IV,4. COMMERCIAL FORCES WIN, THEN CRUMBLE

 4.4. Commercial forces win then crumble

SLAVE RAIDERS SWEEP THE SAVANNAH

With archaic kingsoms crushed,
they seize the labor that commercial economies demand
(Especially from about 1870)

The raiders must have looked this / Internet

• Slavery and growth 

• Adapting Islam to captive labor

• Warlords and big-time traders

• Samory and the Senufo Judas 

• Slave liberation and colonial economies

*      *      *

Next,

Slavery and growth

SLAVERY AND GROWTH

RAIDS BECOME MASSIVE AND EFFICIENT

They are meant to seize land and labor for production,
not maintain the status quo

 • New firarms, new use, new results 

 "Muslim raid in the 1880's" by Harry Johnston 

Rifles replace the deliberately poor trade guns.

Arab slavers in East Africa, Internet (source not named)

Populations are massively displaced..  

Second journey to the source of the Nile by John Speke, London, 1864 (colors added, Almamy stock photo)

...to work immense domains. 

• Djimini production greatly expands
during the raider Samory Ture's brief rule
(1894-98)

Kong, Kondodougou and Bokhala are destroyed, but other villages spring up or become larger -- "Marabadiassa which replaced Kong after its destruction, is an important commercial center." 

 
Rice culture develops, yams are introduced, markets grow from 2000 people to 5000 and the new center of Dabakala attracts 7000. 

 -- Abidjan archives, 1899 

All interlocutors confirmed that growth.

*     *     *

Next,
Adapting Islam to the need for labor 

ADAPTING ISLAM TO THE NEED FOR LABOR

PRODUCERS INTERPRET IT 
TO JUSTIFY MASSIVE SLAVE RAIDS
AND INTENSE EXPLOITATION

As they use it to impose private land ownership

•  Muslim terms come to mean:

"Keffir:" evil doer, unbeliever -- animist

"Jihad:" war against the keffirs -- slave raids 

• Application: "Though a good man at heart..." 

a Tukulor warlord attacks an animist village that has given his men water. When an explorer objects, he answers, "they are keffirs, with them all means are fair."  

-- Lt. de vaisseau Mage, Voyage dans la Sénégambie occidentale, 1868, 623 

 • A slave's descendant reacts

In Segu, the son of an animist slave owner agreed to speak to me about slavery, and invited the descendant of one of his father's captives to attend our conversation.

My host said that his father had treated his slaves well, and had even left one in charge of the family during an absence. But, he said, the Tukulor cared only for money and treated their slaves like animals.

I then asked,
"Weren't they ruined when the French freed the slaves?"
The visitor, who so far had said nothing, 
suddenly sat up and joyfully exclaimed, 

 "They even cried about it!" 

-- Dongougou Bouaré, Segu

 *      *      *

Next,
Warlords and big-time traders

WARLORDS AND BIG-TIME TRADERS

 RAIDERS AND POWERFUL MERCHANTS ALLY

Accounts of Nambolosse's killing 
overlook the Dyula chief and substitute "Mori,"
a Hausa merchant and the chief of Marabadiassa,
who ravages nearby Taguana   

• Historical reality

When Nambolosse demands that a wealthy Hausa be given over to him as a slave and seizes a Soninke legacy, a Dyula chief and his men come to Bokhala when the warriors were gone and burn him alive in his hut.

-- Dakar archives, 1878

• Accounts:

° The Muslim version,
by raiders' descendants 

The dispossessed heirs call in Mori, whose men set fire to Nambolosse's hut. When he runs out they decapitate and eviscerate him, and cook his corpse on a spit, like a roast.  

-- Bakari Coulibali, imam de Darhala

° The animist version,
by victims' descendants
(The villages are understandably separate) 

Nambolosse's hut is fireproof. He does not die, but chases Mori out of Djimini. He would have caught him, but Mori's magic horse would disappear and reappear five kilometers further. In his flight Mori runs into Samory and says to him, "Watch out for Djimini. There are real men there." 

 -- Serisio Coulibali, Senufo farmer

° Other French records: silence,

which shows not the absence of raiders,
but French interest only in those they fight

After about 1870, at least four raiders besides Samory terrify populations of the northern Ivory Coast: "Mori" and Vakuba Ture who "raids in the east with his sons."

--  Vakaba Ture: 

Abidjan archives for the Bonduku region (east of Djimini

I found no other mention of raiders in the records of Paris or Dakar for that region, though the Abidjan archives and those of local administrative centers refer to them perhaps. the main source would be local memory, which may be vibrant even now.

Collective memory reveals what matters
to the people who recall it,
not the literal truth
(the belief that Equality Philip 
cast the deciding vote for the king's execution
 is a reason why there is no monarchy in France).

In Djimini,
both Muslim and animist villagers
overlook the Dyula killer
because the Dyula do not raid,
 and vanish in later attacks.

They replace him with Mori,
whose assaults elsewhere foreshadow Samory.

*       *       *

 Next,

Samory and the Senufo Judas

SAMORY AND THE SENUFO JUDAS

SAMORY,
TEXTILE TRADER, SLAVE RAIDER AND CONQUEROR,
 KNOWN EXCLUSIVELY FOR OPPOSING THE FRENCH 

They push him back from his first empire
 (in 1875).
He falls back on Djimini
 (in 1894-98)

• A fifth column, the "Sonnangui:"
Senufo who with the cowrie currency

emerge as producers for market,
with slaves as laborers  

They are "indigenous people... who have adopted the language the customs, the ways and the external aspects of the Dyulas' religion while keeping the Senufo tattoos... 

They have neither the elevation of ideas nor the education of the Dyula, but having opened their arms and land to Samory, have profited from the victor's friendship to exploit the Senufo, toward whom they display an arrogance and a despotism that the  Dyula ignore."

-- Abidjan archives, bold added

• Among them is Pelegayan,

who grows millet for a market
on the conqueror's route
(Foumbolo)

 In small letters, villages that Samory destroys. In large ones, villages that are new or enlarged.

 "He wanted to be king, 

but did not have the right"

The Djimini forces stop Samory near Foumbolo. 

Pelegayan gets up at night, goes to Samory and says,   

-- "Don't be discouraged, you'll win this battle. 

-- How?

-- Oh, don't worry, I am a child of this country and I will show you its secrets.

-- You tell me not to be discouraged, but I've been here for three months and I'm not getting anywhere. 

-- Oh, don't worry, I am a child of this country, I know the secrets, you will win out. 

He gives the secrets and tells his army not to load their guns. "

-- Serisio Coulibali

The Sonnangui are remembered for their "curious" Islam,

 which brings them closer to the conquerors
and separates them from their animist slaves.

*     *     *

Next,
Slave liberation and colonial economies

SLAVE LIBERATION AND COLONIAL ECONOMIES

THE NEW PRODUCERS' DYNAMISM 
MAKES ESTABLISHING COLONIAL ECONOMIES IMPOSSIBLE

Their opposition is implacable
and European wares cannot compete 

• Textiles, motor of commerce, 

are unsaleable:
Why substitute flimsy manufactured cloth

° For this... 

Haussa weaving 

Cloths of hand-woven strips from the excellent cotton last a lifetime, and look spectacular on dark skins. (In fact, the colonial powers never do take over the African market, which goes to the Dutch with the dramatic prints that soldiers in Indonesia bring home).

° ...or this?

                                                                                                                             Internet

Embroidery, a royal craft

• So as soon as their military control is assured 

the conquerors free the slaves,
which provokes exodus and collapse.  

A melancholy report describes them: 

The 40-page narrative by the local administrator begins with the Ivory Coast governor announcing emancipation in two northern centers with large slave populations. He travels from the coast during the rainy season, which shows that the order comes from Paris.

At first slaves do not believe that they are free, but when a few slip away and nothing happens, the exodus snowballs. Almost all the captives leave, some to villages that often no longer exist, others with no idea where to go.

The administrator concludes by doubting that their lives will be better, and by sadly observing the immediate disintegration of societies that had flourished. 

-- Rapport du Capitaine Schiffer, October 1907, Dabakala archives

• The producers must work the fields themselves -- 

their descendants still do.

In all but the most remote of the conquered regions,
that change is complete by about 1907.

Then colonial economies can be imposed. 

End of this chapter.

*     *     *

Next chapter,
IV, 5.
Another narrative