IV. AFRICA: WHY CHOOSE A BACKWATER?

CHANGE THERE MUST PROVE A WIDER EVOLUTION AND NO SECONDARY FACTORS DISTRACT

I  needed to do field work for a doctorate in African history. When the Ivory Coast's University of Abidjan offered lodging and Ministry of the Interior support in exchange for three months of teaching, I was happy to accept.

Djimini is the forgotten territory on the fringe of forest and savannah, where the terrifying slave-raider Samory established an empire before he was defeated by the French.

Adapted from a Google map

After consulting the archives during the months of teaching, I went to Dabakala, which except for a much smaller Muslim center (Darhala) was the area's only town.

Adapted from Britannica

There were no hotels

 and I expected to stay at a "rest house..." 

that harbored two or three male travelers and a Fulani prostitute, who wore big earrings and a long red dress. I left my bag with her and wearing a huge hat to protect from the sun, walked two miles on the hot and dusty road until I came to a ranch house, set off from it as if it were a palace.

A servant answered my knock. I said I would like to see the sous-préfet (the regional government head). "He's sleeping," the servant said. "I'll wait," I answered, "Please don't wake him up." 

He woke him up.

A tall, handsome, very dark man wearing a colorful wax toga entered. He yawned and rubbed his eyes because he had just woken up, or from surprise. Occasionally French "co-opérants" (government specialists) travelled through the region, but white women never did.

I was just as surprised, and said that I had told the servant not to wake him and was very, very sorry that he had. Coming out of my confrontation with the Dean and the subsequent upheaval (and being very young), diplomacy with officials was not my way. But my embarrassment was real and established his authority. For once, I said the right thing. 

I explained that I had come to do research on the region's history, that I hoped he would help me and handed him the letter from the Minister. He looked at it, looked at me again, and said, "I will do so. You may stay with me and my family for as long as you like."

I stayed twice for six weeks and remember Ernest Texier's beautiful, fiery wife, their two "legitimate" little boys and his 13 other children, who on returning from school would sit with perfect behavior around a large table to do their homework. 

But mostly I remember the help he gave, bringing in elderly men from distant villages to tell me what they knew of the past, having me meet a paralyzed chief in his village or groups of elders who took time away from their fields.

He also brought me a document from the archives. I will come back to it.

*    *    *

Next,

The evolution of the Sudanic Belt

 from an unexpected point of view

IV.I. AFRICAN TRANSFORMATION RETHOUGHT

IT IS OFTEN ASSUMED THAT THE ATLANTIC SLAVE DESTROYED FLOURISHING CIVILISATIONS LEAVING THEM VULNERABLE TO CONQUEST 

*Take the esteemed French monthly "Le Monde diplomatique:" [The Atlantic trade] was the form of slavery that indisputably contributed most to the present situation of Africa. It permanently weakened the continent, led to its colonisation by the Europeans in the nineteenth century, and engendered the racism and contempt from which Africans still suffer.

-- La Dimension africaine de la traite des noirs, by M. Bokolo, 1998 / zoom

So whites dominate: If you click "African slave trades images" on the web, you will find dozens of pictures dealing with the Atlantic slave trade, a few with that to North Africa, and, except for lines of chained captives who could be going anywhere, almost none within Africa itself. 

For example:

     The Slave Trade by Auguste François Biard, 1840 / zoom

A dead captive lies in the center, but the light shines on the white doctor and white master.

City of London Slave Trade Money Trail Tour (no source named)

     The Transatlantic Slave Trade through the Eyes of an African Artist, at the Abomey palace in Benin, 2022 / zoom

There is nothing about Dahomey's ritual decapitation of slaves, or about the 300 sacrificed so as not to be fall into producers' hands.

Written history shows the same point of view. Contradictions concern the economically primitive coast, where slavery meant doing chores and strengthening the lineage, and where the massive raids that wracked the interior did not (yet) take place. When economic growth is unmistakable it is seen as "stability," that is, changelessness. 

# # #

But if one compiles the facts explorers' give and compares them over time and space, it becomes clear that throughout the Sudanic Belt economic growth was steady.

 The Sudanic Belt is the light green band.

The Atlantic slave trade did affect the interior, however, since when it stopped toward 1850, far more violent and extensive raids by local forces wracked the area. Because that trade had distorted traditional social systems, it is said.

But why would those much more destructive raids coincide with theocracies whose dynamism was based on intensive use of captive labor and whose implacable opposition to Europeans made establishing colonial economies impossible after military conquest was assured?

Puzzles are often clues. 

Please read on.

End of this short section.

*     *     * 

Next section,
V.2.
Commerce strikes a communal society