[SAHS] CFP: The Legal Abolition of Slavery in African History: Rethinking Frameworks, Chronologies, and Comparisons

[Prinisha Badassy]

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Legal Abolition of Slavery in African History: Rethinking Frameworks, Chronologies, and Comparisons

Workshop organized in the framework of the AFRAB Project, in collaboration with the SLAFNET Project. The workshop will take place online on 21-24 Sept 2021.

We invite contributions on the legal abolition of slavery in Africa. The workshop focuses on the ideas and actions of African rulers, politicians, intellectuals, legal and religious specialists, free commoners and enslaved persons in relation to the legal abolition of slavery in their countries and regions. When and how did African actors begin to mobilise in order to delegalize or criminalize slavery within their legal and normative frameworks? What legal and normative concepts did they mobilize? What rationales did they develop in different African languages and legal traditions? How did they react to European antislavery ideas? The present workshop, organized by the research project "African Abolitionism: The Rise and Transformations of Anti-Slavery in Africa" (ERC Advanced Grant no. 885418), explores the legal abolition of slavery in Africa by analyzing the normative and legal strategies of Africans, and their interactions with international actors.

The introduction of abolitionist norms in African jurisdictions should be subjected to closer scrutiny. Although many African rulers were opposed to abolitionist ideas, at least some of them developed abolitionist strategies in the nineteenth century and changed their legislations accordingly. The relevant literature often downplays their actions as mere posturing. But European abolitionism, too, had other agendas beyond humanitarianism. After occupying Africa under the banner of abolitionism, colonial powers became accountable for enforcing the laws they introduced. Yet, colonial administrators often turned a blind eye to lingering slavery and introduced new forms of labor coercion. Abolitionist laws, indigenous and colonial, were not necessarily applied, or perceived as just by everyone. In most African regions, codified state law co-existed with legal norms and institutions transmitted and regulated orally. The rise and development of abolitionism in Africa happened in contexts marked by legal pluralism. Commonly accepted periodizations of African emancipation based mainly on the passing of European abolitionist laws do not account for the complex and pluralist juridical worlds in which abolitionist ideas developed in Africa. Following decolonization, all African countries abolished slavery. Most of them also criminalized it and ratified international anti-slavery conventions. Yet, in some parts of Africa pro-slavery ideologies lingered on. The workshop aims to expand our understanding of the transformations of African legal apparatuses from pro-slavery to anti-slavery and to add precision to the inventory and periodization of abolitionist legislation in different African regions and countries. It invites close analysis of the terminology used in particular African laws or edicts, and of the local debates surrounding the passing of such laws.

Contributions to the workshop will:

* analyze sources that reveal different legal and normative approaches to the abolition of slavery in particular African locations and at different moments in time;

* illustrate circumstances characterized by legal and normative pluralism or hybridity;

 * discuss tensions and/or complementarities between different legal approaches to the eradication of slavery in any one region or locality;

* document processes of legal and normative transformation in written or oral laws/norms for the abolition of slavery;

* examine the ideas and practices of the main actors involved in the development of legislation on slavery and/or abolition;


* investigate clashes between pro-slavery (including arguments in favor of amelioration) and anti-slavery positions.

We invite researchers interested in presenting at the workshop to send an abstract of 200-250 words and a bio-note (100 words) including professional affiliation and contact address to afrab at ucl.ac.uk<mailto:afrab at ucl.ac.uk> by 30 May 2021. Decisions will be communicated by the end of May. Draft papers (5000-8000 words) will be precirculated among participants by Friday 3 September 2021. A selection of papers will be developed into a collective publication.


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