‘That man can work, he must have liberty…’:1 Mauritanian haratine and the Colonial Labour Discourse

A new social hierarchy, founded uniquely on wealth, is being established [here]. Politically, it is difficult to predict the consequences of this evolution which consecrates the importance of work and which destroys the ancient seigneurs….Practically, this evolution has developed on the one hand poverty, materializing … in a number of prostitutes and poor…, on the other, [it has] created a new class: ‘the working class’.2 [1943]

People worked both in pre-colonial and colonial . If we are to believe French colonial records, what was distinctive about ‘colonial’ work and those who engaged in it was the emergence of a particular “class”, autonomous in its identity and independent of those who employed it – E.P Thompson’s proverbial ‘working class’.3 However, in our

post-modern, post-colonial era, this avowedly Marxist concept has much less currency

than it did a generation ago. And analysis of records – texts – of any kind occupies itself

more with concerns of ‘discourse’, narrative ‘tropes’, deconstruction and contextual

‘rubric’ than of descriptive or ‘factual’ information. So clearly, to seek ‘a working class

in the making’ in the colonial records is not only passé according to contemporary

scholarship, it is impossible. No longer can one look to text for truth.

The problem is those people who worked in pre-colonial and colonial Mauritania, still

‘work’ in post-colonial Mauritania – workers (and ‘working people) remain critical to

contemporary Mauritania’s reality. And from my understanding of Mauritanian social

1 Marius Moutet, press conference, 1937. The quotation continues “…that is, that he can apply himself to his own cultivation…It is also necessary to free the worker from certain corvees [forced labour recruitment]”. Cited (and extensively footnoted) in Frederick Cooper, and African Society: the labor question in French and British (Cambridge University Press, 1996), p.74. 2 Archives, Atar (RIM – hereafter AATAR), Rapport politique annual, ‘Notes’, 1943. 3 Edward P Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Penquin Books Ltd., 1968; first pub. Victor Gollancz, 1963). history to date, the ‘identity’ of those who work is central to explaining how other

‘groups’ (or classes) see themselves.4 Therefore, the claim that ‘created’ a

working class in Mauritania deserves exploration. Perhaps there is still something to be

drawn from Thompson’s perceptions of process that has relevance for a post-colonial

questioning of reality.

In Search of a Working Class

At first glance, there would seem to be little question about who constituted this new

‘group’ of workers. French colonial rule of Mauritania resulted in rapidly expanding

agriculture (flood-fed cultivation and irrigated oasis agriculture ), pastoralism (some

transport animals but mostly meat-supplying sheep and cattle) and commerce (largely

centered on the flourishing of , involving exports of foodstuffs and

imports of French manufactured goods like cloth). Put another way, it necessitated that more work be accomplished. It also introduced a series of laws to eliminate slavery and the slave trade, and promoted French schooling. The combined effects of this

‘colonialism’ was a tendency on the part of Mauritanians to free slaves and to send the

children of slaves and newly-freed slaves ( haratine), to school. Muslim masters,

reluctant to enter the secular world of French work or to have their children do so,

thereby ‘made’ a class of French speaking, wage-earning, haratine labourers that was

sure to reproduce itself. This, then, was the ‘new working class’ claimed by French

4 E Ann McDougall, “Topsy-Turvy World: slaves and freed slaves in the Mauritanian Adrar, 1910-1950”, in R Roberts and S Miers, The Ending of Slavery in Africa (University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), 362-88; Meskerem Brhane, “Narratives of the Pst, Politics of the Present: identity, subordination and the haratines of Mauritania”2 Vols., (PhD, Dept. Political Science, University of Chicago, 1997); Urs Peter Ruf, Ending Slavery. Hierarchy, Dependency and Gender in Central Mauritania (Bieflefeld Transcript Verlag, 1999 – from Dissertation, Bielefeld, 1998); E Ann McDougall, Neskerem Brhane and Urs Peter RUf, “Legacies of Slavery, Promises of Democracy: Mauritania in the 21st Century” in Malinda S. Smith(Ed), Globalizing Africa (Africa World Press, 2003), 67-88. administrators, as the direct product of their policies. But is the story so simple?

If we return to the gist of Thompson’s ‘English working class’, he asserted that it was an

historical phenomenon and very much a ‘cultural’ affair. Most famously he asserted that

it ‘made itself’ as much as it ‘was made’: “[it] owes as much to agency as to conditioning

… The working class was present at its own making”.5 The narrative description I

provided above speaks only to what Thompson would term “the productive relations into

which men are born – or enter involuntarily”; it does not address how these “experiences

were handled in cultural terms”. Most problematic, however, is the fact that all agency is

attributed to the actions of the French colonizers and the Mauritanian masters. To

conclude with Thompson’s still seminal words, “class is defined by men as they live their

own lives”. One element missing from our understanding of the Mauritanian

phenomenon then, is the agency and the ‘lived experience’ of the haratine themselves.6

The narrative also raises a second issue. In an article on the ending of slavery in

Mauritania some years ago, I identified the process of freeing male slaves as being key to understanding colonial social and economic change. I posed the unanswered question

‘why, under what circumstances, would a master decide to free a male slave – as opposed to not freeing him’.7 While I thought I knew why masters were not freeing female

5 Thompson, English Working Class, p.9. 6 Ibid., pp.10,11. In “Topsy-Turvy World”, I argued this in slightly different terms: that because the colonial economy was primarily about ‘work’ and that “all work was customarily performed by servile groups, colonial labour requirements had a social impact on Mauritanians which far outweighed its broader economic significance. The categories ‘master’, ‘slave’, and ‘hartani’ remained unchanged, but the experience of being a master, a slave or a hartani did not” (p. 365). I pick up this last point in the second half of this paper. 7 McDougall, “Topsy-Turvy World”, p.365, Ft.4 slaves8, was my logic that male slaves were being liberated specifically to form a wage-

labour working force necessarily the logic of Mauritanian masters? Were masters

consciously creating a class of workers?9

Finally, a third question, one belonging more properly to recent work on language and discourse than to Thompson’s social history analysis, namely: to whose ‘discourse’ did the concept of ‘working class’ actually belong? Was it something acknowledged by haratine themselves? Thompson’s ‘class consciousness’, that is how experience

“embodied in traditions, value systems, ideas and traditional forms”10-- was it ever

‘bought into’ by masters or slaves? When the French spoke of la class ouvriere, it was

often in the context of discussions of slavery – or more precisely, the ending of slavery.

The terms ‘slave’ and ‘slavery’ were constantly evolving during the colonial period.

Often, both concepts were subsumed to discussions of ‘respecting local customs’ – here

meaning Islam and the perceived role of slavery and slaves within this religion11. But as

has been demonstrated elsewhere, slavery emerged as a point of intersection between the

overtly political agenda of the French in , the colonial administrators on the ground,

and the local Mauritanian elites. Each used the volatile and politically sensitive subject

for their own purposes. Often issues ostensibly about ‘slaves’ or ‘slavery’ were not really

8 Ibid., p. 365 for general terms; stories of masters resisting freeing female slaves, pp.370-2. 376,7.Masters made it quite clear that female slaves were the source of children and hence, future slaves. I will return to this in the final section of the paper. 9 In this sense, Thompson would probably reject the question, arguing that no one class can create another, that classes are created through process. Nor do I believe that he would consider one ‘class’ recognizing the existence of another necessarily pertinent. That said, he was not writing of slaves in a colonial society. 10 Thompson, English Working Class, p.10. 11 Both the term and concept will be discussed further, below. about the institution or its victims at all12. Is it also possible that what we think we know about the creation of a haratine ‘working class’ and the process underlying that creation fall into that same category of analysis?

Was la class ouvriere also more a part of French colonial discourse than Mauritanian experience? Most of what we have seen of both masters and slaves, we have seen through the lens of colonial administrators, through words intended primarily for superiors located in and Paris13. Moreover, the French were not alone in the world of colonialism and the audience for edited versions of local reports was, from at least the mid-1920s, an international one. With the intervention of the League of Nations, the

International Labour Organization and finally, the United Nations into labour issues, global templates were created to make sense of systems of labour and categories of labourers; ‘language’ shoehorned varied and specific experiences into a largely universal discourse.14 Where in this larger discussion should we situate the haratine workers of

Mauritania?

12 See for example my study of the infamous Dahomean exile, Louis Hundanrin: “Setting the story straight: Louis Hunkanrin and un forfait colonial, History in Africa 16 (1989):285-310. 13 While “Topsy-Turvy World” used some oral evidence, and “Legacies of Slavery” drew on contemporary interviews, most of the colonial analysis relies heavily on archival records. On the importance of debate over slavery between “senior administrators and jurists” in Paris and Dakar, and the field administrators on the ground, Martin Klein speaks of a “chasm” in large part because of the ‘conservatism’ of the latter and their concern about how to administer laws. (Martin A Klein ,Slavery and colonial rule in French , (Cambridge University Press, 1998); see Chapter 8 “The imposition of metropolitan priorities on slavery”, especially pp.131-40. 14 Frederick Cooper references the importance of this ‘universal’ discourse in several parts of his seminal study of labour in French and British Africa. He draws attention to the emergence of concerns specifically over ‘forced’ labour in the 1920s, the involvement of the League of Nations with the 1926 ‘Anti-Slavery Convention’ and the investigation of the International Labour Organization into forced labour that resulted in the ILO ‘Forced Labour Convention’ of 1930. He similarly traces the concerns of the United Nations over ‘social’ issues that included labour in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s. These discussions will be addressed (with specific page references), below. See Decolonization and African Society. The labor question in French and British Africa (Cambridge University Press, 1996).

The Language of Labour

From the beginning of their involvement with Mauritania, French colonial officials found

themselves dealing with a society in which ‘superior classes’- nobles, warriors, religious

clerics () depended upon inferior classes given solely to work. The latter had a

relation to the former analogous to the “vassalage of the Middle Ages”; with time, this

had become for some a consensual custom – such was the case with the ‘tribes’ of

haratine or affranchis15. In the context of the central region of Tagant, these anciens

captifs affranchis were identified as constituting an important part of the ‘labouring

class’, deserving of French protection, support and ‘favour’. The others were esclaves or

captifs – serviteurs naturels who comprised the majority of the labouring class and even

worked for haratine16 . Bordering the , the commandant in the cercle

[administrative region] of Brakna clearly distinguished the ‘slavery’ of Mauritania from

that of Senegal, noting that while the latter were primarily long-term ‘captifs de cas’,

those in Mauritania were not ‘ready’ for liberation. He explained that the rule was to act

with ‘prudence’, maintaining the status quo. He liberated slaves beaten by their masters

and prohibited all outright purchasing and sale of slaves but otherwise he respected the

“morals, customs, property and religion” of the Mauritanian nobility as had been

promised them at the time of their submission to the French17. Summarized, while it was

desirable to apply French conceptions of a social state based upon the role of the

15 Archives Nationales de la Republique Islamique de la Mauritanie (hereafter ARIM) 1905-1908, series E1-61 “Esclavage”; letter circulated to all Commandents de Cercle in Mauritania (regarding anti-slavery decree of 1905), March 1906. 16 Ibid. Response of Comt. Tissot (Tagant), September 1906. 17 Ibid., Letter Resident Brakna to Governor General Mauritania, 25 December 1905, E1 61. Apart from individual reports, there are several decrees and circulars dealing with the subjects of the slave trade and slavery (eg December 1905, February and March 1906, May/June 1907, April 1908) also in this file. (understood ‘free’) individual, to wrench this individual too abruptly from his “natural

group” would be to “sow social disorder”. Mauritania was not yet “ripe enough for the

exercise of full individualism” or for the “progressive and definitive freeing of the

labouring masses”18.

This special understanding was articulated even more clearly a decade later in 1918, as

Governor Gaden explicitly distinguished between domestic slavery and the slave trade.

He also introduced explicitly a concern that would dominate the coming decades: work.

In effect all the agreements we have made with the show that we will

respect their social structure, property, customs and religion. We have therefore

recognized a situation of fact: The slaves stay in the family of their owner for

whom they constitute the labour force. …Having recognized this state of affairs,

we do not want to say that we will authorize trade… This traffic, in addition to

being reprehensible, is also contrary to the interests of owners who lose a worker

they are not able to replace, since the peace which we have brought to Mauritania

no longer permits them to bring slaves from the south. … It can happen that in

certain contracts between Moors, for the constitution of a bride price for example,

it is specified that a slave be given by the spouse. This is not, in my opinion, an

act of slave trading – a slave whose condition we have already recognized,

remains in the family and does not leave the country. This is not a loss for the

18 ARIM E1 61 “Esclavage”, letter circulated to Mauritanian commandents de cercle (regarding Anti- Slavery decree 1905), March 1906. masters. These are the only transactions to which we can close our eyes.19

By 1928, the official rhetoric had not changed in substance, but had

evolved somewhat in language and context. What had earlier been referred to as captifs

and captifs de cas were now serviteur and serviteurs nes, literally those born into

‘service’. And while the obligation to respect usages et coutumes continued to be

referenced, it was now in the context of acknowledging that “it is not possible for us to

maintain this integral dependency that sooner or later should end”. So the French had to

both assist masters who would progressively lose the rights of their traditional social role,

and exercise close control over the “serviteurs nes [who were] now disengaged from their

servitude”20. In 1929, the Commandant of the Adrar sent a lengthy missive to his

subordinate administrators in the towns of Atar and Shingit and the cercle commander in

Traraza. In the context of addressing a particular case21, he focused discussion on the

basic issues characterizing French treatment of : “In all our

, we have formally condemned slavery. But in Muslim countries we have

recognized officially [emphasis in original] an existing social state: that of the ‘serviteurs’

which constitutes labour within the family and Muslim organization such that it is fixed

by the religion and Muslim law . What we do not permit is the reduction to servitude by

force those of a free condition…”. Most of the remainder of the document discussed

19 Correspondence, Resident Shinqit to Commandant du Cercle de l’Adrar, October-November 1918, ARIM E1 28 20 Circular from Saint Louis to all the circles and residences of Mauritania, section entitled ‘Serviteurs’, ARIM E2 135, 1928. 21 It concerned a slave wishing to be repatriated to , and spoke to concerns about the still troubled relationship the French had with the grandes nomads, the Regueibat. affranchissement or liberation of said ‘serviteurs’, inheritance and the custom of hiring-

out a ‘legitimate captif’ in the special terms of Muslim law:

The freeing of a serviteur is recommended by the Muslim Religion and we should

encourage it. The rachat [buying back] is legitimated by the loss suffered by the

patron who has raised and maintained the serviteur and loses the fruits of his

labour [my emphasis]. The division of serviteurs belonging to a family as part of

inheritance is legitimate since they are an integral part of the family. We have not

intervened in these distributions regulated by Muslim law and which rely on the

competence of the . … The hiring out [location] of a legitimate captif in

Muslim law ought to be considered as a work contract between the patron,

entrepreneur who has raised and maintained the serviteur and the employer who

benefits from his work. We should authorize such a contract only with the consent

of the serviteur22.

This evolution of the discourse, in which Islam played an increasingly prominent role and the slippage around the language of slavery became increasingly transparent, was clearly

rooted in the context of the nineteenth-century ‘slavery and abolition’ discourse. But in

the post WWI years, it could not long remain oblivious to what soon developed into a

discrete, international rhetoric generated around colonial labour practices. The League of

Nations, formally constituted in 1920, entered the fray in the aftermath of highly

publicized forced labour scandals in several African colonies, and just as imperial powers

like France were discussing the practical implications of moving to policies of completely

22 Capt. Reviers de Mauny, Cmdt. de Cercle de l’Adrar, circular, December 1929, ARIM E1 18 “Esclavage”. ‘free’ labour23. In 1926, it passed an ‘Anti-slavery Convention’ that reiterated much of

the language of earlier documents, directly referencing the Congress of Brussels 1889-90

regarding the suppression of all ‘vestiges of’ the slave trade and the ‘progressive’

abolition of slavery ‘in all its forms’24. In terms of both language and concept, the

importance of the Convention was the international acknowledgement that the labour

practices of a member government could be analogous to slavery; the problem then

became how to define when labour became unfree25. The International Labour

Organization (founded in 1919), autonomous but working closely with the League,

undertook to find out. Detailed questionnaires were sent to member states, the results of

which shaped the passing of the Forced Labour Convention in 193026. In his seminal

work on ‘the labour question in French Africa’, Frederick Cooper explored extensively

this era in which colonial administrators sought creative language that could reshape the

issue of forced labour into discussions of taxation, military service and infrastructures

meant to ‘bring liberation’ to Africans. Metaphors notwithstanding, their efforts were in

vain27. The conference of 1930 passed a convention on colonial labour that included all forms including those employed in French colonies; France did not ratify it until 1937.

23 Cooper, Decolonization, pp.28,9. 24 “La Conventionion Relative a L’Esclavage” was signed in Geneva in September 1926, ratified by the French Government December 1926. Copy consulted as published in Bulletin de la Comite de l’Afrique, Renseignments Coloniaux 9 (1931):517-9. 25 Cooper, Decolonization, p.29. 26 The recommendations were submitted to the ILO in 1929, leading to the convention of 1930 (Cooper, Decolonization, pp.28,9). 27 In Cote d’Ivoire, ‘compulsion’ was a question of taxation and military recruitment, therefore (it was argued) belonging to the question of ‘national sovereignty’, not to labour. Cooper refers to la deuxieme portion, the portion of required military service devoted to public works, as a ‘metaphor’. In Dahomey, it was claimed that forced labour in the private sector had been suppressed, but that a certain ‘pressure’ and ‘constraint’ remained with respect to the public-works labour necessary to complete ‘the work of liberation’ the new improved infrastructure was bringing to Africans: forced labour would ‘liberation’. (Cooper, Decolonization, pp. 38 ). This did not mean, however, that France was insensitive to the ongoing international

judgment of the League. In June 1931, the then Minister of the Colonies placed the

‘Present Problem of Slavery’ squarely in this new context for his colonial Governor

Generals. In a lengthy document, Reynaud set out the connection between the concerns

of the League of Nations over forced labour – “the polemics and numerous works,

articles and conferences to which the question of forced labour like that of the actual

vestiges of forms of slavery have given rise” – and the current situation in the French

colonies. “It is no longer enough, in effect, to refer to French colonial legislation

abolishing slavery, it is absolutely necessary to detail exactly what vestiges of slavery

remain in our diverse, faraway possessions”. He then went on to request documentation

on the ‘remnants’ of domestic slavery (interestingly differentiated from captivite de

case), of tribal or ‘chiefly’ slavery, of pawning, of ‘hidden’ trafficking in women and

children and of all non-remunerated forms of labour.28

The word games continued. In , language used to justify the forced

labour of the Office du Niger (Soudan) echoed the ‘working for liberation’ language

heard earlier: building their own infrastructure (albeit by compulsion) would eventually

bring about the creation of a much-needed ‘work ethic’ among Africans otherwise not

attracted to wage labour29. Cooper draws attention to another striking example around the

issue of unemployment. It was argued that since the African family had access to land

and took care of its own, only the most ‘detribalized’ of Africans, those in urban situations, could ‘count’ as unemployed. According to Cooper, this was discourse typical

28 Minister of the Colonies, Reynaud, to Governor Generals and Governors of the Colonies: “Le probleme present de l’esclavage”, june 1931. ARIM E1 18 “Esclavage”. 29 Cooper, Decolonization, pp.89,90. of the 1930s, an example of how drawing on perceptions of the ‘peculiar nature of

African society’ “could define an entire problem [in this case mass rural under and

unemployment] out of existence”30. The linking of the ‘detribalized’ African with a

social and economic problem is also notable, especially when compared with the ideals expressed in the early Mauritanian documentation about the ultimate desirability of creating the individual ‘freed’ from his ‘natural group’. The language reveals a real contradiction: how to ‘free’ from a relation defined by a forced labour without ‘freeing’ from tribal affiliation, when the former was an integral part of the latter? It masks, on the other hand, the evolution of French policy from a concern with ending slavery per se to a need to re-define free labour.

It is clear that France was sensitive to the fact that it had supported the principle of free labour in 1930 but not ratified the convention sanctifying it until seven years later.

Cooper notes that it is difficult to know exactly what officers were thinking and doing in the interim. He does, however, draw on a document dated 1937 in which one Governor

General expressed concern about the ‘morality’ of asking administrators on the ground to apply – “on paper only” – labour regulations inapplicable in practice. Or, as Cooper concludes: “they were supposed to write reports in the international language of free labour, while day by day, they exercised power in ways that could not be discussed” [my

30 Cooper, Decolonization, p.42 Similar tricks of the tongue continued to tackle the labour issue in Cote d’Ivoire. On the eve of French ratification of the ILO convention in 1937, administrators introduced the Apostulate du Travail whereby administrators, while continuing to ‘encourage work’ by Africans were to cease being ‘purveyors of work’ and become ‘inciters’ instead. Interestingly, the policy generated complaints that removing the administration from formally managing labour opened the door to private purveyors, who would abuse both the situation and the Africans. It was said that chiefs would sell anyone (the old, the sick) to private employers for high prices: “we have returned to slavery” colons [settlers] cried. Cooper points out the irony here, that ‘anti-slavery language’ was being invoked to support forced labour; in effect colons were using new language to justify old practices (Ibid., 79-83). emphasis]31. Mauritania may have lain outside the mainstream of the labour discourse

deliberations – indeed its ‘Maures’ were written off completely as people who would not

work32, but it was nonetheless directly affected by them. The sensitivity to using the term

‘serviteurs’ rather than ‘captifs’ or ‘esclaves’, to officially ‘defining’ serviteurs and serviteurs nes such that they could not be confused with ‘unfree labour’, and to establishing in lengthy reports and circulars the ‘peculiarity’ of Mauritania’s Muslim society – all resonate strongly with the ‘language of international labour’ created by the

League of Nations and the ILO in the 1920s and 1930s.

‘Imagining the Working Class33’

It was in the 1940s and 1950s that France began to ‘imagine’ the African working class.

The pre-war focus on ‘work’ had been directed to freeing the African labourer, initially

from slavery, later so that he could become more like the French peasant. This had been

articulated best by the Popular Front government in 1937: “That man can work, he must

have liberty, that is, that he can apply himself to his own cultivation”34. By the late

1940s, responses to a post-war economy both in Europe and Africa, the latter marked by

increasing urbanization and labour unrest, had adjusted the image of the ideal African.

Now, the ‘worker’ was the desired outcome of colonization. An Inspection General du

Travail was created to provide the bureaucratic framework for overseeing this transition

and between 1947 and 1952, the French Assembly struggled to come up with an

31 Ibid, p.31. 32 That fact is underscored by Cooper’s almost total lack of reference to the region. Mauritania is referenced only once, in a footnote, and then as an ‘exception’ to a policy, p.76. And ‘Maures’ are mentioned only once in the context of noting who of the West African population would not work (p.40). 33 Borrowed from the title of Cooper’s Part III “The Imagining of an African Working Class”, Decolonization. 34 Marius Moutet, press conference 1937; cited in Cooper, Decolonization, p.74. acceptable Labour Code for the Inspection to apply. As African deputies put it, “work

itself does not change” – Africans knew what work was as well as French administrators

did; what was at issue was “to define the salariat, that is the worker”. In the end, what was essentially defined was what the worker was not – in other words, what was to remain ‘peculiarly African’ about him. This was articulated in 1948 by one of the labour

‘inspectors’:

In regard to family labour, it is worth remembering that the immense majority of

cases of this do not fit the mold of wage labour, but are regulated by custom…The

framework of the family, which comprises a true system of social

security…draws its principal force from ties of a religious nature, which have not

been unaffected as a result of contact with western civilization but whose value

and solidity we must be careful not to underestimate. It is possible that under

cover of these ties abuses can be committed. At the same time, the possible

victims…retain the freedom to leave the family circle when they want to…35.

It is interesting that white settler interests articulated their objection to this ‘protection’ of

black Africans’ right to exploit ‘family’ labour outside the constraints of the labour code

accusing the assembly of ‘consecrating feudal rights’ – an striking echo of the language

used the Atar administrator quoted at the outset of this chapter -- under cover of a

euphemistic expression, ‘customary rights’36. They lost, both this particular battle and

the larger war. The Code was finally accepted by the Assembly in November 1952. But

the lengthy debates revealed the extent to which ‘African peculiarity’ remained central to

the labour discourse.

35 Inspector Combier, note to the ministry,1948, cited in Cooper, Decolonization, p.295. 36 Ibid., the speaker was Jules Castellani.

Apart from defining the worker, discussion had tended to focus around two aspects of

this new ‘class’: migration and stabilization. The migrant labour systems that had served

as the infrastructure of colonial economies were now seen as undermining the need for a

stabilized work force. From 1947-1948, the ILO, the Inter-African Labour Conferences

and the United Nations repeatedly addressed these questions and again, information on

the ‘labour situation’ was demanded from administrators in all colonial territories. As had been the case with the earlier focus on forced labour, these internationally articulated concerns established the acceptable framework for discussion. They did not determine government policy in Paris or West Africa, but they did, as Cooper has argued, condition the language used and force colonial thinking to engage, “one way or another” with this international discourse.37 Mauritania’s administrators were no exception. In June 1950,

they received a United Nations questionnaire from the Governor General of French West

Africa on the subject of ‘Esclavage en Mauritanie’. The responses, collected and

submitted by Mauritania’s governor, were a kind of anthology of documents from the

1940s; they reveal a lot about the shape of the discourse that was evolving around the

‘work’ and ‘labour’ issue in the colony by 1950. The respondent from the ,

for example, reviewed the evolution of French policy towards slavery from the time of

occupation, noting that recently accepted conventions regarding captifs meant that in “in

the future.. one could no longer recognize the devolution de serviteur through inheritance

or reclamation. … Also, one can no longer speak of ‘captifs belonging to…[someone,

some family, some tribe]’ but only of ‘serviteurs being part of…[said family, tribe].

Tomorrow, it will be without question travailleurs [workers]’. He went on to address the

37 Decolonization, p.363. term serviteur, assuring his superiors that “it is not in effect an elegant euphemism – it

translates faithfully the reality. Serviteur-ne is the family domestic who follows the tent

in its movements, it is even more the agricultural worker…”38. His counterpart further

east in the Hodh was more skeptical of the ‘faithfulness’ of the terminology, commenting

that because “we no longer officially tolerate slavery and because there are officially no

longer slaves, by a delicious euphemism, they have become serviteurs”.39 In the southern

agricultural region of Gorgol, his colleague echoed this sentiment with the comment

“what is a serviteur if not an esclave?40

Euphemism or not, there was an unease everywhere about what the discourse meant for

Mauritanian reality. The administrator from the Tagant had continued in his observations

about the serviteur ne being above all the agricultural worker: “The day when this

ideology, not yet valid [fully accepted] achieves the suppression of this class of

serviteurs, it will have succeeded in pushing the tribes that we should be interested in

sedentarizing (at least partially), back into exclusive nomadism. The Moors, if need be,

will herd but they will not cultivate and it is known that if they lack their captifs, they

will in their turn, abandon date-palm [cultivation – literally ‘they will lack date-palms’]. I

think that one will thusly serve neither the cause of the administered nor our own”41. Like earlier circular arguments, this one too embedded itself in most of the overall report. As the situation with serviteurs improved and as freed slaves became ‘reclassified’, structured work was needed for them. But as ‘masters’ lost their labour force, they

38 Archives Nationales du Senegal, AOF (hereafter AS), Rapport des Nations Unies sur l’esclavage, 1950. “L’esclavage en Mauritanie”, 2K15 174 MAURITANIE. Section on Tagant, August 1950. 39 Ibid., anonymous response that appears to be drawn from a report from the Hodh, 1949. 40 Ibid., Gorgol, July 1950. 41 Ibid, Tagant. abandoned the oases and returned to herding, thereby leaving the newly freed slaves

destitute and the economy in a downward spiral. This perspective was reinforced by

numerous references to slaves’ inability to ‘manage being free’ – quickly turning to theft,

murder or a new master. Even the ‘liberty villages’ that were “meant to teach slaves

about work as an ‘apprenticeship to liberty’ [my emphasis] were failures; thus envisaging

the freedom “pure and simple” of slaves was illusionary.42

Reading the summary of these responses provided by the Mauritanian Governor, M. E

Terrac to the Governor General of the AOF, 31 August, 1950, one could be forgiven for

thinking the date mistaken by two or three decades. The contents spoke mostly to the

continued existence of serviteurs and Terrac referenced the same rhetoric as his

predecessors in seeking the ‘peculiarity’ of the Muslim society. He pointed out that the

serviteur situation was integrally tied not only to ‘religion’ (as one might understand

custom), but to Islamic law. This was confirmed in a report from Atar in which it was

noted that while legally slavery no longer existed, in practice the slaves who were there

when the French arrived “by virtue of Qur’anic law” remained with their masters as

serviteurs: “it is the same today with their descendants”.43 This was a semi-fedual

society, maintained by Islam “that resisted any attempts at modification. Given the

current state of Mauritanian society, an attempt to free all of the remaining serviteurs

immediately is not envisaged. … it would only bring to Mauritania economic ruin and

social disorder.”44

42 Ibid., Adrar, referencing an anonymous report from 1949. 43 Ibid., anonymous letter dated 20 June, Atar, 1950. 44 Report Governor of Mauritania to Governor General, AOF, 31 August 1950, AS 2K15 174 MAURITANIE.

However, this same report emphasized the importance of a new social category –

implicitly the ‘answer’ to the slavery problem – namely, the affranchi or hartani45. One

respondent, the same who spoke of the serviteur ne as a euphemism, also wrote that

“liberated by the Moor, conforming to Moorish custom, the captive becomes affranchi, not breaking with that which has previously constituted the normal conditions of his life, and it is thusly that is formed this so interesting class of modest, economic, working haratine. 46” The freed slave was not actually new of course, nor was it created by French

policy. As we saw earlier, the status had been noted from the outset of colonial rule, and

identified as potentially the most immediately useful to French labour needs. What is

revealing here is the argument that the haratine could only be ‘made’ through the

customary liberating process of the Muslim master: “ Freed by us, to the contrary, the

captive, probably because he has left the traditional life, gives nothing of value…” 47.

Here, a significant shift in the importance now attached to retaining the ‘natural group’ connections and avoiding the Mauritanian equivalent of the ‘detribalization’ that was proving so problematic elsewhere.

The local-level archives frequently mention haratine, mostly in terms of agricultural labourers and herders. They were therefore especially important in the southern circles and the eastern Hodh. In his summary “Sur la question des serviteurs en Mauritanie”,

45 Ibid.. 46AS, Rapport des Nations Unies sur l’esclavage, 1950. “L’esclavage en Mauritanie”, 2K15 174 MAURITANIE. Section on Tagant, August 1950. 47 The report continues with a fascinating observation:”… and as he is at heart, like all black slaves, a beidan, he will, like a beidan, use this excessive liberty to abandon his tools and loiter around the military posts.” (More on the significance of this observation, below.) Governor General Poulet spoke specifically to what he referred to as the continuing social problem in the south and east posed by this ‘numerous population of servile origin’. “This actual caste of serviteurs that one calls today by the generic name of harratine (affranchise) is some 70,000 strong, comprising approximately one-seventh of the Mauritanian population”. He located almost half in the east and just over half in the south, with a few thousand located in the central regions.48 It is notable that he explicitly equates haratine with serviteurs. So too does another, even lengthier report, by the

Governor of the French Soudan in direct response to the United Nations’ questionnaire.

In 1944, the boundary of eastern Mauritania had been adjusted such that the dhar

(escarpment) Tishit-Walata, with its oases, pasture and salt-flats was detached from the

French Soudan and added to Mauritania’s cercle of Tagant49. In so doing, the administration divided ‘masters’ based in Tishit, neighbouring Akreijit and Walata from their numerous herding and cultivating haratine, who remained in the Soudan. The issue of whether or not these haratine should be permitted to return to Mauritania was the subject of much discussion at the time50. Most ultimately remained in the Soudan51 in spite of being registered in Mauritania and there, continued to engage the concern of local

48 AS 2K15 174 MAURITANIE. “Apercu Sommaire sur la question des serviteurs en Mauritanie:, G. Poulet, 17 May, 1949. The figures he gives were probably drawn from the 1940-43 census (ARIM B70 Rencensement, 1940-3): Cercles Aioun (east) 30,000; Assaba and Guidimakha 15,000; Brakna 12,000; Gorgol 4,000; Trarza 5,000 (south); Tagant 2,000; ‘other (including Adrar) 2,000 (central). 49 This creation of a new frontier and its economic impact on Tishit is discussed in E Ann McDougall, “From Prosperity to Poverty: an economic history of Tishit (c.1905-1945), Masadir, Cahiers des Sources de l’Historie de la Mauritanie 3 (Faculte des letters et des sciences humaines, University : 2002),115-29. Unfortunately, no bibliography was published with this article, rendering some footnotes difficult to follow. 50 ARIM Letter Commandant Tagant to Governor General, March 1940; Archives RIM, Tichit, Rapports Annuels, Carton #7, 1940. Later the discussion is reprised in “Enquete du Conseil Economique et Social des Nations Unies sur l’esclavage de la territoire en AOF, 1948-52” AS 2K15 174. (See below) 51 In the “Enquete du Conseil Economique et Social des Nations Unies sur l’Esclave de la Territoire en AOF, 1948-52”, a very approximate haratine population of 2,000 to 3,000 is identified as living in the Sub- division of Aioun-al-Atrousse. That said, the same report notes that agricultural villages (adabaye) in the interior of the cercle were not included. It is not clear whether the ‘guesstimate’ above was meant to extend to these unknown centers or not. AS 2K15 174 MAURITANIE. administrators. Hence their appearance in a twenty-five page report filed in January, 1950

entitled “The problem of serviteurs in the Western Soudan”. Its auther, the Governor

General of the French Soudan, noted that in fact these were ‘ex’ serviteurs of the Moorish

nomads, known globally as ‘haratine’. The slippage is complete as he then defines

‘l’abd’, literally slave, as being hartani, suggesting this term is the ‘considerate’ one to use. “This is”, he continued “le serviteur properly speaking”. Thus, while acknowledging the ‘real’ continuance of a social hierarchy and set of labour relations little (if any) different from the early days of occupation, the discourse obscures that reality in

suggesting that all are ‘generically’ freed.

It accomplishes this in other ways as well. Above, I noted that in the report on the Tagant

region, the Commandant had commented upon the importance of haratine being created

by the masters themselves, not the French administration. He had gone on to editorialize

that, “ as he [the hartani] is at heart, like all black slaves, a beidan [‘white’ Moor,

master], and he will, like a beidan, use this excessive liberty to abandon his tools and

loiter around the military posts.52”The Governor General of the Soudan echoed an

important aspect of this observation in introducing the haratine as those who had “made a

family [among] and adopted the language and customs of their beidane masters”53.

Among the most important of those adopted ‘moeurs’ was Islam. According to Poulet,

for example, the extent of haratine respect for the religion of their masters slowed their

52 AS, Rapport des Nations Unies sur l’esclavage, 1950. “L’esclavage en Mauritanie”, 2K15 174 MAURITANIE. Section on Tagant, August 1950. 53 AS, Report Governor General French Soudan to Governor General AOF, January 1950, 2K15 174 SOUDAN. own social and political evolution, and made them vulnerable to the continued

exploitation of those same masters.54

Islam, in fact, played a key role in the discussion of haratine, just as it had two decades

earlier when the categories of serviteur and serviteur ne were legitimated in terms of

‘Muslim’ society. Even as French administrators c.1950 attempted to use the

‘serviteur/haratine/affranchis’ discourse to suggest change in their own terms, they also

acknowledged a certain ‘lag time’ from the point of view of Mauritanians who continued

to interpret their society through the prism of Islam. Poulet, for example, pointed out that

while according to French law all categories of serviteur were now regarded as free, the

‘Moors’ themselves continued to differentiate between an ‘abd or slave and a hartani

(affranchi), freed slave, according to Islamic Law55. In a sense, Poulet echoed earlier

observations about Mauritania’s ‘special’ situation. But his counterpart writing from the

Soudan side of the frontier turned the argument on its head. In some detail, he examined

just exactly what Islamic law had to say about serviteurs and recommended, in

conclusion, that the French could use Islamic law to ‘manage’ the problem. He argued

that the ‘customs and rules of the Qur’an’ with respect to freeing slaves, purchasing their

freedom, recognizing the family and patrimony of the affranchise, and establishing work

conditions were favourable to French aims. “It is up to us to make Qur’anic law, assez

liberal, work to our profit in matters before the indigenous courts [eg. Liberation,

purchasing of freedom], using qadis and the religious chiefs.” Islam could also work to

address concerns around establishing viable and stable families for the serviteur (part of

54 AS, “Apercu sommaire sur la question des serviteurs en Mauritanie”, G. Poulet, 17 May 1949, 2K15 174 MAURITANIE. I will return to his analysis in more detail, below. 55 Ibid. the larger labour discourse in which international interests were represented). “Here too,

the subtleties of Muslim law, ‘preliminary liberation’ [affranchissement prealable], the

well understood concerns of the master and the chief, who have every interest in

conserving [ties with] the ex-serviteur and protecting his goods, [following] the example

of the [free] black cultivators, should permit rapidly enough the constitution of a proper

patrimony for the haratine … (salary, animals, land, tools, furniture). This patrimony

will be transferred to inheritors by means of succession, according to the Qur’anic

principles….”. Finally, in terms of ‘work’, we should substitute a work contract for

servage: “the serviteur becomes a salaried worker, continuing to work for his master,

who becomes, then, a ‘patron’.” The report cautioned against shareholder-types of

arrangements, the social evolution being still ‘too primitive’ and the mentality of the

liberated slave still confusing “liberty with a license to do nothing and above all, to refuse often to work for his old master” 56.

At the same time, the report in several places engaged explicitly with ‘issues’ that would

have resonated with its international readership. Building on references to the ongoing

discussion about creating ‘stable workers’ through the introduction of the ‘constitution of the haratine family’, and the inferences that a newly liberated slave would simply not work, the Governor General brought up the sensitive issue of ‘social disorder’ and

‘detribalisation’. Having clearly established that these ‘servile classes’ were a natural reservoir of labour, he went on to iterate another reason why social change should take place within the ‘traditional’ political (and religious) domain:

56 AS, Report Governor General French Soudan to Governor General AOF, January 1950, 2K15 174 SOUDAN (pages 15-17). Detribalized serviteurs too often constitute miserable plebians, living outside of their

original framework, in conditions worse than their former [servile] state. ...[if not

careful, we risk alienating the ‘free’ Arabo-Berber elements of this hierarchical

society] without sufficiently attaching classes of servile origin who, too rapidly

emancipated, incapable of using well a liberty freshly acquired, without resources and

without contexts, would constitute a miserable proletariat, detribalized,

uncontrollable”57 [my emphasis]

The terms ‘detribalized’ and ‘proletariat’, so completely dissonant with this rural, clan-

based, nomadic world were not used accidentally, Nor, I would argue, were they used by

administrators ignorant as to what constituted ‘detribalization’ or a ‘proletariat’

elsewhere. The terminology deliberately referenced the whole debate developing within

the international discourse of labour modernization and the one unfolding vigorously in

the rest of decolonizing, urbanizing Africa. Even as the framework for discussion

remained rooted in the language of serviteurs and servage, the signifiers – ‘detribalized’ and especially ‘proletariat’, in conjunction with scattered references to work contracts and salaried workers – was deliberately intended to draw readers of Mauritanian reports into the familiar discourse from which they were meant to infer achievements in social and economic stability and modernity. It was also a discourse intended to shift the focus away from the now anachronistic discussion of forced labour towards one more consonant with post-war development: the creation of stabilized workers. This salaried class, however, had first to become sufficiently Europeanized to respond to the

57 AS, Report Governor General French Soudan to Governor General AOF, January 1950, 2K15 174 SOUDAN (pages 3,23). appropriate stimuli – or as Cooper put it, if the African worker could be convinced to

behave like the European worker, he could become the European worker. [my emphasis]

As administrators in Mauritania kept repeating, this would take ‘time’. The paradox in

this case is that for this goal to be achieved, for ‘recent liberty’ to move past being

misinterpreted as ‘a personal license to do nothing’, freedom for the haratine would have

to continue to be curbed -- just as it had long been -- by Islamic ‘custom’ and law. What

this reveals to us is that by negotiating between the two discourses, French administrators in Mauritania and the Soudan were able to argue for maintaining ‘traditional Islamic management of labour’ and ‘customary Islamic practices of liberation’ while simultaneously claiming to be ‘making’ the haratine into a recognizable working class.

This was no mean feat.

Negotiating the Discourse(s): masters, haratine and the ‘new working class’

It was 1943 when the Commandant of the Adrar wrote: “A new social hierarchy, founded

uniquely on wealth, is being established [here]. Politically, it is difficult to predict the

consequences of this evolution which consecrates the importance of work and which

destroys the ancient seigneurs.” [my emphasis] . Practically, what the evolution had created was an urban ‘underclass’ of poor, including prostitutes, and a working class whose success was measured in agricultural and commercial activities. It was little short of a revolution in the making. Or so the language would lead us to believe. ‘Consecrating work’ would ‘destroy the seigneurs’ who directed this feudal-like society. Unlike the references to the emergence of a ‘miserable proletariat’ just a few years later, this observation about the making of a Mauritanian working class is evidently ambivalent. Contrasted to poverty and prostitution, it was clearly a desirable revolution. But as a

‘destroyer’ of the seigneur and his feudal society, its longer term consequences were less

certain. So, as historians, how should we read this apparently important evolution in

Mauritania’s central , evolution that was even more significant (it would

seem) than in some of the other regions we’ve discussed above58? I would like to

suggest that we read it in the same way we have suggested for the literature more broadly speaking – that is, as a negotiated discourse that is at the same time revealing of some experienced ‘reality’. On the one hand, the juxtaposition of ‘wealth based’ and ‘work consecrated’ was clearly meant to jar against the notion of ‘feudal’ society with its seigneurs and vassels such that the ‘outcome’ – major social change along a progressive continuum – was an indisputable given. This was a reflection, of course, of the extant understanding of the ‘evolution’ of French society itself and ‘western’ civilization more generally, aimed at an audience conversant with both. But to the extent that what was being described was in fact occurring, was it understood in the same way by Mauritanian masters and haratine? Keeping in mind what other reports acknowledged about the different perceptions of serviteurs when seen through the prism of Islamic law and society, is it perhaps possible that another ‘reality’ was embedded in this particular

‘discourse negotiation’ as well?

As a first step in what is in essence another whole study of masters’ and haratine

perspectives, let me return to the research that gave rise to this interest in the first place

and to the ‘Topsy-Turvy World’ of Hamody of Atar. The essence of that analysis was

58 Ibid., reference to Political Report 1943-44. It was actually an excerpt from a March 1945 report that concluded this ‘evolution’ was not quite so evident elsewhere. that to whatever extent the external structure of colonial Mauritanian society appeared to remain the same, with its ‘feudal’ classes of ‘masters’, serviteurs and haratine, the experience of being a master, a serviteur or a hartani changed significantly in the context of the colonial political economy. The issues facing the Adrar, and especially its two major oasis towns, Shinqit and Atar, were not dissimilar to those elsewhere in the colony, namely a need to increase agricultural output. However, the problems of production had been exacerbated by several years of consecutive drought in the 1920s. This led to intensified pressure in the 1930s by local administrators on clan heads not only to revive declining date palm groves but to plant new trees, to extend gardens planted in their shade and to put new lands into wadi-fed grain cultivation. Masters, hard-pressed to meet

French demands enforced by fines and the threatened reallocation of their land, and the simultaneous tendency of their slaves to seek emancipation under new anti-slavey laws, turned to hartani labour. Haratine traditionally contracted with masters to supply labour in return for various shares of the harvests in subsequent years. There is good reason to believe that the emphasis the administration placed on more fully exploiting Mauritania’s agricultural potential during the 1930s resulted in the increased use of such ‘customary contracts’ and a consequent enlarged hartani class – at least enlarged relative to the number of remaining serviteurs. Census material for the subdivisions of Atar and

Shinqit between 1910 and 1954 suggests that the percentage of the servile population identified as hartani rose from being no more that one- to two-percent in 1910 when the

French first established their presence, to being close to fifty-percent by 195059. Even allowing for the considerable inaccuracies caused by terminology and data collecting

59 Archives Shinqit, rencensements 1910, 1930, 1943-4; Archives Atar, recensements 1948-54. practices60, this would suggest that some notable change was underway. It is possible that in some instances, masters were simply trying to slow the stream of runaway slaves by offering them something better; in most cases, however, the significant factor was Islam.

According to Islamic law, masters could not enter into contracts with non-free people.

Serviteurs, therefore, could not be engaged to do the work now required. Indeed, even

French officials commented on this ‘constraint’ in the context of recommending a move towards contracted labour in general terms. Masters were therefore strongly pushed to enlarge their retinues of haratine.

A second point of importance is the fact that the slaves being freed were mostly males. A

hartani was entitled to enter into contracts, amass property and bequeath inheritance. He

could also take a wife and ‘own’ his own children, provided his wife was herself free, a

hartania61. He had incentive to work. At the same time, Islamic custom dictated that he

continued to have a responsibility to his former masters’s family, the nature of which varied according to whether he continued to live as part of those extended families or established himself and his family as an independent herder or cultivator, often in villages called adabaye. This responsibility usually included ‘hospitality’ to former masters and their families, annual payments or ‘presents’ in kind and contributions to the clan’s collective obligations such as taxes and crime compensation. The relationship was a

60 See my discussion of this in “Salt, Saharans and the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade: nineteenth-century developments”, in Elizabeth Savage (ed.), The Human Commodity. Perspectives on the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade, special issue Slavery and Abolition 1,13 (April 1992), pp.76-80. It is notable that in most regions of the colony, ‘slaves’ (usually captifs or serviteurs sometimes noirs) were clearly distinguished from each other in individual categories. But in the central Adrar, haratine were for the most part counted among the bidan or whites, becoming for all intents and purposes, invisible to the historian in the more recent censuses. 61 Haratine could and did marry slave wives but any children that issued would then belong to her master, not the hartani. When they were from the same family – that is to say they shared the same master, this issue was considered less constraining. permanent one, inherited by his descendants. Therefore, the hartani was potentially of

greater value to the master’s family, in both the short and long term, than the serviteur.

According to Poulet, writing in 1949, masters were successful in cultivating these

relationships. From his perspective, this was a negative facet of Mauritanian society,

reflecting “the conservative spirit of the maures blancs who use all the resources of

Muslim casuistry and the respect of their serviteurs for the religion [of Islam] ultimately

to maintain them in the untutored state [etat inculte] one finds them in today”[my

emphasis].62

If Islam was a ‘tool’ in the arsenal of beidan masters to retain their male labourers, it was

the single most important influence on their treatment of female serviteurs. By law, once

a woman became a hartania, her labour and reproductive capacity passed from her

former master to the man she married; consequently, masters were more reluctant to free

female slaves. That said, to the extent that masters could benefit from the collective

family labour of haratine, either in adabaye (which they continued to control and whose

land they continued to own) or en brosse tending to herds, there was still much to be

gained through the ‘customary’ relationship with the freed slaves the French were

identifying as their new ‘working class’63. Moreover, evidence suggests that masters’

62 AS, “Apercu sommaire sur la question des serviteurs en Mauritanie”, G. Poulet, 17 May 1949, 2K15 174 MAURITANIE. 63 In her 1997 dissertation on “Narratives of the past, politics of the present” dealing with contemporary haratine in Mauritania, Meskerem Brhane recounted haratine life histories. Several of them located origins in maternal ancestors and linked concepts of ‘resistance’ to female hartania seeking support against bidan masters in adabayes. Brhane interpreted these stories as a kind of ‘counter-hegemonic narrative’, privileging female ancestors in resistance to a society whose dominant group saw itself in terms of patrilineal descent. But it is equally possible to see them as a reflection of experienced reality: as a reflection of the 1930s and 1940s when male slaves were increasingly being freed, when female slaves were increasingly being valued by masters as important sources of reproduction, and when adabayes were seen as alternatives for women whose masters would not free them willingly. See especially Chapters 3 understanding of what they were doing, at least in the early 1930s when we believe this enlarged hartani class may have had its origins, was clear. Again, drawing on Islamic practice, masters spoke of their slaves as ‘children’ who they wanted to keep, protect and put to work; and they specifically rejected French attempts to interfere with Islamic inheritance procedures by which female slaves, being ‘property’, were shared among inheritors. “To receive even one-quarter of a female slave”, they explained “gives a possible profit of one or several children tomorrow”. This ‘right’ had been formally recognized by the French in 1929, as we saw earlier; masters were not going to give it up in the 1930s. Access to new commercial sources of slave labour had been strangled by

French policy regarding trade; access to continued slave reproduction in the domestic context in which respect for ‘custom and religion’ had been promised, remained intact64.

So, did ‘consecrating the importance of work’ lead to the ‘destruction of the seigneur’ as the Atar administrator would have it? In ‘creating’ haratine, did masters see themselves transforming their society? I would argue that the evidence, limited though this sampling is at present, suggests otherwise. It is entirely consistent on the one hand with French perceptions of a seigneur – ownership of land in the hands of the noble, labour in return

for a share of the harvest in the hands of the ‘vassal’ or hartani. And this particular socio-

economic relationship appears to have expanded in the 1930s and 1940s. However,

looked at from the masters’ point of view, it is also consistent with their understanding of

society and their position within it. The focus in this paper on ‘discourse’ and language is

“When a camel talks: reclaiming the past through oral narratives of family history” and Chapter 4 “My master is my cousin and other ambiguities of subservience”, pp.163-211. Unfortunately, this superb thesis has yet to be published. 64 Ibid., pp. 364-79; quotation p.376. meant to open up for us the masters’ understanding of the dialogue and negotiation in

which they were engaged with the French. What I argued above was that the movement

between the language of the ‘slavery/abolition’ and ‘labour/modernization’ issues left

considerable space for negotiation, especially at the local level. The turn to Islam as part

of the solution to the slavery question by French administrators and then by extension, to

the production of the ‘class’ they needed to satisfy their labour needs, created a niche

Mauritanian beidan could share with their own ‘masters’, the French. In using Qur’anic custom and law to manage labour, Mauritanians could simultaneously obey colonial authority and exercise their own. Or, to be more precise, continue to exercise their own.

That French administrators obliged to speak the language of international labour laws were intersecting with a completely different discourse, derived from different realities and geared to achieving different ends, was of little import to Mauritanian beidan masters who saw themselves preserving, not transforming, their society.

But what of the haratine? If the general picture is to be believed, they were occupying a

larger part of Mauritanian society both in terms of expanded settlement and absolute

numbers. Poulet’s 1949 account described half of them, the haratine in the south, as

‘vigourous and politicized’ -- “beginning to become conscious of their utility [to masters

totally dependent upon them]… and to search for an officially recognized ‘place’ in their

communities”. He clearly understood that this ‘place’ should be at least independent of (if

not in conflict with) ‘masters’; consequently, he saw the extent to which Islam drew

haratine back into the world of their masters as retrogressive65. It is questionable that all

haratine would have agreed with him. Indeed, the fact that so many of them apparently

65 Refer to discussion, above p. ?? adopted the ‘customs and language of their beidane masters’66 suggests otherwise. In

“Topsy-Turvy World”, I focused on the relatively commercialized world of the Adrar to

trace the fortunes of several haratine who were able to profit from moving between the

two worlds. The French need for transporters, cooks, bakers, barbers, ‘boys’, interpreters,

guards, tailors, well-diggers, and shepherds was satisfied mostly by haratine. Haratine

also ‘negotiated’ between the cultures of both French and Mauritanian masters in the area

of commerce, often beginning with petty trade operations and building them into

substantial commercial businesses67. In Atar, the most famous of these was Hamody. The outlines of his story having been told elsewhere68; what is of importance here is the fact

that his initial success as a butcher and seller of tanned skins in the French commercial

sector was completely rooted in his beidan connections, his access to both financial and

animal capital. By the late 1930s, he was recognized as the administrative chief of the

Awlad Bou Sba clan in Atar, and during the 1940s he acquired an enormous amount of

property (land and buildings) from his beidan neighbours. During difficult times, he provided food and credit for people of all social classes in the town. Perhaps most significant for this discussion, however, is the fact that throughout his career Hamody invested in slaves. He purchased males to work in his business, herd his animals and cultivate his date-palm groves; females were bought to mate with the men and to work in his large household. He was reputed to buy ‘only slaves of quality’, and like the masters discussed above, to free males he considered capable of being successful haratine69. At

66 The specific reference here was to the haratine living on the Soudan side of the frontier in the late 1940s; how much more likely, then, was it that those living among their masters would have done the same? This suggestion is confirmed by the evidence discussed, below. 67 McDougall, “Topsy-Turvy World”, pp. 369-71. 68 “Topsy-Turvy World” , pp. 379-84. 69 The fact that he bought ‘slaves of quality’ was emphasized in interviews I undertook in 1984; that he did so in order to assure they would make good haratine was added to the information through interviews with his death in 1961, he was said to have bequeathed some 200 slaves and a large portion of

Atar’s rich date-palm groves and commercial property, to his thirteen children.

Hamody’s extraordinary success was not typical of haratine fortunes in colonial

Mauritania, but the process by which he ‘arrived’ was a path open to everyone. It exploited traditional socio-economic relations to take advantage of new opportunities in the colonial economy. In my account of his life in “Topsy-Turvy World”, I emphasized the extent to which “‘rising expectations’ from the 1930s contributed to a growing consciousness of being hartani as distinct from ‘slave’. To own a slave or slaves was not only an achievement”, I argued, “it was a concrete realization of the difference between the ‘slave’ and the ‘freed-slave’ condition’.70 I went on to conclude that there was much about the colonial world to support and encourage hartani ambition, that colonial authorities acknowledged fully the worth ethic and economic productivity they came to associate with the hartani class. But that at the same time, in the world of their masters where traditional ‘custom and religion’ pertained, haratine remained ‘freed slaves’ with all the social constraints this entailed. Contrary to the expectations of French administrators, haratine in this ambiguous position did not develop a ‘political consciousness’ with other serviteurs and grow increasingly dependent on their position as salaried, contract workers. Rather, they continued to identify with the social system and the beidan nobility that promised both material gain and social security71.

his family in December 2004-January 2005. I am currently engaged in writing a more expansive account of Hamody of Atar and his ‘extended family’ – his haratine and their descendants. 70 McDougall, “Topsy-Turvy World”, p. 383. 71 Ibid., pp.382-4. I think that argument can be nuanced even further now to better reflect the changing

‘shape’ of the haratine class itself. If our understanding of the colonial process of freeing

male slaves is correct, then a subtle shift in the composition of ‘customary’ extended

families was also occurring. To the extent that haratine not only engaged with beidan in

the context of these relations but tended to mirror them in their own, the significance of

slave ownership per se may have diminished in favour of ties to their ‘own’ haratine.

Concomitantly, the centrality of female slaves and female haratine to the evolution of

this ‘class’ may also have responded to these changing conditions. And the fact that

hartani women worked, while beidan women did not, means the emergent class, however

it came to define itself, was unique in characteristics that can only be articulated in terms

of gender72. Hamody’s family history would suggest all these points are worth further

investigation, and clearly they are relevant to any future discussion of the ‘making of a

working class’. What is ironic about this situation is that both the ‘seigneurs’ (apparently

in no danger of extinction) and the ‘new haratine working class’, mediating as they were

between very different perspectives and discourses, solved the problem worrying the

French authorities elsewhere in the colonies – namely, how to ensure that the working class could and would reproduce itself. Even as they spoke of the potential social upheaval of the new proletariat if not ‘handled carefully’, and of the unknown consequences of ‘consecrating the importance of work and wealth’ in the Mauritanian social hierarchy, the French – like the masters and haratine themselves, were fully aware

72 McDougall, “Topsy-Turvy World”, p. 370,1. What emerged from the archives showed fairly limited possibilities for women; my recent interviews with the Hamody ‘family’, on the other hand, suggest that the hartania played a very active role in defining whatever this ‘working class’ was or was not becoming. I hope to pursue this in the context of writing the family history. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the family, and especially Mohamed Said ould Hamody, for sharing so much of their history with me. that Mauritania’s workers continued to root themselves and their reproduction in female serviteurs. Some things were not really ‘new’ about the new working class, after all.