Marian Malowist Seminar. “Redemption and Resistance”
We would like to invite you to Marian Malowist’s seminar in the Global History & Anthropology Seminar series. Our guest speaker will be Stephen J. Rockel (Department of Historical and Cultural Studies, University of Toronto Scarborough). He will give a lecture on ‘Redemption and Resistance: the White Fathers and Slavery in late 19 th Century East Africa’.
- The seminar will take place on 12 December, at 5 p.m., in room 125 at the UW Faculty of History.
- The meeting can also be attended meet.google.com/kpu-ehzc-eor.
Abstract
By 1900 the White Fathers or Missionaries of Africa operated twelve mission stations in the vast Unyanyembe and Tanganyika vicariates, and others at the south end of Lake Victoria in Nyanza vicariate. By 1913 more White Fathers’ stations had been established around Lake Victoria, in Rwanda and Burundi, and at the southern end of Lake Tanganyika. The history of slavery has scarcely been studied in these regions, and the various archives of the Missionaries of Africa are a rich resource. In this paper the practice of redemption, the labour of redeemed Africans, and their responses are examined, with a focus on the Tabora, Kirando, and Karema mission stations. For Africans, redemption from enslavement did not seem very different from slavery itself. If enslaved Africans prior to redemption were captive and kinless, after redemption they remained unfree and kinless for a lengthy periods at White Father mission stations. The entire existence of the missionaries in remote western Tanzania rested on African forced labour. It is not surprising that evidence of flight, or la fuite, is conspicuous in the mission records. Redeemed former slaves who were caught after fleeing were subject to severe punishments not so different from those experienced by others living in servitude in neighbouring African chiefdoms and commercial centres. A key source is the Kirando redemption book (“Rachats d’esclaves”). Other sources include the writings of Cardinal Lavigerie, mission diaries, reports and letters, life histories of enslaved Africans, critical accounts by protestant missionaries, explorers’ journals and publications, colonial records, and photographic images.
Biography
Stephen Rockel is a specialist in African history, particularly East Africa and the western Indian Ocean region. After his Ph.D. he taught in the Department of Economic History at the University of Kwazulu-Natal, in Durban, South Africa, before returning to Toronto. He has interests in African social and cultural history, labour, slavery, urbanization, colonialism, environmental history, and war and society. He published the first full study of caravan labour, Carriers of Culture: Labor on the Road in Nineteenth-Century East Africa (2006) and (with Rick Halpern), Inventing Collateral Damage: Civilian Casualties, War and Empire (2009). The Life Histories of Enslaved Africans and Their Descendants in Africa (with Martin A. Klein) is forthcoming in 2025.