4.3.4. TRADERS AND TEXTILES COME TO DJIMINI

DYULA FROM RELATIVELY NEARBY KONG PRECEDE SONINKE AND HAUSA, FROM THE MIDDLE NIGER AND HAUSALAND (NORTHERN NIGERIA NOW)

Soninke and Hausa organization, networks and capital are much greater than those of the Dyula. As are their ambitions: We will come that.

Adapted from a Stock map

 

 Zoom

Dyula, 1905

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

Hausa transporting kola

"Large sums are expended by the natives upon this luxury

which has become to them as necessary as coffee or tea to us. 

The import of this nut into Kanó, comprising certainly more than five hundred ass-loads every year, the load of each, if safely brought to the market — for it is a very delicate article, and very liable to spoil — being sold for about 200,000 kurdí, will amount to an average of from eighty to one hundred millions. Of this sum, I think we shall be correct in asserting about half to be paid for by the natives of the province, while the other half will be profit."

-- Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa by Heinrich Barth, 1855, II, p.131. Underlining mine. 

 

P.120

Kano, "this glorious panorama"

 Barth writes of textile production in the Hausa city of Kano:

P. 129

"The great advantage of Kanó  is that commerce and manufactures go hand in hand, and that almost every family has its share in them. There is really something grand in this kind of industry, which spreads to the north as far as Múrzuk, Ghát, and even Tripoli; to the west, not only to Timbúktu, but in some degree even as far as the shores of the Atlantic."

-- P. 126.

Photos of 1910 show its importance:

Zoom / first picture of series

Fourteenth photo

They introduce weaving from 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 usher in weavers, dyers, clothiers and embroiderers.

* Their role in Paris's neighborhood of La Goutte d'Or is shown here. 

They reveal status

and bring social transformation.

*    *    *

Next,

4.3.5. 

Classless communities that elders lead