4.4.3. "EVERYWHERE THE HUMBLE SHOW THE MASTERS THEIR TEETH" -- Dakar archives, 1857

This page and the next summarize Aubin, pp. 457-94

AN EARLY MOVEMENT BREAKS OUT IN FUTA TORO, THE SENEGAL RIVER'S ALUVIAL PLAIN  

It fails, but moves to the Middle Niger where it establishes a theocracy  

(In 1854)

* The first movement and first theocracy appear in Hausa country (the Caliphate of Sokoto in Northern Nigeria, at the start of the 19th century), the region where growth was strongest. I chose the movement in Senegal, however, because of the number of French documents. The basic evolution is comparable.

What made Futa Toro distinct:

• Its alluvial plain produces two harvests a year and cattle-raising gives its Toucouleur population a sense of private property unusual for the time. Many become traders.

  

• The French colony of Saint-Louis, at the mouth of the Senegal River, stimulated grain sales for its growing population* and for slaves and slave-ship crews with the Atlantic slave trade at its height.
  

* In the 1780's 6,000; in the 1850's 15,000.

View of Saint-Louis from the Sea, undated / zoom

• The Revolution in Paris of 1830 ushered in the Industrial Revolution in France and so demand for hides to make shoes and other leather goods for urban populations and for peanuts, used for soap, fertilizer and greasing machines. 

 Zoom (among other pictures)

Inauguration of the bridge on the right in the 1850's.

*     *

Points of sale along the Senegal multiply. Some workers and servants save their salaries and become merchants, but many people lose their lands and points of reference. 

The mission between Matam and Bakel (outposts along Senegal River) in Voyage au Soudan français by Commdt. Gallieni, 1885 

Much later, but same principle.

• An early millennial movement deepens social cleavages by letting almamies (Muslim leaders), many of whom are involved in commercial production and long-distance trade, control communal landholdings and impose tithes, which they often keep. 

-- Aubin pp. 465-6, n.109-116.

• Toucouleur 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 martyrdom grows from village to village with prayer-beads in hand, heads shaved, marches before him". 

-- Abbott P.D. Boilat, 
Esquisses sénégalaises,1853, p. 411, slightly shortened

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

-- Anne Raffenel, 

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

In 1851 al-hajj Umar Tall, a Toucouleur merchant, scholar and rare West African to have been to Mecca, calls for a society based on divine law.

1860 / zoom

His followers include one fourth of the Toucouleur population

and subordinates from other ethnic groups: peasants who have lost their lands, slaves and 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.

The Futa Toro army on the march, 1820 (in  account of the explorer Mollien, Gallica) / zoom

The authorities resist. Sign of their strength — there are no markets.

-- Raffenel I, 233.

Umar leads his following to the Niger.

*      *      *

 Next,

4.4.4. 

A theocracy amps up growth