14 - A question of honor

Summary

Slavery having disappeared as a structure, it is discourse and behaviour that constitutes our only access to the reality. Today, though slavery has been abolished for more than a half-century on the level of power as much as production, daily language abounds with references to the noble-slave contradiction, perpetuating the valorisation of one and the symmetrical contempt of the other.

J.-P. Olivier de Sardan

Though the FulBe no longer have any rights over the RiimaayBe they used to own, the memory of the old relationship is still very much alive in both groups. Individuals vary considerably in how they feel about the past, but it is fair to say in general that the FulBe regret the coming of the French, the loss of sovereignty, and the ‘“theft” of their RiimaayBe labor force, while the RiimaayBe are glad of it.

Paul Riesman

Slavery casts a long shadow into the colonial period and when adjustments in relationships must be made they are made within the weakened idiom of the known world, just as the relationships of the slave period had been accommodated within the idiom of pre-existing kinship systems.

Martin Chanock

In 1958, several months after the referendum that gave France's African colonies self-government, Robin Maugham visited Timbuktu under the auspices of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. He interviewed both slaves and masters and actually bought a slave. In Timbuktu, slaves had the right to freedom and many took it. Some fled to the city, where they could find work in the quarries, could become prostitutes or could farm.