ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how two early twentieth-century reforms of tutelle (guardianship), a system that maintained order among formerly enslaved children in Senegal, exposed tensions between officials’ attempts to recast French colonialism as a humanitarian initiative and the state’s ongoing need to document and control colonized people. It also highlights how African children’s resistance to tutelle underscored constraints on colonial power. Created not long after the French emancipation decree of 1848 went into effect in Saint-Louis and Gorée, the tutelle system placed recently freed children with notables who served as guardians. Tutelle thus ensured that these children, called “liberated minors,” were productively occupied and provided with shelter and supervision, but it also allowed guardians to benefit from their labor. Relying on police reports, administrative and personal correspondence, and data for over 1300 liberated minors culled from tutelle registers and monthly reports, this chapter considers the state’s increasing intervention into the lives of these marginalized children and the responses of both guardians and children. In doing so, it shows how French attempts to improve the protection, surveillance, and documentation of formerly enslaved children in Senegal contributed to new forms of unfreedom and it explores children’s efforts to contest the state’s initiatives.
