In Pursuit of Freedom: Oaths, Slave Agency, and the Abolition of Slavery in Western Tanzania, 1905–1930

IF 0.8 3区 社会学 Q1 HISTORY
Salvatory S. Nyanto, Felicitas M. Becker
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

This article examines ways in which slaves and missionaries used public declarations before witnesses to carve out a distinctive space of legal proceedings in pursuit of emancipation in western Tanzania. This way of pursuing emancipation shows slaves deploying their intellectual creativity and cultural knowledge to shape the German and British colonial legal systems. Interviews provide evidence that these public declarations drew on long-standing practices of oathing in western Tanzanian societies, while administrative sources indicate that oaths had been used in Islamic legal practice. Both mission and administrative sources show that these public declarations became a fairly routine means to facilitate slave emancipation between about 1907 and the 1920s. They were seen as legitimate by both (ex)owners and (ex)slaves, and were welcomed by officials as they mitigated tensions between owners and slaves, and between slave owners and missions. This legal practice was not codified in either the gradualist German-era laws on slavery or the more proactive abolitionist laws enacted by the British. It was a bottom-up innovation, developed in a context in which effective emancipation depended on drawn-out struggles and negotiations over personal autonomy and malleable social norms.
追求自由:誓言、奴隶中介和 1905-1930 年坦桑尼亚西部废除奴隶制的情况
本文探讨了在坦桑尼亚西部,奴隶和传教士如何利用证人面前的公开声明来开辟独特的法律诉讼空间,以寻求解放。这种追求解放的方式表明,奴隶们利用自己的智力创造力和文化知识塑造了德国和英国殖民时期的法律体系。访谈提供的证据表明,这些公开声明借鉴了坦桑尼亚西部社会中长期存在的宣誓习俗,而行政资料则表明,伊斯兰法律实践中曾使用过宣誓。传教士和行政部门的资料都表明,从 1907 年到 20 世纪 20 年代,这些公开宣誓已成为促进奴隶解放的常规手段。前)奴隶主和(前)奴隶都认为这些声明是合法的,并受到官员的欢迎,因为它们缓解了奴隶主和奴隶之间以及奴隶主和传教士之间的紧张关系。这种法律实践既没有被编入德国时代关于奴隶制的渐进式法律,也没有被编入英国颁布的更为积极的废除奴隶制的法律。它是一种自下而上的创新,是在有效的解放取决于对个人自主权和可塑性社会规范的长期斗争和谈判的背景下发展起来的。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
1.10
自引率
12.50%
发文量
42
期刊介绍: Law and History Review (LHR), America"s leading legal history journal, encompasses American, European, and ancient legal history issues. The journal"s purpose is to further research in the fields of the social history of law and the history of legal ideas and institutions. LHR features articles, essays, commentaries by international authorities, and reviews of important books on legal history. American Society for Legal History
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