ABSTRACT

This paper situates Morocco’s invasion of the West African Songhai Empire in 1591 within the global histories of race, slavery, and capitalism. Morocco’s invasion, which took place during the height of the Sàdi dynasty (1554–1659), provided Morocco with an influx of capital through Black West African slave labour on Morocco’s sugar plantations and its newfound control over the lucrative gold and salt mines of West Africa. Such wealth and power bolstered Morocco’s regional and global position in the vital node where Africa, Europe, the Mediterranean, and Atlantic all converge. This paper will address the following questions: how did Morocco’s shift from enslaving non-Muslims to enslaving Muslim West Africans from the Songhai based on their race lay down the foundations for centuries of anti-Black violence in North Africa? (2) how did Black slave labour from the Songhai allow Morocco to become England’s primary source of sugar imports prior to the rise of sugar plantations in the Americas and the Caribbean? (3) how can we move beyond normative taxonomies that view North and West Africa as separate spaces instead of as regions whose conditions were shaped by one another? Ultimately, my paper will demonstrate how the Sàdi dynasty was an active player in the rise of racialized forms of slavery that eventually dominated the Atlantic for centuries and whose afterlives continue to endure on both sides of the Atlantic.

摘要

本文将 1591 年摩洛哥对西非桑海帝国的入侵置于种族、奴隶制和资本主义的全球历史中。摩洛哥的入侵发生在萨迪王朝 (1554–1659) 的鼎盛时期，通过在摩洛哥甘蔗种植园雇佣西非黑奴劳工及其对西非利润丰厚的金矿和盐矿的新控制权，为摩洛哥提供了资本流入. 这种财富和权力巩固了摩洛哥在非洲、欧洲、地中海和大西洋交汇处的重要节点的区域和全球地位。本文将解决以下问题：摩洛哥如何根据种族从奴役非穆斯林转变为奴役来自 Songhai 的穆斯林西非人，这如何为北非几个世纪以来的反黑人暴力奠定了基础？(2) 在美洲和加勒比地区甘蔗种植园兴起之前，来自桑海的黑奴劳工是如何让摩洛哥成为英国主要的食糖进口来源地的？(3) 我们如何才能超越将北非和西非视为独立空间而不是条件相互影响的地区的规范分类法？最终，我的论文将展示萨迪王朝如何积极参与种族化奴隶制的兴起，这些奴隶制最终统治大西洋几个世纪，其来世在大西洋两岸继续存在。