Historians have explained the demise of slavery in this part of the Muslim world merely as an effect of European imperialism within the Mediterranean. They have thus mainly understood the demise of slavery in the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya) and across the wider Muslim world from a Western or, indeed, a European standpoint as a legal abolition implemented in the wake of British abolitionist campaigns and European colonial expansion. Consequently, they have tended to analyze this legal abolition as an indicator of the extent to which Muslim societies were able to adapt to crucial changes such as the end of slavery.
Conversely, other historians have shown that the abolition of slavery in North Africa and in other parts of the Muslim world was not merely due to British diplomatic pressure and European colonial interventions.
Though the team of researchers that I will involve in SlaveVoices will bear in mind these foundational debates and will conceive of slavery as “the individual or communal ownership of another person or group” (Rossi 2009), the research project aims to explore the ending of slavery in North Africa from a very different angle: SlaveVoices will reinterpret the end of slavery in North Africa by seeking to understand how slaves, former slaves, the servants and sons of slaves were involved in abolition and the broader demise of slavery in the Maghreb. The project follows and expands recent attempts by historians of the Ottoman Empire to recover the voices of slaves in modern Egypt and at the centre of the Ottoman Empire (Toledano 2007, Troutt Powell 2012). However, SlaveVoices will not –as has been the case so far– only focus on African slaves. It will be the first research project scrutinizing the testimonies produced in North Africa by slaves hailing from various regions during the abolition era –be they from West Africa, from the northern shores of the Mediterranean or from the Caucasus.
As a PI I will write one short book in French for a broad audience about slavery in modern North Africa. I will write and revise two chapters from the Global History of Slavery edited by Paulin Ismard in French and in English: a chapter about “slave narratives”, another about “manumissions”. I will work on another book, summarizing the overview and main scientific outcome of the project, that will combine chapters from the drafts of the short book, and the materials collected from fieldworks in Mediterranean archives.
Each postdoctoral student involved in the project will aim to publish at least a peer review paper in a journal.
Finally, we will select testimonies from male and female slaves from various cultural and social backgrounds that we will present in a website, hopefully in a book and for an exhibition conceived for a broad audience concerned with the resurgence of slavery in the present day.
