IV.5. THE NEW PRODUCERS WIN, THEN CRUMBLE

 4.5. Producers win then crumble 

SLAVE RAIDERS SWEEP THE SAVANNAH

The end of the Atlantic slave trade* diminished the resources of traditional states, letting new classes whose wealth came from slave-based production blow them away and establish profit-oriented theocracies in their stead. 

*Between roughly 1850 and 1870.

Gone from the web

Savannah horsemen who resemble the raiders.

A transformation that 

colonial conquest deleted.

• Slavery and economic growth

• Adapting Islam to the need for labor

• Samory and the Senufo Judas

• Samory: French and Africans omit the raided

• Military conquest does not bring economic control

• Islam, sole topic to leave out the West (sort of)

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Next,

Slavery and economic growth

INTENSIVE SLAVERY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH

RAIDS BECOME MASSIVE AND EFFICIENT

Once meant to maintain the status quo, their goal becomes seizing land and labor for production.

• Rifles replace the deliberately poor trade guns.

 Muslim raid in the 1880's  by Harry Johnston 

• Populations are massively displaced... 

Arab slavers in East Africa (origin not named) / zoom

To provide labor for the huge new estates:

Second Journey to Discover the Sources of the Nile, 1861-1862, by John Speke (French ed.),  zoom

He [Sirboco] had the good luck of aiding the district chief who, attacked in his fortified village, was about to ignominiously surrender when he gave him the courage to push back the enemy. A grand concession of land was his reward and Sirboco cultivated his vast estate by bands of slaves chained together...

-- My version, shortened and bolded up.

Same source, color added (alamy)

# # #

Djimini production greatly expands during the brief rule of raider Samory Ture:
(1894-98)

• Kong, Kondodougou and Bokhala are destroyed, but other villages spring up or become larger: "Marabadiassa which replaced Kong after its destruction, is an important commercial center." 

 -- Abidjan archives, 1899

 Small letters, villages Samory destroys. Large ones, villages that are new or enlarged.

• Rice production expands, yams are introduced, markets grow from 2000 people to 5000 and the new center of Dabakala attracts 7000. 

-- Same source.

All interlocutors confirmed that growth.

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Next,
Adapting Islam to the need for labor 


Un incendie consuma d'un seul coup toutes ses marchandises et le réduisit [Sirboco] à la misère la plus complète. En revanche, il avait le bonheur de venir en aide au chef du district. Celui-ci, attaqué dans son village fortifié [...] allait se rendre ignominieusement, lorsque Sirboco, lui redonnant courage, le mit en état de repousser l'ennemi. Une grande concession de terres fut la recompense à cet exploit, et Sirboco, qui avait à craindre en retournant à la cîte à être emprisonné pour dettes, a préférer demeurer ici. Il cultive ses vastes propriétés au moyen de bandes d'esclaves enchaînés l'un à l'autre ...

ADAPTING ISLAM TO THE NEED FOR LABOR

PRODUCERS INTERPRET IT TO JUSTIFY MASSIVE SLAVE RAIDS AND INTENSE EXPLOITATION

They use it to impose private land ownership and Muslim terms come to mean: 

"Keffir:" evil doer, unbeliever — animist

"Jihad:" war against the keffirs — slave raids 

"Though a good man at heart..." a Toucouleur warlord attacks an animist village that has given his men water. When an explorer objects, he answers, "they are keffirs, with them all means are fair."  

-- Lt. de vaisseau Mage, Voyage dans la Sénégambie occidentale, 1868, p. 623. 

# # #

The reaction of a slave's descendant  

In Segu, the son of an animist slave owner agreed to speak to me about slavery, and invited the descendant of one of his father's captives to attend our conversation.

My host said that his father had treated his slaves well, and had even left one in charge of the family during an absence. But, he said, the Tukulor cared only for money and treated their slaves like animals.

I then asked,
"Weren't they ruined when the French freed the slaves?"
The visitor, who so far had said nothing, 
suddenly sat up and joyfully exclaimed, 

 "They even cried about it!" 

-- Dongougou Bouaré, Segu

 *      *      *

Next,

Samory and the Senufo Judas

SAMORY: FRENCH AND AFRICANS OMIT THE RAIDED

AS THE MOST EFFECTIVE OPPONENT OF COLONIAL CONQUEST, HE IS LEGENDARY TO BOTH SIDES 

Most French people learn about him in school and the emphasis on his resistance implies respect. 

 Capture and prisoner (records of 1898)  

For Africans that opposition makes him a hero:

 

The Intrepid Warrior who Defied French Colonisation / video: zoom (in French)

A statue: Please click and scroll down.

A  pop tune: "Run, run, Samori, the whites are coming, they have sworn to kill you." 

-- By Alpha Blondy, 1984; YouTube, 2013

Bori, bori Samory
Run, run Samory
Toubabouhou bikôh oko obi faga
The whites are coming, they have sworn to kill you

No one says the Senufo of Djimini recall him with terror. 

Zoom

Traces of combat after the passage of Samory, September 26, 1898. Probably after a fight with the French, but after a slave raid would not have been different.

The French and African legends

stress resistance to colonization only,

 leaving out raided populations

and the dynamic economy captive labor brought. 

*    *     *

Next,

Military conquest does not bring economic control

SAMORY AND THE SENUFO JUDAS

SAMORY TURE WAS A TEXTILE TRADER, SLAVE RAIDER, EMPIRE BUILDER AND OPPONENT OF THE FRENCH  

When they push him back from a first empire in what is now Senegal and Mali, he establishes another in Djimini (in 1894-1898). 

Adapted from African History Extra in "The Empire of Samori Ture on the Eve of Colonisation" by Isaac Samuel / zoom

The changes that have taken place in the 50 years since a cowrie currency has been allowed lead to a fifth column of grain-producing, slave-owning "Sonnangui." 

They are "indigenous people [...] who have adopted the language the customs, the ways and the external aspects of the Dyulas' religion while keeping the Senufo tattoos [...]

They have neither the elevation of ideas nor the education of the Dyula, but having opened their arms and land to Samory, have profited from the victor's friendship to exploit the Senufo, toward whom they display an arrogance and a despotism that the  Dyula ignore."

-- Abidjan archives

Today they are indistinguishable from other Senufo, but they are remembered for a "curious" Islam that brings them closer to the conquerors and separates them from their animist slaves.

# # #

The Senufo remember a traitor, Pelegayan, "who wanted to be king, but did not have the right." 

He grows millet for the new market of Foumbolo on Samory's route. When the Djimini forces stop Samory near that site Pelegayan gets up at night, goes to Samory and says,

-- "Don't be discouraged, you'll win this battle. 

-- How?

-- Oh, don't worry, I am a child of this country and I will show you its secrets.

-- You tell me not to be discouraged, but I've been here for three months and I'm not getting anywhere. 

-- Oh, don't worry, I am a child of this country, I know the secrets, you will win out." 

"He gives the secrets

and tells his army not to load its guns.

-- Serisio Coulibali

*    *    *
Samory: French and Africans omit the raided

MILITARY CONQUEST DOES NOT BRING ECONOMIC CONTROL

THE POWER OF LOCAL SLAVE-BASED PRODUCTION BLOCKS SALES OF WESTERN GOODS  

Take textiles, the most important export of the manufacturers who back conquest: Why should locals substitute flimsy manufactured cloth when they could have for this...

Embroidery, a royal ornamentation.

Or this:

Alamy photos: zoom 

 

Haussa weaving 

 

# # #

The colonial powers never do 

take over the African market,

which goes to the Dutch with the

 dramatic prints that Ghanaian soldiers

in Indonesia bring home. 

*     *     *

Next,

Slaves freed, economies collapse

WHEN THE SLAVES ARE FREED, THE PRODUCERS' ECONOMIES COLLAPSE

AS SOON AS THEIR MILITARY CONTROL IS ASSURED THE CONQUERERS FREE THE SLAVES, WHICH PROVOKES EXODUS AND COLLAPSE 

A melancholy report describes them: 

The 40-page narrative by the local administrator begins with the Ivory Coast governor announcing emancipation in two northern centers with large slave populations. He travels from the coast during the rainy season, which shows that the order comes from Paris.

At first slaves do not believe that they are free, but when a few slip away and nothing happens, the exodus snowballs. Almost all the captives leave, some to villages that often no longer exist, others with no idea where to go.

The economy of the administrator's entire district collapses within weeks.

He concludes by doubting that their lives will be better, and by sadly observing the instant disintegration of societies that had flourished. *

-- Rapport du Capitaine Schiffer, October 1907, Dabakala archives

*This is the report that Monsieur Texier, the sous-préfet of Dabakala, found in the archives and let me read.

MUST FIND THE COPY.

The producers must work the fields themselves. Their descendants still do.

# # #

In all but the most remote of the conquered regions,
that change is complete by about 1907.

Then colonial economies can be imposed. 


*     *     *

Next,

Islam, sole non-Western subject

ISLAM, SOLE TOPIC TO LEAVE OUT THE WEST?

THE 19TH-CENTURY THEOCRACIES AND THEIR ISLAM MAY SEEM AN EXCEPTION TO THE EMPHASIS ON THE WEST

But historians can choose animism, which remains powerful and  as a State religion or to unite disoriented communities changed many times...

This photo and that below from Rois d'Afrique by Daniel Lainé, Paris (ed. Arthaud), 1991.

Or Islam, which also underwent mutations, from the "lax" beliefs and behavior of syncretism to theocrats' fervent adaptations.

Yet not only are there many studies of African Islam and relatively few of animism, but the emphasis is on the philosophy of leaders who wished to "purify" it, that is, to make it as un-African as possible. In fact, all the groups that joined the millenarist movements that spread Islam throughout the 19th-century savannah interpreted it in their own ways, and leaders innovated when useful: Take Amadu Tall's 800 wives and proclamation of Segu as a pilgrimage site equal to Mecca. 

What explains that fascination with the proclamations of orthodoxy? Is it that Islam seems an alternative to the beliefs of the industrialized world, a replacement that is powerful, exotic and socially conservative? 

Does that attention also give a kind of respectability to Africans, by associating them with elites that are urban, commercial, literate —  and white?   

*     *     * 

Next,
Africans take center stage