Les registres recensant la libération des esclaves au Sénégal colonial : analyse préliminaire des informations (1894-1903)

Abstract

This is a preliminary analysis of 10,000 enslaved Africans who obtained formal liberation in Senegal from 1894 to 1903. It is a subset of the 28,930 liberations recorded in the official Registers of Liberation from 1857 to 1903. Most of the evidence we have on liberated Africans are from those on ships that were captured by European anti-slavery squadrons on the high seas, and who were then liberated by the Europeans into various Vice-Admiralty courts and Mixed Commissions established to deal with such cases. Most of the enslaved Africans listed in the Senegal Registers of Liberation actively sought their own liberation; a smaller percentage were freed from captured slave caravans. The data used in this article comes from the twenty ledgers of the officially recorded liberations held by the National Archives of Senegal. This article provides a preliminary demographic characterization of this population of Africans and places these acts of formal liberation within a wider context of Senegalese political and economic history and French antislavery policies in Senegal. The first part of this article examines the wider context of French antislavery policies in colonial Senegal from 1848, when the French formally abolished slavery in its territories, through 1903, when the government-general of French West Africa enacted a new colonial legal system that prohibited the recognition of slave status in disputes brought before the new courts, and in 1905 when the governor-general prohibited new enslavement. This was also a period of intensified colonial expansion during which antislavery policies were often subordinated to political goals; at the same time, it was a period of political and religious conflict within African polities, when the production of peanuts for export provided freed Africans with significant economic incentives to leave their masters. The article then examines the demographic characteristics of those enslaved Africans who sought their liberation and were recorded in the registers from 1894 to 1903. 53% were female despite the barriers that enslaved females faced in seeking their liberation, and most of these were young adults from 21-30 years old. The registers also include evidence of unaccompanied minors, the vast majority of whom (62%) were female. The median age of the liberated Africans was 25.5 with young adults comprising 38% of the total. Liberations also reflected the agricultural calendar, in that 41% of them l occurred from March to June just after the harvests were completed and when new crops were planted, suggesting intentionality on the part of enslaved Africans seeking their liberation. The final part of the article compares the evidence of Africans seeking their liberation within Africa from the Senegal Registers with that collected by other scholars using evidence from different sources for Senegal, and with the larger body of evidence for Northern Nigeria.