Suchergebnisse

This book focuses on the range of trajectories followed by slavery as an institution since the various abolitions of the nineteenth century. It also considers the continuing and multi-faceted strategies that descendants of both owners and slaves have developed to make what use they can of their forebears' social positions, or to distance themselves from them. The book contains both anthropological and historical contributions that present empirical evidence on contemporary manifestations of slavery and related phenomena in Mauritania, Benin, Niger, Cameroon, Ghana, Senegal, and the Gambia

Abstract
This article investigates the causes of the resilience of slavery in the region of Tahoua in the Republic of Niger in the West African Sahel. It attributes slavery's lingering vitality to the semi-autonomous evolution of slavery and abolitionism in this region. It illustrates the historical processes through which, following colonial legal abolition, slavery in Tahoua started being challenged, but not effectively eradicated. The article shows that slavery and abolitionism in the Nigerien Sahel are rooted in different historical processes and discursive genealogies than those that led to the development of colonial abolitionism and international law on slavery and trafficking. It advocates appropriate historical contextualization of slavery-related phenomena in regions where European abolitionism was initially tied to imperialism. In such regions different groups engaged critically with European attitudes toward local slavery. Following decolonization, the rise of Nigerien abolitionist movements was informed both by integration in international humanitarian networks and by engagement with the specific forms of slavery prevalent in local society.

When, how, and why—if at all—did slavery end in the Nigerien Sahel? What processes facilitated the emancipation of enslaved persons? What were the strategies of colonial administrators, slave-owners, slave-traders, slaves, and slave descendants? In the first two decades following France's occupation of the Central Sahel, legal abolition did not lead to the suppression of slavery, because laws were not at first enforced. But in the 1920s the internationalization of abolitionism that followed the creation of the League of Nations resulted in the activation of anti-slavery laws. This article argues that emancipation was initially propelled by the establishment of international surveillance mechanisms with the power to (de-)legitimize colonial rule at a time when no one was actively seeking to end slavery in this region. The first section highlights the ambiguities of European abolitionism and reveals the web of connections between the League of Nations, the French state, and French administrators on the ground. The second section develops a microanalysis of slave resistance, showing how some enslaved and trafficked persons, especially young women, profited from global institutional transformations to incriminate their owners and traffickers. The final section considers the contemporary recollections of an elderly woman, who in her youth experienced circumstances analogous to those described earlier in the article. Her perceptions, and those of others like her, exist today in a context marked by tension between circumscribed proslavery discourses and national grassroots abolitionism.

RésuméQuand, comment et pourquoi l'esclavage a-t-il disparu dans le Sahel nigérien – si tant est qu'il ait complètement disparu ? Quels processus ont favorisé l'émancipation des personnes réduites en esclavage ? Quelles étaient les stratégies des administrateurs coloniaux, des propriétaires d'esclaves, des trafiquants, des esclaves eux-mêmes et de leurs descendants ? Au cours des deux premières décennies de l'occupation française du Sahel central, l'abolition légale n'a pas abouti à l'éradication de l'esclavage car les lois n'étaient pas appliquées. Mais, à partir des années 1920, l'internationalisation de l'abolition qui a suivi la création de la Société des Nations a entraîné la mise en œuvre des lois contre l'esclavage. Cet article entend montrer que l'émancipation a connu une impulsion initiale grâce à la mise en place de mécanismes internationaux de surveillance en mesure de (dé)légitimer le pouvoir colonial à un moment où personne ne cherchait activement à mettre fin à l'esclavage dans cette région. L'article met tout d'abord l'accent sur les ambiguïtés de l'abolitionnisme européen et sur les interconnexions entre la Société des Nations, l'État français et les administrateurs sur le terrain. Il propose ensuite une micro-analyse de la résistance à l'esclavage, en montrant comment des personnes asservies ou victimes de la traite des esclaves, en particulier des jeunes femmes, ont tiré profit des transformations institutionnelles à l'échelle mondiale pour poursuivre leurs propriétaires ou des trafiquants devant les tribunaux. Il examine enfin les souvenirs contemporains d'une femme âgée qui a connu, plus jeune, des situations analogues à celles décrites précédemment dans l'article. Sa perception, ainsi que celle d'autres personnes ayant eu des expériences similaires, s'inscrivent dans un contexte marqué par la tension entre des discours circonscrits en faveur de l'esclavage et la lutte pour l'abolition menée au niveau local.

AbstractThis article focuses on the consequences of twentieth-century developmentalism for labor practices in the Nigerien Sahel under French rule and in the postindependence period. It examines labor regime transformations at the desert's edge; the ways in which state-led developmentalism influenced labor relations; and gender disparities in the history of emancipation from slavery. Following the abolition of forced labor in 1946, the rhetoric of human investment was used to promote the "voluntary" participation of workers in colonial development initiatives. This continued under Niger's independent governments. Seyni Kountché's dictatorship relabeled Niger "Development Society" and mobilized Nigeriens' "voluntary" work in development projects. Concurrently, drought in the Sahel attracted unprecedented levels of international funding. In the Ader region this led to the establishment of a major antidesertification project that paid local labor on a food-for-work basis. Since most men migrated seasonally to West African cities, the majority of workers in the project's worksites were women who welcomed "project work" to avoid destitution. In the name of development, it continued to be possible to mobilize workers without remuneration beyond the cost of a meal.

AbstractThis article introduces an Africa-focused special issue showing that the rise of development in its modern form coincided with the demise of the political legitimacy of forced labor. It argues that by mobilizing the idea of development, both colonial and independent African governments were able to continue recruiting unpaid (or underpaid) labor—relabeled as "voluntary participation," "self-help," or "human investment" —after the passing of the ILO's Forced Labor Convention. This introduction consists of two parts: the first section summarizes the main findings of the contributions to the special issue. The second part advances preliminary considerations on the implications of these findings for our assessment of international development "aid." The conclusion advocates that research on planned development focus not on developers-beneficiaries, but rather on employers-employees. Doing so opens up a renewed research agenda on the consequences of "aid" both for development workers (those formally employed by one of the many development institutions) and for so-called beneficiaries (those whose participation in development is represented as conducive to their own good).