INTENSIVE SLAVE RAIDING IN THE COLONIAL INTERSTICE: HAMMAN YAJI AND THE MANDARA MOUNTAINS (NORTH CAMEROON AND NORTH-EASTERN NIGERIA)

2012 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
WALTER E. A. VAN BEEK
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Border Region ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
General Situation ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Military Technology ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
History Of

ABSTRACTA rare document, the diary of a slave raider, offers a unique view into the sociopolitical situation at the turn of the nineteenth century in the colonial backwater of North Cameroon. The Fulbe chief in question, Hamman Yaji, not only kept a diary, but was by far the most notorious slave raider of the Mandara Mountains. This article supplements the data from his diary with oral histories and archival sources to follow the dynamics of the intense slave raiding he engaged in. This frenzy of slaving occurred in a ‘colonial interstice’ characterized by competition between three colonial powers – the British, the Germans and the French, resilient governing structures in a region poorly controlled by colonial powers, and the unclear boundaries of the Mandara Mountains. The dynamics of military technology and the economics of this ‘uncommon market’ in slaves form additional factors in this episode in the history of slavery in Africa. These factors account for the general situation of insecurity due to slave raiding in the area, to which Hamman Yaji was an exceptionally atrocious contributor. In the end a religious movement, Mahdism, stimulated the consolidation of colonial power, ending Yaji's regime, which in all its brutality provides surprising insight in the early colonial situation in this border region between Nigeria and Cameroon.

Indigenous Written Sources for the History of Bonny

1989 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 185-196
Author(s):  
Susan M. Hargreaves
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Niger Delta ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Additional Material ◽  
Court Records ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
History Of ◽  
Similar Character ◽  
Written Sources

It is well known that indigenous contemporary written documentation exists for the precolonial and early colonial history of some of the coastal societies of South-Eastern Nigeria. The best known example is Old Calabar, for which there exists most notably the diary of Antera Duke, covering the years 1785-88, a document brought from Old Calabar to Britain already during the nineteenth century. More recently John Latham has discovered additional material of a similar character still preserved locally in Old Calabar, principally the Black Davis House Book (containing material dating from the 1830s onwards), the papers of Coco Bassey (including diaries covering the years 1878-89), and the papers of E. O. Offiong (comprising trade ledgers, court records, and letter books relating to the period 1885-1907). In the Niger Delta S. J. S. Cookey, for his biography of King Jaja of Opobo, was able to use contemporary documents in Jaja's own papers, including correspondence from the late 1860s onwards. In the case of the neighboring community of Bonny (from which Jaja seceded to found Opobo after a civil war in 1869), while earlier historians have alluded to the existence of indigenous written documentation, they have done so only in very general terms and without any indication of the quantity or nature of this material.

Contradictions in Creating a Jihadi Capital: Sokoto in the Nineteenth Century and Its Legacy

2013 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Murray Last
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Northern Nigeria ◽  
Field Site ◽  
Rural Town ◽  
Political Center ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sokoto Caliphate ◽  
A Site ◽  
The U.S

Abstract:The Sokoto caliphate in nineteenth-century northern Nigeria was an astonishing episode in the history of Africa: a huge, prosperous polity that created unity where none had existed before. Yet today its history is underexplored, sometimes ignored or even disparaged, both within Nigeria and in Europe and the U.S. Yet that history is extraordinary. Sokoto town was, and still is, an anomaly within Hausaland; built speedily on a “green-field” site as both a trading and a political center for the caliphate, it is a site of pilgrimage that to this day remains a rural town with no monumental buildings or fine edifices. As a by-product of a religious movement (jihad), Sokoto thus represents many of the dilemmas that faced and still face radically reforming Islamic groups if they expand rapidly and go to war. Thus Sokoto history remains deeply significant for modern Nigeria.

scholarly journals THE QUESTION OF THE PRECONDITIONS OF THE STRUGGLE OF THE MOUNTAINEERS OF THE NORTH-EASTERN CAUCASUS IN THE 20 - 50 YEARS OF THE XIX CENTURY

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 55-65
Author(s):  
M R Hasanov
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Arable Land ◽  
The Other ◽  
Mountain Communities ◽  
The North ◽  
Colonial Policy ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
History Of ◽  
Xix Century

The Article examines the preconditions of the struggle of the mountaineers Sevres-Eastern Caucasus in the 20-50-ies of the XIX century On the basis of analysis of sources and existing literature reveals the principal causes of the struggle of the mountaineers against the colonial policy of tsarism and the local rulers. It stresses that the dissatisfaction of the highlanders was caused by construction on arable land fortresses, device the so-called fortified lines with the Cossack settlements, permanent mobilization of the local population to build roads, fortresses, requirements, burdensome taxes and the heavy duties and activities assigned to mountain communities and possession of the king's officers and the commandant of managers to intervene in the internal life of the highlanders. The article talks about the brutal repression used by the Royal officials in relation to the unhappy mountaineers - the burning of entire villages, destruction of crops and grain reserves, the destruction of the gardens - all this aroused the indignation of the mountaineers and led to the struggle against tsarist oppression and local feudal lords. The article is subjected to criticism the concept of M. M. Bliev, if the mountaineers lived by raids on their neighbors. His thesis is that in the first half of the nineteenth century the mountaineers have experienced a period of expansion of tribal relations, not only clarifies the issue of their struggle in the 20-50 years of the XIX century, but also confuses the history of the peoples of the region. The publication highlights how local authorities based on the Royal arms, brutally oppressed rank and file of the highlanders, were taken from their last horse or bull, the last under the grain in the tax bill. The article presents material about the ill-treatment of Aslan-Khan Kyurinsky and the other lords with their subordinates. The feudal lords levied a population with taxes and duties at its discretion, enriched by direct robbery. Therefore, according to the article, the idea of anti-colonial protest in the minds of the highlanders were merged with the anti-feudal aspirations.

ANXIETIES OF DISTANCE: CODIF ICATION IN EARLY COLONIAL BENGAL

2007 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
JON E. WILSON
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Continuous Flow ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Property Law ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of

Historians of political thought tend to emphasize the continuous flow and transmission of concepts from one generation to the next, and from one place to another. Historians of Indian ideas suggest that India was governed with concepts imported from Europe. This article argues instead that the sense of rupture that British officials experienced, from both the intellectual history of Britain and Indian society, played a significant role in forming colonial political culture. It examines the practice of “Hindu” property law in late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Bengal. It suggests that the attempt to textualize and codify law in the 1810s and 1820s emerged from British doubts about their ability to construct viable forms of rule on the basis of existing intellectual and institutional traditions. The abstract and seemingly “utilitarian” tone of colonial political discourse was a practical response to British anxieties about their distance from Indian society. It was not a result of the “influence” of a particular school of British thinkers.

Karnu's Message and the ‘War of the Hoe Handle’: Interpreting a Central African resistance movement

Africa ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Burnham ◽  
Thomas Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Central African Republic ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
East Central ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
History Of ◽  
Resistance Movement

IntroductionIn writing the history of the Gbaya-speaking peoples, a group of some half-million population inhabiting east-central Cameroon and the western third of the Central African Republic, we are seldom able to recount the careers of famous individuals, and genealogical charters which link present leaders with long-dead heroes are uncommon. For the most part, in the pre-colonial and early colonial periods, the Gbaya were not organized politically at a level greater than very localised, clan-based groupings, and political leadership was more a matter of competition for short-lived political powers among locally influential men than of formally institutionalised chieftaincy (see Burnham, 1980a: 19 et seq.). However, in some cases during the late pre-colonial period, particularly in the westernmost parts of the Gbaya region, certain leaders began to consolidate their positions as a result of political and economic relations with the neighbouring Fulbe states of Adamawa and their associated Hausa and Kanuri traders (Burnham, 1980b). The names of men like Dogo Lokoti, Bafio and Mbartua (Bertoua) then occasionally figure in the oral histories and colonial documents, and we obtain glimpses of their personalities and careers. It is all the more striking, therefore, when we encounter a Gbaya figure who stands out clearly in the historical record. Without a doubt, Karnu, the inspiration behind the movement that has been called the Karnu Rebellion or the ‘War of the Hoe Handle’ in the Gbaya language, is the most widely known name in Gbaya history.

Accumulation, wealth and belief in Asante history: I. To the close of the nineteenth century

Africa ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. C. McCaskie
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
West African ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
History Of ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphThe present article is intended as the first of two contributions to the economic and social– but above all to the intellectual– history of the West African forest kingdom of Asante or Ashanti (now located in the Republic of Ghana). Both papers will attempt to pull together and to situate in a ‘mentalist’ framework a number of recent and confessedly disparate research findings concerning a cluster of concepts, ideas and beliefs that, merely for the sake of brevity at this point, I will assign simply to the embracing ‘neutral’ rubric of general transformations in the ideology (or ideologies) of wealth. The first article will be concerned with developments in Asante society up to the close of the nineteenth century (defined here interpretatively rather than in strictly chronological terms); its successor will concentrate on a highly detailed examination of a sequence of crucially telling events in the early colonial period, and upon selected developments thereafter in the twentieth century. The articles are designed and intended to be read sequentially; the first, it is hoped, will assist in making sense of the significantly denser context (and more detailed content) of the second.

Firearms in the Central Sudan: A Revaluation

1972 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 591-607 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph P. Smaldone
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Structure ◽  
Military Technology ◽  
Military Organization ◽  
Relative Ease ◽  
Central Sudan ◽  
History Of ◽  
Internal Change ◽  
Independent Existence

The recent thesis propounded by Fisher and Rowland regarding the role of firearms in the Central Sudan requires considerable modification. While one must concede that the observable effects of firearms in the nineteenth century were not profound, this statement must be qualified to account for the incipient revolution in military technology, army organization, and political structure that occurred in many of the Central Sudanese states in the last quarter of the century. The relative ease with which European imperial powers conquered these states has tended to obscure from historians the dynamics of internal change that became manifest during the last decades of their independent existence.It is clear from the evidence presented in this article that the increasing use of firearms intensified the tendencies toward bureaucratization and the centralization of power in the states of the Central Sudan. The creation of regular standing armies, the formation of slave musketeer units commanded by slave officers, and the progressive devaluation of feudal institutions in favour of bureaucratized political and military structures, were the distinguishing characteristics of this period. Although history is irreversible, it is interesting to ponder the possible alternative outcomes of this nascent revolution. Its directions were clear, its destination unknown. In this article we have argued that these developments in politico-military organization did in fact represent a new departure which, if permitted to run its course, would have radically affected the subsequent history of the Central Sudan. It is our contention that the Fisher-Rowland thesis underestimates and misinterprets the nature of these changes.

Military Mortality in Tropical Asia: British Troops in Tenasserim, 1827–36

1999 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-37
Author(s):  
Peter Coclanis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Demographic History ◽  
Demographic Analysis ◽  
Basic Information ◽  
Tropical Asia ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Fundamental Categories

The demographic history of Southeast Asia remains largely uncharted. This is particularly true of mainland Southeast Asia prior to the commencement of the era of high imperialism in the second half of the nineteenth century. To be sure, in recent years scholars have begun to explore certain aspects of the mainland's demographic history during the precolonial and early colonial periods. Nonetheless, we still lack basic information on fertility, mortality, and migration — the three fundamental categories in demographic analysis — for most populations on most parts of the mainland prior to 1850.

A History of the Jewish Community of Tállya and of Their Synagogue

2020 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-179
Author(s):  
Júlia Csejdy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Religious Orientation ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
East European ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
History Of ◽  
Composition I ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractIn the study I tried to reconstruct the history of the Jewish community of Tállya and their synagogue, for up to now neither the community, nor the art historically important Torah ark has received due attention. After the Holocaust very few survivors came back to Tállya – a settlement in Tokaj-Hegyalja, a region of north-eastern Hungary – and not a single member of the former Orthodox congregation lives there today. The community built their third place of worship in the mid-nineteenth century, pulled down in 1964. The reasons why I found it important to map the socio-cultural and religious environment in more detail are commemorative and research methodological. The Israelite community enjoyed autonomy in choosing their rabbi and arranging all other domestic matters, and consequently, their taste, religious orientation, acculturation influenced the shaping of their synagogue building, the style of its furnishing and ritual objects. For lack of congregational documents, many kinds of sources (e.g. newspaper articles, recollections, biographies of rabbis, municipal documents) had to be interpreted within the context offered by the historical elaborations of the age. It was indispensable to shed light on the system of relations between Hasidism of growing influence from the early nineteenth century and traditional Orthodoxy, particularly because the tendencies of secession also appeared in the Tállya community, and the iconography of the Torah ark of their synagogue is most closely related to the carved Torah arks of East European Hasidic communities (in Poland, Galicia, Moldavia, etc.). According to archival sources the community leaders of Tállya could assert their wish to have the woodcarver create symbolic motifs on the ark despite the rabbi’s disapproval. As the direct antecedent to the composition I identified the masonry Torah ark of Mád, but the inventive, singular style of the carvings bears no kinship with the mentioned prototypes or the altars in churches in the vicinity. At the end of the paper I sum up the events that led to the demolition of the synagogue and the perishing of its interior furniture, relying on documents in the Hungarian Jewish Museum and the Monument Documentation Centre.

Ninteenth-Century Reform in Ottoman Libya

1984 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Reform Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
Ninteenth Century

The history of political change in Libya during the nineteenth century has been obscured by subsequent events in the Middle East and North Africa. A relatively unimportant province of the Ottoman Empire, it went to the least important European colonial power in the region – Italy – and the Italian tenure destroyed much of the legacy of Ottoman reform. Even contemporary observers in the nineteenth century usually viewed the province through a prism whose primary focus was elsewhere, leaving distorted and partial accounts of the changes wrought by the Ottoman administration. This lacuna in the literature has hindered comprehensive assessment of the Ottoman reform period and, perhaps as seriously, distorted interpretation of Libya's subsequent political history.

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