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Slaves and personal dependency in oriental Africa (XVTH - XXTH century)
Organised by Henry Médard, Franck Raimbault and Thomas Vernet (Donatecarcenter.com-Paris)
Monthly seminar, on Tuesdays of 17 h 30 - 19 30
Donatecarcenter.com-PARIS / Centres Malher, 9, street Malher 75004 Paris
Room Person
Programme
October 9th, 2007
Thomas Vernet, Henry Médard, Franck Raimbault : Presentation of Seminar
Mary Pierre Ballarin (IRD) : A community of slaves liberated today : Rabai (Kénya)
On Monday, November 12th (14h-18h, room 107)
Henry Médard, Jan Georg Deutsch (University of Oxford), Benedetta Rossi Germani (University of Liverpool) : Ancient Slavery, colonial slavery, contemporary inheritances : Around works and recent researches on slavery [Henry Médard and Shane Doyle (Editors), Slavery in the Great Lakes Region of East Africa. Oxford, James Currey, on 2007 ; Deutsch, Jan Georg, Emancipation without abrogation in German east Africa (c.1884-1914), Oxford, James Currey, on 2006]
Tuesday, December 11th, 2007
Eric Vallet (MCF, Paris 1). The slaves in the archives of the sultanate rasûlide of Yemen (XIIITH - XVTH centuries)
In January February break of seminars
In march (at the end of the month)
Jean Pierre Christian (NATIONAL CENTRE FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH), The milking of the lake Tanganyika (the XIXth century siécle)
April
Samuel Sanchez (Paris VII) : Colonial Power and networks of pro-slavery milking in Nosy Be, Madagascar : On 1839-1896
Tuesday, May 13th, 2007
Audrey Carotenudo (University of Provence) : Approach of servile resistance in the ocean Indian : self-defining reconstructions (XVIIITH - XIXTH century)
Presentation
Seminar « Slavery and personal dependency in oriental Africa » is linked from now on to seminar « milking, XIVTH - XXTH century » enlivened by Antonio de Almeida Mendes, Jean-Michel Deveau and Salah Trabelsi, as part of the International Research centre on Slavery (GDRI of the NATIONAL CENTRE FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH).
Sessions will take place on the second Wednesday of every month (the 17 h 19 h) in EHESS, 105 boulevard Raspail, 6th Paris.
The milking and more still the slavery in a broad sense are much less studied in oriental Africa than in the Atlantic world. By oriental Africa we understand here the geographical going aerie of Mozambique up to the Horn and including the fringes of Congo and of Sudan. The Red Sea, supplementary or rival space of the Indian Ocean according to period, is naturally included in our research aerie. We are therefore interested in relations between inside and Africain shores and in those of Africa and Madagascar with the Indian, Arab, Persian shores and Mascareignes. If you should not plate of course on the Indian Ocean phenomena noticed in the Atlantic world, it would be also ridiculous not to draw part of the huge job performed on the West to light what takes place in the East.
It is impossible to separate study of the milking and slavery and it is impossible to separate the slave of others dependent and of his opposite, free man. Historical production concerning these topics is very unequally divided. There is an important literature on slavery, milking and world Swahili in the XIXth century. Since about twenty years, developed a more modest literature concerning the XIXth century in Madagascar. A not negligible literature exists also concerning the island Maurice and Meeting but especially for the XIXth century (let us note the recent exception of Meghan Vaughan on Maurice in the XVIIIth century) and to a lesser extent on the Southern Africa.
Break, absence of communication between the different geographical aeries and between the English-speaking world and the French-speaking world are particularly sensitive. The specialists of the world Swahili are generally unaware of everything of literature on Madagascar in French (Edward Alpers is a notable exception). The academics of Meeting seldom know general literature only on slavery in English (Hubert Gerbeau is an exception). We want go here beyond these linguistic barriers and to stress sources also in sub-exploited languages as has already recommended him Clarence Gervase Smith in 1989 : French, German and Portuguese for Eastern Africa, amharique and geez for the horn of Africa.
For 1970s (Alpers, Roberts, Renault), they know that there is not a big network of milking but from many sub-regions more or less well linked between them. But it is necessary to wait for 2000s so that consequences (Deutsch) are drawn. The horn of Africa, coast Swahili, Madagascar, the colony of the Cape, Egyptian Sudan, hinterland nyamwezi, kamba, Portuguese and yao, Africa of the Great Lakes, basin of Congo are more or less interconnected but have internal logic which is peculiar to them.
This seminar has as objective to study slavery for as long as sources allow it and to go back up until the XXth century. It is necessary to follow lessons of Frederick Cooper as regards Mombasa and Malindi. By avoiding so possible to make such a common error to think that slavery disappears with its colonial abrogation by a blow of magic wand, we will lean over the way slavery appears and disappears. What become the liberated slaves and their descendants ? How their job and other positions that they hold are replaced in the Africain societies ? The recent jobs on urban culture and the slavery in Zanzibar during British colonisation could be put in parallel with Dar are Salaam under German occupation. It is also necessary to think about memory and about inheritance of slavery, stake which can become very important in the contemporary world, and also in resurgences today of practices which remind of those of the XIXth century : kidnapping of young people in Uganda, in Congo and in Sudan to make children soldiers or their common law wives.
Indicative bibliography
C. Meillassoux, 1975, slavery in precolonial Africa, Paris. O. Pétré-Grenouilleau, on 2004, négrières milking. Trial of total history. Paris. S. Miers, I. Kopitoff, 1977, Slavery in Africa, Madison. On 1977 F. Cooper, on 1977, Planting Slavery one the East Coast of Africa, New Haven. Mr Wright, 1993, Slavonic Strategies of and Women. Life-Stories from East / Exchange Africa, New York.
