The Worlds of Slavery: A Comparative History
Detail of the cover of the book "Les mondes de l'esclavage, une histoire comparée", edited by Paulin Ismard.
© Le Seuil
Text by: Olivier Favier Follow
4 min
It is a sum of some 1,200 pages having brought together some 50 authors of 15 different nationalities, which appears in September by Editions du Seuil, to address the "
History of slavery in the world, from the Neolithic to the present day.
"
.
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Most are historians, but there is also an educator (and researcher), an economist, a few anthropologists, sociologists, archaeologists and a political scientist.
The epilogue was entrusted to the writer Leonora Miano: which is to say that this extraordinary book, which required four years of work, was immediately interdisciplinary and freed as much as necessary from academic locks.
It was built in three parts.
The first, entitled "Situations", unfolds in an almost chronological way, from the Neolithic to modern slavery, interesting case studies from the five continents, bearing as much on the relations of domination as on their memory, with detours through the forms. of slavery, its religious or ethical justifications through the ages.
Situations, comparisons, transformations
It is a question, writes Paulin Ismard in his introduction, of "
redrawing the cartography of slavery in history, by disorganizing a landscape traditionally centered on Atlantic history
".
And he adds: "
The play of contrasts reveals one of the major specificities of European colonial slavery, which is due to the role played within it by the order of race
".
It is he, he still recalls, who calls into question "
the universalist claim that we consider to have inherited from the enlightenment
.
"
To show the singularity of certain phenomena, whether it is expressed by its magnitude, its duration, its horror, its social, economic, political impacts, recourse to comparison is necessary, and this is the object of the second part of the book, which is presented as an alphabet book, exploring twenty-six notions or concepts, some of which are expected - emancipation, masters, revolts, violence - when others may on the contrary surprise, such as "
voluntary slavery
" , in other words the pledge of one's own person in exchange for food.
Finally come the transformations, a series of essays that articulate the major changes in the religious, philosophical or economic and political order and the phenomenon of slavery.
How did monotheisms view slavery?
How did it accompany Islam in its expansion and how the Christian churches accommodated, supported or criticized the slave trade and Atlantic slavery?
How did the Enlightenment understand this phenomenon?
What role did he play in the globalization of capitalism, especially through what has been called the “
age of the plantation
”?
More than a global story, a comparative story
If this book draws a fresco of what remains perhaps the greatest shame in human history, it does not present it, Paulin Ismard reminds us, "
in the form of an invariant or a universal, but in through a multiplicity of lines which overlap and intersect
”.
Indeed, “
if a global history of the slave trade and slavery is possible, a history of the worlds of slavery, which allows the greatest diversity of societies as well as the discontinuity of their history, is very different.
Alongside declared slavery - and the figures to which this notion invariably leads, from the Greco-Roman world to the Caribbean plantation - we find a number of intermediate situations, from caste society to serfdom and forced labor - which takes on the looks of temporary slavery - from sexual mutilation to the surprising social ascents of certain freedmen.
Come back to this story which is far from over, both by the consequences it has had on the demography of several continents and on the social, economic and political structuring of contemporary societies, but also by the existence of very diverse forms “
contemporary slavery
” may also mean working in France, as Sylyane Larcher says about West Indian history and its long post-abolitionist history, “
to decolonize oblivion
”.
And it is undoubtedly no coincidence that this sentence by the Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes practically concludes the introduction to the book: "
The future has no more solid anchorage than the past, because the past is the only proven future that we know;
the past is the only proof we have that the future did, indeed, exist.
The worlds of slavery are also places where women and men fought for their emancipation.
Paradoxically, the end of these systems testifies more than any other moment in human history to its greatness and the hopes that can still be placed there.
►
Paulin Ismard (under the direction of), Benedetta Rossi, Cécile Vidal (coordination),
The worlds of slavery, a comparative history
, Le Seuil, September 2021, € 29.90.
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