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65 3w The End of Slavery, “Crises” over Trafficking, and the Colonial State in the French Soudan richard l. roberts Among the great paradoxes in the making of the modern world were the unintended consequences of European abolition of the transatlantic slave trade and, later, slavery itself. Far from yielding an industrious and obedient working class, the abolition of the slave trade encouraged freed men and women to become peasants in their efforts to control more of their labor and their time. Formal abolition of the slave trade, first by the Danes, the British, and the Americans, and later by most of the industrializing world, did not end the demand for slave labor. The transatlantic slave trade persisted until Cuba prohibited new slave imports in the 1860s and Brazil abolished slavery in 1888. Even then, the demand for coerced labor led to the trade in indentured labor, sometimes mirroring the conditions of the transatlantic slave trade and at other times reflecting older and regional patterns of debt bondage.1 For Africa and Africans, the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, which led to a gradual reduction in the demand for slaves in the Americas, stimulated demand for slaves in Africa. The nineteenth century witnessed an increased demand for slave labor on the continent as prices declined and as Africans responded to increased opportunities to invest in production to meet growing regional and international demand.2 Increased demand for slaves within Africa permitted the established warrior states to persist; it increased tensions between peasants and warrior elites, who responded to market stimuli in different ways; and it led to the rise of new warrior states, which expanded slave catchment areas and their state-building enterprises.3 This was the context in which Europeans conquered Africa in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. European colonial powers used anti–slave trade ideologies to justify 66 w Richard L. Roberts colonial conquest.4 Few colonial powers in Africa, however, had the means and the will to suppress the slave trade. In thinking about the issue of trafficking in the early colonial period in Africa, we should be mindful of the complex interplay of several mutually reinforcing yet contradictory processes. Contradictory Policies on Slavery First among these processes are the often contradictory policies regarding slavery and the slave trade on the colonial, metropolitan, and international levels. France’s history of antislavery and anti–slave trade actions is rich and contradictory . Revolutionary France had abolished slavery in 1792 only to see Napoléon I reinstate it in 1802 as part of France’s effort to reclaim Saint-Domingue from its rebels, who sought to establish the principles of the revolution. After its defeat in Europe, in 1815, Britain pressured France into abolishing the slave trade by its nationals in 1818, but it was less than enthusiastic about enforcement . Following the July Revolution, in 1830, France criminalized the slave trade, imposed two- to five-year sentences on traders, up to twenty years for captains of slave ships, and actually applied the law in the tiny French outposts in Senegal.5 How well the law was applied remains an open question. Between 1831 and 1882, only eleven cases of trafficking were heard by the Cour d’Appel of Senegal. Seven led to prison sentences. Three of the seven also led to the forfeiture of the ships carrying the slaves.6 The 1848 revolution clarified French policy that French soil liberates all who touch it, but as I argue below, French officials in Senegal sought to limit the impact of this decree by circumscribing what constituted French soil. France was a signatory to all the major international anti–slave trade and antislavery conventions, beginning with Berlin in 1885, Brussels in 1890, SaintGermain -en-Laye in 1919, the 1926 Slavery Convention of the League of Nations , and the UN General Assembly’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery.7 Yet slavery and the slave trade persisted in French colonies in Africa. At the colonial level senior French officials implemented laws regarding slavery and the slave trade in response to metropolitan pressure and in response to local events on the ground, where policies and practices often contradicted each other. In explaining the tensions between policy and practice , I am reminded of Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale’s insights regarding the contradictory pressures on the colonial state in Africa: “The colonial state...

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