Issouf Dosso

Slavery, Migration and Memory: The Aftermath of the Abolition of Slavery in the early Twentieth Century in Northwestern Cote d'Ivoire

This research explores the aftermath of the French abolition of indigenous slavery in Kabadugu at the beginning of the twentieth century. Before abolition, Kabadugu had risen to prominence as a result of a high density of varied slaves whose exploitation generated an abundance of wealth for the elite. More than two-thirds of the kingdom were inhabited by captives and slaves. However, the abolition of slavery rather than legitimating French authority and facilitating the implementation of exploitation projects, led to a massive disruption in the socioeconomic structure based on indigenous slave labor. Following the mass liberation of slaves and captives in May 1905, roughly 6 or 5 thousand manumitted slaves gradually left Kabadugu, as reported by colonial administrators. Most slaves after liberation, departed the region leaving former masters and the French with a problematic issue of depopulation and labor shortage to address. Unlike freed slaves who stayed and those who returned to their villages to join their relatives, many emigrated to other areas where they had never been before. My project focuses on the latter category of freed slave emigrants who sought refuge in foreign villages far from Kabadugu where they had formerly been enslaved. Using a bricolage approach, it analyzes the implications of the abolition of indigenous slavery in Kabadugu for both slaves, slaveowners and the French.  It retraces the itineraries of freed emigrating slaves and also looks at how shame, fear of being recaptured and the stigma of being a slave and descendant of slave in new culturally and linguistically different host communities were crucial to the formation of a non-slave diasporic identity reaching into recent history.