4.2. COMMERCE STRIKES A COMMUNAL SOCIETY

 .5.2. Commerce strikes communal society

SAHARAN EXCHANGES OF GOLD FOR SALT AND SLAVES SPARK TRANSFORMATION

Thanks to T.L. Miles for this excellent map / zoom 

The main trans-Saharan caravan routes toward 1400. Yellow: Modern Niger.

Toward 1700, 

their ripples reach the forest fringe. 

• The legendary empires of the medieval savannah

• Trade strengthens social systems, then transforms them

• Classless communities that elders lead 

• Cowries, new traders and textiles...

• The cowrie currency meets violent resistance

• A cycle of change

*      *      *

Next,

The legendary empires of the medieval savannah

THE LEGENDARY EMPIRES OF THE MEDIEVAL SAVANNAH

MODERN GHANA AND MALI TAKE THEIR NAMES FROM THOSE EMPIRES, WHICH CONTROLLED THE TRANS-SAHARAN TRADE FROM THE 4TH TO 16TH CENTURIES

They were great, the modern legend says.  

Video / zoom

For the full continent and a chart, zoom

The distant, mysterious, exotic source of gold brought a change in how the Three Kings in Christian art are shown:

Zoom (click to enlarge the map)

The Mali ruler, Mansa Musa (d.1388) dominates trade in the Western Sahara.

 

       By Taddeo Gaddi, Florence, toward 1330 / zoom                 By Jan de Beer, Belgium, toward 1510 / zoom

The eldest king kneels in front of Jesus. Of the two who look on, one is young, handsome, elegant and Black. He vanishes in the 16th century when the Atlantic slave trade begins.

With a fall in the price of gold and the impact of European slave raids they decline, it is said. But...

The most moderate population estimate for Gao, the capital of Songhay, is 75,000 souls. That is the size of London at time, around which there were six other towns of 6,000-12,000 people, plus a multitude of villages of 600-2,000. But Leo Africanus mentions only four towns in the entire region in 1516 (Gao, Timbuktu, Cabra and Djenne).*

*Archeological excavations show numerous inhabited sites, but 19th-century explorers notice that villages constantly move. 

As well, his account shows that the population is unclothed, houses are thatched, river transportation by canoe, armed troops accompany caravans and an iron currency is not adapted to small sales. But in the 19th century, explorers show that people are clothed, houses are made of baked clay, boats are made of sewn-together tree trunks and a cowrie-shell currency is almost infinitely divisible.

-- Aubin, pp. 435-437, with footnotes.

# # #

Rulers seem extremely powerful...

Grégoire Lyon

A royal Songhay tomb in its capital of Gao (in modern Mali).

But a story shows a "revolted slave" challenging his master by ostentatiously distributing wealth* and quote.

* Misakullah

Please read on. 

*     *     *

Next,

Trade strengthens social systems,

then transforms them

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.

Traders they move south, for gold and 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 becomes the Islamic center of Kong:

Adapted from a Google map

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

# # #

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

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.

*      *      * 

Next,
Classless communities that elders lead

CLASSLESS COMMUNITIES THAT ELDERS LEAD

THE TRADERS COME UPON THE SENUFO, WHO STRETCH ACROSS THE SAVANNAH FROM WESTERN MALI TO BURKINO FASO 

Senufo languages / zoom

 Many are still subsistence farmers.

Zoom

Some of the rites 

Louis-Gustave Binger, toward 1888, zoom

Zoom (please scroll down); no date

Senufo funeral in the Folona, Mali by Barbara E. Ward and Nafogo Coulibali, 2015 / zoom 

    Ceremony by which men after initiation since childhood become fully adult / zoom

For a page of good pictures, please click here and for more pictures and a description of the initiation, here (please click down).

Zoom (please scroll down) 

Dancers of Boloye, 2022 / zoom

                                                                           Zoom                                                          1966, Zoom

# # #

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,

Cowries, new traders and textiles

COWRIES, NEW TRADERS AND TEXTILES...

ARRIVE IN DJIMINI TOWARD 1740

Traders from nearby Kong (the Dyula) travel over relatively short distances with little capital or organization, and their gains are correspondingly slight.  

 Zoom

Dyula traders, 1905

Then come long-distance traders, from the Niger (Soninke) and Northern Nigeria (Hausa), whose networks, capital and profits are greater. So are their ambitions.

De Saint-Louis à Tripoli par le Chad by Lt.-Col. P.L. Monteil, 1895/ zoom

"Hausa traders transporting kola"

They introduce textiles...

Zoom / first picture of series

Zoom / 14th photo

Then weaving, which is launched in their village of Marabadiassa: "Maraba" means "people of the east, that is, Hausa. 

# # #

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

* For their importance in a partly African neighborhood in Paris, please click. 

When textiles appear

 social transformation begins. 

*    *    *

Next,

The cowrie currency meets violent resistance

THE COWRIE CURRENCY MEETS VIOLENT RESISTANCE

THE SMALL, LIGHT SHELLS FROM ASIA SPREAD THROUGHOUT WEST AFRICA, TOWARD 1780-1850

Zoom

They allow challenging control of primitive economies, and authorities 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 of course know how to use the weights. But demanding cowries defies the king, whose weights are one-third heavier than others.  

Or they appear after civil wars bring stronger political control.

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

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

Such direct information is rare

because explorers do not understand its importance. 

One grasps it by connecting 

different parts of their narratives, 

or by comparing accounts of the same place 

at different times.

*    *    *

Next:

Introducing a pattern of change

INTRODUCING A PATTERN OF CHANGE

MORE TRADERS COME. A CHIEFTAINCY APPEARS. WAR BREAKS OUT. A STRONGER CHIEFTAINCY TAKES OVER

 

Reference

The villages in oral tradition are all on a trade route.

Narrators do not know when cowries came to Djimini, saying only that it was before the arrival of Samory (in 1894). Their appearance must lead to founding the market village of Bokhala (toward 1750?) since there could be no sales without them.  

# # #

Djimini's story of conflict and transformation 

Narrators' statements are in italics.

When traders arrive from Kong, at Kondougou a chief replaces the elders: His wives grow provisions for the traders and his sons fetch the kola (toward 1700?) 

That arrangement lasts as long as he controls exchanges. 

• Later — toward 1800? — fighting breaks out. 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. 

The "pagan" song: 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. So Tofanga and Gnapon are animists, their opponents Muslims. Muslims are by definition merchants, which means that their village is a market that functions, or wants to function, by sales that are outside the exchanges that Tofanga controls and that the infinitely divisible cowrie currency allows. 

in short, the expansion of the kola trade has led to the rise of independent producers, who join with the merchants to challenge the chief's monopoly. 

# # # 

Tofanga voluntarily cedes power to Gnapon, who as a warrior represents might.

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 [the traditional reward] but as"a woman might come between us," he cedes 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 that the animist population approves the 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.

Summing up: New forces oppose a control that has become archaic. Their victory brings a more dynamic commercial system and stronger power to control i it. 

That story of violence, victory and centralization will repeat itself in Djimini, in much of the savannah, in France and, one assumes, wherever economic growth threatens an archaic economy.

# # #

 Why place the change toward 1800:  

• Peasant time is based on seasons, not on a linear series of years. Narrators may connect a change with an event, such as after the traders come from Kong. Otherwise, as for the transfer of power from Tofanga to Gnapon and the founding of Bokhala, they cannot give a date.

• A French archival document says Gnapon's son was killed in 1878, when he was "too old to fight." So one can place those events at the time when Gnapon would have been young and energetic, between 1780 and 1820. The date of 1800 is an approximation.

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

Hausa traders are expelled from certain kingdoms and millenarian movements — please read on — begin at about the same time.

The upheaval in Djimini is part of wider change, 

which takes place at the turn of the 18th century.

End of this section.

*     *     *

The next section,

IV.3.

Cycles of growth, conflict and new power