Marie Rodet: The webdoc 'Bouillagui: A Free Village'. A public history project about resistance and displacement in post-slavery Mali

HUMA Doctoral Seminar Series

Speaker: Marie Rodet (SOAS University of London, UK)

Bouillagui is a Soninké village in western Mali, located at the Mauritanian border. Its inhabitants liberated themselves from slavery at the beginning of the twentieth century. They rebelled against their masters and founded Bouillagui where they lived freely. The people of Bouillagui are very proud of their history. It is in stark contrast with the rest of Mali. Indeed, there is usually a taboo toward internal slavery and its legacies. The recent Gambana mobilisation has brought the topic of descent-based slavery into the spotlight in Mali. The web documentary Bouillagui: A Free Village is a public history project to bridge the gap between endogenous historical fighting against slavery and the contemporary fight against discrimination and violence entailed by descent-based slavery in Kayes and beyond.

About the speaker: Dr Marie Rodet is a Reader in the History of Africa at SOAS University of London, UK. Her research interests lie in modern migration history, gender studies and the history of slavery in West Africa. She has extensively published on the history of slavery in western Mali, including the documentary film The Diambourou: Slavery and Emancipation in Kayes - Mali (2014) and the web documentary Bouillagui: A Free Village (2020).