Everyday life of slaves in Northern Dahomey: The process of remembering

Abstract

This article analyses the social act of remembering among the Gannunkeebe in northern Benin, predominantly descendants of slaves of the Fulbe. It raises methodological issues concerning the possibility of gaining access to memories of the daily life experiences of a community whose members possess their own factual history but one which - unlike the 'things-worth-remembering' history of their masters - offers little scope for the creation of traditions of collective identity. Hence the slaves' descendants often remain silent, negating their own stories. In consequence the everyday experience of slaves is transmitted not so much in verbal as in corporeal remembering. This process of embodying memories is the main subject of the article. Although the circumstances transmitted by slaves' descendants cannot always be traced directly to colonial influences, the colonial authorities do often feature in the fragments of remembered history. The Gannunkeebe paint an ambivalent picture of the colonial period: on the one hand, the authorities are depicted as welcomed strangers, associated with the end of slavery; on the other, they represent military service and forced labour, under which slaves were the worst hit, frequently being sent as substitutes for their masters to colonial recruitment. Even if French colonialism at the beginning of the twentieth century punished slave raiding and the slave trade, it did not challenge the master-slave relationship at the core of the Fulbe community. Orally transmitted knowledge shows that slaves were not passive victims but actively constructed their daily life as social agents, albeit subject to their masters' power to determine whose labour was placed at the disposal of the colonial administration.