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SLAVE EMANCIPATION, TRANS-LOCAL SOCIAL PROCESSES AND THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN FRENCH COLONIAL BUGUNI (SOUTHERN MALI), 1893–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 November 2004

BRIAN J. PETERSON
BRIAN J. PETERSON
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Abstract

This article explores the relationship between slave emancipation and the spread of Islam in early colonial French Buguni (southern Mali). It examines the reconstitution of village communities in the wake of violence and enslavement during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and documents the ways in which widespread mobility and trans-local social processes fostered the emergence of new forms of religious identification and practice. It demonstrates that many of the region's first Muslims were returning slaves whose conversion was a cultural consequence of slavery. Oral accounts of village histories of Islam are used in reconstructing a history that has left few traces in the archival record.

Keywords

Malislavery abolitionIslamreligion
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , November 2004 , pp. 421 - 444
Copyright
© 2004 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Research was funded by the Fulbright-IIE program (Mali), the Yale Center for International and Area Studies and the Howard R. Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders (Yale University). I wish to thank Robert Harms, Martin Klein and the journal's reviewers for their suggestions. In Mali, my gratitude goes to Sekou Camara, Tlegné Coulibaly, Yacouba Danyoko, Mamadou Diawara and Adama Kone. I would equally like to acknowledge Andrea Camuto, Mary Dillard, Esperanza Brizuela-Garcia, Julie Livingston, Mike Mahoney, Greg Mann, Mike McGovern and Shobana Shankar for their comments on an earlier version of this paper.