Slave Emancipation, Trans-Local Social Processes and the Spread of Islam in French Colonial Buguni (Southern Mali), 1893-1914

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Periodical article

Title:	Slave Emancipation, Trans-Local Social Processes and the Spread of Islam in French Colonial Buguni (Southern Mali), 1893-1914
Author:	Peterson, Brian J.
Year:	2004
Periodical:	The Journal of African History
Volume:	45
Issue:	3
Pages:	421-444
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	Mali France
Subjects:	Islamization colonialism migration abolition of slavery Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) History and Exploration Religion and Witchcraft Labor and Employment
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/4100753
Abstract:	This article explores the relationship between slave emancipation and the spread of Islam in the early colonial French district of Buguni (southern Mali). It examines the reconstitution of village communities in the wake of violence and enslavement during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and documents the ways in which widespread mobility and translocal social processes fostered the emergence of new forms of religious identification and practice. It demonstrates that many of the region's first Muslims were returning slaves whose conversion was a cultural consequence of slavery. Oral accounts of village histories of Islam are used in reconstructing a history that has left few traces in the archival record. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]