Octobre 2023 à juin 2024
Joseph Jules Sinang is a lecturer and researcher in the Department of History at the Faculty of Arts, Letters and Social Sciences of the University of Yaoundé I in Cameroon. He is the Project Coordinator at the Center for Multidisciplinary Studies and Research on Slavery and the Slave Trade in Africa (CERPETA).
Environmental history and issues of enslavement in contemporary societies constitute his main areas of research. He has participated in several international research programs dedicated to these topics, including the Landscapes and Livelihoods Initiative in the Sangha Tri-National (LLS/TNS/IUCN/CEES/PACO, 2007–2010), as well as the European programs SLAFNET: Slavery in Africa: A Dialogue between Europe and Africa (H2017–2023, RISE program) and AFRAB: African Abolitionism: Rise and Transformations of the Anti-Slavery Struggle in Africa (ERC H2020-EU, 2020–2025).
He has been an active member of the IRN SLAMARANET: Slavery, Memory and Race in the Colonial and Postcolonial World (CNRS / IRN 2020–2024) and the lead investigator of the EMC-AC project: Slavery, Memory and Citizenship in Central Africa: A Dialogue between France and Cameroon (PHC Bantou 2024 / Project No. 51696, UKRI Campus France 2024–2025). He is currently involved in the IRN PESAC: Post-Slavery in Africa and the Caribbean: Structures, Knowledge and Practices (CNRS / IRN 2025–2029) and in the project Colonial Legacies, APP SHS, Humanities and Social Sciences Cluster, Nantes University (2025–2028).
Slavery in Central African forest-dwelling societies: Definitions, issues and legacies
This research, which focuses on Central Africa, analyses the place and impact of slavery in forest-dwelling societies, which are described as egalitarian by ethnologists.
Based on empirical data collected in lineage societies in south-eastern Cameroon, north-western Congo, southern Gabon and western Central African Republic (CAR), it deciphers, through a qualitative and comparative approach, the particular nature of this slavery, which is not only economically based but also ideologically, culturally and politically motivated.
It thus addresses the modalities of this slavery, its mutations, its decline, its legacies as well as its contemporary nature. This makes it possible to reassess the representations inherited from the first research on slavery in Africa, which was dominated by Marxist historiography, and to better tackle the roots of certain social inequalities found in this part of the continent.
Joseph Jules Sinang, “Ndiba and Mbartwa, Two Slavers among the Gbaya of Eastern Cameroon, 1859–1903,” in Martin A. Klein & Stephen J. Rockel (eds.), Enslaved Africans and Their Descendants in Africa: Life Histories, Ohio University Press, November 2025, pp. 297–310.
Joseph Jules Sinang, “Travail et servitude des pygmées au Sud-est Cameroun” [Labour and Servitude of Pygmies in South-Eastern Cameroon], in M. P. Ballarin & K. Boyer-Rossol (eds.), Les Esclavages en Afrique, Paris: Karthala/Ciresc, 2024, pp. 399–412.
Joseph Jules Sinang, “De l’oubli à la valorisation de la mémoire de l’esclavage et des traites négrières au Cameroun postcolonial” [From Oblivion to the Promotion of the Memory of Slavery and the Slave Trade in Postcolonial Cameroon], in Lawrence Ajie & Nicolas Gachon (eds.), La mémoire de l’esclavage. Traces mémorielles de l’esclavage et des traites dans l’espace atlantique, Paris: L’Harmattan, 2018, pp. 51–77.
Patrice Bigombe Logo & Joseph Jules Sinang, Les figures marquantes de l’Histoire à l’Est Cameroun : Notables et hauts commis de l’Etat [Prominent Figures in the History of Eastern Cameroon: Notables and Senior State Officials], Yaoundé: Presses de l’Université Catholique d’Afrique Centrale (PUCAC), 2023, 398 p.
Joseph Jules Sinang, “Conflit de représentation de la nature entre les pays du Nord et du Sud et son impact sur les politiques de gestion des ressources fauniques au Sud-Est Cameroun (1992–2022)” [Conflicting Representations of Nature between the Global North and South and Their Impact on Wildlife Resource Management Policies in South-Eastern Cameroon (1992–2022)], Revue Africaniste Inter-Disciplinaire (RAID), No. 27, July 2022.
Joseph Jules Sinang, “Les racines coloniales de la gestion des ressources forestières et fauniques au Cameroun” [The Colonial Roots of Forest and Wildlife Resource Management in Cameroon], in Paul Batibonak (ed.), Indépendances inachevées en Afrique. Sur les chemins de la reconquête, Yaoundé: Monange, 2020.
Joseph Jules Sinang, “La gestion transfrontalière des ressources fauniques des abords nord du bassin du Congo : une remarquable contribution à la question de l’intégration sous-régionale en Afrique centrale” [Cross-Border Management of Wildlife Resources in the Northern Congo Basin: A Remarkable Contribution to Sub-Regional Integration in Central Africa], in Jean Koufan Menkene (ed.), Une passion africaine consumée. Mélanges offerts au regretté Dr Jean-Bedel Norodom Kiari, Douala: Editions Cheikh Anta Diop (Edi-Cad), Coll. Politique africaine en mutation (CPAM), 2017, pp. 238–255.