Journal of West African History

The Senegal Liberations Project

Richard Roberts — 2025-10-03

The Senegal Liberations Project is designed to stimulate international collaborative research and scholarship through making widely available a dataset of 28,421 enslaved people who actively sought their own freedom in colonial Senegal from 1857-1903. In doing so, the SLP will generate new perspectives on the pathways out of slavery and contribute to global histories of freedom and unfreedom in the modern age. This forum showcases the potentialities of linking cutting-edge digital humanities research to public school curriculum as a way to enrich both the pedagogy of world history and academic scholarship through collaboration between university specialists and front line teachers.

The Precariousness of Freedom

Sharika Crawford — 2025-10-03

This essay reflects on how the Senegalese Liberation Project and situates it within the context of the Atlantic world freedom struggle during the Age of Emancipation. It offers a comparative lens to similar processes happening in the Caribbean, Latin America, and, to a lesser degree, the United States. The author notes how scholars have shown how the formal end of the institution of slavery did not translate into freedom enjoyed fully by formerly enslaved peoples. Finally, the essay draws attention to additional digital resources, which complement the instructional project.

La problématique des mineurs affranchis au Sénégal au XIXe siècle et l’enseignement de l’esclavage

Mamadou Baldé — 2025-10-03

Les mineurs affranchis représentaient, après le décret d’abolition de l’esclavage de 1848, une part non négligeable des hommes libérés. C’est pourquoi, les dispositions juridiques et politiques coloniales associées à ces mineurs montrent que leur situation tenait à cœur les autorités. Malgré tout, ils n’ont pas été très étudiés par les historiens de Dakar. Le silence relatif de ces derniers sur cette question a fait qu’elle a été négligée dans les programmes d’Histoire des classes de quatrième et de seconde. Or, une réflexion sur les mineurs affranchis pourrait permettre aux élèves d’avoir une autre lecture de l’esclavage. Cet article montre ainsi comment pourrait-on intégrer, cette question, à travers le cas Awa Diop dans les enseignements sur l’esclavage au Sénégal. Comment l’utiliser dans l’enseignement ? Quels seraient les avantages d’une telle innovation ?

Senegal Liberation Database Lesson

Kelly Duke Bryant — 2025-10-03

This social studies unit plan, aimed at high school history students, grows out of research into the registers of slave liberation created by French officials in Senegal from 1848 to 1903 and into the guardianship system that the French imposed to provide supervision for liberated minor children. It includes a series of classroom activities and assessments, a background essay, a set of primary sources, and other materials.

REVIEW: A Country of Defiance (by Deets)

Nathan Carpenter — 2025-10-03

REVIEW: Slavery, Resistance, and Identity in Early Modern West Africa

Pape Chérif Bertrand Bassène — 2025-10-03

Slavery, Resistance, and Identity in Early Modern West Africa: The Ethnic-State of Gajaaga is a contribution to the enrichment of the global history of the Atlantic connection. The author, Makhroufi Ousmane Traoré, Associate Professor of African history at Pomona College, Southern California, his research interests include the history of imperialism and colonialism in Africa, with a focus on the role of trans-Saharan Africa in world history. The central thesis of the six chapters, divided into three main parts and comprising a total of 458 pages, is the defence of the idea of the Gajaga as an ethnic state with defined territorial boundaries and a hierarchical socio-political organization.

REVIEW: Conflicts of Colonialism: The Rule of Law, French Soudan, and Faama Mademba Sèye (by Roberts)

Jan Jansen — 2025-10-03

REVIEW: Conflicts of Colonialism: The Rule of Law, French Soudan, and Faama Mademba Sèye (by Roberts)

REVIEW: Liberia's First Civil War: A Narrative History (by Hogan)

Jacien Carr — 2025-10-03

REVIEW: From Rebels to Rulers: Writing Legitimacy in the Early Sokoto State (by Naylor)

Mesrob Vartavarian — 2025-10-03

REVIEW: From Rebels to Rulers: Writing Legitimacy in the Early Sokoto State (by Naylor)

Cooking the War

Ishmael Annang — 2025-10-03

Recent Asante scholarship forefronts the intersectionality of spirituality, politics, and militarism—including the humans whose choices and personhoods either brought about victory or defeat. With fresh appeal to indigenous spirituality, using oral and archeological source analyses, this article seeks to re-direct attention to the role of African spiritual forces in the 1826 Akantamanso War between Asante and Gã-led Gold Coast allies where Asante was defeated by the latter. This approach allows us to deeply appreciate Atlantic African warfare as a project of spiritual diplomacy, for nothing about these wars was restricted to mortals. Such conception of statecraft captures the interactions among African spirits and their human supplicants, with implications for polity and the layered politics of making and unmaking war. The article refines earlier scholarship which, like European actors, in seeking to engage in global comparative significance, have failed to fully account for the spiritual foundations of Atlantic African warfare.

Yoko of Senehun, 1879-1884: From Mediator to “Ruler” of Sierra Leone’s Kpa Mende Confederacy

Lynda Day — 2025-10-03

Abstract

Yoko of Senehun, a high-ranking woman of the Mende region, oversaw the largest precolonial state in what is now Sierra Leone for a period of nearly 25 years. Her authority grew out of pre-existing customary roles for women as mediators, but was re-shaped into colonial chieftaincy by the exigencies of British imperial expansion. Throughout her career, she maintained a balancing act between upholding Kpa Mende autonomy and cooperating with colonial authorities. Though often perjoratively described as a collaborator, she demonstrates some of the many complexities scholars have described for those who intentionally acted as intermediaries in the years of growing European dominance in African spaces. As a self-reflexive and thoughtful woman of her time, she carved out a unique path to personal power at this juncture in Sierra Leone’s history.

Editor's Introduction

Saheed Aderinto — 2025-10-03

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