Bernard Moitt. Child Slavery and Guardianship in Colonial Senegal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. vii + 223 pp. $110. Hardback. ISBN: 9781009296472.
Year: 2024
Type: book-review
Abstract: While so much has been written about the transatlantic slave trade, little has been said about children's experiences within this traumatic experience, especially in Senegal.In his book, Bernard Moitt strongly urges scholars to study this history and acknowledge Senegal's importance as a site to which researchers should pay more attention, particularly regarding the status of children in the history of slavery in Africa.Responding to his call, Moitt has written a condensed yet thorough study of child slavery in colonial Senegal in a captivating way through succinct chapters that have convincing arguments and clear timeframes.His book is a great example of how to do strong scholarly work based on colonial archives and extant research.Focusing on the period between France's abolition of the slavery trade in 1848 and 1910, Moitt uncovers a tragic history in which this empire's greed ended up marring the liberator status that it aimed to have by emancipating slaves.This paradox is evident in France's successful attempt after its 1848 emancipation decree to compensate for its anticipated loss of labor that would result from the proclaimed end of the slave trade with a new and covert bondage system.The empire aimed to create a legal mechanism through which the supposedly liberated blacks in Senegal could be kept in a customary and dissimulated form of captivity.This history unfolded between the 1840s and the early twentieth century in Senegal when inhabitants of the four communes (Saint-Louis, Dakar, Gorée, and Rufisque) could aspire to French citizenship.By contrast, other Senegalese (composed of child and adult populations) were ushered into a system that re-enslaved them.The solution was "tutelle," a mechanism that made it possible for children and adults who were categorized as slaves before 1848 to have a new status that was akin to the one they previously had.Former slaves and their children were now put under the legal category in which French, black, or other inhabitants of the four communes with privilege were supposed to house, feed, and care for them in exchange for labor.Focusing on Saint-Louis, Moitt writes: Paradoxically, many of the children ended up in households in which they were once enslaved, particularly households headed by signares-mixed-race African women.The council entrusted many others, mostly males, to artisans in whose households the children worked as apprentices.In all instances, the guardians of liberated children exploited their labor and the
Source: African Studies Review
DOI: 10.1017/asr.2024.168
Author: Babacar M’Baye
Institution: Kent State University
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4404330040