The Anti-Slavery Project: From the Slave Trade to Human Trafficking

6. “Classical” Slavery and Descent-Based Discrimination

C h a p t e r 6 “Classical” Slavery and Descent-Based Discrimination The recent history of the Anti-Slavery Project has been defined by a more expansive understanding of the breadth and depth of anti-slavery obligations. This has resulted in a landscape in which slavery is now widely held to come in a variety of different forms, which require a variety of overlapping solutions. “Classical” slavery occupies an anomalous position within this new political and legal landscape. In some settings, classical slavery appears as one of many forms of slavery. In others, it appears as a separate and exceptional category. While other forms of human bondage now enjoy much higher profiles, not everyone has embraced the shift from strict equivalence to sufficient similarity . While the overall numbers of people who fall within the rubric of classical slavery are now relatively small, their experiences of enslavement continue to be viewed in a different light because of their association with earlier slave systems. It does not necessarily follow, however, that recent examples of classical slavery can be easily equated with previous historical models. To the extent that traditional forms of slavery remain an ongoing issue, they now form only one part of a larger set of problems, such as descent-based discrimination and wartime abuses. By the mid-twentieth century, classical slavery was much diminished but not entirely suppressed. This chapter focuses on a small number of cases where the historical categories of master and slave have continued to have a profound influence on contemporary life. In order to better understand both the political and analytical issues at stake, I have divided the chapter into three sections. In the first section, I present a partial snapshot of the sorts of information, or lack thereof, that was readily available on classical slavery at 168 Chapter 6 an international level during the 1960s and 1970s. In the second section, I focus more specifically on two countries—Mauritania and Niger—that have recently found it necessary to introduce legislation (re)abolishing slavery. As we shall see, this new legislation can be at least partially traced to moderate pressures generated by local anti-slavery activists. Despite recent progress on a number of fronts, it has become increasingly apparent that the problems involved are not confined to residual cases of slavery, but also extend to broader patterns of discrimination on the basis of slave descent. In the third and final section, I consider the recent history of wartime enslavement in Sudan. There are a number of recent conflicts in Africa that owe various debts to earlier historical slave systems, but the case of Sudan is of particular interest due to the way in which classical slavery has been invoked in order to prioritize a variety of severe human rights abuses. The best-known issue here has been the controversial practice of slave redemption, which has sharply divided human rights groups. As we shall see, the language of classical slavery continues to be an effective way of attracting international attention, but it remains hamstrung by a number of analytical and political shortcomings. Anecdotes, Incidents, and Extrapolations In 1948, British anti-slavery activist Charles Greenidge optimistically reported that “Except for Ethiopia, there are no other countries in Africa in which there is still any considerable amount of slavery.” Greenidge accepted that some isolated remnants could be found elsewhere, but he believed that they were “rapidly dying a natural death.”1 Despite being one of the most informed anti-slavery activists of his day, Greenidge could only work with the information available to him at the time. While traditional forms of slavery continued to be a substantial problem in a number of parts of colonial Africa, information on these problems was not widely disseminated at an international level. Official declarations that slavery had effectively come to an end were usually taken at face value by outsiders. In a discursive environment where slavery was now (at least tacitly) assumed to no longer be an ongoing problem, the burden of proof fell on anti-slavery activists and other agents to produce compelling evidence that contradicted this default position. This proved to be a difficult task. During the Cold War era, much of the evidence compiled by anti-slavery activists and international organizations regarding the persistence of slavery was heavily reliant on a fragmentary “Classical” Slavery and Descent-Based Discrimination 169 combination of anecdotes, incidents, and extrapolations. One...