I. HINTERLANDS REACT TO SUDDEN GROWTH

THE RUDIMENTARY ECONOMIES OF PRE-COLONIAL AFRICA AND PRE-INDUSTRIAL FRANCE MAKE THE EFFECTS OF GROWTH STAND OUT

Mid-15th-century Paris and mid-19th century Timbuktu were the main hubs north of the Alps or in West Africa, but were backwaters compared to the towns of Italy, the Middle East, India and China.

• By 1450 France had recovered from the plague and the ravages of the Hundred Years' War. Economic growth was gradual and gradually-centralizing royal power contained it.

 Charles VI Greets Louis II of Anjou Near the Saint-Michel Gate, "Chronicle of Jean Froissart," end 14th century

 Paris: the north-south route looks like a country path.  

• In 1850 West African production was expanding, and states able to profit from emerged in the most commercial regions (west of Lake Chad and along the Senegal and Niger Rivers). 

 "Arrival at Timbuktu," Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa by Henry Barth, 1855 / zoom (color added)

Timbuktu: soldiers accompany the caravan because authority is weak and routes unsafe. 

• But upheavals brewed:

• In western Europe, the geographic discoveries of the end of the 15th century would bring unprecedented growth and social upheaval.

• In West Africa growth was relatively slow because climate belts discouraged the spread of agricultural improvements* and because the Atlantic slave trade buttressed archaic elites. But its end (from about 1850) would let independent  producers sweep them away and create dynamic economies based on intensive slave labor.

*A Popular History of the World, from the Stone age to the New Millenium by Chris Harmon, "The African civilizations," 1999. A rare history to connect political change and economic evolution.

These pages show how

African and French societies

reacted to that transformation. 

 
*      *      * 

 

Next,
I.
Braking the search for gain

II. BRAKING THE SEARCH FOR GAIN

2. Braking the search for gain

SEEKING INDIVIDUAL PROFIT SAPS THE COLLECTIVE EFFORT THAT ALLOWS SURVIVAL...

  Zoom

Fresco in an ancient Egyptian tomb

  Gone from the web

In Ethiopia

        Witness by Peter Weir with Harrison Ford, 1985 / YouTube

Amish farmers build a barn

So pre-capitalist societies contain it. 

This chapter explains why containing profit  

— that is, limiting growth —

 was necessary, and how it took place.

• One can't bring in the harvest alone

• From chiefs to kings

• The grandiose destruction of wealth

• Behavior whose logic escapes us 

• Read accounts like detective stories

• Were (are) underlying economic motives recognized? 

• Explosive effects of the search for profit

*      *      *

Next,
One can't bring in the harvest alone 

ONE CAN'T BRING IN THE HARVEST ALONE

OR FISH WITH LARGE NETS OR HUNT BIG ANIMALS

So unmechanized work must be collective —  as this painting of peasants in 16th-century Flanders implies. People bring in the harvest and relax together.

    The Harvesters by Pieter Breughel the Elder, 1565 / zoom

Pursuing individual gain weakens the community and communal lands become privately owned. Then people leave —"He went off to seek his fortune," many fairy tales begin.

The growing towns let some learn craft or become merchants — that's how a middle class grows up — but most finish as vagabonds, mercenaries or thieves. 

Those who remain on the land become sharecroppers or serfs. 

That menace explains the brakes on gain
that villagers initiate and stronger power extends.  

*      *      *

Next,
From chiefs to kings

FROM CHIEFS TO KINGS

WHEN PROFIT-SEEKING OVERWHELMS THE LIMITS VILLAGERS IMPOSE, CHIEFS APPEAR

In traditional Africa, the newly-rich are admired if they share their wealth, tolerated if they spend it and sanctioned if they keep it: Griots (praise-singers) follow them, chanting praises that become mockery of their servile origins until they give the expected tip.

That is, until they distribute funds they might otherwise invest.

Griots, gone from the web

Expecting immigrants to distribute gifts when they return to the village and pestering them if they don't bring enough is the same idea.

If growth continues, chiefs appear and if it continues beyond what they can contain, kings replace them. The awe they inspire comes from their tie with the supernatural, in a way that the past legitimizes. In Dahomey the connection is with ancestors, in France with the baptism of the first king.

• In Dahomey, communion with the ancestors first comes from decapitating and keeping the heads of corpses. The Atlantic slave trade leads to kings who control it, and who become stronger as it grows. In the 18th century they forbid traditional decapitation and establish human sacrifice to become sole intermediaries with the dead.  

 -- "My Head Belongs to the King: On the Political and Ritual Significance of Decapitation in Pre-Colonial Dahomey" by Robin Law, Journal of African History 1989: abstract. 

 

Instead of crowning a new king, Dahomeyans honored he who had died by beheading slaves for his service. To enter the new world cheerfully they were well treated, attendants fanning them to drive away the flies. Though tied together they would chat and sway to the music. 

-- The famous British explorer Sir Richard Burton describes the ritual in chapter 12 of A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahomey, 1864. A similar account appears for Ashanti, which mentions captives who are well-fed and seem unconcerned.  

Victims for Sacrifice, "The History of Dahomey, an Inland Kingdom of Africa" by Archibald Dalzel, 1793 / zoom

 For how and why the ritual changed,

 please click back. 

# # #

In France, the king is sacred, that is authentic, only after coronation in the church where the first royal baptism took place (Reims, in Champagne). *

*The only king to be crowned elsewhere (in Chartres, in 1585) was Henri IV, because the town of Reims refused to accept the former Protestant. 

The Crowning of Charlemagne (no more information) / zoom

The importance of coronation at Reims explains why the high point of Joan of Arc's epic is considered persuading the Dauphin (the Crown Prince) to make the dangerous journey through English-held territory. The central panel of  the most important work in Panthéon's* grand entry hall is triptych that puts the event in the central panel, like an Annunciation, Nativity or Crucifixion in a medieval triptych.

*France's secular mausoleum.

To the left and right are Joan's martyrdom and her first victory, taking Orleans. The coronation is considered even more important.

# # #

Sending servants to the deceased king or crowning the successor takes place over several days.

• Burton describes the four.

• In France, the occasion includes a vigil, the ceremony, a banquet, a cavalcade, and in medieval times a ceremonial entrance into Paris that ends at Notre-Dame Cathedral.

Cavalcade of Louis XV after the Sanctification, October 16, 1722 by Martin le Jeune / zoom

# # #

In both kingdoms, the rite is renewed each year.

• In Dahomey, a smaller number of captives is sent to to serve the deceased kings. 

• In France, the king would touch people suffering from scrofula after taking communion at Easter.*

Henri II's book of hours (toward 1540), detail, zoom

* The practice ended when Louis XV refused to take communion and abandon his mistress. That it was gradually forgotten is an aspect of the monarchy's 18th-century decline.

# # #

In short, the Dahomeyan honoring the deceased king and French crowning of the new one serve the same purpose. They establish the ruler's tie with the Other World while strengthening awe of him in this one and destroying potentially disruptive wealth.

*    *    *

Monarchs' tie with sacred allowed them

 to maintain harmony

 between the cosmos and the kingdom.

In practice that meant protecting 

  social harmony by containing what threatened it —

notably the search for profit. 

  
*      *      *

Next,

The grandiose destruction of wealth

THE GRANDIOSE DESTRUCTION OF WEALTH

THE SIMPLEST WAY TO CONTAIN GROWTH: ELIMINATE WEALTH BEFORE IT CAN BE INVESTED

Making the event spectacular draws in the public, so reinforces authority. As by:

  • Competition

This 1914 movie filmed the last match, which anthropologists know as "potlatch."

When the Kwaktiul Indians of the North Pacific obtain goods by barter with whites (from about 1850) the clans that control the trade compete by throwing the wares into the sea. The clan that destroys most wins. 

The community watches from the shore. Then all celebrate with a feast and dancing.

Trailer

These pictures are from the film, 

that is, of the real ceremony

The dance on the return

• Ostentation

       A Royal Army on the March,16th-century tapestry (detail), Renaissance Museum

European nobles disperse their income on accoutrements that they show off around the king. People come from miles to watch processions that break the routine.

Dispersing wealth with panache is part of their prestige: King Arthur cares "not for gold or silver, but for honor alone," says a Roman envoy whom Arthur treats with a feast that a full page describes.

-- La Morte d'Arthur

• Funerals

 The movie shows the majesty of the destruction.

When a Viking chief dies a boat is filled with treasure and burnt.

Everyone watches from the shore.

 • Monuments 

      The Great Pyramid of Giza Zoom

Ancient Egypt remains essentially unchanged for 3,000 years. Imagine — 3000. 

Because the pharaohs neutralize investible income with monuments so huge that the term "pharaonic" applies to any construction that is over the top? 

That immensity is a constant show of power.  

 • Squandering 

European map of Africa of the 14th century, a sign of expanding exchanges.

A 14th-century ruler of the Mali Empire spends so much gold on his pilgrimage to Mecca that its value drops for a decade, which hinders emerging producers.

Populations watch the extraordinary caravan pass and benefit from the largesse. 

 Deliberate destruction
 transforms the meaning of innumerable
customs and events:
We will come back to it many times.

*     *     *  

Next,
Behavior whose logic escapes us

BEHAVIOR WHOSE LOGIC ESCAPES US

WE TEND TO GLOSS OVER WHAT WE DON'T UNDERSTAND  

Take an explorer's mistake. He contrasts Western dancing (on the right) with that of "black devils." 

"Grant Dancing with Ukelema," Second Visit to Discover the Sources of the Nile by John Speke, London, 1864

But dance unites the village — like pages in a royal court, the youths highlight the chief's exploits. At other times men and women dance in separate lines, never touching. There is no dancing in couples because social organization is collective.*

*As with Western square dancing, the French village "bourrée" and court and salon balls. Dancing with a partner came with the waltz in the early 19th century, as part of middle class idealization of the couple. Today people dance alone in large groups, mirroring isolation.

Since the explorer has the artist draw his partner's astonishment, he knows he's broken the rules. He thinks he's done the right thing — showing Africans how to dance!   

Explorers, like historians,
confront worlds that they don't understand:

Instead of pointing out enigmas,
they amass data.

Sometimes an enlightening detail slips 
into their accounts,

like the guards' yellow liveries when

Louis XVI tried to flee.

*     *     *

Next,
Read accounts like detective stories

READ ACCOUNTS LIKE DETECTIVE STORIES

"SHE HAD BEEN TRAINED TO LOOK FOR ANAMOLIES"

-- The Silence of the Lambs,
crime novel by Thomas Harris whose heroine is a detective

Figuring out the past means acting like a detective, pondering what seems odd.

Clues can be customs or events that seem irrational or tangible elements, like a painting placed too high for viewing, urban voids too vast for traffic, a king replacing Jesus... 

Paris's rue de Belleville

Or they jump out from the narratives of historians and explorers... 

A library's history shelves

Map at the Paris Mission Center ("Procure des Missions")

Although they are buried in data. 

*     *     *  

Next,

Were (are?) underlying economic motives recognized? 

WERE (ARE) UNDERLYING ECONOMIC MOTIVES RECOGNIZED?

YES, BECAUSE PEOPLE INSTINCTIVELY KNOW WHAT REINFORCES RULES OR BREAKS THEM

No, because customs are so engrained as to be invisible. Take a modern practice, buying what one does not need:

       Window at the Galeries Lafayette department store / Richard Nahem

"If I wore my favorite black dress on Tuesday in Cincinatti, I'd  see pictures on social media on Wednesday, and I couldn’t repeat the look in San Diego on Thursday, or people would think I had only one dress."

-- Woman preparing a book tour, New York Times

For women especially, changing outfits every day is a kind of tax. They may do so out of habit, because they like shopping or because if they don't do it, they'll seem to lack the means. 

Very few say, "such purchases give an impression of liberty but in fact are imposed, because the economy depends on them."

The next chapters show how 
social organization and beliefs
corresponded (and still correspond) to tangible needs, 

of which people are usually unaware.

*     *     *

Next,
The explosive effects of the search for profit

THE EXPLOSIVE EFFECTS OF THE SEARCH FOR PROFIT

GLOBALIZATION MEANS THAT MILLIONS LOSE LAND AND THAT  SOCIAL TIES AND SACRED BELIEFS ARE SHATTERED.

Buying stuff is all that replaces them, on condition of being among the fortunate who can afford to.   

It speed makes the transformation still more violent. Can one be surprised at a nihilism and turn to strongmen that in Europe, the United States, the Middle East, India (...) is basically the same?

"A global anti-elite surge could carry Trump to victory," op.ed, The New York Times, 2019 / Darren Hauck, Getty Images

The innumerable ways in which

 pre-capitalist African and French societies

contained that search 
proves its destructiveness.   

End of this introduction.

*      *      *

Next,

V. 2.
Curbing growth: kings and ritualized warfare