Fetishers, "Marybuckes" and the Christian Norm: European Images of Senegambians and Their Religions, 1550-1760

Abstract

English and French attitudes toward Africans in the Senegambia developed and became well-defined during the late sixteenth, seventeenth, and early eighteenth century. These attitudes were influenced by three main factors: European ethnocentrism, the commercial relations which governed European-African intercourse, and the growth of the slave trade. During this period, Europeans expressed increasingly negative characterizations of Africans and their way of life. An ideology of African inferiority served, in part, to validate the Atlantic slave trade. It was easier to justify the enslavement of people who were considered less civilized or even a lower form of humanity. The formation of this ideology was facilitated by ethnocentric perceptions which led to a bias in favor of more westernized peoples. One important parameter by which Senegambians came to be judged inferior to their European counterparts was in the area of religious beliefs and practices. In the Senegambia, French and English observers gradually established a sliding scale with Christians at the top, Muslims somewhere in the middle, and followers of local African religions at the bottom. The fact that Senegambians were not Christians eventually came to be cited as evidence of their cultural, intellectual, and moral inferiority. By the late eighteenth century, this approach would lead to the development of pseudo-scientific attitudes about European racial superiority. The Senegambia is of particular interest to the study of the growth of ethnocentric attitudes. It was the region of earliest established seaborne contact between Europe and West Africa, as well as an early locus of French and English participation in the slave trade. In addition, the various ethnic groups in the region included both Muslims and non-Muslims. European responses to the different religions are well documented in the letters and narratives of traders and explorers, a fact which facilitates the study of comparative images of the different groups.