Let's Celebrate Abolition (We'll figure out what it means later)

Several months ago Jacques Chirac designated today, May 10, as the day to commemorate the abolition of slavery by the Second French Republic in 1848. Forced to respond to the uproar over legislation that called French imperialism a positive force in the development of non-European peoples, Chirac chose this one day to prove that the republic and slavery were incompatible. He repeated this formula again in a ceremony at the Jardin du Luxembourg:

Nous devons regarder ce passé sans concessions mais aussi sans rougir car la république est née avec le combat contre l'esclavage. 1794, 1848: la République, c'est l'abolition.

If it were only more true. While the abolition had a positive effect in France's Caribean colonies, African slavery was intensified even though the slave trade came to an end: slavery became more prominent among Africans as markets moved to the continental interior. When the Third French Republic expanded from its Senegalese ports across western Africa, administrators did almost nothing to end the institution. They allied with and propped up the elites who kept slaves on their farms; in some cases, runaway slaves were returned to their masters. Missionaries, notably the White Fathers, were among the few who helped slaves to free themselves (although the conditions of Sub-Saharan Africa made it difficult for Africans to free themselves from the missionaries.) If slavery declined in French Africa, it was because the slaves refused to heed it: as Martin Klein argued, the slaves simply walked away in 1905-7.

The republic's abolition of slavery did not end the institution of slavery in the republic's territory. Expansion of France's empire seemed to depend on tolerating it, perhaps accepting it as the natural condition of many Africans. Hopefully Chirac will work the slaves' own agency in the republic's commitment to liberty and equality.