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

French version

 

EMPHASIZING THE UNDERLYING ECONOMY TRANSFORMS HOW WE SEE THE PAST 

      All drawings by Harald Wolff

The familiar accounts show how change happened. For why, one must grasp the effects of deep-seated economic transformation.

Take a drama that took place in Dahomey, a slave-exporting kingdom, in 1853. When the British blocked its port to prevent boats carrying captives from sailing, the king found himself with 300 useless prisoners. Rather than sell them to palm oil producers who would use them to expand their labor force and defy him, he had them decapitated in a massive human sacrifice. 

Human sacrifice in Dahomey in 1853, "Le Tour du Monde," 1863

-- Analyzed by the late anthropologist Claude Meillassoux,

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

The king sits under a parasol, symbol of power. The public behind him applauds each time the executioner raises a head.  

The destruction of so much wealth that could be invested maintains the status quo and its spectacular eradication reinforces authority. 

These pages suggest that in preindustrial times that conflict was universal. 

.

They take as examples societies

in precolonial Africa and preindustrial France. 

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Next,

0.1. 

Summary and contents

0.1. SUMMARY AND CONTENTS

COMPARABLE ECONOMIC BASES, COMPARABLE WAYS OF CONTROL 

Comparable struggles too. 

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

Kings are emphasized and isolated in the same way.  

*     * 

Contents

0.3. My background as a historian of Africa

0.2. Why choose Africa?

I. HINTERLANDS AT THE DAWN OF SUDDEN ECONOMIC GROWTH 

II. KEEPING GAIN FROM BEING INVESTED

2.1. One can't bring in the harvest alone   

2.2. Curbs on profits that villagers impose  

2.3. The grandiose destruction of wealth

2.4. Elders, chiefs and kings

2.5. Ways whose logic escapes us 

2.6. Were — are —  the real aims recognized? 

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

III. CURBING GROWTH: ARCHAIC KINGS AND RITUALIZED WARFARE 

3.1. Kings concentrate wealth, then make it circulate 
3.2. African kings, prestige and constraint 
3.3. "Absurd" succession practices 
3.4. Kings of medieval Europe are also restricted  
3.5. Detour: Images of Christ, from shepherd to warrior to king 
3.6. Commercial peoples' emphasized subordination

*     * 

3.7. Limits to traditional wars and raids
3.8. European warfare had comparable limits

3.9. Valor: Nobles react to nascent capitalists

3.9x. Did memory of feudal valor add to the carnage of World War I?

IV. THE AFRICAN PAST REVISITED

   4.1. The belief that whites dominate the African past

   4.2. The choice of a backwater

   4.3. Cycles of growth, violence and new authority 

4.3.1. The legendary empires of the medieval savannah

4.3.2. Economic change and a sign of the future

4.3.3. Another upheaval, kola nuts and routes to the forest

4.3.4. Traders and textiles come to Djimini 

4.3.5. Classless communities that elders lead 

4.3.6. A divisible currency brings upheaval

4.3.7. Djimini shows the struggle up close 

 4.4. Destabilized crowds sweep the Sahel  

4.4.1. Storms in preparation 

4.4.2. An explorer is taken for the messiah   

4.4.3. "Everywhere the humble show the masters their teeth"   

4.4.4. A theocracy amps up growth...

4.4.5. Then contains it

4.5. Back to Djimini: violence returns

4.5.1. New forces menace

4.5.2. Nambolossé, the Senufo hero

4.5.3. The multiple deaths of Nambolossé

4.6. The new producers win, then crumble 

4.6.1. Destruction, slavery and economic growth

4.6.2. Adapting Islam to the need for labor

4.6.3. Samory's legend skips the raided

4.6.4. Detour: Nationalist history hides modern issues

4.6.5. Samory and the Senufo Judas

4.6.6. Colonial conquest does not bring economic control 

4.7. The slaves are freed and economies collapse

         4.8. Islam, a non-Western topic?

4.9. Africans take center-stage

 

V. USING THE SAME METHOD FOR FRANCE

 5.1. Similar agrarian economies, similar cycles of change

 5.2. Growth breaks lose 

 5.3. Economic growth and the "Wars of Religion"

5.3.1. Violence that has nothing to do with religion

5.3.2. The "season" of Protestant massacre

5.3.2. Catholic communities where people intertwine 

5.3.4. The traditional faith puts brakes on gain

5.3.5. The new faith shatters them

5.4. Monarchs seize the reins

5.4.1. Growing economies bring more active kings

5.4.2. Stronger kings disperse wealth

5.4.3. Detour: the French monarchy's lasting éclat

5.4.4. French Baroque's sobriety 

5.4.5. Archaic opponents of growth resist and are defeated 

5.5.6. Spain, no civil war, no protestants, no capitalists

5.5. Super-spending returns 

5.5.1. Celebrations
5.5.2. Favorites

5.5.3. Creation, destruction, replacement

5.5.4. The Hall of Mirrors 

VI. LOUIS XIV, THE ULTIMATE ANTI-CAPITALIST 

6.1. Does Louis need another palace?

6.2. The Versailles enigma

6.3. No water!

6.4. Gargantuan works bring water to the site 

6.5. The elimination and circulation of wealth 

6.6. Outlawing Protestants brings capitalists to heel 

6.7. Greater authority after violence 

6.8. Detour: a faith specific to France

6.9. Detour: memories of persecution and wartime rescues

VII. CONTROLS ON PROFIT START TO CRACK 

VIII. HISTORY THAT ILLUMINATES

Yes. 

But what past? 

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0.2. MY BACKGROUND AS A HISTORIAN OF AFRICA

THE PAGES ON AFRICA COME FROM MY DOCTORAL THESIS FOR NEW YORK'S COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN 1975

Its summary, Growth and Violence in the Precolonial Sudanic Belt, appeared in this French publication of 1982.

  

Wars of Lineage and Wars of State in Africa, Éditions des Archives, Paris, 1982

The publication's final article, translated from English by Emmanuel Terray, pp. 423-500

I maintained that far from being "in decline" due to the Atlantic slave trade's devastations as was widely believed, the sub-Saharan savannah underwent increasingly dynamic growth. Political, social and religious transformations followed, bringing a dynamism that made establishing colonial economies impossible. That explains why colonialists' first act when sure of their military hold was to free the slaves (in 1907). Eliminating their opponents' labor force destroyed them within weeks. Imposing colonial economies followed. 

My main source was economic data in explorers' accounts, collected for entire sub-Sarahan savannah from medieval records to slave emancipation. Documents from the archives of Paris, Abidjan, Dakar, Bamako, Ouagadougou and Accra confirmed growth. Interviews in those towns and in Ségou (Mali) and three months of field work in Djimini, in the northeastern Ivory Coast, revealed conflicts between rising and threatened interests.

That study was published in a collection edited by Jean Bazin and Emmanuel Terray), successive directors of the l'EHESS (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences) in Paris. 

The article, the last and longest, changed the way in which African history is understood. It received an enthusiastic review in a French-Canadian publication but though its editors were leading French Africanists, the publication was ignored in France.

*     *

A well-known professor at my dissertation defense (Stuart Bruchey) had said with a smile that I was a "civilized Marxist" and proposed that Columbia publish the study. 

I had married a Frenchman, had a small child, lived in Paris and had no way of returning to the States. Not knowing that the book would be ignored and thinking that eventually French university doors would open, instead of revising my thesis and sending it to Columbia I knocked on doors that stayed closed.

Then I became a tour guide. When I needed the support of the French consul in Washington to obtain a guide's card, Terray wrote...

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

Guiding led to French history and the comparisons that follow.

Here is that study, 

the French sequel added.

 

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Next:

0.3.

Why choose Africa? 

 

O.3. WHY CHOOSE AFRICA?

THE REASON IS A BABY-SITTER

When my brother and I were small, Cora Bailey, a Black woman from a neighboring town, would take care of us when our mother took a day off. She was a calm person who never scolded. But then, it would never have crossed our minds to disobey her.

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

Some years later Cora told me that Doris 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 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,

I.

Hinterlands at the dawn of sudden economic growth 

I. HINTERLANDS AT THE DAWN OF SUDDEN ECONOMIC GROWTH

TIMBUKTU TOWARD 1850 AND PARIS TOWARD 1450 WERE BACKWATERS COMPARED WITH THE TOWNS OF ITALY, THE MIDDLE EAST, INDIA AND CHINA 

Timbuktu: Soldiers accompany a caravan because authority is weak and routes unsafe.

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

But expanding production has led to states emerging in the most commercial regions (west of Lake Chad and along the Senegal and Niger Rivers) and Timbuktu will soon be part of a powerful theocracy.*

* Africa's slower economic growth was due first to climate zones that hampered the spread of agricultural improvements,* then to the states that supplied the Atlantic slave trade and slowed the rise of commercial production (Section 4, The African past revisited). 

-- Climate zones: A Popular History of the World, from the Stone Age to the New Millenium 

by Chris Harmon, 1999, a rare account to connect economic and political change. 

Paris: The north-south trade route looks like a country path. 

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

But France has recovered from the Black Death and the Hundred Years' War and the economy is slowly growing. Explorations and discoveries are about to bring a commercial expansion that will provoke religious and political upheaval... .

To understand the effect 

of that sudden growth,

grasp how those societies functioned

and how they replied. 

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Next,
II.
Keep profits from being invested