Olivier Grenouilleau delivers an important work on the history of slavery and the status of the slave, this “ border man “. Being a slave does not prejudge one’s profession or one’s place in the social hierarchy. But the work deals less with the global history of the concept of slave than with the history of Western and French thought on slavery in the world.
What is slavery ? is an important work, rich and sometimes disappointing, useful and sometimes questionable. Despite its arduous nature, the book is an enjoyable read. The author has consulted a large number of works, especially in French and in English. His thesis is that slavery is a status of a universal nature, even if there are multiple variants depending on historical-cultural specificities. Hence a global apprehension of the concept. From this point of view, it is a success.
A very long history of slavery
The work offers three distinct parts. The first, in 150 pages, consists of reading sheets drawn up on French and secondarily English-speaking authors (plus some Greek and Latin authors) who have reflected on the concept, since ancient slavery. The second part constitutes the heart of the work, devoted to defining what a slave is (p.158-278), emphasizing the key period of XVIIIe Atlantic century. The third part looks at the dynamics of slavery. It begins with the invention of slavery and ends with the process of disappearance of this exploitation of man by man.
These are therefore three attempts of quite different style. The first will be valuable for those interested in the ups and downs of French thought on slavery. The second, despite some inevitable silences in an undertaking of this magnitude, provides an essential summary of what slavery is. The third offers very interesting surveys, but incomplete, due to a lack of bibliographic updating.
This work has the undeniable quality of putting the Atlantic slave trade in its place, in a very long history of slavery, which is a Statusnot to be confused with the milkingwhich is the trade of “ enslaved » (recent term not used by the author). The documentation is impressive until the dawn of our century.
The author also has the merit of bringing together the characteristics common to all slavery in his second part, by far the best, because it is both well-informed and thoughtful, revealing his capacity for synthesis. He demonstrates that, whatever the variation of the variants, be a slave contains invariants everywhere and at all times. Hence a unique and tenacious concept: the slave is a “ other » — which leads to segregation and racism ; he is “ owned by another » — essential notion, because the concept of possessionwhich Olivier Grenouilleau is right to propose, is more encompassing than that of property dear to the West ; finally, the slave is a “ man on borrowed time “, but nevertheless a human being, and it is as a man that he is useful to his master ; it’s a “ border man », a nice formula which makes this notion a malleable concept adaptable to all civilizations.
The author twists the neck of a series of misconceptions, clichés previously rehashed by colonial ethnologists and too often taken up by the media and the general French and African public, such as that of domestic slavery to be opposed, in a “version” gentle », to the harsh slavery of plantation or trade: the two coexisted everywhere and can be interchangeable. Being a slave is a Statusand therefore does not prejudge either the profession or the social hierarchy of the individual slave. In all societies there have been slaves invested with responsibilities: royal slaves, planters, entrepreneurs, artisans or artists, etc.
The demonstration is based on ancient slavery and American slavery. The author also draws on other cultures, but rarely mentions the Caribbean. However, in the United States, the presence of non-slave states has always constituted a possible escape route, even if random and perilous. On the other hand, in the island case, the confinement was total and the power of the masters absolute – which did not prohibit differentiated social relations among the slaves and between the slaves and their masters.
Olivier Grenouilleau underlines the essential distinction between slave societies and slave societies (where the dominant, even exclusive, mode of production and possession is based on slaves), which was the case in Rome, in the south of the United States, but also in precolonial sub-Saharan Africa XIXe century (a case that he rarely addresses). It reviews, through a series of text analyses, the hypotheses (evolutionist, functionalist, transitional) proposed since the XVIIIe century by philosophers and researchers to wisely conclude that this question cannot be answered, if not complex. Finally, it analyzes the progressive disappearance of slavery in Western societies, by reviewing the theses born on this subject in XIXe century, then by proceeding with the confrontation/differentiation between the slave and the worker based on the work of Louis Chevalier.
What did the slaves think? ?
This is all full of ideas. But we are left a little unsatisfied: the work does not really live up to its title. He does not treat the global history of the concept of slavebut the story of Western and especially French thought on slavery in the worldwhich is not quite the same thing.
First, the analyst’s concern encourages the author, systematically in the first part – a trait which reappears towards the end of the work – to multiply the reading sheets, emphasizing the key period of the XVIIIe century, where he referred to the original texts while sheltering himself behind sometimes long quotations. Is it essential to know in depth this “play of mirrors” of Western reconstruction, as he himself titles this section, by returning to the articles of theEncyclopedia on slavery, already commented on the Internet, to conclude that none of the proposed definitions is satisfactory ? Lesser-known references (such as those of Locke and Hobbes) or the rereading of seven explorers from the first half of the XIXe century in West Africa (p. 141-152), with an allusion to East Africa (Livingstone). On the other hand, we are surprised not to see Condorcet’s premonitory text cited (before his work of 1794), Reflections on Negro slavery (1781).
What did the slaves themselves think of their status? ? The point is only sketched: seen especially through the eyes of Whites, the slave as an actor in his history hardly appears, and almost nowhere is the question “ gendered “. This is because a formidable source is omitted: the life stories of slaves, more than a thousand of which have been collected in North America, especially in recent years. Some date back to XVIIe century, more in XVIIIe century, and even more in XIXe century, when abolitionists researched and published them in abundance. Sometimes translated into French, many are available on the Internet. They demonstrate the capacity for resilience of these men and women capable, early in history, of analyzing this unspeakable world from their point of view. That similar stories do not exist for the Caribbean suggests the harshness of the slave system in the sugar islands, which made social advancement impossible.
The author uses his previous works or those that he has directed, in particular the Dictionary of slavery (2010). But his bibliography, as rich as it is, ends, with some exceptions, in 2005. It was, on that date, the great merit of the author to have anticipated the renewed interest in slavery. His work of synthesis was innovative. We have the impression that he took up the mass of materials that he had then accumulated, without updating his library too much (note the absence of a summary bibliography, annoying insofar as a number of authors cited several times are only recalled by a brief op.cit.).
Omissions and gaps
With few exceptions, the review stops at the moment when research explodes under the impetus of contemporary political shocks: the Taubira law of 2001, article 2 of which requires teaching in schools the history of trafficking and of slavery (hence the need to design textbooks), and President Sarkozy’s speech declaring in July 2007 at the University of Dakar that Africa was not yet “ entry into history “. As much as his own work, these events were so many injunctions to specialists to get to work.
Since then, knowledge of the French language has progressed enormously. For Africa, the author’s almost sole source (with the exception of an African historian for whom he wrote the preface, the Burkinabé Maurice Bazemo, in 2007), is Claude Meillassoux, a major but now renewed author. Ignored is the excellent Nantes journal Cahiers des Anneaux de la Mémoire, founded in 1999. The inter-African network is not consulted. MAP (African Center for Research on Trafficking and Slavery) directed by the Senegalese historian Ibrahima Thioub (who spends four months a year at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Nantes).
The most questionable is the choice of Gilberto Freyre (1933) to analyze Brazilian slavery (p. 110-124). His thesis, successful crossbreeding (for which Grenouilleau took up a 2005 article which already highlighted its internal contradictions) is called into question by today’s Portuguese-speaking historians. The sum of Luiz Felipe de Alencastro should have been mentioned. For the Antilles, its sources must be amended by the two volumes edited by Jean-Pierre Sainton, professor at the University of the Antilles. It is a tour de force to deal with the Haitian revolution (1791-1804, p. 375-381) without referring to the work led by the French specialist on the issue, Marcel Dorigny (University of Paris VIII).
The same can be said of CIRESC (International Center for Research, Slavery, Actors, Systems and Representations), which has published no fewer than ten volumes in its collection “ Slavery » at Karthala, and which is a nursery of quality theses animated in CNRS by Myriam Cottias. Absent are the works of Éric Mesnard on slavery in the French West Indies, and those of Antonio Mendes, a French-speaking and Portuguese-speaking specialist in the slave trade in its Mediterranean-Atlantic transition (XVe–XVIe century). Pierre Dockès is ignored on the sugar cane route from Asia to America, via Africa.
Work as a team ?
These gaps lead Olivier Grenouilleau to make risky assertions: “ It is no longer possible to multiply work on slavery without asking the question of its very definition. » (p. 403). These researchers spend their time asking themselves ! Or he deplores the neglect of the transfer of “ slavery between the medieval Mediterranean and modern colonial America, with the intermediate stage of the introduction of slavery in Atlantic islands like Madeira or São Tomé » (p. 389). However, this has been excellently covered for several years, as has the invention of the sugar cane plantation by the Portuguese in São Tomé, half a century before the discovery of Brazil.
This gap makes the synthesis, serious and useful elsewhere, partly outdated. However, the author announces with great courage the ambition to continue his work as a solitary researcher: on the one hand, a world history of slavery and, on the other hand, a history of international abolitionism. Let us point out that a new mass of documentation appears: the conference (prepared for a long time) organized in Nairobi by African historians on Slavery in Africa: history, legacies and news (November 2014). The debates were fascinating, between around a hundred international specialists from Africa and elsewhere, and will be followed, we have no doubt, by an important publication.