Editorial: Mémoires et migrations en Afrique de l'Ouest et en France

Jusque dans les années 1990, la thématique « mémoires et migrations » a surtout été abordée dans le cadre des Diaspora Studies anglo-saxonnes. La discussion s’est longtemps centrée sur la question de la diaspora africaine et de son identité en Amérique du Nord qui a vu s’opposer les défenseurs d’un projet ontologique de la diaspora africaine (Echeruo, 1999) et les partisans du « Black Atlantic ». Parallèlement, se sont également développées les Memory Studies. Intimement liées, au départ, à l..

Lawrance, Benjamin N., Osborn, Emily Lynn & Roberts, Richard L. (eds.). – Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks. African Employees in the Making of Colonial Africa

Benjamin N. Lawrance, Emily Lynn Osborn et Richard L. Roberts rassemblent dans cet ouvrage de référence onze contributions (plus deux, avec la conclusion de Klein et l’annexe de Mbaye) qui tentent de nous éclairer sur la diversité des rôles remplis par les auxiliaires, les « intermédiaires », essentiellement masculins, et leurs pratiques du fait colonial. Par intermédiaires, les auteurs entendent le personnel qui occupait un poste subalterne dans l’administration coloniale ou du moins dont la..

Durand, Bernard & Fabre, Martine (dir.). – Le Juge et l’Outre-mer. Tome 1 : Phinée le devin ou les leçons du passé

L’équipe de Bernard Durand et Martine Fabre qui a déjà conduit un travail riche sur la justice coloniale sous la Troisième République et la position du juge en situation coloniale (Le juge et l’Outre-mer : les roches bleues de l’Empire colonial, 2004) s’attaque ici au projet ambitieux de placer le juge colonial dans une approche comparative spatiale et temporelle pour la période qui précède l’objet de leurs premières recherches. Ce projet est ambitieux puisqu’il présente quinze travaux s’inté..

‘Bigamy’, ‘marriage fraud’ and colonial patriarchy in Kayes, French Sudan (1905–1925)

Examining court cases of ‘marriage fraud’ and ‘bigamy’ heard in the region of Kayes (French Sudan, currently Mali) in the first half of the twentieth century, this chapter analyses the lack of colonial interest in understanding the complex geographies of local marriage and circulation of women until the late 1930s. This neglect entailed the invention of specific offences such as ‘marriage fraud’ and ‘bigamy’, while women attempted to navigate the colonial and local landscapes of power and to claim their agency, including emotional agency, when it came to marriage’s consent. These cases also demonstrate the crucial role played by female family members, especially mothers and aunts, when it came to marriage negotiations and daughters’ support in marital strategies. This specific female power would be soon eroded by the colonial codification of customary law

Documenting the History of Slavery on Film in Kayes, Mali

In 2010 I filmed descendants of formerly enslaved populations in Kayes narrating the history of their ancestors and the realities of internal slavery in West Africa. The result was a 23-minute documentary film entitled “The Diambourou: Slavery and Emancipation in Kayes—Mali,” which was released in 2014. The film was as much responding to specific historiographical questions in the field as a tool of research action to raise awareness among younger generations and to fight legacies of social discrimination today. With the exactions perpetuated against descendants of formerly enslaved populations in the Kayes region since 2018, the film, via its access-free online version, has experienced a second life as an anti-slavery activist medium, helping to bridge the gap between endogenous historical fighting against slavery and contemporary anti-slavery activism in the Soninke diaspora

Sexualité, mariage et esclavage au Soudan français à la fin du XIXe siècle

Cet article analyse quatre affaires qui ont eu lieu entre 1902 et 1906 dans la région de Kayes (Mali), et qui montrent l’importance de la sexualité et du couple comme enjeux complexes de pouvoir entre colonisateurs et colonisé-e-s. Ces affaires permettent en particulier d’identifier la fabrique coloniale et genrée de catégories spécifiques telles que esclavage, mariage et sexualité, de même que leurs contestations et leurs reconfigurations par des acteurs et actrices finalement peu étudié-e-s dans l’histoire du Mali : les femmes esclaves et les agents subalternes de la colonisation.This article analyses four cases which took place between 1902 and 1906 in the region of Kayes (Mali). These cases show the centrality of sexual issues in the complex power relations between colonizers and colonized. They also allow us to identify the colonial and gendered making of specific categories such as slavery, marriage and sexuality, as well as their contestations and reconfigurations by actors of the history of Mali who remain understudied: slave women and subaltern colonial agents

Genre, coutumes et droit colonial au Soudan français (1918-1939)

Dans cet article, l’étude de deux affaires qui ont lieu dans la région de Kayes au Soudan français (Mali actuel) à vingt ans d’intervalle, l’affaire Sakiliba (1918) et l’affaire Haw (1939) nous montrent comment certaines Africaines n’hésitèrent pas à s’adresser directement à l’administration coloniale pour contester le pouvoir patriarcal traditionnel et forcer ainsi l’administration à prendre position sur la question des rapports entre coutumes, droit colonial, « condition de la femme » et « mariage indigène » en Afrique occidentale française. Ce débat fut très vif au sein de l’administration coloniale à partir des années 1920. Les décisions de l’administration coloniale en la matière furent en réalité marquées, jusqu’à la fin des années 1930, par un tiraillement intrinsèque entre l’idée républicaine d’émancipation et un pragmatisme colonial basé sur le respect des « coutumes indigènes » pour s’assurer le soutien du « pouvoir traditionnel ».Gender, Customs and Colonial Law in French Sudan (1918-1939). – This article analyzes two cases which took place in the region of Kayes, French Sudan (now known as Mali), twenty years apart. The Sakiliba case (1918) and the Haw case (1939) show us how some African women did not hesitate to have recourse to the complaints procedure of the colonial administration against the patriarchal traditional power. Thus, they forced the administration to take a stand on the issue of the relationships between customs, colonial law, “women’s condition” and “indigenous marriage” in French West Africa. This discussion became very lively within the colonial administration from 1920s onwards. In reality, up to the end of the 1930s, the decisions of the colonial administration on this matter remained steeped in the intrinsic friction between the republican idea of emancipation and a colonial pragma­tism keen on respecting “indigenous customs” in order to secure the support of the “traditional power”

Old homes and new homelands: imagining the nation and remembering expulsion in the wake of the Mali Federation’s collapse

This paper examines concepts of ‘home’ and ‘abroad’ for migrants and citizens in the twilight of empire. It focuses on the ‘cheminots refoulés’, railroad workers with origins in the former Soudan (today’s Republic of Mali) who were expelled from Senegal shortly after both territories declared independence, and other ‘Soudanese’ settled in Senegal sometimes for several generations. Using newly available archives in France, Mali, and Senegal, and interviews with former cheminots and ‘Soudanese migrants’ on both sides of the border, this study seeks to historicize memories of autochthony and allochthony that have been constructed and contested in postcolonial nation-building projects. The Mali Federation carried the lingering memory of federalist political projects, but it proved untenable only months after the Federation’s June 1960 independence from France. When member states declared independence from each other, the internal boundary between Senegal and the Soudanese Republic became an international border between Senegal and the Republic of Mali. In the wake of the collapse, politicians in Bamako and Dakar clamoured to redefine the ‘nation’ and its ‘nationals’ through selective remembering. Thousands of cheminots and ‘Soudanese migrants’ who had moved to Senegal from Soudan years (and decades) earlier were suddenly labelled as ‘foreigners’ and ‘expatriates’ and faced two governments eager to see them ‘return’ to a hastily-proclaimed nation-state. This ‘repatriation’ allowed Republic of Mali officials to ‘perform the nation’ by (re)integrating and (re)membering the migrants in a nascent ‘homeland’. But, having circulated between Senegal and Soudan/Mali for decades, ‘Soudanese migrants’ in both states retained and invoked memories of older political communities, upsetting new national priorities. The loss of the Mali Federation raises questions about local, national, and international citizenship and movement in mid-century West Africa. Examining the histories invoked to imagine postcolonial political communities, this paper offers insight into the role that memory has played in constructing and contesting the nation’s central place in migrations histories within Africa and beyond