The Banamba slave exodus of 1905 and the decline of slavery in the Western Sudan

Abstract

One of the most important changes to take place during the early colonial period was the transformation from slave labour to free labour. In French West Africa this resulted not from a policy decision by the French administration but from the massive departure of slaves in those societies most reliant on slave labour. The focal event was an exodus from Banamba, a Maraka town which had been a major centre both of the slave trade and of the exploitation of slave labour. During the period before the Banamba exodus, tensions were building up within various slave societies, tensions that reflected themselves in a gradual filtering away of slaves and in occasional slave revolts. The French were generally afraid to deal with these tensions and limited themselves to stopping the slave trade while reinforcing allied élites, most of whom were slave owners. There were three major factors in the exodus: (1) Massive enslavement during the late nineteenth century created large reservoirs of slaves who were homogeneous and remembered a free state. (2) The closing-off of recruitment pushed slave-owners to exploit slave labour more systematically. (3) With the end of warfare and the opening of new opportunities in the cities and in the Senegambian peanut fields, slaves had increasing opportunities to go elsewhere.