TRADE STRENGTHENS SOCIAL SYSTEMS, THEN TRANSFORMS THEM

EARLY TRADE IS IN LUXURIES, WHICH ALONE BEAR THE COST OF TRANSPORT

Caravan Approaching a City in the Vast Desert of Sahara, "Stanley and the White Heroes of Africa" by H.B. Scammel, 1890 / zoom

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.

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In the course of the 16th century traders move south from the Niger, for gold, slaves and a new product — kola nuts.

Zoom

Small and light, they are used as dyes. When chewed they lessen thirst and create a light euphoria. They contain caffeine, and their effect is like that of coffee.

They establish outposts, whose leaders control the routes. One of these settlements is Kong, whose rulers forbid outsiders from reaching beyond it. 

Adapted from a Google map

Toward 1700, a "mad" ruler (Lasari Gombele), habitually shoots into the market and seizes the wares people leave behind as they flee. A kola trader from the Niger (Mallam Boro), and a local merchant ally (Seku Watara) unite to overthrow him.* The names show that the conflict is between relatively uncommercial animists and Muslims, who are traders by definition.

*Information given by Karamoko Wattara, the canton chief, and Bassidi Watara, farmer, May 4 and 6 1973. 

The route to the kola-producing regions are open, and traders set up small centers on the forest's fringe.* Kong prospers and becomes an important center for both commerce and Islam, which here are closely linked.

*A report in the Abidjan archives dates the foundation of the settlement of Grumania toward 1740, and Djimini oral tradition places another, Satala-Sokura, at about the same time. (Aubin, p. 432).

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

 

"A View of Kong, Capital City of the Kong Empire" 

Captain Gustave-Louis Binger (above)

A Kong mosque

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The"mad ruler" story expresses a pattern: When growing economies lead to interests that authorities cannot contain, they try to control them by force. That brings a struggle which the new interests win. 

We will come back to it.

 

The upheaval in Kong opens the routes,

and traders arrive in Djimini 

at the start of the 18th century.

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Next,
Classless communities that elders lead