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ABSTRACT
This article explores the efforts of an inquiry in Saint-Louis, Senegal to abolish slavery in the nascent French colony between 1842 and 1844. It discusses the perspectives of a professional Muslim elite and highlights those who resisted slavery and those resisting abolition. The article thus demonstrates the complex positions Muslims took in facing emancipation and their implications for relationships between them and French colonialism. On the one hand, those Muslims in favour of the ransoming of enslaved people cited the Quran to assert the conditions under which slavery was permitted or denied, stressing the illegality of the current practice in Saint-Louis. On the other hand, those resisting emancipation claimed that abolitionism would destroy their society and traditional ways of living. Debates revolved around the organization of labour markets and the indemnity proposed by the French government to release captives from African or European masters. Those for and against slavery both drew their arguments on Islamic tenets, which shows that different ideas of liberty and society were mostly grounded in social classes rather than a single Islamic discourse.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Commission d’enquête. Dossier de l’émancipation, pièce n. 3, 2e partie. Saint-Louis, Enquête, Noirs Libres. In. Examen de la question d’emancipation au Sénégal par la Commission des affaires coloniales. Travail de la Commission d’Enquête nommée au Sénégal (1842–1844). Archives Nationales d’Outre Mer, Sénégal, XIV, 13, no page numbers. I am grateful to Juliana Barreto Farias, who first brought this document into my knowledge.
2 Boubacar Barry, Le royaume du Waalo: Le Sénégal avant la conquête (Paris: Karthala, 1985), 87.
3 Hillary Jones, The Métis of Senegal: Urban Life and Politics in French West Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 20.
4 Louis Moreau de Chambonneau. ‘L’Histoire du Toubenan, ou changement de Souverains et réforme de relligion desdits nègres, depuis 1673 son origine, jusques en la présente année 1677’, in Deux textes sur le Sénégal (1673–1677), Bulletin de l’I.F.A.N., t. XXX, sér. B, n. 1, ed. Carson Ritchie (1968), 352.
5 Archives Nationales du Sénégal (Dakar), Fonds AOF, Folder 13.G1: Tratés conclus avec les chefs indigène du 28 août 1782 au 05 julliet 1843, p. 08.
6 Ibid., 11, 24.
7 Frederick Cooper, ‘Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African History’, The American Historical Review 99, no. 5 (1994): 1516–45.
8 Martin Klein, ‘Studying the History of Those Who Would Rather Forget: Oral History and the Experience of Slavery’, History in Africa, 16 (1989); John Hunwick, ‘Islamic Law and Polemics over Race and Slavery in North and West Africa (16th–19th Century)’, in Slavery in the Islamic Middle East, ed. Shaun E. Marmon (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 1999); Ghislaine Lydon, ‘Slavery, Exchange and Islamic Law: A Glimpse from the Archives of Mali and Mauritania’, African Economic History 33 (2005): 117–48; Marie Rodet, ‘Mémoires de l’esclavage dans la région de Kayes, histoire d’une disparition’, Cahiers d’Études africaines, L (1) (2010): 197; Sandra E. Greene, West African Narratives of Slavery: Texts from Late nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Ghana (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011); Bruce Hall, A History of Race in Muslim West Africa, 1600–1960 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Chouki El Hamel, Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race and Islam (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Hilary Jones, ‘The Testimony of Lamine Filalou: A Young Man’s Experience of Enslavement and His Struggle for Freedom in French West Africa’, in African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade, ed. Alice Bellagamba, Sandra E. Greene, and Martin A. Klein (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Juliana B. Farias, ‘“O laptot e a signare: gênero, escravidão e liberdade” (Senegal, século XIX)’, in África, margens e oceanos: Perspectivas de História Social, Lucilene Reginaldo; Roquinaldo Ferreira. (Org.) (Campinas: Editora da Unicamp, 2021); Sean Hanretta, ‘Islam and Emancipation’, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, 20 (2022).
9 For a recent study on this topic, Jose Lingna Nafafé, Lourenço da Silva Mendonça and the Black Atlantic Abolitionist Movement in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022).
10 Ahmad Baba, Mi’raj al-Su’ud: Ahmad Baba’s Replies on Slavery, Annotated and trans. John Hunwick and Fatima Harrak. (Rabat, Morocco: University Mohammed V, Institute of African Studies, 2000).
11 Rudolph Ware, The Walking Qur’an. Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge, and History in West Africa (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 161.
12 Sandra Greene, Slave Owners of West Africa: Decision Making in the Age of Abolition (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2017), 2–3.
13 Alice Bellagamba, Sandra E. Greene, and Martin A. Klein, eds., African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
14 Vanicléia Silva Santos, ‘Mulheres africanas nas redes dos agentes da Inquisição de Lisboa: o caso de Crispina Peres, em Cacheu, século XVII’, Politéia (UESB) 20 (2021): 67–95; Toby Green, Philip J. Havik, and Ribeiro da Silva, eds., African Voices from the Inquisition, I: The Trial of Crispina Peres of Cacheu, Guinea-Bissau (1646–1648) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021); Thiago Henrique Mota, ‘Wolof and Mandinga Muslims in the Early Atlantic World: African background, missionary disputes, and social expansion of Islam before the Fula jihads’, Atlantic Studies, 20, no. 1 (2021): 150–176.
15 Juliana Barreto Farias, ‘Sou negro e os negros são meus irmãos’: vozes africanas sobre escravidão e liberdade no Senegal, século XIX’, in Histórias de escravidão e pós-emancipação no atlântico (séculos XVIII ao XX), ed. Henrique Espada Lima, Waldomiro Silva Júnior, Lourenço da e Mamigonian,, Beatriz Gallotti. (São Leopoldo: Casa Leiria, 2022), 172.
16 Juliana Barreto Farias, ‘Não há cativo que não queira ser livre’: Significados da escravidão e da liberdade entre marinheiros do Senegal, século XIX’, Varia Historia, Belo Horizonte, 36, no. 71 (mai/ago 2020): 395–431, 398–9.
17 Boubacar Barry, Le royaume du Waalo: Le Sénéfal avant la conquête (Paris: Karthala, 1985), 273.
18 Roger Pasquier, ‘A propos de l'émancipation des esclaves au Sénégal en 1848’, Outre-Mers. Revue d'histoire Année (1967): 193.
19 Roger Botte, ‘L'esclavage africain après l'abolition de 1848. Servitude et droit du sol’, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 55e année, no. 5 (2000): 1012.
20 Commission d’enquête. Dossier de l’émancipation, pièce n. 3, 2e partie, no page number.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
24 Célia Maria Marinho de Azevedo, Onda negra, medo branco. O negro no imaginário das elites, século XIX (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1987), 47–8.
25 Ronald Raminelli, ‘Reformers of Slavery: Brazil and Cuba c. 1790 and 1840’, Varia Historia, 37, no. 73 (2021), 119–54, 125.
26 Paul E. Lovejoy and A.S. Kanya-Forstner (eds)., Slavery and Its Abolition in French West Africa. The Official Reports of G. Poulet, E. Roume, and G. Deherme. Madison: African Studies Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1994, 5.
27 Commisson d’enquête. Dossier de l’émancipation, pièce n. 3, 2e partie, no page number.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid.
32 Juliana Barreto Farias, ‘Não há cativo que não queira ser livre’: Significados da escravidão e da liberdade entre marinheiros do Senegal, século XIX’, Varia Historia, Belo Horizonte, 36, no. 71 (2020), 395–431.
33 Commisson d’enquête. Dossier de l’émancipation, pièce n. 3, 2e partie, no page number.
34 Martin Klein, Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
35 Mamadou Diouf, Le Kajor au XIXe siècle: Pouvoir ceddo et conquête coloniale (Paris: Karthala, 1990), 151.
36 Ibid, 152–3.
37 Commisson d’enquête. Dossier de l’émancipation, pièce n. 3, 2e partie, no page number.
38 Ibid.
39 Muhammad Ibn Ismail Al-Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari, livro 2, hadith 23. Disponível em https://sunnah.com/bukhari/2/23, acesso em 17/06/2018.
40 Ibid.
41 Thiago H. Mota, ‘Significados da escravidão para africanos muçulmanos: ideias jurídicas e religiosas islâmicas no Mundo Atlântico (séculos XVI e XVII)’, Anos 90, no. 26 (2019), 1–18.
42 Marta García Novo, ‘Islamic Law and Slavery in Pre-Modern West Africa’, Journal of World History, no. 2 (2011); Chris Gratien, ‘Race, Slavery and Islamic Law in the Early Modern Atlantic: Ahmad Baba al-Tinbukti’s treatIse on Enslavement’, The Journal of North African Studies, 18, no. 3 (2013); Bruce Hall, A History of Race in Muslim West Africa, 1600–1960 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011); John Hunwick, ‘Islamic Law and Polemics’; Ousmane Oumar Kane, Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016); Paul Lovejoy, Jihad in West Africa During the Age of Revolutions (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2016).
43 Baba, 35
44 Baba, 38–9.
45 Baba, 36.
46 Commisson d’enquête. Dossier de l’émancipation, pièce n. 3, 2e partie, no page number.
47 Ibid.
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid.
50 Ibid.
51 Tamba M’bayo, Muslim Interpreters in Colonial Senegal, 1850–1920: Mediations of Knowledge and Power in the Lower and Middle Senegal River Valley (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2016), 35–6.
52 Commisson d’enquête. Dossier de l’émancipation, pièce n. 3, 2e partie, no page number.
53 Ibid.
54 Ibid.
55 Ibid.
56 Ibid.
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid.
59 Ibid.
60 Ibid.
61 Ibid.
62 Ibid.
63 Ibid.
64 Ibid.
65 Ibid.
66 Ibid.
67 Martin A. Klein, ‘“He Who Is without Family Will Be the Subject of Many Exactions”: A Case from Senegal’. In African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade, 66.
68 Commisson d’enquête. Dossier de l’émancipation, pièce n. 3, 2e partie, no page number.
69 Ibid.
70 Jessica Balguy, ‘L'indemnité coloniale de 1849: Mise en place à répartition en Martinique et en Guadeloupe’, Histoire sociale/Social history, 53, no. 107 (2020), 113–29.
71 Ibid, 114.
72 Ghislaine Lydon, ‘Les péripéties d’une institution financière: la Banque du Sénégal, 1844–1901’. In AOF: réalités et héritages: Sociétés ouest-africaines et ordre colonial, 1895–1960 ed. Charles Becker, Saliou Mbaye, Ibrahima Thioub (Dakar: Direction des Archives Nationales du Sénégal, 1997), 475–91.
73 COMMISSION d’enquête. Dossier de l’émancipation, pièce n. 3, 2e partie, no page number.
74 Ibid.
75 Ibid.
76 See how Al Rayan Bank or the Islamic finance at the Bank of England works: https://www.alrayanbank.co.uk/guide-expected-profit#, https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/explainers/what-is-islamic-finance#. access in 06/15/2024.
77 Ashfaq Ahmad, Kashif-ur Rehman, Asad Afzal Humayoun, ‘Islamic banking and prohibition of Riba/interest’, African Journal of Business Management 5, no. 5 (2011): 1763–7, 1764.
78 COMMISSION d’enquête. Dossier de l’émancipation, pièce n. 3, 2e partie, no page number.
79 Ibid.
80 Jones, The Métis of Senegal, 80, 135.
81 COMMISSION d’enquête. Dossier de l’émancipation, pièce n. 3, 2e partie, no page number.
82 Ibid.
83 Ibid.
84 John Hunwick, ‘Islamic Financial Institutions: Theoretical Structures and Aspects of their Application in Sub-Saharan Africa’, in Credit, Currencies and Culture: African Financial Institutions in Historical Perspective, ed. Endre Stiansen and Jane I. Guyer (Stockholm: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1999), 88–9.
85 COMMISSION d’enquête. Dossier de l’émancipation, pièce n. 3, 2e partie, no page number.
86 Ware, 162.
87 Lamin Sanneh, Beyond Jihad: The Pacifist Tradition in West African Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).
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Thiago H. Mota
Thiago H. Mota is in the Department of History, Federal University of Viçosa, Avenida P. H. Rolfs, s/n, Campus Universitário, Viçosa (MG), Brazil CEP 36570-900. Email: [email protected]