The Chicken and the Egg Or the Egg and the Omelette

William Cohen. The French Encounter with Africans: White Responses to Blacks (1530-1880). Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980. xxx + 361 pp. $24.95, paper, ISBN 978-0-253-21650-2. Trevor R. Getz. Slavery and Reform in West Africa: Toward Emancipation in Nineteenth-Century Senegal and the Gold Coast. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004. xx + 257 pp. $65.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8214-1520-7. Reviewed by Leland Barrows Published on H-Africa (April, 2005) We have here two examples of very different sion of the Atlantic slave trade followed, some kinds of historical writing, albeit on related sub‐ years later, by the European-imposed emancipa‐ jects. The frst book, by Cohen, is the work of a tion of slaves in two distinct nineteenth-century mature scholar. It is a broad synthesis derived protocolonial areas in West Africa: French Sene‐ mostly from intellectual history that analyzes the gal (excluding Casamance) and British Gold Coast. French view of Blacks over a three-hundred-and- Both books purport to be revisionist. The frst fifty year period. The second book, by Getz, is his one, however, is spectacularly so. Its author chal‐ revised University of London, School of Oriental lenges the reputation that France had gained for and African Studies doctoral thesis. Titled "The itself (particularly among Anglo-Saxons and Most Perfidious Institution: The Slow Death of AfricanAmericans and Afro-West Indians) by the Slavery in Nineteenth century Senegal and the first decades of the twentieth century for being a Gold Coast," it earned him his doctorate in history country virtually bereft of race and color preju‐ in 2000. Like the original, the revised version is a dice, a perception, indeed, that had come to form short, targeted monograph, an exercise in com‐ an integral part of the French self-image. The sec‐ parative history, which presents and interprets ond book, the revisionism of which is more sub‐ the dynamics of the European-imposed suppres‐ tle, applies the broad sweep of such an author as H-Net Reviews Martin Klein in his Slavery and Colonial Rule in populations lived--until as late as the 1905 decree French West Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni‐ abolishing slavery in French West Africa. versity Press, 1998) and the methodologies of Can the laxness (or "pragmatism") of French those who contributed to Suzanne Miers and Mar‐ policy, as perceived by Getz, be at least partially tin Klein, eds., Slavery and Colonial Rule in Africa explained by the deeply ingrained negative view (London: Frank Cass, 1999), to the complex socio- of Africans and Afro-Caribbean peoples that Co‐ economic and political realities of the Southern hen identifies as a significant thread running Gold Coast and Senegal north of the Gambia Riv‐ through French intellectual history from the six‐ er. It shows how slavery persisted and even teenth century onward? (Never mind certain so‐ thrived, thanks to the initiatives and connivance cio-economic realities characteristic of plantation of both masters and slaves as well as colonial offi‐ slave societies and the precariousness of the cials in both settings well beyond the convention‐ French presence in Senegal during most of the pe‐ al dates given for the ending of slavery in the riod under study.) Or was the problem in the colonies of Great Britain and France, 1833 and French case, like in that of the British, simply one 1848, respectively. of maintaining the commercial profitability and While Getz does not take direct aim at a na‐ the political stability of the respective colonies by tional myth, he does add considerable evidence of relying on the support of local slave-owning the unintended perverse results of the hopes for elites? and the realization of "legitimate trade" as de‐ Professor Cohen's study has been around for fined by European abolitionists such as Thomas some time. First published in 1980, it was intend‐ Fowell Buxton, whose African Slave Trade and Its ed to be a French-focused equivalent to Philip Remedy (1840; 2nd. ed. London: Frank Cass, 1967) Curtin's The Image of Africa: British Ideas in Ac‐ was influential in Great Britain as well as in tion, 1780-1850 (Madison: The University of Wis‐ France. As an aside, Getz also suggests that the consin Press, 1964). Cohen's inspiration germinat‐ Gold Coast elites who generated the Mankessim ed while he was preparing his doctoral thesis at Constitution, the Fante Confederation (1868-1873), Stanford University on the French colonial ser‐ and the Accra Native Confederation were, in large vice.[1] part, slave owners who wished to conserve at The present paperback edition of The French least indigenous slavery (pp. 97, 113). This fnding Encounter with Africans, published in 2003, is is a surprise to those who view the Fante Confed‐ identical to the original of 1980 except for the ad‐ eration, in particular, as the frst step towards dition of a foreword by Professor James D. Le modern, liberal, constitutional, and independent Sueur of the University of Nebraska. The latter ex‐ government in Ghana where slavery, of course, plains how groundbreaking the frst edition was would not be tolerated, and as a precursor of the even if its central thesis, which postulates a "con‐ Gold Coast Aborigines' Rights Protection Associa‐ sensus [existing] in French thought, which rele‐ tion, founded in 1897, that would be known for its gated the black to a position of inferiority," was strong antislavery stance. vigorously rejected by such knowledgeable It would seem that the French authorities in French critics as the historian Emmanuel Todd.[2] Senegal, even more than the British authorities in Given the growing French preoccupation, since Gold Coast, allowed, indeed, collaborated in, the the initial publication of the book in 1980, with continued existence if not the expansion of in‐ immigration from the former French colonies, In‐ digenous slavery in Senegal, particularly in the diana University Press found it appropriate to re‐ protectorate areas--where most of the indigenous publish Cohen's book. (Never mind the fact that 2 H-Net Reviews this particular debate in France is mostly con‐ imposed theory of the monogenism of human cre‐ cerned with immigration from North Africa even ation, placed the black African on the bottom if it has been punctuated from time to time by rung of the evolutionary ladder--or at the extreme widely publicized mass expulsions of Malians and end of a postulated chain of progressive degener‐ other Africans from the former French colonies ation--just above the orangutan, wrote Jacques and their forced repatriation in chartered air‐ Philibert Rousselot de Surgy around 1763 (p. 87). craft) and the general hardening of attitudes, not For some Enlightenment era thinkers, Voltaire only in France but in other European Union coun‐ among others, the specific physical characteristics tries, regarding immigration not only from the of Blacks seemed to be a self-evident argument in Third World but also, since 1990, from such East‐ favor of polygenism, a theory postulating the sep‐ ern European countries as Romania. Also, repub‐ arate creation of the races of humankind, leading lication of this book would serve as a suitable to the conclusion that Blacks were a separate, not memorial to its author, given his untimely death fully human, species. Polygenism had the added in November 2002 as the result of a freak acci‐ attraction, among the more anticlerical French dent. As Professor Le Sueur claims, Cohen has thinkers, of standing in opposition to the Church- taught the French as much about their long histo‐ backed monogenism, according to which all hu‐ ry of racism as Robert O. Paxton has about their manity was descended from Adam and Eve. more recent collaboration with Nazi Germany Theory and practice intermingled in the eigh‐ and their contributions to the holocaust during teenth and early-nineteenth centuries in three the period of the Vichy regime (1940-1944).[3] venues: the French West Indies, Senegal, and If we are to believe Professor Cohen, the "im‐ France. The perceived exigencies of intensive sug‐ pulse to inequality" goes back a long way in the ar production by slave labor and the presence of history of French thought, having even been influ‐ Whites in Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Saint- enced by the negative views about Sub-Saharan Domingue, as a very small but dominant minority Africa and its inhabitants of the third-century ge‐ in a slave plantation society, led to stringent ographer, Solinus (p. 1) and by Christian tradi‐ racially exclusive laws (despite the relative hu‐ tions equating blackness with sin, dirt, and the manity of the 1685 Black Code), intended to guar‐ devil. This "impulse to inequality," once estab‐ antee the efficiency of the slave production sys‐ lished, was confirmed and reinforced by the frst tem and the dominance of the white planters. contacts of Frenchmen with West Africa, particu‐ Even though the presence of Blacks in France at larly Senegal, in the development of slave-worked the time was minuscule, a perceived growing fear plantation colonies in the Caribbean and else‐ of "disorders" and miscegenation led to laws in where, and the corresponding Atlantic and Indian 1738 and 1777 that vastly restricted the presence Ocean slave trade. Early French observers, it of blacks in France. Only in the tiny French settle‐ seems, were shocked by the blackness of African ments in Senegal, particularly the islands of Saint- skin and the general appearance of Africans as Louis and Goree, where French survival depend‐ well as by their social customs, apparent religious ed on the maintenance of good relations with the practices, and material culture. surrounding African polities, did a strong but de The philosophes of the eighteenth century En‐ facto degree of racial tolerance and a sentiment of lightenment, in their search for a science of man, equality evolve along with an influential, politi‐ gave theoretical underpinning to an assumed cally dominant, and culturally French mixed-race black inferiority.

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