The Persistence of ServilityAuthor(s): Martin KleinSource: Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne des Études Africaines, Vol.39, No. 1 (2005), pp. 1-4Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Canadian Association of African StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25067448 .

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The Persistence of Servility

Martin Klein

R?sum? Les trois premiers articles de ce num?ro ?voquent les divers aspects de

l'h?ritage laiss? par Vesclavage. L'un des plus importants traite, soit de la

persistance de l'exploitation, soit des efforts des anciens esclaves pour obtenir d'?tre trait?s avec ?galit?. Alice Bellagamba se concentre sur

Fouladou, r?gion de l'est de la Gambie, autrefois gouvern?e par Mousa

Molo, ?diflcateur d'?tat, qui, sagement, s'?tait alli? ? la fois aux Fran?ais et aux Anglais, et ainsi, pendant un temps, a parvenu ? garder le contr?le

des esclaves, et particuli?rement le contr?le des femmes de son harem.

Les deux autres traitent de r?gions de l'Afrique de l'ouest, qui n'?taient ni

essentielles ? la croissance ?conomique ni ? l'op?ration du syst?me colo

nial. Au Sahara, les Fran?ais avaient lib?r? les esclaves de fractions de

Tamasheq (Touareg) qui s'?taient soulev?s contre eux, mais une fois la

situation redevenue normale, m?me ces fractions ont pu maintenir un

contr?le souple sur leurs d?pendants. Baz le Coq d?crit la mani?re dont la

servilit? a ?t? la cons?quence de la n?gligence bienveillante qui a carac

t?ris? l'entre-deux guerres, des s?cheresses d?sastreuses des ann?es 1970

et 1980, de deux guerres civiles et de la d?mocratisation. Mirjam De

Bruijn et Lotte Pelkmans, parlant d'une r?gion adjacente au d?sert, d?crivent une situation plus ambigu?, o? la servilit? est contest?e, mais

persiste, souvent accept?e par de nombreux anciens esclaves. Dans ce cas

ci, la migration ouvri?re, le d?veloppement des relations de march?s et la

d?mocratisation jouent un r?le. L'article de Jos? Curto ne traite pas de

l'h?ritage laiss? par l'esclavage, il parle de la r?alit?. C'est une histoire de

trahison, o? un petit marchand d'esclaves est pris dans les tentacules du

syst?me auquel il a particip?. Elle d?montre ? quel point l'influence de la

traite d'esclaves peut ?tre persuasive dans une soci?t? qui accepte d'y

participer. Elle illustre ?galement que le r?gime colonial africain le plus

pauvre nous a laiss? la documentation la plus riche sur la traite

d'esclaves.

The importance of slavery and the slave trade has been a major theme in the history of different parts of Africa since the mid-1970s

i

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2 CJAS / RCEA 39:1 2OO5

(Meillassoux 1975; Miers and Kopytoff 1977; Lovejoy 1983). More

than anything else, it was stimulated by the discovery by many field researchers that slavery questions were crucial and some

times still remained alive in the areas that they studied. This repre sented a radical change from research during the colonial and early

independence periods, which tended to ignore slavery questions. In

spite of this, few of us confronted the persistence of forms of servil

ity, sometimes vestigial, but often real in contemporary Africa. In

my book on slavery and the French (Klein 1998), I tried to bring the

story up to the present, but evidence was sometimes ambiguous and I tried to be cautious. Two years later, the debate was trans

formed by a special issue of the Journal des Africanistes, edited by

Roger Botte, and entitled "UOmbre port?e de l'esclavage: Avatars

contemporains de l'oppression sociale." Botte (1994) had already done important work on the Futa Jallon, where the struggle of

former slaves to be fully accepted as equals remains important. In

the special issue, he gathered articles, almost all of them by African

authors, on diverse aspects of the heritage of slavery, of which the

most important deal either with the persistence of exploitation or

with the efforts by former slaves to achieve equality. The first three articles in this issue are an effort to continue the

discussion. Alice Bellagamba deals with Fouladou, an area in the

eastern Gambia once ruled by Mousa Molo, a state-builder who

wisely allied himself with both British and French, and thus, for a

while, maintained control over his slaves, particularly the large number of women gathered in his harem. The other two deal with

areas in French West Africa, which were neither central for

economic growth nor for the operation of the colonial system. In

the Sahara, the French had freed the slaves of Tamasheq (Tuareg) fractions that revolted against the French, but once conditions

returned to normal, even these fractions were often able to main

tain a loose control over their dependents. Baz Le Coq describes

how servility was effected by the benign neglect of the inter-war

period, by the disastrous droughts of the 1970s and 1980s, by two

civil wars, and by democratization. Writing about a desert-side

area, Mirjam De Bruijn and Lotte Pelckmans decribe a more

ambiguous situation, in which servility is contested, but persists, often with acceptance of many former slaves. Here, labour migra

tion, the development of market relations and democratization are

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Klein: The Persistence of Servility 3

playing a role.

During the late 19th century conquest, the French army took

slaves, allowed their allies to take slaves, and often distributed

slave prisoners, particularly women, to their soldiers, servants and

agents. With the capture of Samory and the fall of the powerful fortress at Sikasso in 1898, the conquest was largely achieved.

Control was speedily transferred to civilian authorities, who

moved quickly against slave-raiding and slave-trading, which were

a barrier to economic development. They acted first in the French

Soudan (now Mali); but in 1903, a new law code was proclaimed for

French West Africa and administrators were told that they could no

longer take slave status into consideration in judicial matters. This

meant that masters could no longer ask the French to return

runaway slaves. Slave flight had been a problem as soon as peace and order were established, but the 1903 instructions do not seem

to have had an immediate impact. In 1905, Governor-General

Ernest Roume decreed the end of all transactions in persons. This

did not abolish slavery, but made it illegal to sell, exchange, give or

bequeath persons. At the time, the administration hoped that

slaves would stay where they were and that slavery would be

replaced by some form of contract labour (Klein 1998, chapter 8).

Instead, during the subsequent six years, somewhere near a million

slaves picked up and went home. There was also significant slave

flight in the Gambia, facilitated by the proximity of the border.

Both French and British freed slaves fleeing the other's colony. Dramatic as slave flight was, it involved mostly slaves who

remembered another home or were confident that could find work.

Most slaves remained where they were. Slave-master relations

were gradually renegotiated, masters gradually reducing labour

obligations or converting them into a form of tribute that was

reduced with time. As this happened, administrators were relieved

to no longer have to deal with "

slave palaver. "

Slaves were free to

leave, but a range of material and ideological factors kept them tied

in to the transformed social order. Only the slave who left was

totally free, though as the story of Maman makes clear, old age and

illness could force even someone who was well off to return to a

community where she had servile status. All three articles describe

the complicated interplay of political and economic change.

Perhaps the most interesting suggestion in the two French articles

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4 CJAS / RCEA 39:1 2OO5

is that the creation of a vibrant democracy in Mali is a major factor

today. I commissioned these three articles while editor of the

Canadian Journal of African Studies, and have added a fourth arti

cle, which deals not with the heritage of slavery but the reality. Jos? Curto's article is a tale of treachery, in which a petty slave trader is

trapped in the tentacles of a system in which he had participated. It

demonstrates how persuasive the influence of the slave trade could

be in a participating society. It also illustrates that Africa's poorest colonial regime left us with the richest documentation on the slave

trade.

Bibliography Botte, Roger. 1994. "Stigmates sociaux et discriminations religeuses:

l'ancienne classe servile au Fuuta Jaloo." Cahiers d'?tudes africaines

34: 109-36.

-, ?d. 2000. "L'Ombre port?e de l'esclavage: Avatars contemporains de

l'oppression sociale." Special issue. Journal des Africanistes 70.

Klein, Martin. 1998. Slavery and Colonial in French Africa. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Lovejoy, Paul. 1983. Tranformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in

Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Meillassoux, Claude, ed. 1975. L'esclavage en Afrique pr?coloniale. Paris:

Fran?ois Maspero.

Miers, Suzanne and Igor Kopytoff. 1977. Slavery in Africa. Madison:

University of Wisconsin Press.

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