<figure><img src="image_1.png" /></figure>

GIULIA BONACCI, Institut de recherche pour le développement

Review

HENRI MÉDARD, MARIE-LAURE DERAT, THOMAS VERNET, and MARIE
PIERRE BALLARIN, eds, *Traites et esclavages en Afrique orientale
et dans l'Océan Indien*

Aethiopica 23 (2020), 302-305

ISSN: 1430-1938

Edited in the Asien-Afrika-Institut
Hiob-Ludolf-Zentrum für Äthiopistik
der Universität Hamburg
Abteilung für Afrikanistik und Äthiopistik

by Alessandro Bausi

in cooperation with

Bairu Tafla, Ludwig Gerhardt, Susanne Hummel,
Alexander Meckelburg, and Siegbert Uhlig

Editorial Team

Susanne Hummel, Francesca Panini
ical paradigm that guided Haberland’s approach in attempting to recon-
struct how ‘history really was’. This undertaking—to decipher the history
of the ‘people without history’—yielded enormous knowledge of certain
aspects of the past, but neglected any attempt to understand their present, a
fact that is bemoaned by the Ethiopian collaborators in their engagement
with the manuscripts. The late Braukämper, mission participant from the
1970s onwards, asserted from an emic perspective the male bias of the Fro-
benius expeditions. The best informants for the cultural-historical approach
of the Frobenius team were seen to be elderly men, who were taken as
‘guardians of historical traditions and cultural heritage’ (p. 61). He empha-
sized the focus of the Frobenius mission as based on empirical fieldwork
and detached from contemporary theoretical discussions. Nonetheless,
Braukämper concludes, all Frobenius members were of the opinion that
emic and etic perspectives yielded some form of objective results.

*Seeking out wise old men* is an important homage to, and appreciation of,
the pioneering German contribution to the study of southern Ethiopia and
its people. The discussion of its shortcomings, between appreciation and
critique, places the book at the centre of an important larger discussion
about German ethnology in the round. Opening the archives for critical
discussion and engagement with Ethiopian scholars is an important step in
decolonizing the otherwise hegemonic knowledge on non-European peo-
ples.

Alexander Meckelburg, Universität Hamburg

HENRI MÉDARD, MARIE-LAURE DERAT, THOMAS VERNET, and MA-
RIE PIERRE BALLARIN, eds, *Traites et esclavages en Afrique orientale
et dans l'Océan Indien*, Esclavages (Paris: Karthala-Centre Interna-
tional de Recherches sur les Esclavages, 2013). 522 pp. Price: €34.00.
ISBN: 978-2-8111-0931-4.

‘Freedom’, ‘enslavement’, ‘abolition’, ‘kinship’, and ‘strangers’ are some of
the concepts and experiences explored in this ground-breaking book that
covers a very large region, from the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of
Africa, to the Swahili coast and its hinterlands, and the islands of the Indian
Ocean. This geographical zone covers areas of extraction and departure of
enslaved people, areas of their consumption, and only a part of the areas
where they arrive. It has the advantage of creating a dialogue between re-
gions not usually studied together, and to ‘open’ Africanist knowledge on
the historical dynamics of the Indian Ocean. It is published in a collection
that focuses on the many systems of slavery and slave trade, and it counter-
balances the usual focus on Atlantic slavery, as well as the dominant use of
English in global slavery studies. The idea put forward (p. 17) of a continu-
um of meaning between the terms concerning slavery, kinship, and patron-
age—rather than fixed words and meanings—aptly conveys the legal plural-
ism at work, the range of historical sources, and the linguistic diversity in-
herent to such a comparative approach.

The scope of the volume is to be commended as the fourteen papers or
case studies are firmly tied together by a general presentation masterly con-
ducted by Henri Médard in the first two chapters. The first of these pre-
sents and discusses the historiography of slavery and slave trade in East
Africa and the Indian Ocean by following major themes: the dominance of
British archives, the relevance of the Atlantic model, the dynamics of aboli-
tion, resistance and transformation, and the complexity of social identities
(including ethnicity, gender, and diaspora). The historiography of most
regions is discussed as well (the ‘Arab’ trade, the Swahili coast, Mozam-
bique, the Cape colony, Madagascar, Mascarene Islands, and Seychelles)
except for Ethiopia where it is only very recently that this historiography
has been assessed.<fnref n="1" /> The second chapter traces the contours of a history of
slavery and the slave trade in the region under study since antiquity up to
modern times. The contemporary legacies of slavery are not the main focus
of this volume, and the processes of racialization, racism, national and in-
ternational migrations, as well as child and domestic labour are mentioned
briefly. Despite its limitation regarding recent times, this chapter should be
mandatory reading for all students of African history.

The second part of the book presents four chapters focusing on Ethiopia
and the Horn, and this is rare enough to be underscored. Marie-Laure Derat
uses hagiographies of saints from the fifteenth and sixteenth century to re-
evaluate the involvement of Christians in a slave trade controlled by Mus-
lims. For the nineteenth century, Laury Belrose brings in oral history and
the memory of enslaved men and women in order to illustrate how the slave
trade was an institutionalized network with negotiators, markets, itinerar-
ies, and local governments’ support. Arnaud Kruczynski demonstrates how,
during the second half of the nineteenth century, the term ‘guragué’—that
designates a slave-producing peripheral region of southern Ethiopia—
became a label used to designate a large proportion of the slaves sold in the

<footnote n="1">¹ For a concise introduction to the historiography of slavery and slave trade in Ethiopia, see G. Bonacci and A. Meckelburg, ‘Revisiting Slavery and the Slave Trade in Ethiopia’, *Northeast African Studies*, 17/2 (2017), 5–30.</footnote>
highlands and beyond. The fourth chapter by Colette Dubois is a ground-
breaking piece on the slave trade in Djibouti where she assesses the output
of the slave routes originating in Ethiopia. At the end of the nineteenth cen-
tury, the port of Tadjoura was very active and it remained so until the 1930s
albeit slave trade was then clandestine, evidence of the duplicity of the abo-
litionist agenda of colonial France.

The third part of the book consists of six chapters that take the reader on a complex journey along the eastern coast of Africa. Yet another ground-breaking chapter is written by Florence Pabiou-Duchamp, who, on the basis of Portuguese sources, studies the sixteenth-century slavery and slave trade taking place in the colony of Mozambique. Thomas Vernet meticulously studies the role of slaves in agricultural practices on the coast before the nineteenth-century peak in slave trading. He also insists on the thin and often blurred line between slavery and dependency, giving particular attention to Pemba and Zanzibar. Distinct maroon communities developed on the Kenya coast during the nineteenth century, where Justin Willis questions the identity and the culture of the runaway slaves or *watoro* and their relation to the hegemonic culture of their masters. He underscores other patterns: a degree of integration in sites of missionary activity like Rabai, and their (sometimes uneasy) incorporation into Giriama society, one of the Mijikenda societies in the hinterland. Taking the debate a step further, Marie Pierre Ballarin and Herman Kiriama analyse the memory of slavery among the Frere Town community, originally a nineteenth-century Anglian mission located in the outskirts of Mombasa that welcomed liberated Africans, Bombay Africans, and other slave fugitives. Their particular position in the ethnic landscape of today's Kenya illustrates the contemporary legacies of slave identities and the challenge of inclusion in a multicultural society. Quite interestingly, the third part of the book shifts away from the coast and proposes two pioneering contributions, one by Jean-Pierre Chréten who discusses the contradictory position of early nineteenth-century colonial society in Burundi and Rwanda, which simultaneously opposes slave trade, and relies on traders to penetrate the hinterland; and the second by Jean-Luc Paul who depends on oral sources to place the Uluguru Mountains on the margins of the slave trading routes, while discussing their social impact in this matrilineal society.

The last part of the book brings the south-western islands of the Indian Ocean into the debate. Sophie Blanchy proposes a very detailed study of slavery in Comoros based on written and oral sources; and Samuel Sanchez tackles the issue of abolition by the French in 1849 on the islands of Sainte-Marie (today's Nosy Boraha) and Nosy Be, off the coast of Madagascar, a move opposed by rioting Sakalava leaders. Through the biography of Ratsi-
tatanina, a creole leader of slave revolts, Pier M. Larson works on Madagascar and Mauritius to re-evaluate créolité and to propose a new model based on the agency of subaltern people to overcome the linguistic and cultural discontinuity prevalent in colonial society. In the Mascarene Islands, Audrey Carotenuto studies a form of slave-led violence called ‘resistance-aggression’ on the basis of three cases found in legal archives, and articulates both quantitative and qualitative data to renovate our knowledge of slave resistance in the island of Réunion.

This volume is completed by fifteen maps that provide immense support to the reader, as well as twelve tables and graphics used to illustrate specific points. It can now be safely assumed that scholarship on the history of slavery and slave trade in a large expanse of East Africa and the south-west Indian Ocean has reached maturity, and we can only encourage colleagues and students to upgrade their skills in French to gain direct access to such a reference volume.

Giulia Bonacci, Institut de recherche pour le développement

GĒRMA AWGĒČČÄW DÄMMÄQÄ, ቋንቋና ነገድ በኢትዮጵያ (Qʷanqʷanna nägäd bä'Ityopya, ‘Language and identity in Ethiopia’), I. የኢትዮጵያ ህዝብ ማንነትና ቅድመታረክ (ከቋንቋ አንፃር) (Yä'Ityopya həzb manənnätənna qədmätarik (käqʷanqʷa anšar), ‘The identity and the prehistory of the Ethiopian people (from the perspective of the language)’) (Trenton, NJ: The Red Sea Press, 2018). 248 pp. Price: $29.95. ISBN: 978-1-56902-598-7 (HB), 978-1-56902-599-4 (pb).

The book ቋንቋና ነገድ በኢትዮጵያ (Qʷanqʷanna nägäd bä'Ityopya, ‘Language and identity in Ethiopia’), I: የኢትዮጵያ ህዝብ ማንነትና ቅድመታረክ (ከቋንቋ አንፃር) (Yä'Ityopya həzb manənnätənna qədmätarik (käqʷanqʷa anšar), ‘The identity and the prehistory of the Ethiopian people (from the perspective of the language)’), in Amharic, is the first volume in the planned four-volume series dedicated to the languages and ethnic groups of Ethiopia (the second volume was also published in 2018 as Gørma Awgəččäw Dämmäqä, ቋንቋና ነገድ በኢትዮጵያ (Qʷanqʷa ənna nägäd bä'Ityopya, ‘Language and identity in Ethiopia’), II (Princeton, NJ–Lawrenceville, GA: Institute of Semitic Studies, 2018)).

The author of this series is the renowned linguist Gørma Awgəččäw Dämmäqä (Girma A. Demeke), whose list of publications includes such solid monographies as *The Origin of Amharic* (2009) and *Grammatical Changes in Semitic: A Diachronic Grammar of Amharic* (2014).