Abstracts: Toronto Conference on Tales of Slavery

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Abstracts: Toronto Conference on Tales of Slavery
1. Acloque, Benjamin - Anthropologie Sociale à l'EHESS (CNRS-LAS), Paris
La possession : pouvoir manifeste et pouvoirs occultes en Mauritanie. Sur l'exécution d'esclaves
accusés de sorcellerie en 1929.
Trois esclaves accusés de sorcellerie avaient été achetés dans le Sud mauritanien par un shaykh renommé
d'une importante tribu Zwaya (Ahl Barikalla) qui entreprit de les exorciser. En 1929, un parent de
l'acheteur les exécutait, convaincu de la poursuite de leurs activités occultes. L'administration française
diligenta une enquête détaillée visant à cerner les faits et à envisager les suites à donner. Pour des
raisons politiques liées à l'influence régionale de Shaykh wuld Abd el Aziz, en particulier auprès de
ressortissants de la colonie voisine du Sahara espagnol, l'affaire fut enterrée.
Pour retracer le récit de ces événements ignorés et aller plus avant dans la critique des sources, il sera
intéressant de s'appuyer sur les témoignages, ceux recueillis à l'époque par l'administration coloniale
et conservés dans les archives sénégalaises et mauritaniennes, ainsi que ceux, contradictoires, des
descendants de témoins ou d'acteurs de l'exécution, et de les confronter. Ils sont l'illustration de plusieurs
faits organisateurs de la société Bidhan. Parmi ceux-ci, je me propose de cerner le contexte symbolique et
politique qui rend possible une telle exécution. Ce sera l'occasion d'aborder les thèmes suivants : la
construction sociale du "sorcier" et les typologies indigènes, l'identification des groupes minorés - au premier
rang desquels les esclaves de traite - à des sorciers en puissance, la maîtrise du surnaturel comme monopole
du groupe social des Zwaya (lettrés musulmans) et les enjeux politiques qui président au déroulement des
événements. On s'interrogera sur les suites de la triple exécution : les débats juridiques autour de sa
légitimité, les réseaux tribaux à l'oeuvre dans la construction d'une version des faits à destination de
l'administration dont l'anti-esclavagisme proclamé devait être contourné, le "réalisme politique" de
l'administration coloniale pour laquelle la question de l'esclavage, comme de la sorcellerie, est plus un
embarras que l'objet d'une politique, et enfin, la perception et le jugement actuels des populations sur
l'événement.
2. Alpers, Edward - University of California, Los Angeles
Mlamali and Mariamo Halii: How two free Comorians were enslaved for and freed
from the French emigré libre labor system in 1883
Mlamali and Mariamo Halii were two young adult Comorians, free citizens of the island of Ngazija (Grande
Comore) who were separately enslaved to supply the so-called émigré libre or “free emigrant” system of
indentured labor established by the French following the second abolition of slavery in the French empire in
1848. This thinly disguised system of slavery was instituted by the French government in the mid-1850s to
serve the labor needs of French planters on both the well-established French island-colony of La Réunion
and the new French island-colony of Mayotte (Maore), in the Comoro Islands, over which French authority
was asserted in 1846. Following this initial reaction to the end of slavery by French planters and officials, a
second phase of the system was inaugurated in the 1880s in response to a renewed surge in the demand for
labor on both island-colonies. New laborers were primarily recruited from Mozambique, but both
Madagascar and the Comoro Islands also were sources of engagement. It is in the context of this later phase
of the émigré libre system that we encounter the stories of both Mlamali and Mariamo Halii, who were
rescued by the intervention of a British Royal Navy cruiser that was patrolling the Mozambique Channel to
interrupt this traffic in 1883. Their testimonies, which are located in the Zanzibar National Archives, are
particularly valuable both because they are significantly longer than most recaptive narratives and for what
they reveal about conditions in the Comoros in the very last days of the illegal slave trade. They describe at a
very personal level the close connections between Ngazija and Zanzibar, the Comoros and northwest
Madagascar, and the involvement of rival Comorian political authorities in the émigré libre system, while
their depositions provide us with an expanded awareness of how the chaotic conditions of this era in
nineteenth century eastern Africa affected individuals whose lives could be permanently altered by the
terrible fate of enslavement. In my paper, I will provide a close analysis of their individual testimonies,
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which I will reproduce in full, as well as an extended discussion of Comorian politics and the dynamics of
the émigré libre system.
3. Anyidoho, Kofi - Department of English, University of Ghana
The Oral Imagination & Trans-Atlantic Narratives of Slavery
The year 2007 was marked as the bi-centennial anniversary of the abolition of the Slave Trade Act by
Britain. A range of commemorative events were held globally to draw attention to and provoke debate, once
more, over what has been described as ‘the single most traumatic body of experience in all our known
history’. The year saw several major conferences and seminars, one of which convened in Bellagio, Italy, on
the theme Finding the African Voice: Narratives of Slavery and Enslavement [September 24-28, 2007].
In North America, especially the United States, a number of interested individuals and groups are promoting
various initiatives on the contemporary legacy of slavery in the US, on the occasion of the Bicentennial of
the US abolition of the slave trade, which was January 2008. Of even greater import, the past decade or so
has also seen the publication of several significant scholarly and creative texts on the subject of slavery. This
seminar focuses its searchlight on three creative texts of special significance.
My proposed contribution to the 2009 Toronto conference focuses on three fairly recent narratives of African
slavery that take us back and forth across the Atlantic, carefully linking the Diaspora to Continental Africa in
an intricate pattern of cross-fertilizations. All three texts provide compelling testimony of the many ways in
which even a brutal historical experience may be redeemed and made more enlightening by the transforming
power of the creative imagination.
The first text is a two-part video, Dialogue with Paul Middellijn, originally recorded in Accra for Ghana
Television, in which the Holland-based Surinamese master story teller performs two extraordinary oral
recreations of slavery transposed into the medium of the traditional folktale. A screening of the video and
transcriptions of the tales will be used to support the formal presentation, time permitting.
The second part of the presentation will focus on Manu Herbstein’s Ama: A Story of the Atlantic Slave
Trade (2001), a complex and elegantly constructed narrative that takes us through the full and bewildering
sweep of the history of African slavery, from the sahel regions of West Africa through the fabulous and
disturbing court of the Asante royals, into the dungeons of the slave fort, across the turbulence of the
Atlantic, to the slave auction block and on and on through plantations of persistent rebellion in the face of
endless agony and towards the ultimate triumph of the human spirit.
The third and final part of the paper will focus on Isidore Okpewho’s Call Me By My Rightful Name
(2004), a complex and haunting narrative of the tormented ancestral voice seeking to reclaim its interrupted
ritual chant across the oceans into a Diaspora made nameless and restless with borrowed and ill-fitting
identities.
Central to all three narratives, is the significant role the oral imagination can and has played in
documentations of experiences of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
4. Argenti, Nicolas – Brunel University, London
Things that don’t come by the road: fosterage, folktales and cannibalism in the Cameroon Grassfields.
In the Grassfields of Cameroon, folktales are most often told by children among themselves with no
adult involvement; learned by younger children from older ones. The stories that children tell centre
on the dangers of the forest and of the exogenous; dwelling on such subjects as witchcraft, the wild
and theforeign. Two themes recur throughout the majority of the stories: those of cannibalism and
of parental neglect. The folktales represent the forests and rivers surrounding the villages of the
chiefdoms as sinister battlegrounds where parents abandon their children to be hunted by cannibal
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witches. This paper argues that these stories not only embody memories of the slave trade into
which so many children disappeared right up to the 20th century, but that they retain
their salience for contemporary generations of children for whom the experience of fosterage is contiguous
with that of slavery, and still a concern today.
5. Baku, Kofi - University of Ghana
“We shall not be silenced”: Claims of emancipated slaves to property and consanguinity in the Gold
Coast (Ghana)
Slave trading and slaveholding did not end in the Gold Coast in 1807 when the Parliament of the United
Kingdom passed legislation to end the trade. After several attempts to end slave trade and slavery in the Gold
Coast, Britain passed the Emancipation Act in 1874 proscribing dealing in slaves in the Gold Coast and the
inland territories of Asante and the North. Even though the Act, in reality, ensured freedom for a small
number of slaves it was still no comfort for many persons held in bondage and for several years after 1807
and 1874 the legal status and entitlements of slaves in the Gold Coast remained uncertain.
Several local dealers in slaves and holders of slaves actively resisted the abolition of slavery. In particular
the inland state of Asante felt denuded by the emancipation and prayed Britain not to proceed with
implementing the Act. Records of the courts of the Gold Coast, particularly after 1874, when emancipation
was proclaimed, are replete with litigation about various aspects of the lives of slaves: their legal and social
status; their rights and entitlements to property; inheritance and consanguinity, etc.
This paper aims at utilizing the enormous records of the British Courts which sat in the Cape Coast Castle
and also missionary records in Ghana to trace and examine cases that came before the Courts about slaves;
the intricate and complex legal issues evoked; the difficulties involved in deciding the status of slaves based
different Gold Coast traditions, laws and customs and British common law; interpretations given by the
Courts and in particular the narratives of slaves in pursuit of their newly won freedom. In a word, the paper
seeks to give a voice to emancipated slaves in the Gold Coast.
6. Baum, Robert - University of Missouri
"Witchcraft and Slaving Craft: Problems of Interpreting the Slave Trade from the Post-Colonial
Present"
Recent studies by MacGaffey(1986), Austen (1993), Baum (1999) and Shaw (2003) have discussed
interpretations of the seizure of people into slavery that have stressed their linkage to concepts of witchcraft.
Shaw's Memories of the Slave Trade have extended this analysis by suggesting that the way that many West
African societies understand witchcraft is itself profoundly shaped by the experience of the slave trade.
Sources for both the linkages, between slave raiding and witchcraft, and for understanding witchcraft are
based largely on oral traditions collected since the 1970s and a few written sources from the period of the
Atlantic slave trade itself. This paper will examine the difficulties in moving beyond an interesting
hypothesis to a strong evidentiary argument, given the dramatic expansion of witchcraft accusations and
witch-finding movements in West Africa, from Senegal to Congo, that accompanied the colonial conquest
(Baum, 2005) and their resurgence during the economic hardships of the last quarter of the twentieth
century. The central issue of this paper will be how do we determine whether twentieth century concepts of
witchcraft are strongly shaped by local participation in the Atlantic slave trade or are the way in which West
Africans in the latter half of the twentieth century interpret the slave trade reflective of the growing
importance of witchcraft since the colonial occupation? Other religious models of the impact of the slave
trade, including a Diola apocalyptic tradition will be examined. This study will focus on the Diola of
southern Senegal and on oral traditions collected by the author during over four years of field research
(1974-2008). It will also utilize cited sources for studies of the Temne and BaKongo slave trades referred to
by Shaw and MacGaffey.
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7. Becker, Felicitas - Simon Fraser University
1Transformations of inequality in a former slave plantation settlement: Mingoyo, Tanzania
Between 2000 and 2004, I conducted ca. 400 oral history interviews in Southeast Tanzania. Slavery and its
aftermath were one of the foci of the research. Yet while a handful of informants readily, even proudly
acknowledged that their grandparents had owned slaves, only one informant – among dozens whose family
history and economic circumstances made slave ancestry likely – admitted that his grandfather had been a
slave, and that man was unusual in having ‘bought’ his freedom. This willed amnesia is vivid testimony of
the struggle to shed the stigma of slavery. Fortunately, it does not preclude a further understanding of this
process, if one pays attention to the way the present is rooted in this history.
An in-dept examination of narratives from one location can help open up the problematic memories. The
country town of Mingoyo is now inhabited by millet- and maize-cultivating peasants. A hundred years ago,
though, it was southern Tanzania’s small-scale parallel to the brutal sugar plantations of Pangani. The
Barwani, a slave-trading family from Zanzibar, had settled the village in the mid-nineteenth century, and
used slaves to work rice and sugar fields near Mingoyo stream. Today, the polite consensus is that the slaves
‘moved away’ as soon as circumstances allowed, i.e. long before official emancipation. Nevertheless, tales
of slavery abound in the 45 interviews I collected here.
The grandson of the last slave-owning Barwani is now a neighbour of the leader of the local chapter of the
Shadhiliyya Sufi brotherhood, whose rituals helped ex-slaves claim a stake in the town. Their, and other
residents’, life stories nevertheless make clear that slavery has not passed without trace. Mohamed Barwani
still owns part of the valley, now planted with coconut palms that look after themselves. He acknowledges
that his father, a local official during British rule, was wildly unpopular in the village due to his obsessions
with status – and publicly humiliated after independence.
Other villagers tell lurid stories of the misery and indignity of slavery, especially of slaves’ lack of control
over their domestic life. Yet Mzee bin Juma, the Shadhili leader, has an optimistic tale of claiming belonging
from obscure origins. The shared tropes and contrasts among residents’ testimony show a whole spectrum of
possible outcomes for people struggling to overcome slavery. They show that gender is an inescapable part
of the equation, as men sought to emancipate themselves by establishing patriarchal control over households.
Moreover, the aftermath of slavery was bound up with all the other historical transitions of the twentieth
century: the violence of Maji Maji and the First World War; Indirect Rule and the colonial economy, the
struggle for Independence and the development of new social and economic hierarchies thereafter. Arguably,
different experiences with overcoming slavery still inform the views people take on contemporary forms of
inequality.
8. Bellagamba, Alice - University of Milan-Bicocca
“My father was not a slave!” Narratives of emancipation and re-subordination from the River
Gambia
After the legal ending of slavery in colonial times, what happened to slaves is a question still open in West
African historiography. Researches in the fields of history and anthropology have assessed that the process
of emancipation was slow and difficult for the slaves. They strove against the resistance of former master
and the conservative attitude of colonial officials, who feared the disorders and the social disruption entailed
by mass liberation. In spite of this, and mostly thank to their commitment to hard work, descendants of
slaves achieved a good degree of geographical and social mobility during the 20th century. In the
Senegambia, they participated in the expanding groundnut economy, they entered into the colonial service,
they were recruited for the two World Wars, they migrated to the urban areas in search of labor and of a new
style of life. Eventually, their sons and daughters were able to climb the ladder of social, economic and
religious prestige.
Such history of change is commonly thought of as a narrative of progress and modernization that couples
with the political and social transformations leading to independence. Yet, the process of emancipation was
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marked also by histories of re-subordination and humiliation, which spoke to the efforts made by masters to
preserve their social predominance. Between the two World Wars, immigrants from Eastern Senegal, Mali,
Guinea Conakry and Guinea-Bissau, who reached the River Gambia to enter into the circuits of the
groundnut economy, were often assimilated to the lower ranks of local hierarchies. As they married women,
who were in slavery, their sons and daughters inherited the social stigma attached to the identities of their
mothers. This essay will highlight such dynamics of re-enslavement and their consequences on the social setup of the contemporary Gambia.
9. Boyer-Rossol, Klara - Université Paris VII -Université de Tananarive
L’histoire orale makoa : un pont entre les deux rives du canal de Mozambique.
Le terme Makoa désignait au XIXe siècle les esclaves africains importés dans l’Ouest malgache, et continue
à désigner leurs descendants. Les traditions orales makoa transmettent le souvenir de la traversée des
ancêtres déportés du Mozambique à Madagascar, mais mettent sous silence l’expérience même de
l’esclavage. Celle-ci est soulevée dans les récits de vies d’anciens esclaves makoa recueillis par des
missionnaires norvégiensa. La mémoire des ancêtres makoa se présente comme une source orale directe sur
la traite et l’esclavage à Madagascar, qui n’avait pas été exploitée jusqu’à présentb. Le croisement des
sources écrites et des sources orales ne consiste pas uniquement à confronter les sources européennes aux
sources africaines, mais nous disposons également de sources écrites malgaches relatives à cette histoire,
mentionnée par exemple dans les correspondances entre les gouverneurs des provinces et le gouvernement
central de Tananarivec. Les sources endogènes apparaissent également à travers les pratiques culturelles,
notamment la langue makoa -d’origine bantou- qui subsiste encore dans certaines régions de Madagascar.
En exposant la méthodologie de recherche utilisée pour reconstituer l’histoire des Makoa, cette
communication vise à présenter la diversification des sources disponibles sur la traite et l’esclavage à
Madagascar.
10. Brown, Carolyn - Rutgers University
Contesting Emasculated Patriarchy: Slave Men and Emancipation Struggles in 20th Century Igboland
During the colonial period slavery was a problematic institution of social discrimination as well as labor
mobilization. Concerned that rapid emancipation would lead to a proletarianized work force of
‘detribalized’ and hence ‘dangerous’ African men, the British cautiously tampered with the institution only
intervening when forced to do so by local groups. Such an opportunity came in the interwar period in
southeastern Nigeria. Colonial officials found themselves confronted with an especially intractable form of
slavery with strong restless groups of local slaves intent upon forcing the state to negotiate a social space for
them within local society. Behind one of the most violent expressions of this unrest were the aspirations of
slave men to claim the same types of patriarchal control over the productive and reproductive labor of their
families as did free men over their families. The conflict, which erupted into a civil war in 1922, became a
sign that slave men were as captivated by gender norms that emphasized elite male status – wealthy men
heading large households of many wives, children and free and unfree dependants. Thus,in some villages,
slaves owned other slaves and even, it was alleged, sacrificed them at funerals. This paper will use oral
accounts from interviews in local villages and a series of colonial documents detailing the Nkanu Patrol,
which went from village to village quelling the protests. It argues that scholars can gain a deeper
a
A la fin du XIX e siècle, les missionnaires norvégiens installés à Morondava (Ouest malgache) recueillent les
témoignages des esclaves makoa émancipés. Le pasteur Aas, une des figures importantes de la Mission, a rapporté le
récit de vie de Kalamba, un des premiers évangélistes makoa de Morondava. Kalamba retrace les différentes étapes de
sa traversée, depuis sa capture au Mozambique jusqu’à son arrivée à Morondava, incluant le processus
d’asservissement. L. Aas, Oplevelser og indtryk..., Stavanger, 1919, pp. 166-181.
b
Boyer-Rossol K., « De Morima à Morondava: Contribution à l’étude des Makoa de l’Ouest de Madagascar au XIXe
siècle», in Nativel D.et Rajaonah F., Madagascar et l’Afrique. Entre identité insulaire et appartenances historiques,
Paris, Karthala, 2007, pp. 183-217.
c
Archives Nationales Malgache, série III CC (Archives Royales).
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appreciation of the motives of slave resistance when using gender, specifically masculinity, as a lens to
examine their protests.
11.Declich, Francesca – University of Urbino ‘Carlo Bo’
Free, Slaves and Families along the coast of Northern Mozambique
An initial analysis of the social life of slaves in this area of the Mozambique at the turn of the nineteenth
century and through the first quarter of the twentieth century will be depicted through the comparison of a
number of oral historical sources gathered in the region surrounding Pemba. Ibo island is the first area where
the Portuguese settled in Mozambique and from Ibo trade was done with India and all the other countries of
the Indian Ocean. A creolization took place although relations of dominance among slaves and masters were
obviously maintained. Families kept slaves in the domestic space who had a number of possibilities for
social mobility. Men and women had different opportunities depending on the kind of relations which took
place. Some written sources underpin the importance of domestic slavery along the time.
12. Fomin, Denis - University of Yaounde, Cameroon
Narratives of Slaves-Masters Relations in Cameroon 1750-1950
Cameroon falls within the West African Atlantic Slave Trade region called the Bight of Biafra. This region
was one of the leading areas in the Atlantic slave business from 1750 to the mid-nineteenth century. The
trade engendered in the region elaborate but varied internal slavery systems. Different societies here
practiced slavery according to their societal norms. Some used slavery as a way of building families and
increasing rapidly the population of the group while others maintained slaves on the margin of their societies
thus perpetuating long slave and freeborn family lineages that have remained the source of social conflicts
even today. Where slaves were rapidly absorbed especially through marriage and palace service, slave wives
and their children as well as male slave palace officials have quite some positive accounts of slavery.
The preoccupation of this paper is to explore and exploit narratives of the descendants of slaves and masters
in the different types of societies in this region on the relation between slaves and masters. In societies with a
centralized setup, the identification of descendants of former masters is quite easy but not so easy with the
descendants of slaves. The problem is even much more difficult in the non-centralized societies where slaves
were more often than not at the margin of the society. Nevertheless, this paper shows how from folklores,
dirges, dances and material artifacts found in many societies in the region today, one can discern the voices
of former slaves and their masters on issues concerning their interactions.
13. Gaibazzi, Paolo - University of Milan-Bicocca
Moving out, moving up? Slavery and migration among the Soninke of the Upper Gambia Basin
The paper analyses the changing status of slavery in a context of migration among 20th century Soninke of
the upper Gambia River. Actual slavery waned in the first three decades of the 20th century; however, some
stigmas remained and slaves were integrated as an endogamous class. Migration and its implications for
Soninke communities have played a substantial role in the transformation of slavery. Geographical and
social mobility are intimately related in Soninke society, though not in a linear manner. On the one hand,
migration has historically offered a path to accumulation of economic and social capital, and thus to progress
and independence. On the other, migration has helped reproducing the status quo. Similarly, according to the
dominant discourse, the condition of the slave is read as social and moral ‘immobility’ (static, retrograde,
dependent) as opposed to migration (i.e. wealth-seeking mobility), while migrants and migrants’ activities
have also brokered new discursive possibilities for the re-definition of status. Therefore, the paper focuses on
the migration-slavery nexus through the analytical frame of im/mobility, describing the processes and
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discursive practices which enable and constrain the emancipation from (social) slavery in a context of
migration and circulations. Following family and individual biographies of descendant of slaves, the paper
highlights particular moments when the relation between migration and slavery became particularly salient.
First, between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, slavery provided an idiom for the
controlled integration of seasonal migrants of the groundnut who wished to settle in Soninke villages.
Second, since the 1950s emigration has boomed in Soninke villages, rapidly evolving into wide ranging
transnational networks. Transnational mobility and flows have both resulted into acquired status for some
descendants of slaves and conveyed resources into existing hierarchies of status. Third, return migration, not
only to the villages but also to the urban areas, has developed in the last three decades; descendants of slaves
who return adopt different discursive strategies to resist and negotiate a post-return social immobilization by
the local elites.
14. Greene, Sandra - Cornell University
Remembering Family and Friends Enslaved: Memories from Ghana
It is rare for communities in Africa to remember centuries later the identities of those who were torn from
their communities and enslaved by others. Memories fade; names are forgotten; other histories are deemed
more important for addressing the pressing concerns of the day. This, however has not been the situation in
four different communities in Ghana. In these places, Tekyiman, Anlo, Adangbe and Gonja, oral traditions
vividly recall particular royals seized, specific individuals kidnapped and learned Muslim clerics abducted,
all to be enslaved in places distant from their homes. Why have these communities remembered when so
many others have forgotten? Why these specific individuals were remembered when so many of the others
enslaved from these same communities have been forgotten? This paper will explore these questions by
examining what exactly is remembered by whom and in what context. In some instances, the information is
remembered as simple fact. In other instances, the history is recalled only reluctantly. And in still others, the
information is related with considerable emotion. What explains the difference and what do these differences
tell us about why these memories have been deemed worth recalling? By answering these questions, this
essay will emphasize the extent to which oral histories about slavery and the slave trade in West Africa
survive because of their continuing importance in managing contemporary social and political relations.
15. Hahonou, Eric Komlavi - Roskilde University, Denmark
Debating Slavery in Contemporary Benin. From Discourses to Practices of Subordination,
Emancipation and Alliances
The present article explores the complex transforming relationships between former slaves (called Gando or
Gannunkeebe) and masters (red Fulbé) in Kalalé (Northern Benin). The paper gives a detailed description of
past and present internal dynamics of Fulbe society of East-Northern Borgou between Gando and red Fulbe.
Over the past three decades, discourses of slaves and slave descendants are swinging between subordination
and political emancipation. While the Gando community was seen as a divided social category of Fulbe and
Baatombu societies, locked in a crisis of identity (‘neither Baatombu nor Fulbe’) and unlikely to emancipate
from their former masters (Baldus, 1977; Hardung, 1997), many of them have joined Gando political leaders
in their attempt to get social recognition and political rights. As shown by the author, allegiance, cooperation
and emancipation are debated among Gando in the local political arena of Kalalé. Over thirty years, local
debates on slavery have been alive. However, the general trend is toward a political emancipation. The
collective process of emancipation has started in associative movements in the late 1990s. It has been
furthered in political parties as soon as the decentralisation reform offered them an unprecedented
opportunity to access local power (with the first municipal elections held in 2002-2003). The more recent
municipal elections of 2008 have established the political supremacy of Gando in Kalalé. Surprisingly, this
social category has turned into what is nowadays considered a new ethnic group. Thus, slave status has
progressively turned to be socially and politically valorised in the society, not only in Gando’s discourses but
in their former masters’ discourses as well. Moreover, despite myths and rumours, endogamy is no more the
only rule for marriages.
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Along this article, the author explores these issues in two folds. On the one hand, he puts the recent political
discourses of Gando during the electoral campaigns of 2008 in resonance with interviews of Gando
registered by Baldus in the late 1960s and by Hardung in the late 1990s. He shows how various contexts may
affect discourses on slavery and the results of research. On the other hand, the author analyses contemporary
social practices (especially alliances between former masters and Gando) by opposing myths and rumours to
discourses of former masters and people of slave origins.
16. Halirou, ABDOURAMAN - Université de Ngaoundéré (Cameroun)
Les Doumdé, fermes agricoles ou prisons à esclaves? Histoire d’une institution esclavagiste au Nord du
Cameroun (De 1809 à nos jours)
Les Doumdé (singulier Roumdé) ont été des véritables institutions esclavagistes. Sorte de plantations, ce
sont des espaces où sont parqués des esclaves choisis pour leur vigueur et leur ardeur au travail manuel. Le
plus souvent situés à la périphérie des cités, ils sont actuellement intégrés dans des quartiers périphériques de
certains villes du Nord-Cameroun : comme c’est le cas du Quartier Roumdé Adjia à Graoua (chef-lieu de la
Région du Nord au Cameroun).
Ces «cités des esclaves» à vocation spécifiquement agricole, ont été en fait nombreuses. Chaque grand
notable aurait créé son Roumdé. Par conséquent, tous les Lamidats fondés au Nord-Cameroun à la suite du
Jihad peul d’Ousman Dan Fodio lancé en 1809, sont parsemés de Doumdé.
Le but de cette communication est d’analyser les enjeux ayant présidé à l’institution de ces fermes. S’agit-il
d’une contrainte politique ou d’une nécessité économique ? Par ailleurs, quels sont les trajectoires pris par
ces esclaves et leurs descendants depuis la fin de cette pratique entamée au début de la colonisation
allemande puis française? Il s’agit ainsi de proposer une étude historico-sociologique des Doumdé, dans un
contexte actuel où les Foulbé n’ont toujours pas cessé d’«employer» des ethnies non musulmanes dans
l’accomplissement des activités agricoles.
17. Hamza, Ibrahim – McGill University
Concubinage and the Legal Status of Property Inheritance in Northern Nigerian Emirates
Concubinage represents one of the most widely studied subjects on slavery in Muslim societies yet remains
least explained from legal status property ownership by women. Our understanding of the institution of
concubinage usually concentrates on issues dealing with exploitation of women. A critical re-examination of
concubinage reveals that women who were taken as concubines represent a special category of slaves whose
loss of freedom appears to be one of the most controversial topics in Islamic legal system.
While is it a generally accepted opinion that slaves including concubines do not have equal status before the
law, their social existence as slaves however receives a wider consideration within the cliché that seeks to
protect and maintain the institution of concubinage. Thus, children of concubines attain unrestricted social
status as free persons, whereas their mothers serve as a continuity of an institution that deprive women the
choice of abolishing the legal status of slavery in many Muslim societies.
The paper draws sources primarily from recorded oral interviews with concubines in Northern Nigeria in
1997.
18. Hall, Bruce - Duke University
Into the Saharan Diaspora: The Epistolary Network of Anjay Isa, Slave from Ghadames in Timbuktu,
1857-1900
This paper explores an unusual story from a lesser-known site of African Diaspora in the Sahara Desert: that
of a literate Muslim slave named Anjay Isa who grew up in the oasis of Ghadames (Libya) in the midnineteenth century, and who was then sent south to Timbuktu by his master in order to coordinate his
master’s commercial affairs, much of which was based on the Saharan slave trade. What makes the story of
Anjay Isa so remarkable is that we possess the voluminous commercial correspondence between him and his
9
master, between him and his master’s sons and relatives, and between him and other merchants in the larger
region of the Middle Niger and Niger Bend. There are several thousand extant letters written in Arabic from
the Ghadames-Timbuktu commercial axis (held at CEDRAB in Timbuktu), and perhaps two hundred of
them written by Anjay Isa, or addressed to him in his role as commercial representative of his master’s
family in Timbuktu. These letters open a window into the complicated experience of a relatively autonomous
and high-status slave living in the circum-Saharan World of the nineteenth century.
We do not know whether Anjay Isa was born into slavery or whether he was enslaved as a young child (his
first name suggests a possible Upper Senegalese origin). We do know that he grew up in Ghadames, that he
learned how to read and write in Arabic at a sophisticated level, and that he was a Muslim who owned
Islamic books which he used for both pious and commercial purposes. He was sent by his master to
Timbuktu to act as a commercial agent in the larger Ghadames-Timbuktu trade, and we have a letter of
introduction written by his master (and presumably carried by Anjay) in which Anjay is described as the
most trustworthy person from Ghadames. We know from James Richardson’s (1851) nineteenth-century
diaries that Saharan merchants sometimes sent slaves to sub-Saharan Africa as commercial agents. Anjay Isa
presents us with a unique opportunity to document this experience of Saharan slaves returning to subSaharan Africa with significant personal autonomy despite continued juridical disability and dependency as
slaves.
The ambiguity of Anjay’s position is clear not only in his juridical status but in cultural terms as well. Anjay
was a slave and “black” yet he was culturally Saharan; non-Saharan commercial agents treated him with a
rhetorical respect demanded by a prosperous and learned Saharan but his master’s sons were careful to use
the familiar language of a close relative while always mentioning his status as a slave. In Timbuktu, Anjay
was neither fully Saharan nor sub-Saharan. We know that the issue of continued slavery was important
because the issue was raised in letters between Anjay Isa and his master’s sons. In one letter, one
of his master’s sons accused Anjay of the theft of common family
property and reminded him that he had not been manumitted. This son
threatened to take the case to the principle judge of Timbuktu, where
Anjay’s status as a slave would render his testimony invalid. Such
letters indicate that his continued status as a slave rendered even a
relatively high-status slave such as Anjay highly vulnerable to the
19. Kitetu, Catherine – Egerton University, Kenya
East African Slave Trade: An Account of Kalela A Run-Away Slave
Much has been written about the Trans- Atlantic Slave trade on the Western coast of the continent of Africa
albeit from European sources. Some autobiographies have also been written by those the few literate slaves.
However, much less is available on the East African slave trade and even less available are any forms of
written records of the experiences that the slaves went through in the East African region. Memories of this
trade though imbedded in ritual and song, yet the danger of these memories disappearing are real and their
writing need agent attention. The account of Kalela a runaway slave which I piece together here is an
account I tell as his great-great grandchild.
Coincidentally, Kalela died the same year I was born. Had I been a man child I would have been named after
him as Kalela reborn. However, nobody was named after him to forestall the bad omen that led to his capture
a century before. The practice of naming itself among these peoples is an interesting indicator of the
happenings of that history. The naming systems among the Bantus, i.e. whose name was passed down and
whose wasn’t, etc may be worth of investigating to extract these histories.
The account of Kalela tells of the brutality endured by this teen-age boy who was kidnapped from his home
village in Taita hills in the present Taita –Taveta district of Kenya. Taita-Taveta is on the south western
corner of the present Republic of Kenya. Kalela together with other slaves were marched to Kilwa in
Southern Tanzania. Kilwa was a collection and loading point. Kalela’s story would have fizzled out at this
point as did the many that passed through Kilwa never to be seen or heard of again. But Kalela ran away.
The methods he used to escape are blurred in memory now, but his walk back to Taita hills from Kilwa a
10
distance of about 1000 kilometers has remained in my mind. Much of what he reported I have corroborated
with oral traditions, songs and available written records.
Kalela talked of walking from village to village relying on the hospitality of these people. Oral traditions and
linguistic studies confirm that it was possible to do this as the people of this region all speak Bantu languages
which are very close. In terms of hospitality, up to the time I was a small girl it was allowed for one hungry
to enter into any farm and find something to eat, as long as they sat to eat there. This would have been in
form of bananas and sugar canes. If one carried anything out of the farm and they were caught then you
suffered the punishment of a thief.
The account of Kalela pieces together his own account as passed down to me by my parents, of how he
walked from Kilwa to Taita hills using Mount Kilimanjaro as a reference point. From Kilimanjaro it was
then easy to move on to Taita hills; a two weeks joutney.
20. Larue, George Michael - Clarion University
Zennab and Dr. Saint-André’s Cruise Up the Nile to Dongola:
An Enslaved Woman from Dar Fur (Sudan) and her Self-Presentation
In the nineteenth century, enslaved Sudanese interacted with European medical personnel in Egypt.
Muhammad ‘Ali, the viceroy of Egypt, recruited European doctors as medical officers in his army, as
physicians in his court, and quarantine monitors in his lazarettos. Beginning in 1827, he established an
Egyptian medical school headed by the French surgeon, Clot-Bey. A further influx of French and other
European medical personnel staffed the medical school (which included midwifery), to provide support for
new hospitals and smallpox vaccination programs in Egypt and to staff hospitals and army posts in the
Sudan. These European doctors, pharmacists and professional midwives often described Sudanese slaves
they treated, encountered or owned, and their accounts can be used to investigate slavery in nineteenth
century Egypt and the Sudan.
One of the French pharmacists who worked for the Egyptian government was Dr. Saint-André. As was
common for Europeans working in Egypt in the 1820s and 1830s, Saint-André purchased Zennab in the
Cairo slave market to be his female companion. She had been captured during the Egyptian invasion of the
Sudan, and was from a “princely family from Dar Fur.” In 1833, Saint-André and Zennab were returning by
boat to his post in Dongola (Sudan) when they encountered the young French traveler Edmond Combes, who
later published an account of their voyage up the Nile together. Combes perceived Zennab as a beautiful,
intelligent and strong-minded woman having dominion over the French pharmacist.
During the journey from Cairo to Dongola, Combes and Zennab conversed frequently about race and beauty.
He recounted several revealing incidents. In one, Zennab befriended a recently married Nubian woman who
had not yet conceived, and acted as an intermediary to seek Saint-André’s medical advice. Later, the two
Frenchmen and Zennab (dressed in the finery of an upper-class Egyptian woman), went ashore in an
Egyptian town. The local townspeople initially admired her appearance. But when she walked alone in town,
she encountered considerable hostility for abandoning Islam to become the slave of a European, and was
only rescued from a local mob by Combes’ timely intervention. Finally, for the celebrations at the end of
Ramadan in another town, she delighted her fellow travelers’ and their hosts by performing a traditional
Sudanese dance imitating the undulations of a camel.
Zennab’s words and actions reveal her views, her range of self-presentation, and the complexity of her
position as the slave companion of a European in a Muslim society.
21. Le Cocq, Baz - University of Ghent, Belgium
The slave trade to Mecca from West Africa in the mid 20th century.
In the mid 20th century the slave trade to the Arab peninsula was probably as alive as it had been in previous
centuries. Two main centers of exportation existed from the 1940s onwards: Balochistan in South Asia, and
11
French West Africa. Often travelling in the company of former masters with whom ties of dependency
remained an unknown number of West African pilgrims of slave origins performing the hajj were sold by
their (formally) former masters in Saudi Arabia. Apparently, ties of servitude often remained strong enough
for these West African of servile status to accept this fate, as the source presented during this paper shows: a
letter of warning sent back home by a sold slave
from Dire, Mali, arriving in Mali in 1960. But not all West Africans sold in Saudi Arabia acquised in their
fate, as is demonstrated by a more documented case of a former slave who returned to Afrique Occidentale
Francaise and sued his former master for having him sold. The existence of this slave trade was known since
at least the 1940s, but efforts to stop it remained in vain, despite popular attention to the subject in the
European metropole, for example in the famous Tintin album Cokes in Stock by the Belgian coomic author
Hergé . Involved in the trade were traditional chiefs (chefs traditonels, a formal African rank in the colonial
bureaucracy) from Senegal, Soudan francais and Niger, of Moorish, Tuareg and other origins. This paper
will look into the scarce but existing source material collected in Mali and Niger to address the following
questions: what fueled this trade, how could it remain existent despite colonial en post independence efforts
by the adminstration to stop it, and how did sold Africans respond?
22. McMahon, Liz - Tulane University
“Willing their intentions: Legal legacies of former slaves on Pemba Island”
The abolition of slavery along the Swahili coast of East Africa came in 1907, yet the links between ex-slaves
and ex-masters did not end immediately. In 1924, a Qadi in Mombasa awarded the estate of a former slave
to his former master based on a relationship of wala or patronage between the two rather than to the
descendants of the former slave. This case helps to explain why in the 1910s, former slaves on Pemba Island
were more likely to write a will than any other group, as they tried to protect their estates from the
depredations of former masters. Using probate records, especially the wills of former slaves, held in the
archives on Pemba Island, this paper explores the estates and decisions of emancipated slaves. For the
Muslim population on the island it was standard at death that their estates were divided by Islamic rules, and
prayers and feasts were held based on the amount left behind. The wills of several former slaves indicate the
concern they had about whether their wishes and position as practicing Muslims would be upheld at their
death. Their wills focus on appeasing their former masters, having proper Islamic death rituals carried out
and decreeing who should benefit from their estates. Literature concerning emancipation along the Swahili
coast often discusses the cooperation between ex-slaves and masters, this work suggests that former slaves
sought ways to undermine the power of their former masters, even in death.
23. Mann, Kristin – Emory University
Reconstructing a Transatlantic Slave Family: Tales from Colonial Court and Administrative Records
At the Bellagio Conference, I closely analyzed the record of a case from the Lagos Supreme Court that
involved former slaves returned from Brazil or their descendants to probe whether the memories and voices
of men and women of slave origin were preserved in the document. In a second paper at the May ’09
Toronto conference, “Tales of Slavery,” I propose a paper that begins with an analysis of a second court
case, this time preserving the stories of two sisters and their male cousin who were enslaved at Owu in 1822.
One of the sisters and the male cousin were shortly after exported to Brazil, while the second sister was
owned by a woman in Ijebu Ode until redeemed by her mother at Abeokuta in the early 1830s.
The male slave returned to Lagos intermittently in the 1820s and 1830s, presumably on slave vessels. There
he met the mother and across time carried messages to her daughter in Brazil. In the early 1850s, this man
returned permanently to Lagos, and a decade later the Brazilian sister returned as well. By that time, she had
accumulated sufficient capital to buy land in Lagos and build on it a substantial house, where she welcomed
her mother and sister who had remained in Africa.
This paper continues the excavation of the memories and voices of former slaves through a close reading of
court records, begun in my Bellagio essay. It departs from that paper methodologically, however, by also
analyzing the memories and voice of one of the former slave women preserved in a series of letters she sent
12
to colonial authorities after the murder of her sister. Thus this second paper begins with stories in court
records told by women and men of slave origin. But it moves beyond the court record to trace the women
and man identified there through other colonial sources as well. Ultimately, I want to collaborate with a
Brazilian colleague to see if we can trace the woman and man who were enslaved for thirty to forty years in
Brazil in Brazilian records, adding breadth and depth to my quest to document their lives and recover their
voices.
I see this work as part of a larger project to reconstruct the biographies of slaves who lived in Lagos or
passed through it. I seek to identify as many of these slaves as possible and to recover their stories to move
beyond the anonymity of slavery and the slave trade and document their effects on the lives of known
people.
24. Mouser, Bruce - University of Wisconsin, LaCrosse
Alimaami Dala Muhammadu Dumbuya: His Trial and expulsion from Freetown
In 1807, while the Sierra Leone Company was still administering Freetown, a Susu trader named Dalla
Mohamed Dumbuya was expelled from Freetown on the dubious charge of selling slaves. In 1809, after the
settlement transferred to Royal Colony status, the new governor asked Dalla Mohamed to give his testimony
(evidence) in written form. I have a? Verbatim? report of that evidence that is given in first person form. I
have used this document elsewhere, but never in full text. It deals with the slave trade; different attitudes
about slavery; different legal systems and impressions; and contentious period when Sierra Leone changed
from company to imperial status. It also says much about local ruling practice.
25. Murphy, Laura - Harvard University
2Childless Mothers and Impotent Husbands:
The Failure of Intimacy in West African Representations of the Slave Trade
Though the trans-Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in Denmark in 1803, in England in 1807, in the USA in
1808, in the Netherlands in 1814, and in France both in 1794 and again in 1818, the trade in human lives was
still a lucrative enterprise on the west coast of Africa by the 1830s and 40s. Historians of West Africa
disagree on the degree of impact that abolition had on the sale of slaves, both domestic and trans-Atlantic,
but all agree that the legal abolition of the slave trade did not coincide with an end to trading in practice.
Though less attention is generally paid to this period in slave trade history, representations of the postabolition period in West Africa can reveal much about the effects the slave trade had on African lives. In
this paper, I discuss the effects the slave trade had on the people who were “left behind” – those Africans
who did not embark on slave ships but who nonetheless experienced the constant interruption of the slave
trade in their personal lives, even long after the trans-Atlantic trade ended. This paper discusses, in
particular, the effect the slave trade had on African intimate and family relations through a reading of some
of Samuel Crowther’s papers and of Ama Ata Aidoo’s dramatic depiction entitled Anowa. In a letter he
wrote from school in Sierra Leone, Samuel Crowther describes the loss of his family in a slave raid in 1821,
and then in a later diary, he recounts the somewhat hesitant, bitter-sweet reunion with his family in the 1846.
In Anowa, Aidoo depicts a slaveholder in the 1870s who, because of his relationship to slaves and the slave
trade, is literally made impotent – though he reaches out to his slaves as if they were his family, he is not
able to have a family life himself. Both the fictional and the non-fictional texts depict the endemic failure of
intimacy that was engendered by the slave trade in Africa, revealing the way in which the economy of the
slave trade was calculated in such a way that family bonds and human relationships were diminished in
value. As a result, the moments of intimacy depicted in the texts are repeatedly interrupted by the violence
enacted upon them by the existence of slavery.
These texts provide us with unusual insight into the means by which writers have represented the slave
trade’s sometimes calculated, sometimes collateral desecration of intimacy in the West African context.
They also reveal the way in which the tropes and themes associated with the slave trade have resonated
through centuries of West African writing. This paper is part of a larger argument that I make in a book
13
project entitled, Enduring Memory: Metaphors of the Slave Trade in West African Literature, which
investigates the means by which West African authors represent the legacy of the slave trade on African
shores. I argue there that memories of the slave trade are overlooked in African literature because they are
not revealed in the forms of overt narrativization so familiar in African American literature. Instead, West
African authors describe the continuing suffering inflicted by the slave trade through metaphors, tropes, and
other formal traces which indicate both the fragmented nature of the memory and the realistic ways in which
people recall and experience those memories. The memory of the slave trade is revealed, not shrouded, in
metaphor, as it is subject to long term transmission and is therefore more mnemonic than narrativized.
Depictions of the slave trade thus disclose the unique locations in which temporally distant and seemingly
forgotten events are assigned to memory. Thus, it is integral that we look to works such as Aidoo’s and
Crowther’s to understand the way in which the slave trade’s effects are coded within the literature, in forms
such as impotence and failed mother-child relationships, and to better analyze the way in which these forms
persist in the literature for several centuries.
In terms the collection of source materials, my paper will be analyzing closely both Crowther’s “Letter from
Fourah Bay College,” 22 February 1837 (which is re-printed in Curtin’s Africa Remembered) and
Crowther’s “Journal of Samuel Crowther for the Quarter Ending Sep. 25, 1846” (which is available in
microform). I will also be doing a close reading of Ama Ata Aidoo’s play Anowa.
26. Nwokeji, G. Ugo - University of California, Berkeley
Memories of Slaving in a Former Slave-Trading Community: The Aro of the Bight of Biafra
If oral historiography is a challenging enterprise, recovering the memories of slavery and the slave trade is
particularly problematic. Not only is indigenous slavery is often a taboo topic, the level of consciousness of
the Atlantic slave trade is apparently low among present-day Africans. The present paper will consider
certain methodological challenges in the way of reconstructing the slaving past based on fieldwork
conducted among the Aro of the Bight of Biafra during 1995-96, suggest research strategies and
interviewing tactics, and explore several themes that jump at the fieldworker. The paper will also consider
Aro conceptions of history and the role of slaving in it. The Aro were important slaveholders and dominated
the slave trade in the hinterland of the Bight of Biafra from the seventeenth century to its end in the early
years of the twentieth.
27. O’Hear, Ann – Independent Scholar
Yoruba/Caliphate Society: Proverbs and Praise Poems
This paper focuses on two oral genres, proverbs and praise poems, and one location: the city of Ilorin,
situated in northern Yorubaland and formerly the center of the southwesternmost emirate of the Sokoto
Caliphate. It aims to illustrate where and how these types of information may be found, and the areas in
which they can be useful in providing African voices on slavery.
The location is important, as Ilorin is extremely secretive about slavery, and information, especially that
providing the slave voice, is very hard to come by. Thus the researcher is compelled to search for
information in many, sometimes unlikely, places. The paper will illustrate the use of interviews, local
histories, and a variety of other written/published sources, including records kept by colonial officers and
local newspapers, in the search for proverbs and praise poems relating to slavery.
Proverbs and praise poems (oriki in Yoruba), together with the related genres of nicknames and slogans, help
to tell many aspects of the story of slaves, including the attitudes of members of society toward them (as
against whatever was the official line), the resistance of slaves, and the lives of elite slaves and their
descendants, concubines, pawns, and poor rural dwellers who were (and are) descendants of slaves.
Proverbs, for example, enable a comparison between the actual treatment of slaves and the norms of Yoruba
and Caliphate society. Even when presented from the owners’ point of view, they help to reveal the extent of
slave resistance. A comparison of proverbs collected in Ilorin with those collected elsewhere in Yorubaland
14
and the Caliphate should ultimately enable researchers to make some generalizations on attitudes and
practices region-wide.
Oriki in Ilorin are particularly useful in teasing out the history of the elite slaves in the city, as are
nicknames. Much more, however, remains to be done to collect oriki in and around Ilorin; this may reveal a
great deal more information on slavery in the area and the internal slave trade. Slogans provide evidence of
the resistance of poor slave descendants and the Ilorin aristocracy’s attitudes toward that resistance, for
example, during the political campaigns of the late colonial period, illustrating the story of continued
subordination and resistance.
28. Ojo, Olatunji - Brock University, St Catharines
Silent Testimonies, Public Memory: Proverbs and the Popularization of Slavery in Yoruba Oral
Tradition
Slavery constituted one of the leading political, social and economic institutions in nineteenth century
Yorubaland. Whether as slave raiders, traders, or victims, hardly was any town left untouched directly or
indirectly by slavery and its aftermath. Although it is now almost impossible to identify anyone with a
firsthand experience of slavery, various aspects of modern Yoruba society continue to be shaped my
memories of slavery. People from Ekiti and Ondo districts are still reluctant to marry from Egba and Ijebu
towns. With this background, I had thought the process of collecting oral data for my doctoral research on
warfare and slavery in nineteenth century Yorubaland would be easy. I was wrong. My informants were very
forthcoming on warfare but usually silent about slavery. This I found was due to a need for political
correctness: discussing slavery would offend some ‘family’ members who descended from slaves. My desire
to break through the barrier of silence led me to collecting oral traditions particular those that fall under the
genre of Yoruba popular culture and folklore. Stationed in a small Ekiti village, I asked people to sing songs
and recite poems, proverbs, and taboos that point to ethnic and class differences, slavery, and pawnship.
Because these traditions reside in public domain, they are less personal than oral history. Hence, in less than
24 hours, I collected many songs and proverbs suggesting not only the ‘popularization’ of slavery and
possibilities of folklore as historical data. This paper discusses Yoruba proverbs in the context of the
commentaries offered on relationships between slavery and ethnicity; modes of enslavement; contrasts
between slaves, freeborn, and pawns; rights, privileges, and treatment of slaves and pawns; status of second
and latter generation slaves; slavery and religious rituals; and colonialism and the emancipation of slaves.
29. Osinubi, Taiwo – University of Montreal
“Emploting Slavery and Historical Accummulation”
This paper addresses the debate about the proper narrative form for the emplotment of slavery as a historical
—and also contemporary—event in African literatures. A number of critics, such as Wole Ogundele,
Kwadwo Opoku-Agyemang, and Madelaine Borgomano, have argued either for a concept of a silence on
slavery in African literatures, or argued that only specific forms of narrative genres—specifically the
historical novel—can adequately represent the effects of slavery on African polities. In this paper, I suggest
that the relationship between history and African narratives of slavery is much more complex than that of
genre. African writers have consistently written about slavery: However, any emphasis on the memories of
slavery has always been displaced by the colonial encounter. What is now happening is a shifting of the
moral weight in narratives about slavery from the colonial encounter to African and diasporic imaginaries
“silenced” by the event. I will base my analysis on a discussion of two historical novels: Manu Herbstein’s
Ama and Yaw Boateng’s The Return.
30. Pelckmans, Lotte - African Studies Centre & Leiden University
What is in a name? Reconstructing memories of slavery through joking & naming practices
in contemporary Mali.
15
Present-day memories of both the external and internal slave trade in the West African region have been
analyzed as embedded in symbolic domains such as ritual, song, and embodied memory. I argue that
memories of slavery in Mali can also be read from two spheres that have arguably been overlooked as source
material, either because they are too obvious in the case of joking relations, either because they involve
conscious erasure of memories as in family names.
References to memories of slavery are freely recalled in joking relations. Joking relationships contain a large
body of references to slavery that –as far as I know- have never really been analyzed as memories of slavery
in contemporary African societies. It is important to question whether explicit references to slavery in the
humoristic and social context of joking proves less valuable for addressing memories of slavery in the public
sphere than other written, oral or implicit sources?
In the second sphere of renaming, the memory of slavery is deliberately erased/ suppressed. Family names
are often associated with the stigma of slave ancestry and therefore many slave descendants try to change
their family names. I propose to discuss two strategies of re-naming practices by (Fulbe) slave-descendants
in rural and urban Mali: 1) buying oneself a noble status and name through Islamic manumission procedures
on village level. 2) Changing stigmatized family names (often after having migrated) either by paying praise
singers to invent a new ancestry either by e.g. registering in (national) administration with re-invented
names.
Both spheres demand for new research methodologies in which we sharpen our attention for and
understandings of present day processes of identification, both as resistance to and/or escape from
stereotyped stigma channeling memories of slavery. Secondly, if changing one’s ethnic status is easier than
changing one’s social status, as the renaming practices suggest, how does this influence our understanding of
often dismissed agency of slave descendants in purposefully disconnecting from collective memories of
slavery? In short I argue for attention to naming, joking and humor as viable sources for tracing memories of
slavery in the West African public sphere.
31. Roberts, Richard - Stanford University
3Voices of Slavery in the Colonial Courts of the French Soudan, 1905-1912
The colonial courts of the French Soudan were established at exactly the same moment as slaves began to
leave their masters throughout the region. Hundreds of thousands of slaves left their masters during the
period from 1905-1912. Leaving often meant leaving behind husbands, wives, children, and possession.
Former masters also sought to entangle their former slaves in disputes over property, contracts, and child
custody. Former slaves sometimes turned to the courts to recover their children and property held by their
former masters.
Court records thus provide a potentially rich set of sources contemporary to the events surrounding the end
of slavery. But court records are not transparently easy to use. Historians can find “voices” of slavery in
these records, but the voices that come to us have been mediated by the multiple filters associated with court
procedures and recording keeping practices.
Although the colonial courts prohibited the recognition of the status of either slave or master, traces of these
statuses appear in the records. This paper will therefore examine cases where former slaves were identified
directly (by the terms such as servant used in the dispute) or indirectly (by the substantive issue of the
dispute or lack of bridewealth transferred). This paper will also explore the ways in which the voices of
former slaves and former masters were presented and changed by the procedures of the courts. Knowing the
latter is an essential step in excavating the voices of slavery from court records.
This paper will use evidence collected in approximately 4,500 entry-level civil disputes heard before the
tribunaux de province in selected districts of the French Soudan and which form part of the Colonial Courts
Data Base project at Stanford University.
16
32. Rockel, Stephen - University of Toronto Scarborough
The Autobiography of Adrian Atiman: Freed Slave to Medical Missionary
Some time in the early or mid-1870s a young boy from the village of Tundurma on the Niger River in the
region of Timbuktu was pawned by his family and then sold into slavery. Passing through a series of Tuareg
and Arab masters he was taken by camel caravan across the Sahara. At Mitlile in northern Algeria he was
redeemed by White Father missionaries. This boy, baptized Joseph Adrian Atiman, was educated by the
missionaries in Algeria and Malta, where he trained in medicine. In 1888 Atiman travelled to Zanzibar as a
member of the seventh White Fathers’ caravan to the central African Lakes. The caravan, operated by CMS
caravan leader Charles Stokes, left Saadani for Tabora and Ujiji, from where Atiman and some of the
missionaries sailed to Karema on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika, where the White Fathers had taken
over the former International African Association station. Thus began a remarkable career of 67 years as a
medical catechist. Atiman recorded his life and career in an autobiography, which was in part published in
Tanganyika Notes and Records in 1946. This is perhaps the only autobiography by a pioneering western
trained African doctor of slave origins. For our purposes it is a rich account of the process of enslavement,
manumission, incorporation into the White Fathers’ mission and then medical work in East Africa. A
number of other accounts of Adrian Atiman’s life have been published, but usually in the form of missionary
hagiographies.
Recent work on the Atlantic, trans-Saharan, Indian Ocean and internal African slave trades broadens
understanding of the slave experience by tracing the lives of slaves from the point of enslavement though
incorporation into host societies, and by examining process of social rebirth in new contexts. The slave and
the freed slave were not only commodities and labourers; they were also took part on the development of
new communities of a modern type. Life stories such as that of Adrian Atiman are especially valuable for
illustrating these processes from the perspective of the freed slave. This paper will begin the processs of
interrogating and contextualizing Atiman’s story highlighting three themes: processes of enslavement and
manumission; the transcontinental and international character of the late 19th century slave trade; the
partnership between missionaries and freed slaves in the construction of new communities in the East
African interior. Some attention will be given to Atiman’s work as a pioneering African doctor, but this
subject has been dealt with elsewhere, including by John Iliffe. Sources include the autobiography and
biographies of Adrian Atiman; missionary archives and publications; Belgian, German and British colonial
records; ethnographic material.
33. Rodet, Marie - University of Vienna
Gender and the End of Slavery in the Region of Kayes, French Soudan : The Sams’ Court Cases
(1925-1926)
Through a detailed examination of a series of court cases which took place in French Soudan in the 1920s
and which all concerned marital disputes between the spouses Sams, this paper aims to analyse some of the
consequences on gender of the end of slavery in the region of Kayes. On 17 May 1925, Mariam Sam went to
court in Kayes in order to obtain 50 000 francs back from her husband, Boubakar Sam, that were the result
of the sale of a property belonging to her. She declared that her husband had received this money wrongfully
and had only given a small part of it to her. The court decided that Boubakar had to give the money back to
his wife. Boubakar, however, went on appeal. From this first judgment and Boubakar’s appeal onward, a
series of court cases started between Boubakar, his wife, and the colonial prosecutor, most of these
judgments would be ultimately declared as Mariam’s fault. This series of court cases took place over two
years with a final decision on September 1926 denying to Mariam Sam the property rights that were
involved during the first judgment of 1925 because of her former slave status.
This case is quite exceptional as it allows us to identify the different discourses on slavery which were
clearly expressed by the different litigants during the proceedings. It is also unique by its length over one
year and for all the new developments which regularly occurred between 1925-1926. Besides, the final
decision in the last judgment tells us much about how the colonial administration ultimately dealt with the
legacy of slavery. It also shows the increasing intervention of the colonial power into the regulation of
17
marital relations. Finally, the Sam’s court cases demonstrate how the reorganization of property in postabolition Mali entailed numerous social and gender conflicts between former slaves and former masters. It
shows how investment in real estate became an important post-abolition stake not only for noble families but
also for those men and women of slave origin who had some success in accumulating wealth over the first
twenty years of the twentieth century.
34. Roeschenthaler, Ute - University of Frankfurt, Germany
Memories of the slave trade in the Cross River region
Descendents of slave traders and descendents of slaves still live together in the larger villages of the Cross
River region. Despite the fact that slave trade was abolished about 150 years ago and ended in the hinterland
latest about 90 years ago, most people in the Cross River region know until today who in his village is free
born and who a descendent of slaves. The existence of their social difference is not visible in daily life, they
call each other brothers, though people rather evade talking about this aspect of the past and reactivate their
memories in ritual performances. All important positions in the village continue to be reserved for members
from free born first settler families. This concerns modern institutions such as the administrative chief’s
position as well as the upper grades of older and more recent men’s and women’s associations. This paper
will provide some insights of how people in the Cross River region remember the slave trade. It will be
largely based on field research and interviews of descendents of slave traders, and (hopefully) also
descendents of slaves who are even less willing to talk about their past than the former.
35. Rossi, Benedetta - University of Liverpool
Without History? Interrogating ‘Slave’ Memories in the Ader (Niger, Tahoua)
It has often been argued that slaves are ‘without history’, or alternatively, that they internalize their masters’
views of history, and therefore interpret the past through ‘borrowed’ memories. The Ader region of Southern
Niger (Tahoua) makes no exception to this. In a comparative article on Hausa and Tuareg conceptions of the
past in the Ader, Pierre Bonte and Nicole Echard, two of the main students of this region, write ‘les classes
sociales dominées sont-elles réellement “sans histoire”? La réponse est clairement affirmative en ce qui
concerne les iklan.’(1976:269).d My proposed contribution will challenge, or at least qualify, this perspective
by referring to oral testimonies that I collected in the Ader in a series of fieldwork visits between 1994 and
2005. These testimonies focus on three themes that recur in accounts of the past across ethnicity and status.
These themes are: slavery; government and political rule; and colonial conquest. The ‘past’ referred to is
comprised roughly between the end of the nineteenth century and the 1940s. For each of these themes, I shall
compare the views of people of free and slave descent, and examine disjunctures and overlaps, as the case
may be.
My work suggests that people of slave descent are more likely to share, or have shared, their masters’
ideologies of status than their masters’ interpretations of the past. This may in part account for researchers’
idea that ‘slaves lack history’. However, not only did many of the slave descendents I talked to have
distinctive memories of the past; but ‘slave memories’ also exhibit considerable internal differences. The
category ‘slave’ was not unified. It comprised a range of gradations of status and diversity of personal
experiences that are cristallized in the different memories of today’s slave descendents. The concept of
‘slave history’ - or lack of it – is less than helpful. Slave descendents in the Ader often proffer alternative
readings of the past from those of free people, or indeed of other slave descendents. I would suggest that
rather than asking whether slaves have, or lack, a history of their own, we should be asking under which
circumstances the memories of free and dependent groups correspond/ differ; and what accounts for
correspondence/ divergence.
d
Bonte, P. and Echard, N. 1976. ‘Histoire et Histoires. Conception du Passé chez les Hausa et les Twareg Kel Gress de
l’Ader (République du Niger).’ Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines, 61-62, XVI (1-2), pp. 237-296.
18
Even within the same social and political unit, slave- and free-descendents may, or may not, have shared
memories (i.e. the actual facts recalled by different groups may differ or overlap). In either case, they may,
or may not, share interpretations of these memories (the same fact may be interpreted in equal or different
ways). For example, until 1917 the French struggled to subdue the Tuareg elites of the Kel Dinnik (Eastern
Ullimmiden). Some slaves of the Kel Dinnik resisted colonial invasion and fought alongside their masters;
others aligned themselves with the French and local groups that had submitted. Accounts of resistance
against the French of Tuareg elites and slaves who fought with their masters sometimes differ – for instance,
slaves and free may recollect different sequences of events, or attribute different causes to the eventual
French victory. In turn, different groups of slaves may highlight or dismiss particular factors, depending on
their past and/or present circumstances.
What accounts for different views and interpretations of the past across and within groups of free and slave
descent? What, if anything, is peculiarly ‘slave’ in the memories of slaves’ descendents? How, if at all,
should we interpret the idea that ‘slaves lack history’? Is there a difference between memory and history, and
is this distinction relevant to this analysis? My proposed contribution will raise these and other questions in
relation to the compared testimonies of descendents of slaves and freemen, and advance some preliminary
hypotheses.
36. Rush, Dana - University of Illinois
“In Remembrance of Slavery: West African Domestic and Transatlantic Spiritual Incarnations”
As evidenced by a classic piece of Beninese/Togolese literature, L’Esclave, and a complex of Vodun slave
spirits, called Tchamba, this paper establishes the local significance of domestic slavery and the deep-seated
cognizance of the transatlantic slave trade focused mainly along coastal Bénin, and Togo, with a brief
excursion into slave spirits in the Caribbean.
To suggest how deeply engrained the ideas of slavery are within local consciousness, I begin by addressing the
multiple translations of the English word ‘slave’ in Fon, Mina, and Ewe. Accordingly, I suggest the deficiency
of our monolithic word ‘slave’ to denote the disadvantaged human element in an institution as complex and
multifaceted as slavery.
Based on the long history of domestic slavery along this coastal region, it is accepted quite simply that when a
family had sufficient money, the father would purchase one or more domestic slaves to work for his family. I
offer an example of this type of enslavement as presented in Beninese/Togolese author, Félix Cochoro’s novel
L’Esclave (1929). Cochoro’s character of the “slave,” the relationships between the “slave” and the members
of the family who bought him, and the social and economic milieu in which the story unfolds present a
backdrop for the development of the contemporary Vodun of slavery, called Tchamba after the ethnic group in
northern Togo. For that reason, Tchamba refers directly to a domestic slave’s presumed origins, ethnicity, and
ancestry. I show how the slave spirit of Tchamba is reified and honored through shrines, dance and temple
paintings.
Of specific importance to this conference, I would like to present the as-of-yet unpublished results of
interviews with Togolese families who have memories of domestic slavery. Although precise details are hard
to come by, there are contemporary stories circulating along this coastal area regarding which families owned
slaves and whether their slaves married into their families, or were sold in the transatlantic slave trade. Some
of the descendants of slaves are just recently learning of their slave ancestry. In turn, some have traveled to the
north in search of their roots and long-lost families. In Lomé, Togo, the name Dogbe-Tome was mentioned to
me several times in relationship to a story – still in circulation -- of someone who had learned of her slave
ancestry, and journeyed north to find her roots in Burkina Faso. I have only one case history in which I was
able to meet the daughter and granddaughter of an amepleple, or “bought person,” named Tonyewogbe. I
conducted a series of interviews in 1999 with these women in the town of Adidogome, Togo. The last
surviving child of the “bought person,” Adono Zowaye, was a frail though vibrant centenarian at the time. Her
youngest daughter Notuefe Zowayè had just begun the process of Tchamba initiation upon the advice of a
diviner due to the “bought person” status of her grandmother.
19
I would hope to conclude my presentation with a brief examination of how the legacy of enslavement plays out
in transatlantic African-derived religious systems such as Umbanda in Brazil, Palo Monte and Espiritsmo in
Cuba, and Vodou in Haiti based on first-hand field research. We shall see how domestic slavery was a preset
stage for the transatlantic slave trade and how the remembrance of slavery allows for the contemporary
maintenance and elaboration of local histories, knowledges and representations of enslavement on both sides
of the Atlantic.
***This paper would be excerpted from a 50 page chapter of the same title from my manuscript-in-progress.
37. Saha, Zacharie, University of Dschang, Cameroun
Mémoire de l’esclavage et rites de réconciliation post-esclavage chez les peuples des Grassfields de
l’Ouest Cameroun
La traite négrière européenne a rencontré en Afrique, outre la traite arabe, diverses formes endogènes de
l’esclavage. Chez les peuples des Grassfields camerounais, notamment en pays bamiléké, une forme
rigoureusement codifiée de l’esclavage qu’il convient d’appeler esclavage coutumier sévissait
indépendamment de la traite arabe ou transatlantique. D’abord alimenté uniquement par le code pénal et le
droit de la guerre qui autorisaient l’asservissement des criminels et des prisonniers de guerre, il connut par la
suite une profonde métamorphose au contact des traites exogènes et en particulier, de la traite
transatlantique. Entre le 18e et le 20e siècle, le phénomène de l’esclavage jusque-là relativement limité a pris
en effet des proportions terrifiantes par son caractère massif et impitoyable à tel point qu’il put survivre à la
campagne abolitionniste et à l’intrusion coloniale.
Ce qui nous intéresse ici, ce n’est tant les pratiques esclavagistes que les souvenirs vivaces qu’elles ont
engendrés et qui sont entretenus par la littérature orale, la musique et la danse. C’est davantage les rites
magico-religieux destinés à réconcilier d’une part les bourreaux avec leurs victimes, et d’autre part l’homme
avec les divinités afin d’épargner aux individus et au groupe malédiction et malheur. Bien qu’étant licite,
l’esclavage n’en fût pas moins reprouvé par l’éthique. C’est pourquoi, incantations magiques, offrandes
sacrificielles, chansons et danses ne sont pas de trop pour servir d’exutoire à la souillure ou de recettes
expiatoires en vue d’échapper à la malédiction et promouvoir la paix.
Mots clés : Pays bamiléké, Esclavage coutumier, Souillure, Malédiction, Rites de réconciliation, Promotion
de la paix,
38. Sarich, Jody – De Paul University College of Law and Kevin Bales (Presented by Jody Sarich)
Gaining Freedom through a Well-Founded Fear: Uncovering the Voices of Contemporary Slaves in
Trafficking-Visa and Asylum Applications in the United States
140 years after the Fourteenth Amendment granted citizenship and constitutional protection to Americanand African-born slaves and their descendants, the struggle to gain citizenship and equal protection of the
laws continues in the United States for African survivors of contemporary slavery. Having escaped the
immediate violence of their bondage, ex-slaves strive to secure a more lasting form of freedom through
applications for trafficking-visas or grants of asylum. What is found within the affidavits, correspondence
and personal narratives that form a complete visa or asylum application reveal as much about modern
trafficking and enslavement of Africans as they do about contemporary legal and social policy toward the
previously enslaved. These documents deserve attention in the broader study of how slaves have used their
voices and the persuasive force of their experiences to assert their own human dignity in the face of an
oppressive past, and can shed light on the experience of earlier forms of slavery. But these applications do
require the same critical analysis as for any archival source. This paper, therefore, will explore the
methodology of researching contemporary slavery through the use of immigration applications, with
particular attention given to the administrative framework within which the applications are crafted, the
persuasive nature of the applications, and the tensions inherent in the asylum process between the factors that
20
may hinder full disclosure of the master-slave relationship and the factors that promote absolute disclosure of
even the most intimate details of enslavement.
39. Sehou, Ahmadou - Université de Yaoundé, Cameroun
Lamido Iyawa Adamou de Banyo (Nord-Cameroun): chef traditionnel, parlementaire et esclavagiste
(1902-1966)
A partir des sources orales, des documents d’archives inédits et des correspondances échangées avec les
administrateurs coloniaux de la Région de l’Adamaoua, cette communication ambitionne de faire connaître
les positions défendues par un chef traditionnel peul et musulman au sujet de la pratique de l’esclavage dans
son lamidate et des velléités françaises d’y mettre un terme.
Le cas du lamido Iyawa est à tout point atypique dans l’histoire de l’esclavage dans les lamidats de
l’Adamaoua entre le XIXe et le XXe siècle: lettré de la première génération d’évolués formés à l’école
française, député des premières assemblées législatives (ATCAM puis ALCAM)f et défenseur acharné du
système esclavagiste dans le lamidat de Banyo dès son accession au trône. S’appuyant sur sa fonction de
parlementaire, il sut mettre à profit les contradictions des institutions administratives coloniales pour
renforcer le pouvoir des maîtres sur les esclaves du lamidat de Banyo.
Ayant capitalisé les attributions administratives et coutumières que lui avait reconnues le pouvoir colonial, il
usa du tribunal coutumier pour renforcer son emprise judiciaire sur la population, des fiches d’impôt et du
recensement pour recevoir ses redevances, Iyawa Adamou demeura le maître incontesté du lamidat de
Banyo. Malgré le caractère confidentiel du combat (confisqué par l’élite administrative) entre partisans et
adversaires de l’esclavage, symbolisés par le lamido Iyawa Adamou et Sablayrolles, c’est le destin de
plusieurs dizaines de milliers de personnes qui était en jeu. La victoire du statu quo, retarda pour quelques
décennies encore la fin de l’esclavage, né dans des circonstances particulières dans l’Adamaoua et qui
survécut en s’enracinant sur le terreau des intérêts, de la complaisance et du déni de droit, loin des cimes
d’un idéal humanitaire de plus en plus universel. Banyo était l’une des plus vastes subdivisions de
l’Adamaoua, à laquelle furent rattachés à certains moments les lamidats voisins de Kontcha, de Tignère et de
Tibati. La survie de l’esclavage dans cette unité eut par conséquent une grande portée pour les autres parties
de l’Adamaoua.
Jusqu’à sa mort en 1966, Iyawa Adamou s’employa à préserver son pouvoir des empiètements progressifs de
l’administration et à maintenir l’esclavage dans sa zone de commandement. Banyo est le seul lamidat de
l’Adamaoua où aujourd’hui encore le lamido se permet de délivrer des certificats d’affranchissement ou d’en
refuser. Une façon détournée de reconnaitre que l’esclavage y a toujours cours, après près d’un demi-siècle
d’indépendance nationale.
40. Strickrodt, Silke - Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Aballow’s Story: The experience of slavery in mid-nineteenth century West Africa, as told by a victim
My paper focuses on a group of documents that record the life story of an enslaved African woman,
Aballow, on the Gold and ‘Slave’ Coasts in the 1840s and 1850s. These documents were generated by the
judicial assessor’s investigation of a case of suspected slave dealing by a European trader at Accra in 1851,
where Aballow, a number of fellow slaves and other Africans appeared as witnesses. Aballow’s statement
gives a poignant account of her traumatic experiences as a slave, such as her enslavement at such an early
age that she was ignorant of her origins, the experience of ‘the slave chain’, the threat of shipment across the
e
Lamidats : chefferies musulmanes au Nord-Cameroun, créées au début du XIXe siècle dans la mouvance du
djihad lancé par Ousman dan Fodio ; à la tête d’un lamidat, trône un lamido ou chef coutumier musulman.
f
Ces assemblées sont issues des reformes impulsées par la Conférence de Brazzaville (30 janvier - 08 février
1944) et l’adoption de la Loi-cadre Gaston Defferre par l’Assemblée de l’Union Française (23 juin 1956).
Ce fut en premier lieu l’Assemblée Représentative du Cameroun (ARCAM), puis l’Assemblée Territoriale
du Cameroun (ATCAM), l’Assemblée Législative du Cameroun (ALCAM) et enfin l’Assemblée Nationale
après la proclamation de l’indépendance en 1960.
21
Atlantic, sexual abuse by a European trader and punishment by the latter’s wife, including flogging and the
sale into the interior of the Gold Coast. The statements of the other witnesses tell the story from different
perspectives, mainly corroborating it but sometimes contesting details. The result is a rare and exceptionally
rich (if uneven) account of the career and experiences of a female slave in West Africa in the mid-nineteenth
century.
However, exactly in this the richness of detail lies a potential danger for historians, as it tempts us to
uncritically accept the story that we are being told. But this would be fallacious, particularly as these
documents were produced in a legal context where people are under pressure to say the ‘right’ thing. And
whose voice is speaking, anyway – that of the witness, the judicial assessor or the translator? In order to be
able to retrieve historical information, these statements therefore need to be critically examined and carefully
contextualised. This is what I seek to do in my paper.
41. Suzuki, Hideaki - University of Tokyo
Behind the numbers: the realities of slave trade in the 19th Century
Western Indian Ocean basing on tales of slaves
W. G. Clarence-Smith mentioned in the introduction to The Economics of the Indian Ocean Slave Trade in
the Nineteenth Century (London, 1989) that “nothing has created so much controversy in the history of the
slave trade as the disputes over the total number of slaves exported.” It was written nearly a couple of
decades ago, but still can be applied to the current situation.
Of course the estimation of the total number of slaves exported is important in order to compare with slave
trading in other regions or to create broader view of slave issues. However, the paper-giver wonders if the
comparison of the numbers is really worthy without consideration of the realities of slave trading which
should be different in each region. Therefore, the direction now we have to be bound for shall be to clarify
the realities of slave trading in the western part of the Indian Ocean.
For above mentioned purpose, narrative accounts of slaves and slave dealers are useful. They were recorded
by mainly British consulates around the western Indian Ocean such as Zanzibar, Bushire and Aden. The
paper-giver has collected these narratives from several archives and contemporary works in the 19th Century.
This paper tries to dig up the memories of (ex) slaves from these materials, and then put them together in
order to find out an aspect of the realities of slave trading in the 19th Century western Indian Ocean.
This paper consists of two parts. The first part of the paper, validity and methodology of these materials are
argued. The second part can be regarded as practice, thus several narrative accounts are picked up as
example of the realities of the 19th Century Indian Ocean slave trading and find out some characteristic
aspects of slave trading there.
The conclusion of the paper is as follows;
1/ slaves’ and slave dealers’ accounts recorded by British officers were taken just after the formers were
protected or arrested by the latter. Therefore, in order to reveal the realities of slave trade at that time, these
“contemporary” accounts are more reasonable to utilize than other forms of documents, such as
autobiographies and life histories which are written/ taken several decades after their emancipation.
Furthermore, British officers tried to investigate both slaves and slave dealers as much as possible; thus, the
reliance of these documents is evaluated highly, though many of them are fragmentary. Therefore, while one
needs to collect so many such fragmental narratives, the tales of (ex) slaves in these documents are quite
worthy to reconstruct the realities of slave trading in the 19th Century western part of the Indian Ocean.
2/ the characteristic aspect of slave trading based on slaves’ and slave dealers’ narrative is frequent dealing.
In many cases, slaves were forced to travel around the western Indian Ocean. Consequence of such travel,
some of them acquired several languages, and worked as translator for British consulate or explorers after
their emancipation.
22
42. Trabelsi, Salah - University of Lyons, France
Témoignages d’esclaves et d’affranchis dans les sources arabes classiques
L’historien des mondes musulmans classiques est souvent confronté à d’innombrables écueils pour
aborder l’histoire sociale des exclus et de ceux qui n’ont laissé que des traces indirectes. Les sources
historiques sont souvent si partielles et si lacunaires au point de ne laisser transparaître que peu
d’informations significatives sur l’univers des anonymes et des laissés-pour-compte.
À condition de renoncer à une trop évidente linéarité des lectures, l’examen de quelques documents relevant
des sources hagiographiques, comme les Tabaqât ‘Ulamâ Ifriqiyya, peut être d’un secours précieux pour
accéder aux « muets » de l’histoire. Ces textes offrent, en outre, des témoignages qui permettent de varier les
perspectives et d’inverser les échelles d’analyse. Au-delà des récits soigneusement arrangés des-fins
d’illustration et d’édification, ces documents présentent, à bien des égards, des éclairages utiles pour déceler
des parcours de vie d’esclaves et des portraits hauts en couleurs.
Une série de documents, attachés avant tout à magnifier des figures tutélaires, ouvre le champ à des régimes
d’historicité sensibles au moindre détail du réel. Ils font, furtivement, surgir, des paroles singulières et des
fragments de témoignages qui nous mettent sur la trace de femmes et d’hommes issus de l’esclavage. À la
lumière des indices et des marques liés à leur expérience sociale, il devient aisé de suivre la trame de
leurs vécus et les traits marquants de leur histoire.
Ces textes fournissent en effet de précieux renseignements et offrent matière à réflexion pour une étude
typologique de quelques récits de vie d’esclaves susceptibles d’être assortis de nuances particulières.
Je me proposerais donc de présenter, à partir des sources documentaires classiques, l’ébauche d’une
galerie de portraits et d’itinéraires montrant l’esclave comme un acteur décisif.
43. Traore, Ousmane – University of Paris - IV
“Entretien avec Khalidou Diallo, Sambou Boubou, Bocar Dème et Amadou Dème: Deux Esclaves,
Deux Maîtres, Deux Mémoires Historiques »
Notre interventions a deux objectifs principaux : nous allons présenter quatre enquêtes que nous avons
réalisées dans la vallée du Fleuve Sénégal à Golléré, dans le département de Podor, au mois d’avril 2007.
Nous nous sommes intéressés à deux esclaves et descendants d’esclaves, Sambou Boubou (85 ans) et
Khalidou Diallo (72 ans) et à deux nobles, Amadou Tidiane Sow (50 ans) et Bocar Dème (83 ans). L’objectif
de cette enquête entrait dans le cadre de nos recherches pour le doctorat. En effet, notre hyspothèse consiste à
montrer qu’une relecture des structures sociales africaines, profondément inégalitaires et hiérarchisantes,
sources de l’Esclavage domestique, pourrait permettre une analyse des sociétés africaines comme
potentiellement « ouvertes » à l’Economie atlantique et à la Traite Négrière. Une telle hypothèse, pour
trouver une réponse, doit désormais associer la « voix » de l’esclave et celle de son maître. Dans le cadre de
notre présentation nous allons interroger la représentation que se fait l’esclave de son histoire, de son milieu
social et de sa conscience territoriale. La question de son appartenance à une communauté est très souvent
mise à l’épreuve par les grands mouvements de populations (interrégionaux ou trans-atlantiques) dont il est
sans cesse sujet. C’est pourquoi Khalidou Diallo associe son identité futanké à la guerre. Notre interlocuteur
dit :
« Je tiens à vous préciser que je suis un fils d’esclave car mon père fut capturé au Macina et amené au FuutaTooro… »
Khalidou Diallo montre que ces mouvements de populations constituent l’essence même de la Traite
Négrière qui a plus touché les catégories sociales inférieures. D’après une une correspondance des Archives
Nationales, en plus de la guerre, l’action politique de la noblesse reste aussi importante dans ces
mouvements de populations. Saint-Robert écrit :
23
« … la guerre que les Maures du païs ont fait aux Foules joint aux pillages que les Grands faisoient aux
Lobes qui estoient des Foules qui s’appliquaient le plus à la chasse des éléphants, les ont obligés de se retirer
dans les Rivières de Gambie ….g »
Mais que ce soit dans le cadre de la Traite Négrière atlantique ou dans le cadre de l’Esclavage domestique, la
mémoire de l’Esclave et la représentation qu’il se fait de son histoire demeurent très vivaces. Pour Khalidou
Diallo la voix de l’esclave, son histoire et son héritage sommeillent dans trois canaux différents : celui de son
maître, celui de la communauté des esclaves et enfin, celui de la mémoire collective de tradition villageoise.
Khalidou Diallo ajoute:
« …Les informations que je tiens, et dont je vais vous entretenir, me viennent soit directement de mes
maîtres, soit des discussions entre nous maccabé[Esclaves] tenues souvent sous la direction de notre chef. On
discute de l’histoire du village, de son fondateur, de l’histoire de nos familles adoptives… »
Notre intervention est une confrontation de la mémoire et de la voix de deux esclaves, ainsi que celles de
deux maîtres, à la compréhension de la Traite Négrière. Recueillir l’analyse de l’esclave et de son approche
de la structuration sociale nous permet d’avoir une meilleure compréhension du phénomène de l’Esclavage
domestique ainsi que l’ancrage de la Traite Négrière dans les sociétés africaines durant plusieurs siècles.
44.Turano, Maria R. - Università del Salento-Italie
Mémoire sociale et représentations du pouvoir politique colonial esclavagiste dans le cycle rituel de
la Tabanka au Cap-Vert
Suivant les indications du call for paper du Colloque à propos du « souvenir de la traite d’esclaves
transatlantique, […] qui reste inscrit dans les rituels, […] et les mémoires […] sociales », je propose une
communication sur le cycle rituel de la Tabanka au Cap-Vert .
La tabanka , nom d’origine guinéenne qui signifie ‘village’, est une confrérie laïque de secours mutuel qui
se présente comme une société (comme au Brésil) avec le roi, la reine, le gouverneur, le commandant, le
capitaine, les « nègres » (les esclaves, en créole negus, ou katibu, captives). Pendant un période de l’année
cette confrérie a un cycle rituel. Comme on sait, l’origine de la plupart des esclaves au Cap-Vert provenait de
la zone frontalière africaine qui va du sud du fleuve Sénégal jusqu’à la Guinée actuelle et était composée en
majorité par les wolofs, les balantas, les serers, les mandingues, les manjaks, les papels, les bijagos, les
diolas, les peuls et d’autres groupes ethniques de cette zone.
Les esclaves guinéens (spécialement les manjaks) avaient des connaissances techniques comme la tessiture
de « panos » et ils étaient utilisés aussi pour tisser le coton cultivé dans les fazendas. Avec leur savoir, ils
portaient aussi certains rituels : probablement à cause du mélange au Cap-Vert des ethnies africaines entre
les esclaves, ce rituel, déjà à l’origine, était « métissé ».h
Au Cap-Vert ces cycles rituels étaient connues comme « les fêtes des nègres » et on en a connaissance
depuis le XVIIème siècle à travers des interdictions de ces manifestations à cause de leur caractère
‘impudique’.
Aujourd’hui le cycle commence avec une période d’une quinzaine de jours de prière collective dans la
chapelle privée de la confrérie, au son des tambours ; successivement il y a l’organisation de la retrouvaille
du symbole du Saint perdu à travers une ‘procession’ dans les rues de la ville de Praia, la retrouvaille dans la
maison de la personne qui prend en charge la fête, le repas rituel et les danses. Donc du point de vue
historique cette forme culturelle populaire est un « produit » provenant de la traite africaine des esclaves et
« inventée » par la diaspora des esclaves africains au Cap-Vert. On peut parler d’une réinterprétation d’une
culture traditionnelle en contact avec d’autres cultures.
g
h
ANF, SAINT-ROBERT, Colonie, C6-6, 28 mars 1721.
24
Dans cette réinvention culturelle la mémoire joue un rôle important : nous sommes en présence de la
mémoire sociale ou collective et de sa transmission : mémoire sociale comprise , selon Pierre Nora (1978),
comme “le souvenir ou l’ensemble de souvenirs, conscients ou non, d’une expérience vécue et/ou mythifiée
par une collectivité vivante de l’identité de laquelle le sentiment du passé fait partie intégrante. Souvenirs
d’événements [...], mémoire active, entretenue par des institutions, des rites… […] La mémoire collective
est ce qui reste du passé dans le vécu des groupes ou ce que ces groupes font du passé »i. Connerton (1990)
ajoute que « les images du passé et la connaissance du passé sont conçues et soutenues par des performances
rituelles »j.
45. Valsecchi, Pierluigi - University of Pavia, Italy
"My dearest child is my slave's child:” Personal status and the politics of succession in south-west
Ghana (19th-20th century)*
This is a historical examination of the blurring of borders between the ascribed status and acquired one, and
considers the frequency with which individuals tainted by the condition of slavery or other forms of extreme
dependency have gained the succession to positions of power and authority in
the Nzema area of south-west Ghana over the past 150 years.
The cases I examine are mainly examples of persons born from unions that locally are termed *suakunlu
agyale*, which literally means "a marriage among occupants of the inner chamber" or, in other words,
among members of the very same matrilineage. In principle this constitutes a clear break with the most basic
rule of exogamy, and in practice, means that either the husband or the wife was an acquired member of the
abusua: normally a slave or ex-slave or an unredeemed pawn, eventually integrated into the matrilineage.
In spite of all the stigma attached in principle to a component of unfree ancestry in matters of succession, a
surprising number of successors to office, including high office, who were chosen by families and kingmakers over a long historical span, were exactly in this situation.
The cases examined in this paper are generally explained and justified in local public discourse in the terms
of exceptions to the sacrosanct established custom. More confidentially people would tell you that, no matter
the pedigree, the proper choice is the person who is most likely to prove successful in carrying out the duties
demanded of the position he or she inherits. A wealthy individual “ even of slave ancestry“ was preferred to
a poor one, and the powerful to the powerless.
The author was particularly struck by the story he was often told by Nzema elders of a man's dearest son
being the one he had had by a slave woman. In this case the link between father and son is the strongest and
most exclusive: the son belongs to the father's matrilineage, due to the fact
that the mother's ancestry is not considered. The son has no one to serve other than his father: he is his most
trusted supporter and very often he happens in practice to be his successor.
Clearly this image of the Gold Coast societies is very different from the one projected by the colonial
experience and by much anthropological research. That perception was of an extremely hierarchical system
in which the ranking of personal status and that of political and economic power more or less matched each
other.
However the available sources often appear to tell a different and much more complex story, in which a clear
distinction has to be stressed between the objective hierarchy of personal status and the potential to climb up
the power structures in both the economic and politico-institutional spheres.
i
Nora, Pierre, “Mémoire collective” in J. Le Goff, (sous la dir.), La nouvelle histoire, Paris, Retz,
1978, p. 398
j
Connerton P., How Societies Remember, Cambridge, Cambridge Univ. Press, p. 37
25
This paper is based both on written documents, oral history, and evidence collected by the author through his
research in this part of Ghana over the past two decades, and especially by direct observation of actual
choices made in cases of succession to office.
46. Walz, Terry –
Sketched Lives from the Census: Trans-Saharan Africans in Cairo in 1848
The 1848 census of Cairo is a treasure trove of information on the city’s 260,000 inhabitants, including some
600-1,200 freed slaves of trans-Saharan African origin, the community of 2-3,000 freeborn Nubians, the
1,000 or more freeborn Africans of various origins living and working in Cairo, and the roughly 8,000
Africans attached to households but not yet freed. Altogether the black African population amounted to
13,000 individuals or 5 percent of the total population of the city.
Census statistics are raw data and like much of the documentation available in Muslim countries say little
about the personal lives of people. What the census data does provide is a context for individual lives as
gleaned from them and other sources. Such documentation might be found in the religious court archives
(properties transactions, commercial contracts and disputes, waqf, emancipation deeds, death notices, estate
probates) or in the records of the civil administration – police records, administrative reports, military
records, or the occasional reference in European accounts. This paper uses the appearance of trans-Saharan
Africans in the 1848 census of Cairo as a jumping off point to discuss the great variety of lives lived by
individual Africans in Egypt in the middle of the nineteenth century.