"EVERYWHERE THE HUMBLE SHOW THE MASTERS THEIR TEETH"

MILLENARIAL MOVEMENTS SWEEP THE SAVANNAH

That historians know best
-- because the French confront it --
begins on the Senegal
and establishes a theocracy on the Middle Niger 
(in 1854)

-- The title's citation: Dakar archives, 1857

This page and the next summarize Aubin, 457-94

• The early economic growth
of the Senegal Valley,
due to geography
and the French outpost of Saint-Louis

° The Senegal Valley's alluvial plain

 yields two harvests a year,

 which allow important sales of millet 

°As well,

cattle-raising gives its Tukolor population

 a sense of private property that is unusual for the time.

 Many become traders

Saint-Louis: 6,000 residents in 1800, 15,000 in 1850

-- Aubin 463-4 and notes

° The Industrial Revolution
increases the demand for hides and peanuts

and slaves and slave-ship crews require more provisions 

with the slave trade at its height.

° Trading posts along the river multiply. 

Locals hired as sailors or servants

 may save their earnings to become traders 

• Growth enriches some,

but many lose their lands
and points of reference

An early millenarial movements deepens social cleavages by letting almamies (Muslim leaders), who are deeply involved in commercial production and long-distance trade, control communal landholdings and impose tithes, which they often keep.

 -- Aubin 465-6, n. 109-116

   
Tukulor prophets appear from the 1770's. In 1830, one of them preaches "the spirit of pillage and devastation" against infidels and "an army of saints... ready for martydom... grows from village to village... with prayer-beads in hand, heads shaved, marches before him...". 

-- Abbott P.D. Boilat, 
Esquisses sénégalaises,1853, 411

In the 1840's, bands of ragged marauders threaten a traveller's boat.

-- Anne Raffenel, 

Voyage en Sénégambie occidentale, 1846, I, 38-9, 47, 177-8, 267-8

• A Tukulor merchant, 

a scholar
and rare West African to have been to Mecca,

calls for a society based on divine law

(al-hajj Umar Tall,
in the early 1850's)

° His followers include 

one fourth of the Tukulor population

 plus subordinates from other ethnic groups, 

peasants who have lost their lands, slaves, lineage minors.

 -- Dakar archives, 1880

° They hope for lands and booty, 

and the collapse of their former communities

 predisposes them to accept a new one

• Those armies contrast with royal ones:

"Pursued, surrounded,

they did not change their regular pace

and let themselves be killed rather than flee."  

-- Dakar archives, 1880

Ambroise Tardieu collection /  Internet

A millennarial force of 1818

But the authorities resist.

Sign of their strength -- no markets.

-- Raffenel I, 233

Umar leads his following to the Niger.

*      *      *

 Next,

A theocracy amps up growth...