“Freedom is the greatest gift your master can give you”; Understanding a protracted emancipation process from slavery to freedom from the perspective of Mauritanian master’s

Abstract: Using Mauritania as a case study this thesis compares the decline of two forms of coercive labour, slavery and servitude, to understand how masters’ incentives differ depending on property right and thus affect conditions for decline. By re-analysing sociological research through an economic lens, this thesis offers a new angle on Mauritania’s emancipation process. It is suggested that changed market condition in the late 19th and early 20th century affected slave-owners opportunity to use slaves as a mean to access capital whereupon they were less incentivised to resist the emancipation initiated by France. Though people in servitude remained bonded. As these people did not provide the same benefits as property it is instead suggested that specifically the increased cost of controlling them made masters no longer deem it worthwhile to keep people in servitude.