Stigmates sociaux et discriminations religieuses : l'ancienne classe servile au Fuuta Jaloo

Abstract

R. Botte -Social Stigmata and Religious Discrimination : Former Slaves in the Fuuta Jalloo. During the early 18th-century insurrection led by pious Muslims in the Fuuta Jalloo, religion was, from the outset, a political ideology of domination. Although the jihad-the pretext for conquering heathen lands-fed on sincere religious passions, Islam was soon being spread for more profane motives. Proselytizing was over as soon as it was proclaimed. The decisive distinction between Muslims and non-Muslims came to jus-tify the production of both slaves for the domestic market and captives for the international market. The theocratie state's economie System was based on slavery and the slave trade. Drawn from Islam, this state's world-view governed ail social relations. Nowadays, 90 years after the beginning of the abolition of slavery, the old forms of political and economie hegemony by Fulani rulers have vanished. But the latter still exercise an intellectual domination based on religious knowledge. This is used to jus-tify prejudice against former slaves (runndebe) and to treat them like outcasts. Whether with regard to land ownership, marriage prohibitions, political duties in the nation state, ranks in mosques, or the individual's condition when facing death, religious criteria cannot hide the worldly stakes in this tenacious discrimination. For this reason, former slaves still consider access to Koranic knowledge to be a means of emancipation and liberation.

Fouta-Djallon linguistic ecology: Between polyglossia and small-scale multilingualism

“…When the emancipation began after the official abolishment of slavery in 1958, it took, in a way, the form of an accelerated ‘fulanization’. It is noteworthy that a common derisive denomination for former slaves was ‘the Fula of 28th September’ (‘les peuls du 28 septembre’) referring to Guinea Independence, 28 September 1958 (Botte, 1994). This points, again, to the clustering of properties, subsumed under the idea of being Fula; one of these properties is being ‘free’.…”

Esclavage, émancipation et citoyenneté dans les lamidats de l’Adamaoua (Nord-Cameroun)

“…Il souligne que malgré la citoyenneté acquise en 1946 et la transformation radicale de la condition juridique des esclaves, en donnant à chacun « sa tête et sa liberté », le stigmate originel de l'ancêtre asservi, que l'affranchissement était censé faire disparaître, demeurait alors même que « ceux qui achetaient et ceux qui étaient achetés étaient morts ». Tout se passe comme si se maintenaient dans le champ des représentations et des idées dominantes, entre droit public et droit traditionnel, des comportements d'exclusion impossibles à conjurer ou à exorciser (Botte 1994). Une question, déjà analysée ailleurs, se pose ici sur la validité juridique de l'affranchissement prononcé par une autorité étatique dans une société musulmane.…”

Slavery and Emancipation in the Colonial Archives: British Officials, Slave-Owners, and Slaves in the Protectorate of the Gambia (1890-1936)

“…In more than one case, social, economic, and political transformations were more important in the decline of slavery in colonial Africa than was the direct action of colonial governments. In historically documented cases, it was the slaves themselves who energetically demanded their emancipation, either escaping or making strategic use of the divisions and ambiguities running through the new social and political order created by the colonisers (Renault 1972;Roberts and Klein 1980;Kopytoff 1988;Moitt 1993;Lovejoy and Hogendorn 1993;Clark 1994;Botte 1994;Cooper 2000;Rochmann 2000).…”