Dr. Cheikh Sene
Postdoctoral Fellow (Heinz-Heinen-Fellowship)
October 2023–December 2023 and July 2024–September 2024
Academic Profile
At the time when Africa traded slaves with Europe, slavery existed in African societies. This slavery is better known as domestic slavery. The elites, the nobles and the wealthy owned slaves, many of whom were women. In the French societies of Goree and St. Louis, a social class of mixed-race women known as signares made their fortune through slavery. Free mixed-race women (signares) and black slave women lived in perfect symbiosis in a hierarchical society where skin color became a social barometer. This research project addresses the history of gender, the history of the body, sexuality, identities, and dependencies in Senegal between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. It explores the sexual, social, economic, and addictive lives of these charismatic businesswomen, who have been portrayed as knowing how to use their physical assets and play on emotions to attract Europeans and defend their business empire. It also explores slave women and their relationship with their mistresses, the signares. In the nineteenth century, when France abolished slavery in Senegal, the relationship between the signares and their slaves became ambiguous. The concept of slavery in Senegal (a soft and fraternal slavery) is put forward by some slave owners to defy the colonial administration in order to keep their slaves.
2022–2023
Postdoctoral fellow at The Harvard University, Center for Italian Renaissance Studies (Villa I Tatti)/DHI Rom Joint Fellowship for African Studies
2021
Qualified as a Assistant Professor by the National Council of Universities (CNU) section 22: History and civilizations: history of modern worlds, history of the contemporary world, art, music
2020–2022
"Young doctor" associated at The Institut des Mondes Africains de Paris
2020
PhD in Modern and Contemporary History, University of Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne
Research theme: "Trade economy and taxation: the question of customs in Senegambia, from the slave era to the colonial conquest 17th-19th century"
2020
Master 2 History and Media, Université Paris-Est Créteil (Paris 12)
Books
- Forthcoming: Les coutumes et l’économie de traite en Sénégambie. Une histoire de la fiscalité de l’ère négrière à la conquête coloniale (XVIIe–XIXe siècle). Karthala-Cirescl-Paris.
Articles and Book Chapters
- 2023. "Marriag 'à la mode du pays': when identity and contractual love become a pledge for the signares' business." In Emotions and the history of business, edited by Mandy L. Cooper and Andrew Popp, 107–123. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
- 2022. "La Maison Des Esclaves De Goree: à l’Intersection Entre Histoire, Mémoires Et Émotions." In African Studies Review 65(2): 354–371. Open access
- 2020. "Commerce colonial français et diplomatie en Sénégambie au XVIIIe siècle." In Une diplomatie des lointains: la France face à la mondialisation des rivalités internationales. XVIIe–XVIIIe siècle, edited by Éric Schnakenbourg and François Ternat. Rennes: Presse Universitaire de Rennes (PUR).
- 2019. "From slaves to gum: colonial trade and French-British rivalry in eighteenth-century Senegambia." In British and French Colonialism in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Connected Empires across the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Centuries, edited by James R. Fichter. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
- 2019. "La 'pièce de guinée,' un textile incontournable dans l’économie de traite en Sénégambie (XVIIIe–XIXe siècles)." In De la mer aux textiles, edited by Claude Coupry, Françoise Cousin, and Corinne Duroselle. Paris: Les Indes savantes.