Elachi Georgetown 0076D 136

CHILDREN AND SLAVE EMANCIPATION IN FRENCH ALGERIA AND TUNISIA (1846- 1892) A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History By Soha C. El Achi, M.A. Washington, DC December 9, 2016 Copyright 2016 by Soha El Achi All Rights Reserved ii CHILDREN AND SLAVE EMANCIPATION IN FRENCH ALGERIA AND TUNISIA (1846- 1892) Soha C. El Achi, M.A. Thesis Advisor: Osama Abi-Mershed, Ph.D. ABSTRACT In the second half of the nineteenth century, both the slave trade and slavery were illegal in Algeria, Tunisia, and the rest of France’s colonial empire. Yet, from the fringes of the Sahara to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, thousands of slaves, mainly women and children, continued to be sold, bought and freed. This dissertation looks at the experiences of servitude and liberation of the children who were born or sold into slavery between the last three decades of the nineteenth century, when France was expanding its imperial territory in Africa and undergoing profound political and social changes in the metropole under the Third Republic. Two main arguments run through the dissertation. First, I argue that, during the fifty years that followed official abolition, sub-Saharan Africans living in Algeria and Tunisia still tended to perform the same economic and social roles as before 1848, and that official abolition reinforced and crystallized racial, class, and gender hierarchies in Algeria and Tunisia. The second argument is that the narrative of slavery, abolition and emancipation in modern North Africa is part of a complex trans-regional history that includes the Americas, metropolitan France, and sub-Saharan Africa. The Haitian revolution, abolition and emancipation in the French and British Caribbean, the Catholic Church’s politics in Europe, America and Africa, as well as the social tensions in the newly born Third Republic, shaped the policies and attitudes of French missionaries and colonial officials towards slavery in Algeria and Tunisia. By following the trajectories of the iii institutions and the individuals involved in the emancipation process, the dissertation studies the structural and ideological connections between colonial politics in the Caribbean, the Realpolitik of imperialism in Africa, and social policies in metropolitan France. I use the methods of micro-history to study these issues. My case studies include a school for freed slaves the White Fathers opened for boys they had bought out of slavery in Algeria and Tunisia, and the judicial affairs opposing owners to their slaves, who brought them to court to demand their liberation or reparation for the physical abuse they endured during their captivity. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 1 A. SLAVERY, ABOLITION AND EMANCIPATION IN NORTH AFRICA AND THE FRENCH EMPIRE .............................................................................. 1 B. MICROHISTORY ............................................................................................... 14 C. HISTORIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................... 17 CHAPTER I: A TALE OF THREE CONTINENTS: THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN THE FRENCH EMPIRE ................................................................... 32 A. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 32 B. THE ABOLITIONIST MOVEMENT IN THE FRENCH EMPIRE ................... 36 C. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND ABOLITION ............................................... 47 D. REDEFINITIONS OF FREEDOM IN THE PERIOD OF EMANCIPATION ... 58 E. CONCLUSION .................................................................................................... 70 CHAPTER II: THE WHITE FATHERS AND THE POLITICS OF EMANCIPATION IN NORTH AFRICA .................................................................. 73 A. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 73 B. THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF FRENCH MISSIONS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ........................................................................................................... 77 C. THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF MISSIONARY WORK IN NORTH AFRICA ............................................................................................................... 83 D. THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF MISSIONARY WORK ..................................... 107 E. CONCLUSION .................................................................................................. 129 CHAPTER III: EMANCIPATION AT WORK: THE WHITE FATHERS’ INSTITUT APOSTOLIQUE DES NEGRES .......................................................... 131 A. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................. 131 B. CHILDREN AND THE SLAVE TRADE IN THE PERIOD OF EUROPEAN COLONIALISM ................................................................................................ 134 C. EMANCIPATION AND SOCIAL DEATH ...................................................... 145 D. THE PRIVATE AND PUBLIC TRANSCRIPT OF EMANCIPATION AT THE INSTITUT ................................................................................................. 153 E. CONCLUSION .................................................................................................. 171 CHAPTER IV: EMANCIPATION ON TRIAL ...................................................... 173 A. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................. 173 B. SLAVERY AND COLONIAL RULE IN TUNISIA ......................................... 180 C. VIOLENCE IN THE HOME ............................................................................. 185 D. FATHMA ........................................................................................................... 204 E. CONCLUSION .................................................................................................. 225 v CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................ 228 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................... 234 vi INTRODUCTION A. Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation in North Africa and the French Empire In January 1846, Ahmad bey (1837-1855), the ruler of Tunisia, issued an edict freeing all slaves in his country who wished to leave their masters: … we decided, in the present interest of the slaves and in the future interest of the masters, as well as to prevent the former from seeking protection from foreign powers, that notaries will be appointed […] to issue manumission letters to any slave who requests them. The letters will then be sent to us to be affixed with our seal.1 In Paris, two years later, in April 1848, the newly born Second Republic promulgated an edict banning slavery in France’s colonial territories: “slavery is entirely abolished in all French colonies and possessions.”2 The Tunisian text in principle provided an avenue to freedom to all slaves who wished to become free, without outlawing the institution itself: since the Quran specifically recognized slavery as a legitimate institution, a Muslim ruler could not ban it. But Ahmed bey presented the document as an abolition decree, which theoretically would, in time, ensure that nobody was enslaved in the Regency, and it was hailed as such by abolitionists in Europe. British anti- slavery activists even used it to put France to shame for its reluctance towards abolitionism, until the 1848 French decree ended the legal existence of slavery. The document banned the 1 Ahmed bey, “Décret prescrivant l’affranchissement des esclaves et ordonnant des mesures pour ce faire, ”in Code annoté de la Tunisie : Recueil de tous les documents composant la législation écrite de ce pays au 1er janvier 1901 I, ed. Paul Zeys (Nancy: Imprimerie Berger-Levrault et Cie, 1901), 384. This, and all the following translations from English to French, are mine. 2 Le Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, “Décret du 27 avril 1848.” http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/actual/abolition/decret.htm (accessed January 15, 2016). 1 institution of slavery in a growing empire, which, in addition to the West Indies, Senegal and Mayotte, included Algeria, and after 1881, Tunisia.3 Abolitionism in the Middle East and North Africa was a product of European imperial politics. There never was a local anti-slavery movement in the Ottoman Empire, Egypt, Algeria or Tunisia. European (usually British) abolitionists promoted an international anti-slavery agenda with support from London. Diplomatic pressure from the British government in the 1840s and 1850s prompted the Ottomans and the Egyptians to promulgate measures against the slave trade, though the new rules remained a dead letter for over three decades. 4 In Tunisia, the anti-slavery legislation was a result of this larger British effort in the Arab and Ottoman world. It followed a series of gradual measures, such as the closing of the Tunis slave 3 On the abolition of slavery in Tunisia, see Ismahel Montana, The Abolition of Slavery in Otoman Tunisia (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2013) and Roger Botte, Esclavages et abolitions en terre d’Islam (Paros: André Versaille Editeur, 2010). On the abolition

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