‘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 Mauritania. 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. Just as they were important to the colonial social and
political experience, they are today critical to contemporary Mauritania’s reality. And
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, Decolonization and African Society:
the labor question in French and British Africa (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).
1
from my understanding of Mauritanian social 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 colonialism ‘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 colony of Senegal, 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
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.
4
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.
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
6
slaves8, was my logic that male slaves were being liberated specifically to form a wagelabour 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 Paris, 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 Dakar 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?
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 West
Africa, (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).
12
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 (marabouts) 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 Senegal river, 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 Moors 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
ARIM E1 61 “Esclavage”, letter circulated to Mauritanian commandents de cercle (regarding AntiSlavery decree 1905), March 1906.
18
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 slavery in Mauritania: “In all our
colonies, 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
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 Morocco, and spoke to concerns about the still troubled
relationship the French had with the grandes nomads, the Regueibat.
19
affranchissement or liberation of said ‘serviteurs’, inheritance and the custom of hiringout 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 qadis. … 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
Capt. Reviers de Mauny, Cmdt. de Cercle de l’Adrar, circular, December 1929, ARIM E1 18
“Esclavage”.
22
‘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.
“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 ).
24
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 French West Africa, 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
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.
28
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.
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.
32
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
36
Inspector Combier, note to the ministry,1948, cited in Cooper, Decolonization, p.295.
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 Tagant region,
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
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.
38
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.
Ibid., anonymous letter dated 20 June, Atar, 1950.
44
Report Governor of Mauritania to Governor General, AOF, 31 August 1950, AS 2K15 174
MAURITANIE.
43
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..
AS, 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.)
46
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
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 Nouakchott:
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 Subdivision 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.
48
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
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.
52
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
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.
54
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, clanbased, 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 Adrar region, 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 the 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
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.
60
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’
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
62
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 socioeconomic 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
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.
72
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.