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Exodus from slavery
in French West Africa
Engraving
of a child in Banamba.
In
1906 thousands of slaves resisted their masters and ran
away from slavery
across a wide area of Afrique occidentale française
(French West
Africa). The
exodus had started in 1905, but the French administration
had forced them to return to their masters. The exodus
resumed in 1906 in Banamba, a small town in what was then known
as Haut-Sénégal-Niger and is now Mali. Most of
the slaves returned to their own villages from which
they had been taken. This great exodus continued
for several years.
Earlier French colonial
administrators had returned slaves to their masters on
the pretext that they were vagabonds. Lieutenant
Governeur (Lieutenant Governor) William Merlaud-Ponty
refused to do so. Slavery as a significant
institution collapsed.
It finally came to an end after World War I
when slaves who had enlisted in the French Army and who
had fought in France on the western front returned home
and, after having experienced freedom, and infected by the political rhetoric of the French
Republic about liberty and equality, refused to resume their
old roles as slaves
to their former masters. However, many women
continued as slaves.
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inks
to other sites also dealing with the abolition of
slavery in the British Empire:
British
campaign against slavery
Sir
Thomas Fowell Buxton (1786-1846)
Thomas
Clarkson (1760-1845)
Granville
Sharp (1735-1813)
Slave
Trade Act 1807
Slave
Trade Act 1843
Slavery
Abolition Act 1833
Joseph
Sturge (1793-1859)
William
Wilberforce (1759-1833)
Links
to pages dealing with the abolition of slavery in the
USA:
Vermont
Harriet
Beecher Stowe
Uncle
Tom's Cabin
Abraham
Lincoln
American
Civil War
13th
Amendment to the Bill of Rights
Links
to pages dealing with the abolition of slavery in other
countries:
Denmark
Peter
Van Scholtenc
Links
to other pages dealing with slavery:
Does
slavery still exist?
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