HomeMissionary strategies and practices, slavery and forced labour (early 19th-mid 20th century)

HomeMissionary strategies and practices, slavery and forced labour (early 19th-mid 20th century)

Missionary strategies and practices, slavery and forced labour (early 19th-mid 20th century)

Stratégies et pratiques missionnaires, esclavages et travailleurs déplacés (début XIXe siècle-milieu XXe siècle)

Estrategias y prácticas misioneras, esclavitud y trabajadores desplazados (principios del siglo XIX-mediados del XX)

Estratégias e práticas missionárias, escravatura e trabalhadores deslocados (início do século XIX - meados do século XX)

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Published on Wednesday, February 08, 2023

Abstract

Another discussion on the institutional position of the churches in relation to slavery will be resolutely avoided. What will be analysed is the concrete confrontation —or cohabitation— with slavery. What did missionaries know about their slave environment? How did they learn about it? How did they take a stand? How did they act–or not? Same questions as far as indentured labour and the colonial forms of forced labour were concerned. Were there confrontations, mediations and misunderstandings?

Announcement

28-31 August 2023 | La Maison Diocésaine and The University of Artois (CREHS and IEFR)

Argument

Defining missionary practices in the context of slavery and emancipation

Missionary practices will be studied in three possible contexts :

Slaves in the European colonies:

  • To what extent did missionaries—based on their experience—participate in, influence controversies? Conversely, were they influenced?
  • What was the modus operandi on housings (missions dedicated to “Black” people)?
  • What were the initiatives developed for gradual emancipation (Mana in French Guyana for instance)?
  • To what extent did they commit to immediate and unconditional abolition?
  • Given the large literature regarding those aspects, a comparison between Catholic and Protestant missionaries will be envisaged.

Slaves and the “Arab” trafficking:

If missionaries turned out to commonly denounce the trade, one could wonder how they participated in the fight against the “Arab” traders: the acts of liberation through redemption or an aid to the captives; the so-called “villages de liberté”. Here again, given the abundant literature, the objective would be mainly to compare mission stations.

Slaves in other non-colonised territories: facing local powers, the dilemma of condamning slavery and slave trade (at the risk of condamning the mission) / fatalism (at the expense of a major denial), situations of working misunderstanding. This field is not as well documented.

After abolition and slave trade had been officially abolished, the issue became more complex as there were new types of forced displacement of workers: indentured labour, coolie trade, blackbirding. However, it is not possible to address the various types of servitude (domestic slavery) which occurred in the aftermaths of the abolition. The following topics should be discussed:

  • “Domestic" and "native" slaves: once abolition had triumphed, were slaves a favourite target or even a priority for the mission and for what purpose? What was the status of servants in the mission stations?
  • Indentured labourers recruited for a fixed term:

Having be given their consent, indentured labourers nonetheless often fell under a trade in disguise and were subjected to living conditions that strictly limited their individual freedom. India was the most studied country (coolie trade) but Africa, Madagascar, Vietnam, China (especially South America such as Peru) were also prone to trafficking. As for the Africans, there was a highly contested recourse to prior redemption. Little is known about the attitude of the missionaries to that trade which soon verged on crypto-trafficking. Even less is known about the missionaries' initiatives to protect, help, emancipate and convert these populations on the plantations.

  • Indentured or raided labourers at the service of colonial economies:

It is not so much about dwelling on forced labour (that would be too vast and ambitious a study) as the manner the missions acted to facilitate, criticise or supervise the displacement of populations with a view to the development of a region (Office du Niger or Cambodia; Tamils in Sri Lanka). Were they taking that aspect into account? What did they do?

  • One could also look at the populations transferred to the mother country during the two world wars for agriculture (Camargue rice) and working in factories. Missionaries seemed to have played a role in convincing Catholic “natives”. Did they participate in recruiting workers in the countries of original departure?

Chronological framework

It is appropriate to limit this immense subject. The CREDIC General Assembly opted for a periodisation starting with the coinciding events: the great rise of European abolitionism and missionary involvement in a variety of non-European slave societies: missionary and planter societies (the Americas, Indian Ocean, Australia and Fiji), missionaries and slavery in Africa and Madagascar. The period then moves on to indentured and forced labour in colonial contexts. It ends with the end of the Code of Indigenous Status and forced labour (particular case of the Portuguese colonial empire).

Conceptualization

Another discussion on the institutional position of the churches in relation to slavery will be resolutely avoided. What will be analysed is the concrete confrontation —or cohabitation— with slavery. What did missionaries know about their slave environment? How did they learn about it? How did they take a stand? How did they act–or not? Same questions as far as indentured labour and the colonial forms of forced labour were concerned. Were there confrontations, mediations and misunderstandings?

While it may be possible to take into account the views of Western Churches on slavery—a subject that has already been widely addressed in other conferences—this coming CREDIC conference will focus on field studies. How did missionary congregations and societies take a stand and work to combat slavery or adapt to it? Did Catholics and Protestants have different conceptions and practices, even within denominations (e.g. the opposition between Boer Reformers and Anglicans and Protestant missionaries in South Africa)? Did their approach and practice vary according to the location?

Although the abolition of slavery could be, among other things, the fruit of the Enlightenment and colonisation was likely to be regarded as an alternative to slavery, slavery kept existing while changing shapes during the colonial period: forced labour, displacement of people, the code of indigénat, etc. How did the congregations and missionary societies understand and adapt to the changes?

Working languages: French and English

Submission guidelines

Abstracts (with a short biographical note) are to be sent to Dr. Didier Galibert (galibertdidier@orange.fr) and Dr. Claire Kaczmarek (claire.kaczmarek@univ-artois.fr)

by 31st March 2023.

Scientific Directors

  • Dr. Didier Galibert (LAM Sciences Po Bordeaux)
  • Dr. Claire Kaczmarek (CREHS, IEFR, The University of Artois, Arras)

Some bibliography

No summary work on the subject. A few introductory references on the diversity of slavery. The (in)action of missionaries is given some light.

ALENCASTRO Luiz Felipe de, « Le versant brésilien de l'Atlantique-Sud : 1550-1850 », Annales, Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 2006/2, p.339-382

–––––––––––, O trato dos viventes: Formação do Brasil no Atlântico Sul, séculos XVI e XVII,  São Paulo, Companhia das Letras, 2000, 544 p. 

Centro de estudos africanos da Universidade do Porto (ed.), Trabalho Forçado Africano. O caminho de ida, Porto, Edições Humus, 2007, 202 p.

ALLINA Eric, Slavery by Any Other Name. African Life under Company Rule in Colonial Mozambique, Charlottesville & London, University of Virginia Press, 2012, xiii+255 p.

BARBIER-MOSIMANN Marie-Claude, Livingstone, 2016, Paris, Ellipses, 336 p.

-------------------------------------, Un Béarnais en Afrique australe ou l'extraordinaire destin d'Eugène Casalis, 2012, Paris, L'Harmattan, 300 p.

CAHEN Michel, « Slavery, Enslaved Labour and Forced Labour in Mozambique », Portuguese Studies Review, 21 (1), 2013, p. 253-265

CLARENCE-SMITH William Gervase, Islam and the Abolition of Slavery, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006, 293 p.

COQUERY-VIDROVITCH Catherine and MESNARD Éric, Être esclave. Afrique - Amériques, XVe-XIXe siècle, 2013, Paris, Éditions La Découverte, 329 p.

DIREITO Bárbara, Terra e Colonialismo em Moçambique, 1892-1942, Lisbonne, Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2020, 306 p.

DORIGNY Marcel and GAINOT Bernard, Atlas des esclavages. De l'Antiquité à nos jours, 2013, Paris, Éditions Autrement, 96 p.

FLORY Céline , De l'esclavage à la liberté forcée. Histoire des travailleurs africains engagés dans la Caraïbe française au XIXe siècle, 2015, Paris, Karthala, 456 p.

ISMARD Paulin (dir.), ROSSI Benedetta and VIDAL Cécile (coord.), Les mondes de l'esclavage. Une histoire comparée, 2021, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1153 p.

MAESTRI Edmond (ed.), Esclavage et abolitions dans l'océan Indien (1723-1860), 2002, Paris, L'Harmattan-Université de La Réunion, 458 p.

MASTERTON WADDELL Hope, Twenty-Nine Years in the West Indies and Central Africa: A Review of Missionary Work and Adventure, 1829–1858, 2010, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Library Collection - Slavery and Abolition) Reissue Edition, 708 p.

MAXWELL David, Freed Slaves, Missionaries, and Respectability: the Expansion of the Christian Frontier from Angola to Belgian Congo, 2013, The Journal of African History, 54(1), Cambridge University Press, pp. 79-102.

MONTEIRO José Pedro Pinto, Portugal e a Questão do Trabalho Forçado. Um Império Sob Escrutínio

(1944-1962), Lisbonne, Edições 70, 2018, 404 p.                     

MORIER-GENOUD, Eric, Catholicism and the Makingof Politics in Central Mozambique, 1940-1986, Rochester/Woodbridge, University of Rochester Press/Boydell & Brewer, 2019, 264 p.

PETRE-GRENOUILLEAU Olivier, What is slavery? Une histoire globale, 2014, Paris, Gallimard, 501 p.

------------------------------------------- (ed.), Dictionnaire des esclavages, 2010, Paris, Larousse, 575 p.

-------------------------------------------, Les traites négrières. Essai d'histoire globale, 2004, Paris, Gallimard, 468 p.

RAFIDINARIVO Christiane, Empreintes de la servitude dans les sociétés de l'océan Indien. Métamorphoses et permanences, 2009, Paris, Karthala, 237 p.

RAISON-JOURDE Françoise, Bible et pouvoir à Madagascar. Invention d'une identité chrétienne et construction de l'État, 1991, Paris, Karthala, 848 p.

RENAULT François, Libération d'esclaves et nouvelle servitude, 1977, Abidjan, Les nouvelles éditions africaines, 237 p.

TINKER H, A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas 1830-1920, 1974, London, Oxford University Press, 432 pp.

TURNER Mary, Slaves and Missionaries: The Disintegration of Jamaican Slave Society, 1787-1834, 1998, Kington, University Press of the West Indies, 236 pp.

ZORN Jean-François, Le grand siècle d'une mission protestante. La Mission de Paris de 1822 à 1914, 2012, Paris, Karthala, 791 p.

-------------------------- "The strange destiny of the abolition of slavery", Autres Temps. Les cahiers du christianisme social. 1989, n° 22, p. 54-63.

Places

  • Arras, France (62000)

Event attendance modalities

Full on-site event


Date(s)

  • Friday, March 31, 2023

Keywords

  • mission chrétienne, esclavage, travailleur déplacé, circulation impériale, réseau, abolition, (dé)colonisation

Contact(s)

  • Claire Kaczmarek
    courriel : claire [dot] kaczmarek [at] univ-artois [dot] fr
  • Didier Galibert
    courriel : galibertdidier [at] orange [dot] fr

Information source

  • Didier Galibert
    courriel : galibertdidier [at] orange [dot] fr

License

CC0-1.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.

To cite this announcement

« Missionary strategies and practices, slavery and forced labour (early 19th-mid 20th century) », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Wednesday, February 08, 2023, https://calenda.org/1049351

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