The Abolition of Slavery in Algeria between the Colonial Legislation and the Local Practices: 1848-1871

The abolitionist principles were foreign to Algerian society that was being brought to the colonial realm, between 1830 and 1871, in a sense that there was no public discourse on the issue of possessing humans by other humans. It was  a practice that had its foundations in the very religious texts used at the time. The colonial officials considered the abolition of slavery as one of the sites of imposing their world views on the colonized population, challenging the very foundations of their socio-religious structures. The debates between officials at the center, those at the periphery on the one hand, and between the colonial minds, and the learned elite of the Algerian Muslims on the other, will be the focus of this presentation. It will concentrate on the intricacies of a colonial endeavor that was humanitarian and uninterested on the surface, but as I will show it was highly connected to the political, economic, social and religious goals of the colonial enterprise in French Algeria.

Yacine Daddi Addoun is the Scientific Director of Ibadica: The center for the Study and Research on Ibadism based in Paris. He obtained his PhD degree in History from York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 2010. He worked at the Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on the Migrations of African Peoples, and taught as an Assistant professor at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas; Notre Dame University, South Bend, Indiana; and Emory University, Atlanta Georgia.