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69 Chapter 4 The Grand Experiment Emancipation in Senegal Colony In the first half of the nineteenth century, the free inhabitants of St. Louis and Gorée, like their counterparts in the trading entrepôts of the Gold Coast, appear to have been largely satis¤ed with the established conditions of slavery in the diminutive colony of Senegal. Nor were the locally posted agents of the French Ministry of the Navy any more motivated than their British counterparts to push for any real reform. Most of these of¤cials were military of¤cers, posted for short periods and with little real understanding of the local situation. Their primary motivation was to maintain the pro¤tability of the colony and thus achieve quick promotion and posting elsewhere. This they were forced to do with the slim resources provided by the Ministry of the Navy and a relatively small force of European of¤cials. Thus the administrators relied heavily upon the local habitant community and the long-serving négotiants—agents of the French trading companies—for both advice and commercial stability.1 Neither of these groups saw abolition as serving its interests in any way. Thus, here, as in the Gold Coast, there was little reason to expect any drastic change in of¤cial policy toward the institution of slavery. Events in Europe, however , were to introduce a challenge to this status quo brie¶y in 1848. The principles behind the revolution of that yearin France itself were expressed in a drastic reversal of policy and a revival of humanitarianism and abolitionism, culminating in an emancipation decree promulgated throughout the empire. The administration ’s view of slavery in the ¶edgling colonies had always been linked to politics in the metropole, and the impact of this decree in Senegal Colony was potentially the transformation of the lives of the colony’s six thousand slaves. In the event, however, an accommodation was reached between administrators and slave owners that would serve as a prototype for a pattern that would continue until the end of the century. You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. 70 Slavery and Reform in West Africa These events have been discussed to some extent by Martin Klein, who devotes half of a chapter to the 1848 emancipation and its immediate impact, and another half to longer-term effects that manifested themselves during and after Governor Louis Faidherbe’s expansion between 1854 and 1865.2 Klein’s treatment of the subject does form a framework for understanding the events surrounding emancipation, but this chapter is an attempt to approach several topics outside Klein’s scope. The ¤rst section covers attempts to reform slavery and debates on emancipation prior to 1848. These precedents illuminate the motivations and strategies of administrators in the metropole and in Senegal as well as slaveowning elites, and assist us in understandingthe crisis ofthe sudden shift to emancipation . Much of this chapter is also concerned with the days surrounding the emancipation, in which we can see the speci¤c social and economic characteristics of slavery in St. Louis and Gorée that led to a unique outcome for emancipation. Using this information, I am able in the last sections to engage with Klein, Mohamed Mbodj, and other historians, as well as Louis Faidherbe himself to discuss the de facto impact of emancipation. Formulating Emancipation?: Manumissions and Debates, 1832–1848 Following the failure of the Waalo plantations in 1827, the French monarchy turned its attention to domestic concerns, and Senegal was somewhat neglected. A series of particularly inexperienced governors was imposed upon St. Louis, one for each of the twenty-one years between Roger’s disgrace in 1827 and emancipation in 1848.3 None of these administrators lasted long enough to formulate and carry out their own policies, and as a result most of the procedural regulations of this period were directly imposed by the Ministry of the Navy.4 The various governors were solely responsible for the implementation of these regulations and the running of day-to-day affairs, reporting the results back to the minister. This, of course, was a particularly in¶exible procedure since messages were passed between capital and colony via ship. The of¤cial manumission policy was a case in point. The administration had a policy of affranchisements de¤nitives (¤nal liberations) for engag...

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