Making Marriages at the ‘End of Slavery’: Religion, Identity, and Law in the Early Colonial French Soudan

ABSTRACT

This article examines how formerly enslaved people in the early colonial French Soudan (today Mali) negotiated and contested the meanings of marriage at the ‘end of slavery’. Because the abolition of slavery in this region was unexpected, no one knew what the legal rules for marriages between emancipated slaves should look like after it occurred. But formerly enslaved people made their opinions known. This piece examines how former slaves’ ideas about marriage clashed and converged, drawing primarily on one exceptionally detailed marriage annulment dispute from a nascent Catholic community called Patyana. Doing so, it illustrates how emancipated slaves went through inchoate processes of forging new identities in slavery’s wake by migrating, changing their names, and converting to new religions, including Christianity and Islam. Bringing these complex identities before legal adjudicators, former slaves determined the meanings of marriage in a time and place marked by great legal ambiguity.

KEYWORDS:

• Mali
• Christianity
• Islam
• colonialism
• law

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Richard Roberts, Sarah Zimmerman, Alaa El-Shafei, my co-panelists at the 2021 NEHA conference, my fellow participants in the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory’s 2022 Summer Academy, and an anonymous reader for their valuable feedback on earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Richard Roberts and Martin Klein, ‘The Banamba Slave Exodus of 1905 and the Decline of Slavery in the Western Sudan’, Journal of African History 21, no. 3 (1980). See also Martin Klein, ‘Slavery and the French Colonial State’, in AOF: Réalités et héritages, Vol. 1 (Dakar: Archives du Sénégal, 1997); Richard Roberts, ‘The End of Slavery in the French Soudan, 1905–1914’, in The End of Slavery in Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988).

2 Richard Roberts, ‘The End of Slavery, Colonial Courts, and Social Conflict in Gumbu, 1908–11’, Canadian Journal of African Studies 34, no. 3 (2000); and Litigants and Households: African Disputes and the Colonial Courts in the French Soudan, 1895–1912 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2005), ch. 5.

3 On freed slaves in Wassoulou, see Jean-Loup Amselle, Mestizo Logics: Anthropology of Identity in Africa and Beyond, trans. Claudia Royal (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), chs. 5–6; and Brian Peterson, Islamization from Below: The Making of Muslim Communities in Rural French Sudan, 1880–1960 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). On Sikasso, see Emily Burrill, States of Marriage: Gender, Justice, and Rights in Colonial Mali (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2015), esp. ch. 2.

4 Andrew Clark, ‘Internal Migrations and Population Movements in the Upper Senegal Valley (West Africa), 1890–1920’, Canadian Journal of African Studies 28, no. 3 (1994); Marie Rodet, Les migrantes ignorées du Haut-Sénégal, 1900–1946 (Paris: Karthala, 2009); and ‘Escaping Slavery and Building Diasporic Communities in French Soudan and Senegal, ca. 1880–1940’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies 48, no. 2 (2015).

5 On the ‘rebel villages’, see Marie Rodet, ‘Mémoires de l’esclavage dans la région de Kayes: histoire d’une disparition’, Cahiers d’études africaines 197 (2010); and ‘Reconfiguration des liens sociaux dans les “villages rebelles” (Soudan français, 1890–1940)’, in Libres après les abolitions? Statuts et identités aux Amériques et en Afrique (Paris: Karthala, 2019).

6 On the liberty villages, see Denise Bouche, Les villages de liberté en Afrique noire française, 1887–1910 (Paris: De Gruyter, 1968).

7 In this article, I use the abbreviations A., B., F., and L. to indicate Arabic, Bamanankan, French, and Latin. All translations are my own. Alice Bellagamba, ‘Marriage is the Arena: ‘Inside’ Stories of Genealogical Purity and Slave Ancestry from Southern Senegal (Kolda Region)’, Anthropologia 7, no. 1 (2020); Gregory Mann, ‘What’s in an Alias? Family Names, Individual Histories, and Historical Method in the Western Sudan’, History in Africa 29 (2002); Lotte Pelckmans, ‘Surnames as Passports to Social Mobility? Renaming Practices of Fulbe Slave Descendants in Central Mali’, in African Slaves, African Masters: Politics, Memories, Social Life, ed. Alice Bellagamba, Sandra Greene, and Martin Klein (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2017).

8 For a similar critique of the ‘religious marketplace’ concept, see Andrew McKinnon, ‘Ideology and the Market Metaphor in Rational Choice Theory of Religion: A Rhetorical Critique of “Religious Economies”’, Critical Sociology 39, no. 4 (2013).

9 Many former slaves chose to become colonial soldiers. Marion Echenberg, Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleurs Sénégalais in French West Africa, 1857–1960 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1990), ch. 2.

10 On the courts, see Roberts, Litigants, ch. 2.

11 The commandant would not oversee most civil disputes, only sitting on the appeals court (tribunal de cercle).

12 Roberts, Litigants, ch. 5.

13 This contrasts with Roberts’s idea of ‘landscapes of power’. Litigants, ch. 4.

14 Ibid. See also, Wallace Teska and Richard Roberts, ‘Widows, “Ordinary” Men, and Levirate Disputes in the Early Colonial French Soudan, 1905–1913’, in Pathos and Power: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Widowhood in Africa, Past and Present, ed. Benjamin Lawrance and Joanna Davidson (forthcoming).

15 Emily Burrill, ‘“Wives of Circumstance”: Gender and Slave Emancipation in Late Nineteenth-Century Senegal’, Slavery & Abolition 29, no. 1 (2008).

16 Marie Rodet, ‘“Le Commandant a refusé catégoriquement de me redonner mes femmes”: Genre, émancipation des esclaves et migration au Soudan français (1900–1914)’, in Les traites et l’esclavage: perspectives historiques et contemporaines (Paris: Karthala, 2010); and Roberts, Litigants, ch. 4.

17 This point is well established in Maliki jurisprudence. See, e.g. Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani, The Risalah, trans. Aisha Bewley (Beirut: Diwan Press, 2018).

18 Joseph-Roger de Benoist, Église et pouvoir colonial au Soudan français (Paris: Karthala, 1987), 20–24.

19 Here, I allude to the expansive debates about the ‘invention of tradition’ and ‘customary law’ in colonial Africa. See, e.g. Kristin Mann and Richard Roberts, Law in Colonial Africa (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1990), esp. 19–23.

20 These arguments were made famous by Martin Chanock, Law, Custom, and Social Order: The Colonial Experience in Malawi and Zambia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Thomas Spear notably critiqued Chanock, noting the limits on European ‘invention’ imposed by elite Africans. Thomas Spear, ‘Neo-Traditionalism and the Limits of Invention in British Colonial Africa’, The Journal of African History 44, no. 1 (2003).

21 Paule Brasseur, ‘Pères blancs et Bambara: une rencontre manquée?’, Mélanges de l’école française de Rome 101–2 (1989): 879.

22 Roberts and Klein, ‘Exodus’, 388.

23 Cordonnier, ‘Le Village de Saint-Joachim à Patjana, Soudan’, Revue de la Société Antiesclavagiste 46 (June 1906): 309.

24 Hirgair, ‘Le Village de Saint-Joachim à Patyana (Soudan)’, Revue de la Société Antiesclavagiste 57 (1909): 274.

25 Hirgair, ‘Saint-Joachim’, 275.

26 Chronique (hereafter, Cr.) 1906-01-00.123-2,9. The Chronique is a compendium of reports circulated within the White Fathers. They are published online at http://www.msv3.org/Main.aspx?BASEID=MDACH.

27 Cr.1908-02-00.146-2,2.

28 Cordonnier, ‘Patjana’, 310; Cr.1905.15,2.1.

29 Cr.1905.15,2.2.

30 The Fathers also confused bamanaya circumcision as a Muslim practice. See Archives de la Société des Missionnaires d’Afrique, Rome, Italy (hereafter, AGMAfr.Rome) GEN 74, Bazin, Letter, 4 May 1907; Bazin, Letter, 5 Feb. 1909; Mahiet, ‘La circoncision à Soungobougou’, n.d.; and N50, Bazin, Letter, 31 March 1905. See also Brasseur, ‘Bambara’, 886; and Martin Klein, Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 175.

31 Cr.1908-08-00.152-1,3.14.

32 Peterson, Islamization, esp. ch. 3.

33 Cr.1903-07-00.98-10,6.2

34 On the spread of Islam, see Peterson, Islamization, ch. 6; Ivor Wilks, ‘The Juula and the Expansion of Islam into the Forest’, in The History of Islam in Africa (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2000).

35 ‘Vicariat apostolique du Soudan français’, Missions d’Afrique des Pères Blancs 175 (Feb. 1906).

36 Saliou Mbaye, ‘Personnel Files and the Role of Qadis and Interpreters in the Colonial Administration of Saint-Louis, Senegal, 1857–1911’, in Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks: African Employees in the Making of Colonial Africa, ed. Benjamin Lawrance, Emily Osborn, and Richard Roberts (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2006).

37 AGMAfr.Rome D.OR65, Mission de Patyana, Diaire (hereafter, D.), 15 Mar. 1904.

38 Ibid., 23 May 1906.

39 In this region, inheritance passes to a man’s brother. For more, see Teska and Roberts, ‘Widows’.

40 D.5 Jan. and 9 Mar. 1907.

41 The missionaries baptized the boy Olivier. D.11 Jan. 1906.

42 Catherine likely came with the missionaries from their liberty village at Banankourou.

43 On occurrences elsewhere, see Burrill, ‘Wives of Circumstance’; and Rodet, ‘Le Commandant’.

44 Cr.1909-05-00.161-1,3.7.

45 Kamisa’s master and Patyana’s village elders came to the mission to demand her return, but she and the missionaries refused.

46 D.16 July 1905.

47 D.22 Aug. 1905.

48 Many people believed the priests were Muslims because they dressed like Muslims (in white robes) and Christian prayer superficially resembled Muslim prayer

49 D.27 Nov. 1905.

50 D.1 Dec. 1905.

51 On practices of enslaved people’s family formations in the Atlantic World, see, e.g. James Sweet, ‘Defying Social Death: The Multiple Configurations of African Slave Family in the Atlantic World’, The William and Mary Quarterly 70, no. 2 (2013); Ann Patton Malone, Sweet Chariot: Slave Family and Household Structure in Nineteenth-Century Louisiana (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1992).

52 D.10 Mar. 1908.

53 D.22 May 1909. This is the same Michel who appears later in this article.

54 D.27 Dec. 1906.

55 D.15 Oct. 1903, 22 Jan. 1907, 30 July 1907.

56 The issue of consent in baptism is a longstanding issue in the Catholic church. In the nineteenth century, these tensions came to a head with the forced baptism of a Jewish boy, Edgardo Mortara. On the Mortara Affair, see David Kertzer, The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara (New York: Vintage, 1998).

57 Joseph Henry, L’âme d’un peuple africain: les Bambara (Paris: Picard, 1910), 130n1. The ‘tattoos’ Henry refers to are actually ritual scarifications. Boli refers to a Bamana power object used in sacrifices to spirits.

58 The idea of ‘retentions’ in slavery remains fundamental to the study of the Atlantic slave trade. See, e.g. James Sweet, Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship and Religion in the African-Portuguese World (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2003).

59 Henry, L’âme, 130.

60 French observers termed this practice ‘Islam noir’, or, the idea that African Islam allowed the retention of local spiritual traditions. Vincent Monteil, L’Islam noir: une religion à la conquête de l’Afrique (Paris: Seuil, 1908). As scholars have noted since, however, Islam is better thought of as a ‘discursive tradition’, infinitely adaptable, and not a bounded set of practices. Talal Asad, ‘The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam’, Qui Parle 17, no. 2 (2009).

61 John Thornton and Linda Heywood suggest the development of similar identities in seventeenth-century Kongo. Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

62 D.19 Aug. 1909.

63 D.23 Aug. 1909.

64 Unless noted otherwise, all details of the case are found in AGMAfr.Rome GEN74, Maillot, ‘Procès sommaire dans la cause du mariage, Rose-Fadouga de Patyana’, December 1909.

65 Impotence can also serve as cause for annulment in Canon Law, but the missionaries doubted the veracity of Rose’s story.

66 The subject is almost entirely ignored outside Southern Africa. See Stanslaus Muyebe, ‘The Canon Law Framework for Arbitration of Delictual Disputes in the Roman Catholic Church of South Africa: A Critical and Comparative Study’ (unpublished DTh thesis, Stellenbosch University, 2005).

67 AGMAfr.Rome GEN 78, Maillot, ‘Carte de visite de Patyana’, 22 December 1909.

68 Ladislas Örsy, Marriage in Canon Law: Tests and Comments, Reflections and Questions (Dublin: Dominican Publishers, 1984), 84.

69 Brett Shadle has similarly highlighted the central role of respectability and dignity in men’s quests to found marriages in colonial Kenya. Girl Cases: Marriage and Colonialism in Gusiiland, Kenya, 1890–1970 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2006), xxix.

70 AGMAfr.Rome D.OR61, Mission de Kita, Diaire II, 5, 7, and 11 Feb. 1907. See also Archives nationales du Mali, Bamako, 2M124, Tribunal du Cercle de Kita, ‘Audience publique’, 1 Feb. 1907.

71 AGMAfr.Rome D.OR61, Mission de Kita, Diaire III, 20 July 1920.

Additional information

Funding

Funding for research in Rome and Bamako was provided by the Department of History and the Center for African Studies at Stanford University, and a Fulbright-Hays DDRA Fellowship.

Notes on contributors

Wallace Teska

Wallace Teska is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of History at Stanford University, 450 Jane Stanford Way Stanford, California 94305. Email: [email protected].