Slavery, Sorcery and Colonial ‘Reality’ in Mauritania, c. 1910–60

Abstract

The continent of Africa was still ‘dark’ to its new twentieth-century masters. Nineteenth-century European explorers had mapped many of its physical contours but for the colonial administrators who arrived for the mission civilisatrice, the human profile of this immense land was an enigma. There were few desirable postings but among French conquered territories there were few less desirable than the Sahara. Heat and sand were unbearable, nomadic ‘natives’ were decidedly unfriendly and economic gains were non-existent. Moreover, Saharans were Muslims, potential ‘fanatics’ like those who had recently led bloody revolts in Algeria.¹ And they were all ‘slavers’: they captured innocent women and children and protected a thriving Saharan slave trade in the Islamic world in defiance of civilized laws. Worse, they openly practised slavery, claiming special status because their religion had a place for slaves in its social and moral order. It soon became apparent that the Saharan world was also one of illusions. Human institutions masked non-human sources of power. It was the supernatural that really governed. And the supernatural lay well beyond both the comprehension of Europeans and the influence of their colonial authority.

We are in the domain of the supernatural and everyone knows that domain is closed to the Europeans.

Lt. Busquet, Rapport de tournée à Toungad, 1936

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate Say, ’I take refuge with the Lord of the Daybreak, from the evil of what he has created, from the evil of darkness when it gathers, from the evil of women who blow on knots, from the evil of an envier when he envies.

From the Qur’an