Challenging Colonial Forced Labor? Resistance, Resilience, and Power in Senegal (1920s–1940s)

Abstract

Based on the combination of colonial archives and the analysis of several complaints published in Senegalese newspapers, this article sheds light on the daily compulsory reality experienced by local populations with regards to forced labor in colonial Senegal (1920s–1940s). In contrast to analyses approaching forced labor systems through the study of colonial bureaucratic routines, this article studies the reactions of local populations and the consequences for colonial labor policies. I introduce the notion of resilience in order to overcome the pitfalls of the resistance paradigm and bring new insight into attitudes of distance, refusal, and adaptation used by local populations as methods to “absorb the shock” of everyday colonial coercion. More broadly, this analysis leads us to interrogate the limits and fragility of the colonial enterprise, recalling that the colonial state was not an almighty administration and that it was, above all, based on abiding adaptations and empirical decisions.

Slavery in Francophone West Africa

“…Often those selected were slaves and slave descendants. 52 In the 1920s-1940s the Indigénat served as the disciplinary mechanism for enforcing the administration's orders. 53 "Prestations" referred to a specified number of days of unpaid labor that able-bodied men had to contribute to the administration of the Cercle.…”

Empires and Colonial Incarceration in the Twentieth Century

“…Inspired by Fanon, they probed the class, racial, gendered and ethnic mechanisms and impact of the intrinsic nature of imperial coercion against 'natives' and indigènes in its most varied forms, from forced and penal labour to corporal punishment and execution (e.g. Killingray 1986Killingray , 2003Penvenne 1995;Deacon 1996;Diallo 1999Diallo , 2005Konaté 1999;Thioub 1999;Anderson 2000;Bah 2003;Fourchard 2003;Goerg 2003;Gray 2003;Sene 2004;Ash 2006; Kalman 2010; Allinne 2011; Okia 2012; Coates 2013; Hynd 2015a; Brunet-LaRuche 2016; Guthrie 2017Guthrie , 2018Monteiro 2018;Tiquet 2018). Another recent line of inquiry has also drawn attention to the role played by settlers and other economic interests in the shaping of the concrete functions and roles of colonial prisons and camps (Scheipers 2015;Furtado 2017).…”

Introduction: African penal histories in global perspective

“…It has been over twenty years since the publication of Florence Bernault's edited volume Enfermement, prison et châtiments en Afrique: du 19e siècle à nos jours (1999), a first of its kind collection that helped establish the field of African penal history. 1 Since then, this field has greatly expanded (see Alexander and Kynoch, 2011; Roberts 2013; Waller, 2017) with innovative research on topics such as capital and corporal punishment (Anderson, 2005; Hynd, 2008; Gendry, 2018; Pierce, 2001; Ocobock, 2012), colonial and postcolonial prisons (Thioub, 1999; Branch 2005; Diallo 2005; Braatz 2015; Hynd 2015b; Brunet-La Ruche 2016; Konaté 2018; Machava 2019; Bruce-Lockhart 2022), prison protests (Filippi, 2012), forced and penal labour (Sene, 2004; Hynd, 2015a; Tiquet 2018), indigenous forms of punishment (Braatz 2015; Balakrishnan, 2020), political imprisonment (Alexander 2012; Branche 2014; Munochiveyi 2014; Deslaurier 2019), detention without trial (Lobban, 2021), detention, re-education or concentration camps (Elkins, 2005; McCracken, 2011; Cruz and Curto 2017, Machava, 2019), and the relationship between penal reform and prison violence (Sarkin, 2008; Gillespie, 2011). Such studies have highlighted the significant of race and ethnicity to African penal regimes, but also their gendered (Zimudzi, 2004; Bruce-Lockhart, 2014), generational (Fourchard 2011; Hynd 2018) and economic/capitalist dynamics.…”