Özgül Özdemir | Straddling the worlds of slavery and abolition in the Hijaz, 1879–1910

 The workshop will discuss the paper Straddling the worlds of slavery and abolition in the Hijaz, 1879–1910, which examines the complex histories of slavery and abolition in the last three decades of Ottoman rule in the Hijaz, 1879–1910. After the 1880s when the Ottoman state internationally participated in the age of abolition, many enslaved Africans seized the opportunity to seek their freedom. Increasing number of enslaved Africans turned to the European consulates and Ottoman officials for their manumission papers. Meanwhile, the slaveholders fought back, protesting their losses, and throughout the region, mayhem ensued. Constantly straddling the worlds of slavery and abolition, the enslaved sought freedom, the slaveholders resisted it, and the Ottoman state took action to prevent competing forces from wreaking havoc in the region. Against this background, this paper argues that the issue of enslaved African’s freedom was not the Ottoman state’s major concern—the empire’s interest worked more to maintain the status quo or defend its sovereignty against European intervention. Rather it was enslaved Africans themselves who took action to end their enslavement by calculating responses to the profoundly new circumstances that were unfolding around them.