Serawoollies, Tillibunkas and Strange Farmers: the Development of Migrant Groundnut Farming along the Gambia River, 1848–95

1980 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken Swindell
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
The Gambia ◽  
Local Rule ◽  
Population Densities ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Individual Host ◽  
Migrant Farmers ◽  
Labour Time

Local and long-distance labour migrants were an important element in commercial groundnut farming along the Gambia river during the mid-nineteenth century, well before colonial partition. Seasonal and periodic circulation of migrant farmers had prior equivalents in the movements of traders across the Western Sudan, especially those associated with slaving. Traders were important in the development of groundnut cultivation and the initiation of migrant farming, when they realized the groundnut trade could be a valuable replacement for the abolished slave trade. In the pre-colonial era migrant farmers payed ‘custom’ to local rule for the land they farmed. This arrangement eventually gave way to a system of shared labour-time with individual host farmers in return for land. This change was accelerated by the abolition and decline in domestic slavery, which provided a new pattern for the Strange Farmer system. Thus the mobility of population in the Western Sudan, together with the evolution of the Strange Farmer system, provided vital marginal inputs of labour in an area of low population densities and facilitated the development of groundnut farming during the era of legitimate trade.

The growth of trade among the Igbo before 1880

1972 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Northrup
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Economic Institutions ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Regional Trade ◽  
Early Date ◽  
South Eastern ◽  
Niger River ◽  
Trading Networks

The peoples of south-eastern Nigeria have been involved in trade for as long as there are any records. The archaeological sites at Igbo-Ukwu and other evidence reveal long distance trade in metal and beads, as well as regional trade in salt, cloth, and beads at an early date. The lower Niger River and its Delta featured prominently in this early trade, and evidence is offered to suggest a continuity in the basic modes of trade on the lower Niger from c. A.D. 1500 to the mid-nineteenth century. An attempt to sketch the basic economic institutions of the Igbo hinterland before the height of the slave trade stresses regional trading networks in salt, cloth, and metal, the use of currencies, and a nexus of religious and economic institutions and persons. It is argued that while the growth of the slave trade appears to have been handled without major changes in the overall patterns of trade along the lower Niger, in the Igbo hinterland a new marketing ‘grid’, dominated by the Arochuku traders, was created using the pre-existent regional trading networks and religious values as a base.

Madagascar and the Slave Trade, 1810–1895

1981 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gwyn Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Western Indian Ocean ◽  
East African ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Trade Networks ◽  
African Slaves ◽  
Increasing Demand ◽  
The One

The distinguishing feature of the Malagasy slave trade in the nineteenth century was the co-existence of two competitive slave networks, the one feeding Malagasy slaves to meet the demand of long-distance and regional markets in the western Indian Ocean, and the other channelling Malagasy war captives and East African slaves on to the markets of Imerina. The export of slaves from Madagascar had long existed, but the import of slaves was a new and distinctly nineteenth-century phenomenon, the result of the rise of the Merina empire, whose economy was based on a huge, unremunerated and servile labour force. As the empire expanded, so its labour requirements grew, to conflict sharply with the increasing demand for labour on the neighbouring plantation islands as they shifted over to the production of sugar. Creole merchants found themselves obliged to find alternative labour supplies, and from the 1830s they were moving rapidly down the west coast of Madagascar, where they purchased slaves from chiefs independent of Merina control. Until the outbreak of the Franco-Merina war of 1882–5, the slave-trade networks remained remarkably stable, despite local rivalries. This was due largely to the presence of the Arab Antalaotra, an experienced body of middlemen, and the Indian Karany who supplied the capital for the trade. The war effectively broke the power of the Merina regime, and as the imperial economy crumbled, so security of trade collapsed across the island. Though the disruption of legitimate commerce initially spurred the slave trade, it also strengthened creole calls for French intervention. This occurred in 1895, and the following year the French authorities abolished slavery in Madagascar. This, and the effective military occupation of the island by the French, reduced the Malagasy slave trade to a trickle by the first years of the twentieth century.

The Establishment of Long-Distance Trade Between Sierra Leone and its Hinterland, 1787–1821

1990 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Winston McGowan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Intermediate States ◽  
Marked Decline ◽  
Atlantic Slave Trade

One of the principal objectives of foreign settlements in nineteenth-century West Africa was the establishment of extensive regular trade with Africans, especially residents of the distant, fabled interior. The attainment of this goal, however, proved very difficult. The most spectacular success was achieved by the British settlement at Sierra Leone, which in the early 1820s managed to establish substantial regular trade with the distant hinterland. Its early efforts to achieve this objective, however, were unsuccessful. Until 1818 the development of long-distance trade with the hinterland was impeded by the desultory nature of such efforts, Sierra Leone's opposition to slave trading, competition from established coastal marts, obstructions caused by intermediate states and peoples, and the weaknesses and limitations of the Colony's policy towards commerce and the interior. By 1821, however, the marked decline of the Atlantic slave trade in the neighbourhood of Sierra Leone, the active co-operation of Futa Jallon and Segu, two major trading states in the hinterland, and certain other important developments in the Colony and the interior, combined to establish such trade on a regular basis.

Fluctuations in Mortality in the Last Half Century of the Transatlantic Slave Trade

1989 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Eltis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Preliminary Analysis ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Middle Passage ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Population Movements ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade ◽  
Board Ship ◽  
Complex Dataset

The slave trade, death, and misery were inseparable long before abolitionist writers took up the slave trade as a subject in the late eighteenth century. Throughout the historiography there has been widespread recognition that Africans entering the trade died not only during the middle passage but during the process of enslavement and travel in the interior, on the African littoral awaiting shipment, and after arrival in the Americas. Europeans directly involved in the traffic were at risk in the last three of these four phases of transition between life in Africa and life in the Americas, and tended to die at rates comparable to their human cargoes. In the shipboard phase, and probably also in other stages of the journey, mortality in the slave trade normally exceeded that in other long-distance population movements. In the nineteenth century this differential widened as rates on other long-distance routes fell (Cohn, 1984; Eltis, 1984; Grubb, 1987; Klein, 1978; McDonald and Shlomowitz, 1989, forthcoming). To date, most explanations have focused on morbidity and mortality on board ship; data on the preembarkation phases are no more available to us today than to the abolitionists 150 years ago. For shipboard mortality, overcrowding on the ship, psychic shock, and violence have not fared well as explanations in the work of the last two decades, although the interplay between the first two and resistance to disease suggests further consideration. The present study focuses on shipboard mortality, but it is based on a large and complex dataset. It begins with a discussion and preliminary analysis of the nineteenth-century data. This is followed by a review of the various hypotheses on mortality in the slave trade.

Trade, State, and Society Among the Yao in the Nineteenth Century

1969 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward A. Alpers
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
State And Society ◽  
Political Units ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Way

Through their deep involvement in the long-distance trade of eastern central Africa, the Yao were increasingly exposed to the impact of Swahili traders and their culture. During the nineteenth century the increased volume of trade, and the ever growing importance of slaves in that trade, combined to produce a marked growth in the scale of Yao political units. This paper begins by outlining the growth of Yao trade before the nineteenth century. It then considers the nature of Yao political organization and the way in which the slave trade, in particular, facilitated the rise of large territorial chiefdoms. The last section deals with related social and cultural changes, including the growth of towns and the introduction of Islam.

Landscape and Ecology

2020 ◽  
pp. 342-368
Author(s):  
Daniel M. Grimley
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Musical Thought ◽  
The Social ◽  
Representational Practice ◽  
Raymond Williams ◽  
The City ◽  
Privileged Site

Images of landscape lie at the heart of nineteenth-century musical thought. From frozen winter fields, mountain echoes, distant horn calls, and the sound of the wind moving among the pines, landscape was a vivid representational practice, a creative resource, and a privileged site for immersion, gothic horror, and the Romantic sublime. As Raymond Williams observed, however, the nineteenth century also witnessed an unforeseen transformation of artistic responses to landscape, which paralleled the social and cultural transformation of the country and the city under processes of intense industrialization and economic development. This chapter attends to several musical landscapes, from the Beethovenian “Pastoral” to Delius’s colonial-era evocation of an exoticized American idyll, as a means of mapping nineteenth-century music’s obsession with the idea of landscape and place. Distance recurs repeatedly as a form of subjective presence and through paradoxical connections with proximity and intimacy.

PAWNSHIP, DEBT, AND ‘FREEDOM’ IN ATLANTIC AFRICA DURING THE ERA OF THE SLAVE TRADE: A REASSESSMENT

2014 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul E. Lovejoy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Guinea Coast ◽  
Congo River

AbstractA reassessment of the institution of pawnship in Africa for the period from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century tightens the reference to situations in which individuals were held as collateral for debts that had been incurred by others, usually relatives. Contrary to the assumptions of some scholars, pawnship was not related to poverty and enslavement for debt but rather to commercial liquidity and the mechanisms by which funds were acquired to promote trade or to cover the expenses of funerals, weddings, and religious obligations. A distinction is made, therefore, between enslavement for debt and pawnship. It is demonstrated that pawnship characterized trade with European and American ships in many parts of Atlantic Africa, but not everywhere. While pawnship was common north of the Congo River, at Gabon, Cameroon, Calabar, the interior of the Bights of Biafra and Benin, the Gold Coast, and the upper Guinea coast, it was illegal in most of Muslim Africa and the Portuguese colony of Angola, while it was not used in commercial dealings with Europeans at Bonny, Ouidah, and other places.

scholarly journals CYCLICAL HISTORY IN THE GAMBIA/CASAMANCE BORDERLANDS: REFUGE, SETTLEMENT AND ISLAM FROM c. 1880 TO THE PRESENT

2007 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
PAUL NUGENT
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Gambia ◽  
Hard Work ◽  
Border Zone ◽  
The Creation

ABSTRACTThis article begins with a quotation from a local informant highlighting a perception in the Gambia/Casamance borderlands that there is a pattern linking the violence of the later nineteenth century with more recent troubles. It argues that there is some merit in this thesis, which is encapsulated in a concatenation of events: systematic raiding by Fodé Sylla led to the creation of a relatively depopulated colonial border zone which was later filled by Jola immigrants from Buluf to the southeast. In the perception of some, it is these immigrants who attracted the MFDC rebels. Mandinkas and Jolas of Fogny Jabankunda and Narang, and Karoninkas from the islands of Karone have therefore been largely unreceptive to appeals to Casamance nationalism. The article also argues that there are more twisted historical connections. Whereas in the later nineteenth century, the Jolas associated Islam with violent enslavement, they later converted en masse. Their attitude towards Fodé Sylla remained negative, whilst the Mauritanian marabout, Cheikh Mahfoudz, was credited with the introduction of a pacific form of Islam that valorized hard work and legitimated physical migration. This legacy has posed a further barrier to militant nationalism. Islam and violence remain linked, but the signs have been reversed.

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