AN ECONOMIC FOCUS BRINGS A DIFFERENT STORY

BLOOK 1 SHOWED HOW NOTICING HOW WHAT IS USUALLY OMITTED CHANGES ONE'S VIEW OF PARIS. 

BLOOK 2 SHOWS HOW SETTING BELIEFS, STRUGGLES AND EVENTS IN THEIR ECONOMIC CONTEXTS TRANSFORMS THEIR MEANING 

It compares how pre-industrial France and pre-colonial Africa  changed in response to profit-seeking economies.  

Louis XIV in T.Cahu, Le Roy Soleil, 1931; the Sheik of Bornu in Clapperton's narrative, 1824

Railings highlight and isolate kings in 17th-century France and 19th-century Northern Nigeria.

# # #

The pages on Africa summarize research done in 1972-73 for a doctorate from New York's Columbia University, "Growth and Violence in the Precolonial Sudanic Belt," 1975. It included consulting the archives of Paris, Abidjan, Dakar, Bamako, Wagadugu and Accra, interviews in those towns and in Segu (Mali) and three months of field work in Djimini (Ivory Coast).  

It was published as Croissance économique et violence dans la zone soudanienne in "Guerres de lignages et guerres d'état en Afrique,"ed. J. Bazin et E. Terray, Paris, Éditions des Archives, 1982. 

# # #

Harald Wolff

The economy and its changes are the base, 

then come facts of different levels of importance, 

which stories illustrate. 

Facts divorced from their tangible contexts 

can illuminate anyway, 

but by suppressing the real issues often mislead.

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Next:

Why Africa?  

WHY AFRICA?

BEING A GUIDE IN PARIS LED ME TO CHOOSE FRANCE. FOR AFRICA, THE REASON GOES BACK TO A BABYSITTER

When my brother and I were small Cora Bailey, a Black woman from a neighboring town, would take care of us when our mother took a day off. She was a calm person whom we never thought of disobeying. She made superb lemon meringue pie and peanut butter cookies. Sometimes she brought her daughter, Doris, a teenager I admired because she could twirl.

When I was 15 Cora told me that Doris wasn't coming because she had had a baby, and then, that he had died. "She misses him," she said.

At about that time my mother's aunt, who worked in an organization called the Urban League in the town where Cora lived, told her that she was a prostitute. "We don't need you any more," Mom said. We never saw her again.  

If true, the little she earned from babysitting made sex work a classic solution, but there had never been anything untoward in the ten years that she took care of us. Cora had no say in losing the small job she had held for at decade and may not even have known the reason for being let go. 

Such unfairness led to my choosing the left and her memory explains being drawn to Black people and culture. It explains choosing African history as a field for research.

This Blook II is dedicated to Cora Bailey.

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Next,

Summary and contents

SUMMARY AND CONTENTS

 0. Contents

ECONOMIC GROWTH LEADS ARCHAIC AND RISING FORCES TO CLASH 

Setting change in the context of underlying economies is rare. Comparing civilizations from that point of view even more. Likening the legendary French cultures (plural since they evolve) with those of economically primitive Africa has to my knowledge never been done.

But French and African societies reacted in basically the same profit-oriented producers threatened their stability.   

• In France, Protestants' beliefs justify activities that increasingly threatened traditional controls (more about that here) and to force their conversion, Louis XIV billeted dragoons in their homes (in 1684), telling them they could do whatever they liked to them short of murder . 

The violence worked: most Protestants converted or left. The power of the State was  reinforced, with lasting traces. 

Dragonnade (detail) by Maurice Leloir in Le Roy Soleil by T. Cabu, 1931

The overwhelmingly Catholic population approved and the king's power was reinforced.

 

• In Dahomey,* palm-oil production was in the hands of a new producers. Their  European clients placed them outside royal control and as the Industrial Revolution increased demand their wealth grew. So did their capacity to strengthen the king. Then the British blocked the port to prevent slave-carrying ships from sailing (in 1853).

*The kingdom in modern Benin that controlled the Atlantic slave trade.

The ruler found himself with 300 captives that the oligarchy could not absorb and that were costly to maintain. The palm-oil producers would gladly buy them, but that would strengthen their labor force, wealth and power.

 To the applause of the crowd, the king sacrificed them instead.

Sacrifice humain au Dahomey en 1853, "Le Tour du Monde"

-- Analyzed by the late anthropologist Claude Meillassoux,

Ostentation, destruction, reproduction , "Économies et sociétés," 1968, II, 4, pp. 760-766.

The king sits under a parasol, a symbol of power, in the front row. The people massed behind him cheer each time the executioner raises a head.

Put aside philosophy, customs, organization etc. to see how the same —  underlying — causes have the same effects. 

Contents

 I. Hinterlands react to sudden growth

 II. Braking the search for gain

     2.1. One can't bring in the harvest alone

     2.2. When chiefs become kings

     2.3. The grandiose destruction of wealth

     2.4. Behavior whose logic escapes us

     2.5. Read history like a detective story or an explorer's account

     2.6. Were (are?) economic motivations recognized?

     2.7. The explosive effects of the search for profit

III. Containing growth: kings and ritualized warfare

     3.1. Maintaining the status quo, the function of kings

     3.2. Ritualized warfare, another brake on growth

IV. African cycles of growth, stability and conflict 

     4.1. Commerce strikes a communal society 

     4.2. Throughout the savannah, comparable change 

     4.3. Back to the hinterland: Violence reappears

     4.4. Commercial forces win, then crumble

     4.5. Another narrative

V. "The past is another country:" pre-industrial France

     5.1. Enigmas, often clues 

     5.2. Growth and the "Wars of Religion"

     5.3. Absolute Monarchy wins

     5.4. The Sun King, anti-capitalist? 

The end of brakes on gain —  almost

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Next,

Hinterlands react to sudden growth