Slavery in Senegal formed part of wider systems of bondage and slave trading in Senegambia and the western Sudan. Captives and people of inherited servile status could be incorporated into households, agriculture, military and political institutions, or commerce. These arrangements varied by place and period and should not be treated as a single uniform institution.

France abolished slavery in its colonies in 1848, including the older French settlements in Senegal. That decree did not, however, produce one simultaneous emancipation across the territory of the modern country. During later French expansion into the interior, colonial officials encountered societies in which slavery remained embedded in households and local hierarchies. A 1905 decree for French West Africa attacked the slave trade and withdrew legal recognition from slavery more broadly.

Implementation remained uneven. Officials sometimes subordinated antislavery policy to political stability and cooperation with local authorities, while enslaved people pursued freedom through flight, relocation, negotiation, and appeals to the new legal order. Senegal's history therefore illustrates the distinction between metropolitan abolition, the extension of colonial jurisdiction, and practical freedom. It also requires separating slavery from later colonial forced labor, which was coercive but rested on a different legal framework.

Further reading