IV. GROWTH AND AFRICAN CYCLES OF STABILITY AND WAR

4. Growth and African cycles

AN ISOLATED REGION REVEALS CYCLES
OF PEACE AND VIOLENCE
BETWEEN COMMERCIAL FORCES
AND POPULATIONS THEY THREATEN 

Djimini was far from commercial centers
and had no particular characteristics:
So the impact of commerce is immediately clear
and secondary factors do not distract

Djimini

Such cycles apply to pre-industrial France
and probably wherever economies are comparable.

 *     *     * 

 But first, 
since we're starting with a region in Africa: 

Can growth and slave raids coincide?

CAN GROWTH AND SLAVE RAIDS COINCIDE?

HOW CLAIM AFRICAN ECONOMIC GROWTH
WHEN SLAVE RAIDS BROUGHT 
POPULATION LOSS, DEVASTATION
 AND FOR THOSE WHO WERE SPARED, 
AN INSECURITY DISASTROUS FOR FARMING? 

Most historians assume "decline."
Some mention "stability."
None, to my knowledge,
 notice the exponential expansion that takes place
throughout the sub-Saharan savannah

Anonymous

• Left out:
the social origin of raided and raiders

° The victims, subsistance farmers

° The predators,
the royal armies already described,
or at the end of the century,
powerful traders and producers 

Since subsistence farmers were outside commercial systems, eliminating them either had no impact on the economy, or encouraged its growth by liberating their lands for production and making them its labor force.

Granted, the massive raids of the end of the century struck merchants too, but they were petty traders in societies that were otherwise non-commercial.   

• Raids do hamper -- but not stop -- growth, 

for an entirely different reason:
Revenus from slave sales buttress old elites,
letting them keep rising producers in their place

° When the end of the Atlantic slave trade
eliminates those revenues,
producers sweep the old kingdoms away
(after about 1850). 

° Those producers' victory unleashes massive raiding,
bringing societies founded on
slave-based commercial production.

End of this short chapter.

*     *     * 

Next chapter,
IV.1.
Commerce strikes a communal society