4.3.3. AN UPHEAVAL, KOLA AND ROUTES TO THE FOREST EDGE

TRADERS FROM THE INCREASINGLY COMMERCIAL S SAHARAN FRINGE SEEK DIRECT ACCESS TO KOLAS

They make the color for dyes and chewed, lessen thirst and fatigue and bring a light euphoria. 

Zoom

• Songhay falls. Paths open. Merchants establish colonies along them, whose chiefs forbid going farther. One of those centers is  Kong:

Adapted from a Google map

• Toward 1700, a "mad" ruler (Lasari Gombele), shoots into the market and seizes the wares people leave behind as they flee. A kola trader from the Niger (Mallam Boro), and a local merchant  (Seku Wattara) unite to overthrow him.*

*Information given by Karamoko Wattara, the canton chief, and Bassidi Watara, farmer, May 4 and 6 1973. 

Like the Misakullah story, this one shows conflict 

between old interests and new ones that they cannot contain.

• The names reveal a struggle between an animist king and Muslims, who are traders by definition.

• The story expresses a pattern to which return: Authorities use violence against rising interests, conflict erupts, the new men win. The contested barrier to profit, here the closure of routes to the south, disappears. Commerce expands. A new cycle begins.

*    *

The victory of long distance traders — Mallam Boro — and local producers — Seku Wattara — opens the routes to the south. Kong grows, becoming a center for commerce and Islam. Traders set up small centers on the forest's fringe.*

*A report in the Abidjan archives dates the foundation of the Grumania settlement toward 1740, and Djimini oral tradition places another, Satala-Sokura, at about the same time. (Aubin, p. 432).

Du Niger au Golfe de Guinée par le pays de Kong et le Mossi (1887-89) by captain Louis Gustave Binger, 1892 / zoom

"View of Kong, capital of the Empire of Kong"

Captain Binger

A Kong mosque

Traders set up small centers on the forest's fringe.*

*A report in the Abidjan archives dates the foundation of the Grumania settlement toward 1740, and Djimini oral tradition places another, Satala-Sokura, at about the same time. (Aubin, p. 432).

At the start of the 18th century

 the Kong revolution lets 

traders go beyond it to Djimini. 

*      *      * 

Next,
4.3.4.

Classless communities that elders lead