Scholars know that meanings of slavery need to be contextualized. They are also aware that in several African contexts freedom is understandable only in contrast with slavery. Yet, while the specificity of African notions of slavery has been long discussed, freedom still waits to be historicized as if it were a self-evident concept cutting across time and cultures. To raise the problem of freedom in the study of West African post-abolition contexts this paper draws on fieldwork and archival research carried out in The Gambia and Senegal on the colonial and post-colonial history of Fuladu, a late 19th century Fulbe polity controlling the people and the lands between the middle reaches of the Gambia River and Rio Corubal in Guinea Bissau. Fuladu political core coincided with the contemporary Senegalese region of Kolda. Which restrains and opportunities shaped the lives and selves of Fuladu freemen, freed slaves and slave descendants in the early twentieth century? Were there significant differences between the British and the French part of Fuladu? Was not colonial coercion reinforcing the kinds of subjection that slavery had left in its wake? The cultural traditions of this part of West Africa tended to naturalize freedom in terms of an inner (and inheritable) quality of the person, and insisted on genealogical purity (or impurity). At the same time they accounted for history, as free selves were seen as the result of a process of social construction whose results were not granted. Free genealogies mattered only if the individuals who claimed purity of origins performed up to the expectations linked to their rank. This analysis from below is key to appreciating the changing contours and contents of West African notions of freedom and their interlacement with broader transformations in the labor market and the political arena.

Bellagamba, A. (2014). Historicing freedom from below: lives, selves and society in early twentieth century Fuladu. Intervento presentato a: Slavery and ‘free’ labour: entangled transitions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, École normale supérieure Paris, September 4-6 2014, Paris.

Historicing freedom from below: lives, selves and society in early twentieth century Fuladu

BELLAGAMBA, ALICE
2014

Abstract

Scholars know that meanings of slavery need to be contextualized. They are also aware that in several African contexts freedom is understandable only in contrast with slavery. Yet, while the specificity of African notions of slavery has been long discussed, freedom still waits to be historicized as if it were a self-evident concept cutting across time and cultures. To raise the problem of freedom in the study of West African post-abolition contexts this paper draws on fieldwork and archival research carried out in The Gambia and Senegal on the colonial and post-colonial history of Fuladu, a late 19th century Fulbe polity controlling the people and the lands between the middle reaches of the Gambia River and Rio Corubal in Guinea Bissau. Fuladu political core coincided with the contemporary Senegalese region of Kolda. Which restrains and opportunities shaped the lives and selves of Fuladu freemen, freed slaves and slave descendants in the early twentieth century? Were there significant differences between the British and the French part of Fuladu? Was not colonial coercion reinforcing the kinds of subjection that slavery had left in its wake? The cultural traditions of this part of West Africa tended to naturalize freedom in terms of an inner (and inheritable) quality of the person, and insisted on genealogical purity (or impurity). At the same time they accounted for history, as free selves were seen as the result of a process of social construction whose results were not granted. Free genealogies mattered only if the individuals who claimed purity of origins performed up to the expectations linked to their rank. This analysis from below is key to appreciating the changing contours and contents of West African notions of freedom and their interlacement with broader transformations in the labor market and the political arena.
paper
slavery, legacies of slavery
English
Slavery and ‘free’ labour: entangled transitions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, École normale supérieure Paris, September 4-6 2014
2014
set-2014
2014
none
Bellagamba, A. (2014). Historicing freedom from below: lives, selves and society in early twentieth century Fuladu. Intervento presentato a: Slavery and ‘free’ labour: entangled transitions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, École normale supérieure Paris, September 4-6 2014, Paris.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/10281/97179
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