4.1. COMMERCE STRIKES A COMMUNAL SOCIETY

 4.1. Commerce strikes communal society

INCREASINGLY POWERFUL CHIEFS
 CURB THE EFFECTS OF GROWTH

Take Djimini,
a region on the border of savannah and forest,
in today's northeastern Ivory Coast

In Ethiopia, but could be any African villagers / Internet

• Trade comes to Djimini, a region from the back of beyond 

• Communities that elders lead 

• Growth, chiefs and tumult

• The implications of barter and currencies

• Cowries, a currency that meets violent resistance

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Next,

Trade comes to Djimini, a region from the back of beyond

TRADE COMES TO DJIMINI, A REGION FROM THE BACK OF BEYOND

RIPPLES FROM TRANS-SAHARAN TRADE
FINALLY REACH IT TOWARD 1700

The exhange of salt for gold and slaves
triggers a series of repercussions

Fourteenth-century map

• A universal scenario:
Exchanges first strengthen 
the existing social system, 
then transform it

Early trade is in luxuries, which alone bear the cost of transport. Local authorities are delighted to get them, and use them to strengthen their control.

But merchants need supplies, and animals, water bags, ropes, sandals. The original authorities cannot handle such requests, and a new elite grows up to manage them. With its wives, children and servants it must be supplied as well. Agriculture and crafts develop.

The initial transactions take second place.

 -- As shown by the late anthropologist, Claude Meillassoux.

• Traders they move south,
for gold and slaves
and a new product -- kola nuts

Internet

Small and light, they are used as dyes and because chewed, they lessen thirst and create a light euphoria. 

• They establish outposts,
whose leaders control the routes.
One of these settlements becomes
the Islamic center of Kong

Du Niger au Golfe de Guinée par le pays de Kong et le Mossi (1887-89) by Captain Louis Gustave Binger, 1892

  

A Kong mosque

A"mad" ruler of Kong shoots into the market.

Likely translation:
When growth brings challengers,
he uses violence to keep them under control.

He is overthrown.

The victors open the routes
and arrive in Djimini toward 1710.

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Next,
Communities that elders lead

COMMUNITIES THAT ELDERS LEAD

WHEN THE TRADERS ARRIVE 
THE SENUFO ARE SUBSISTENCE FARMERS

 Many still are

All photos / Internet, photographer mentioned if named

Irene Becker

Lineage elders send young members to fetch the kola,
whose exchange they control.
 Being in direct contact with the merchants
 strengthens them at first. 

 *      *      *

Next,

Growth, tumult and chieftaincies

GROWTH, TUMULT AND CHIEFTAINCIES

THE NUMBER OF TRADERS INCREASES.
CHIEFTAINCIES SUCCEED EACH OTHER ON THE TRADE ROUTE

At Kondodugu, a chief replaces the elders:
His wives grow provisions for the traders
and his sons fetch the kola
(toward 1750)

The villages in the story are all on a trade route.

• Two kinds of traders  

° The first are petty traders (Dyula)
 from nearby Kong 

They trade over short distances with little capital or organization, and their gains are correspondingly slight.  

° Then come long-distance traders,

from the Niger (Soninke) and Northern Nigeria (Hausa),
whose networks, capital, profits are much greater --
their ambitions will be too. 

Hausa dignitaries in 1902 / Internet

The Hausa come from farther away and are particularly dynamic. Their village of Marabadiassa ("Maraba," or "people of the east," that is, Hausa) brings weaving to the region. 

Textiles are easy to produce and transport, and the market for them is inexhaustible. They lead to seeking dyes and stabilizers for dyes, beget new sources of capital and bring the emergence of weavers and dyers. 

The appearance of textiles means social transformation. 

 • A conflict leads to a more powerful chief  

Narrators' statements are in italics.

 ° Kondodugu's chief, Tofanga, is captured

but a warrior, Gnapon, rescues him

His opponents take him to their village. But he has a friend, the warrior Gnapon. Gnapon hides behind a tree and signals his presence by singing a pagan song. Tofanga sings back. 

Interlocutors do not remember who the enemy was or what caused the conflict. But though the story's details change from village to village, all mention the "pagan" song. That makes sense only if the village is Muslim, which means merchant: so the fight is between traders and locals, and its cause must be economic. 

° Tofanga voluntarily cedes power to Gnapon,
who as a warrior imposes stronger power 

Gnapon hides behind a tree and howls. When residents of the enemy village leave to see what is happening, Tofanga escapes. He tells Gnapon that he could give him a wife (the traditional reward) but that "a woman might come between us." He chooses to cede power instead.

Here too the words are always the same: "a woman might come between us." The defeated Tofanga has no power to cede, but insisting on the voluntary transfer shows approval of stronger authority. 

° Gnapon's village, Bokhala, becomes a market,
which a marabout strengthens with his prayers

The marabout (an erudite Muslim, by definition a trader) sells beads and other articles of little value.  

So he is a Dyula, or petty local trader. The Soninke and Hausa have no importance yet.

 • The change takes place toward 1800

° That's a guess:
Peasant time is based on seasons

Narrators may say that an event happened at noteworthy time: after the traders came from Kong, before Samory appeared (please read on), or, as in this case, do not know.   

° A French document 

says Gnapon's son was killed in 1878, 

when he was "too old to fight." 
So it makes sense to place Bokhala's founding toward 1800...

  -- Death Gnapon's son, Dakar archives, 1878

when Gnapon would have been young and energetic. At least, it could not have been much before 1780 or later than 1820.

At about the same time,
Hausa traders are expelled from certain kingdoms
and millenarian movements begin:
The upheaval in Djimini is part of wider change.

*     *     *

Next,
The implications of barter and currencies

IMPLICATIONS OF BARTER AND CURRENCIES

IN DJIMINI THE ABSENCE OF CURRENCY
LETS TOFANGA CONTROL EXCHANGES   

Is the fight due to merchants' introducing it?
Take the celebrated empires of the medieval savannah

• The "silent trade" of the Mali Empire 

makes private transactions impossible,

which leaves exchanges to the king

(on the 14th century Niger Bend) 

Storyboard / Internet

Arabs place salt on the bank of the Niger and retire.

Blacks examine the offer, place the gold they propose in exchange next to it, and retire as well. Negotiations continue in that way, with drumming but no words.

Arabs who break the silence are beaten, blacks impaled (they menace the king's monopoly more directly).

 -- G. Mouëtte, Histoire des conquêtes de Moulay Archy, 1683, 316-17

• An iron money replaces barter.

The empire of Songhay supplants that of Mali
at the same time 

 -- For the iron money, 
The history and description of Africa by Leo Africanus,
early 16th century

Grégoire Lyon

A royal Songhay tomb.
In Gao (Mali)

Probable context: growth makes the silent trade unenforceable and brings a control that is less rudimentary.

The heavy, cumbersome iron currency is adapted to important exchanges, not tiny sales. It lets an elite monopolize commerce, to which ordinary people have no access. 

Society stays stable. 

• Social change appears with divisible currencies,

which let independent producers emerge

Narrators do not know when cowries came to Djimini, saying only that it was before the arrival of Samory (in 1894). Their appearance must coincide with the founding of the market at Bokhala, which could not sell ordinary items otherwise. 

Gnapon, a warrior, is more powerful than Tofanga.
The arrival of the almost infinitely divisible currency
explains acceptance of a stronger chieftaincy:
By the merchants, to protect them.
By the population, to contain the impact of the change.

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Next,

Cowries, a currency that meets violent resistance 

COWRIES, A CURRENCY THAT MEETS VIOLENT RESISTANCE

 THE SMALL, LIGHT SHELLS FROM ASIA
SPREAD THROUGHOUT WEST AFRICA
(Toward 1780-1850)

Transmaldavian airlines / Internet

• They eliminate kings' control 

of the most primitive economies,
and rulers may oust traders
who try to impose them

Hausa are expelled from Macina (Mali), Oyo (southern Nigeria) and Ashanti (Ghana), toward 1800. The sources do not give a reason, but in Ashanti they are driven away because "They did not know how to used the weights for weighing gold. So the Ashanti told them, if you don't want to learn how to use them, you can go." "

-- Atta Kwadwo, Keeper of the Royal Stool, Kumasi

The Hausa have traded in Ashanti for half a century and know how to use the weights. But demanding cowries defies the king, whose weights are one-third heavier than others.

• They appear after civil wars

that stronger political power follows

In Bornu, cowry use coincides with overthrowing the most ancient nobility (in 1846), as the Henrich Barth explicitly states.

-- Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa, 1855, II, 55

Explorers rarely give such information directly, because they do not understand its importance. One grasps the link by connecting different parts of their narratives, or by comparing accounts of the same place at different times (as the next chapter shows).

The struggle between Tofanga and the traders

and Gnapon's stronger power 

are typical of the change that cowries bring. 

End of this chapter.

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Next chapter,

IV, 2.
Same transformation, much wider scale