"FOLLOW THE MONEY"... 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SURFACE

AN ECONOMIC FOCUS TRANSFORMS THE MEANING OF EVENTS AND SHOWS HOW THINGS WORK.

Popularized by Marx, it leads to correctly identifying the adversaries. It is espoused the left when people have heard of it. But because all that contradicts the mentality that globalized capitalists try to impose - as Blook 1 shows -- they usually haven't. 

*It was common in the U.S. from the 1930's to the Cold War. Then, except in the 1970's with the Vietnam War, it almost disappeared. In France it was largely accepted for a generation after World War II, when collaboration with the Nazis brought the right's discredit and admiration for the Resistance a turn to the left. It has faded since the 1980's, a change that coincides mist multinationals' rise.  

These pages address that lack by showing how societies whose economic base is comparable react to comparable economic change in comparable ways. They focus on preindustrial France and precolonial Africa. Take what happens in Dahomey* and France when new economic forces challenge the status quo: 

*The kingdom in modern Benin that controlled the slave trade on its part of the coast. 

• In Dahomey, whites' demand for palm oil has brought a new class of producers independent of the king. When the British block the port to keep slave-ships from sailing the king finds himself with 300 captives to feed. Rather than sell them to palm oil producers who would use them as laborers, he beheads them through a massive human sacrifice (in 1853).

Sacrifice humain au Dahomey en 1863, "Le Tour du Monde"

-- Analyzed by the late anthropologist Claude Meillassoux,

Ostentation, destruction, reproduction , "Économies et sociétés," 1968, II, 4, pp. 760-766.

• In France, Protestants were often nascent capitalists whose beliefs, applied in practice, threatened traditional controls on gain. When they sidelined Catholic businesses Louis XIV billeted dragoons in their homes, saying that they could do whatever they liked short of killing them unless they converted (in 1684).

Dragonnade (detail) by Maurice Leloir in Le Roy Soleil by Gustave Toudouze, 1931

In the picture of the Dahomey massacre, the king sits under a parasol, a symbol of power. The people massed behind him cheer each time the executioner raises a head. In France, the mass of the population approves suppressing the Protestants, affirming the ruler's power then and a few years later, when war threatens the kingdom.  

The conflict is less that of "slaves against masters, peasants against lords," as of rising economic forces against those trying to contain them, until they can't.

These pages reveal those cycles of conflict

in precolonial Africa and preindustrial France.

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Next,

0.1. 

Academic background and credentials

0.1. ACADEMIC BACKGROUND AND CREDENTIALS

THE PAGES ON AFRICA COME FROM MY DOCTORAL THESIS FOR COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 1975. 

"Growth and Violence in the Precolonial Sudanic Belt began with economic data in explorers' accounts of  West and Central Africa. I then consulted the archives of Paris, Abidjan, Dakar, Bamako, Ouagadougou and Accra, conducted interviews in those towns and in Segu (Mali) and did three months of field work in Djimini,  in the northeastern Ivory Coast, in 1973.

It was published as Croissance économique et violence dans la zone soudanienne in a collection of articles "Guerres de lignages et guerres d'état en Afrique" ("Wars of Lineage and Wars of State in Africa").* 

*Ed. by Jean Bazin and Emmanuel Terray, Paris, Éditions des Archives, 1982, pp. 423-500, translated by Emmanuel Terray. Both were Directors of Studies at the EHESS (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences). Bazin became Director. Terray succeeded him.

The article, the last and longest, received a glowing review in a Canadian publication. But the book was ignored in France.

I had married a Frenchman and lived in Paris. University doors stayed closed. Terray wrote to the French consul in Washington when I needed his support for a guide's card...

In spite of the quality of her work, Catherine Aubin could not find a place in the French university system. That will not surprise those that know how deeply that system turns inward and is reserved to an "elite," pre-selected by the important schools ("Ecoles Normales Supérieurs") and administrative competition (the "Agrégation"). Even if Catherine Aubin had published her thesis in the United States, even if she had published numerous articles — beyond her contribution to the collective work Guerres de lignages et Guerres d'Etat en Afrique ) that I published with Jean Bazin in 1982 — the situation would not have changed and she would not have been able to obtain a university position in France; her case is far from unique: no matter what her qualities and value of her work — and they are considerable — it is practically impossible for a foreign man, and perhaps even more for a foreign woman, to integrate the French university network of which the access is, de facto, solidly locked off from the start.  

--Emmanuel Terray,  Director of the EHESS, January 8, 1991

So I became a Paris tour guide. 

That led me to French history

 and to the comparisons that follow.

     The Sheik of Bornu in Clapperton's narrative, 1824  / Louis XIV by M. Leloir in G. Toudouze, Le Roy Soleil, 1931

Railings emphasize and isolate kings in 19th-century Northern Nigeria and 17th-century France.

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Next:

Why choose Africa?  

*     *    *

WHY CHOOSE AFRICA?

THE REASON IS A CLEANING-LADY 

When my brother and I were small Cora Bailey, a Black woman from a neighboring town, would do house work and take care of us when our mother took a day off. She was a calm person whom we never thought of disobeying. 

She made superb lemon meringue pie and peanut butter cookies. Sometimes she brought her daughter, Doris, a teenager I admired because she could twirl.

When I was 15 Cora told me that Doris wasn't coming because she had had a baby, and then, that he had died. "She misses him," she said.

At about that time my aunt, who worked at the Urban League in the town where Cora lived, told my mother that Cora was a prostitute. "We don't need you any more," Mom told her. We never saw her again.  

The accusation may not have been true. In any case there had never been anything untoward in the ten years that Cora took care of us, and her private life was none of our business. She may not even have known the reason for being let go. 

Such unfairness led to my being on the left and her memory explains being drawn to Blacks. It led to choosing African history.

Blook II is dedicated

 to Cora Bailey.

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Next,

Contents

0.3. CONTENTS

 0.3. Summary & contents

ECONOMIC GROWTH BRINGS A CLASH BETWEEN TRADITIONAL AND RISING FORCES 

Contents

I. Hinterlands react to sudden growth

II. Braking the search for gain

2.1. One can't bring in the harvest alone   

2.2. Curbs on gain that villagers impose  

2.3. The grandiose destruction of wealth, a universal practice  

2.4. From elders to chiefs to kings 

2.5. Behavior whose logic escapes us 

2.6. Were (are) tangible factors recognized? 

2.7. Awareness of the economic base would avoid tragedies like this 

III. Curbing growth: kings and limited war

3.1. Kings maintain the status quo 

3.1.1. Kings concentrate wealth, then make it circulate 

3.1.2. African kings, prestige and constraint 

3.1.3. "Absurd" succession practices 

3.1.4. Kings of medieval Europe are also restrained  

3.1.5. Retour: Christ becomes a warrior or king 

3.1.6. Static kings are universal  

3.1.7. Commercial peoples' subordination

 3.2. Ritualized warfare, another brake on growth

  

IV. Africa: choosing a backwater

4.1. The African past revisited  

4.2. Commerce strikes a communal society   

4.2.1. Legendary empires of the medieval savannah   

4.2 2. Trade strengthens social systems, then transforms them

4.2.3. Classless communities that elders lead

4.2.4. Cowries, new traders and textiles... 

4.2.5. The cowrie currency meets violent resistance

4.2.6. Introducing a pattern of change

 

         4.3. Throughout the savannah, same cycle 

4.3.1. Back to the hinterland: Violence reappears

4.3.2. Commercial forces win, then crumble

4.3.3. Another narrative

V. "The past is another country:" pre-industrial France

     5.1. Enigmas, often clues 

     5.2. Growth and the "Wars of Religion"

     5.3. Absolute Monarchy wins

     5.4. The Sun King, anti-capitalist? 

The end of brakes on gain — 

 almost

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Next,

Hinterlands react to sudden growth

I. TURMOIL COMES WHEN GROWTH UPSETS THE STATUS QUO

MID 19th-CENTURY TIMBUKTU AND MID 15th-CENTURY PARIS  WERE BACKWATERS COMPARED WITH THE TOWNS OF ITALY, THE MIDDLE EAST, INDIA AND CHINA 

 "Arrival at Timbuktu," Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa by Henrich Barth, 1855 / zoom (color added)

Timbuktu: Toward 1850 soldiers accompanying a caravan because authority is weak and routes unsafe. Yet production is expanding, states emerging in the most commercial regions (west of Lake Chad and along the Senegal and Niger Rivers) and soon a fervent Muslim producers will set up a much stronger theocracy.

Louis II of Anjou arrives in Paris, "Chronique de Jean Froissart," toward 1475 / zoom 

Paris: At the end of the 15th century the north-south trade route looks like a country path. But France has recovered from the Black Death and the Hundred Years' War and is undergoing a gradual economic growth. Soon explorations and discoveries will bring a commercial expansion that, sudden and unprecedented, will bring comparable religious and political upheaval...

To understand how those societies reacted,

grasp how they worked. 

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Next,
I.
Braking the search for gain

II. BRAKING THE SEARCH FOR GAIN

2. Braking the search for gain

UNMECHANIZED AGRICULTURE DEMANDS COLLABORATION

  Zoom

Fresco in an ancient Egyptian tomb

  Gone from the web

 Ethiopian villagers return from the field.

        Witness by Peter Weir with Harrison Ford, 1985 / YouTube

Amish farmers build a barn

This chapter explains need to contain profit  

and how it took place.

• One can't bring in the harvest alone...

• Curbs on gain that villagers impose

• The grandiose destruction of wealth, a universal practice

• From chiefs to kings

• Behavior whose logic escapes us 

• Were (are) tangible factors recognized? 

• Awareness of the economic base...

*     *    *

Next,

One can't bring in the harvest alone... 

II.1. ONE CAN'T BRING IN THE HARVEST ALONE...

OR FISH WITH LARGE NETS OR HUNT BIG ANIMALS

So work must be collective. 

 The Harvesters by Pieter Breughel the Elder, Flanders, 1565 / zoom

When growing towns lead to crops grown for market, lands used communally become private. Then people leave —"He went off to seek his fortune," is how many fairy tales begin.

Some migrants learn a craft or become merchants — that's how a middle class grows up — but most finish as vagabonds, mercenaries or thieves. 

Those who remain on the land become sharecroppers or serfs.

Ways to limit such change appear.

*     *     *

Next,

2.1.1. 

Curbs on gain that villagers impose