Richard Roberts | The Senegal Liberations Project
450 Jane Stanford Way, Building 160, Stanford, CA 94305
433A
Most 19th-century people enslaved in Africa remained on the African continent, yet we know relatively little about slavery and freedom in Africa. For descendant communities, and those around the world who continue to live in slavery’s centuries-long repercussions, this project opens access to sources, tools, and analysis to craft a fuller and more just narrative of this fraught moment in global history. This is especially true in Senegal, where the stigma in enslaved descent continues to stifle equity and social mobility. The source for this project is the colonial era Registers of Liberation (1857–1903), which documents 28,349 enslaved Africans in Senegal who presented themselves to French colonial officials to request certificates of liberty. Each entry tells an untold story of an enslaved person actively seeking freedom, often through enormous challenges. Taken together, they provide crucial evidence on the enslaved population and paths they took towards freedom.
Lunch at 11:45 a.m. for in-person attendees
About the Speaker
Richard Roberts is the Frances and Charles Field Professor of History Emeritus at Stanford and has published widely in the social, economic, and legal history of French West Africa. He has published four monographs, two of which have been translated into French, and co-edited 12 books or special editions of journals. His most recent book is Conflicts of Colonialism: The Rule of Law, French Soudan, and Faama Mademba Sèye, published by Cambridge University Press, and his most recent collection co-edited with Walter Hawthorne, Fatoumata Seck, and Rebecca Wall was “The Politics and Ethics of Naming the Names of Enslaved People in Digital Humanities Projects,” was published by Digital Humanities Quarterly in 2025.