Commercial Sectors in the Economy of the Nineteenth-Century Central Sudan: The Trans-Saharan Trade and the Desert-Side Salt Trade

1984 ◽  
pp. 85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul E. Lovejoy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Central Sudan ◽  
Salt Trade

scholarly journals The British Salt Trade in the Nineteenth Century

1901 ◽  
Vol 11 (43) ◽  
pp. 421 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. M. Fells
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Salt Trade

A West African Cavalry State: the Kingdom of Oyo

1975 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Law
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Economic Burden ◽  
West African ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Considerable Evidence ◽  
Central Sudan ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Military

Following an earlier article in this Journal, by Humphrey Fisher, dealing with the role of the horse in the Central Sudan, this article considers the role of cavalry in the kingdom of Oyo. It is suggested that the use of cavalry may have been adopted by Oyo during the sixteenth century. Oyo never became self-sufficient in horses, but remained dependent for its horses upon importation from the Central Sudan, while local mortality from trypanosomiasis was considerable. Evidence relating to the operations of Oyo armies supports the view that cavalry was of substantial military value, while at the same time illustrating the limitations of the military efficacy of cavalry. The acquisition and maintenance of large numbers of horses represented a considerable economic burden for Oyo, and the high cost of maintaining a large cavalry force may have inhibited the establishment of a royal autocracy in Oyo. The decline of the cavalry strength of Oyo in the early nineteenth century was due, it is suggested, to economic difficulties.

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.

Frontier Disputes and Problems of Legitimation: Sokoto–Masina Relations 1817–1837

1976 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 497-514 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. C. Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
West African ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Central Sudan ◽  
Internal Politics ◽  
The Subject

The nature of relations between the neighbouring West African caliphates of Sokoto and Hamdullahi in the early nineteenth century has been the subject of speculation by students of the western and central Sudan from the time of Barth's visit to the area in the mid-nineteenth century. Now, working from several new manuscript finds and the evidence built up by scholars who have studied the two caliphates in detail, a tentative reconstruction of relations between the states in the crucial period 1817–37 is possible. What emerges is evidence of an intricate balance between the two caliphates and their mutually acknowledged spiritual advisers from the Kunta confederation in the Azaouad in which economic and strategic priorities as well as internal politics and theological matters all seem to play a role in determining the nature of relations between Hamdullahi and Sokoto.

The Volta River Salt Trade: the Survival of an Indigenous Industry

1981 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. B. Sutton
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Commercial Production ◽  
Market Forces ◽  
Traditional Methods ◽  
Motor Transport ◽  
Local Sources ◽  
Salt Trade

Salt has been produced in Ghana since at least the sixteenth century at many coastal sites. By the nineteenth century commercial production was concentrated in the lagoons east of Accra, and especially at Songor Lagoon just west of Ada. Here the Ada Manche and the priesthood controlled production. Much salt consumed in Asante and further north came from Accra, Ningo and Songor, and an increasing proportion went up the Volta River by canoe. The share of salt trade in the hands of the Ada traders is reflected in their virtual monopoly of the river traffic and their settlement in trading communities along the river. The British attempted to regulate and tax the trade, but market forces were more important in determining price. Salt from Ada was generally preferred to imported salt and to salt from other local sources, but the alternative of imported salt helped regulate the local prices. The importance of Daboya as a source of salt seems to have been somewhat exaggerated. Salt from Ada continued to predominate in much of Ghana in the twentieth century, but the river traffic was gradually replaced by motor transport, and the hold of the Adas on the distributive network broken. Salt continued to be produced by traditional methods at Songor until quite recently. It is still produced by traditional means for a fairly wide sale at Keta Lagoon, east of the Volta.

Imperial Reach Versus Institutional Grasp: Superstates of The West and Central African Sudan in Comparative Perspective

2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 509-541 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Austen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Agricultural Production ◽  
Major Goal ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
The West ◽  
Occupational Groups ◽  
Central Sudan ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
History Of

AbstractThe history of five states in the African West and Central Sudan—Songhay, Borno, Segu, Samory and the Sokoto Caliphate—is analyzed for a period from ca. 1500 to ca. 1900. Recent scholarship has stressed the non-territorial nature of these “states without maps”, an issue that needs to be dealt in a more nuanced manner, given the efforts by local regimes to control both multiple urban centers of commerce and rural zones of agricultural production as well as maintaining regular systems of taxation. None of these states used writing or salary payments to maintain an effective bureaucracy, basing their power instead upon various combinations of lineages with claims to ruling or aristocratic status, associations of young unmarried male initiates, segregated occupational groups (bards, smiths and fisher folk) and finally, slaves. Warfare was the main occupation of Sudanic empires but despite the introduction of firearms in the late 1500s, weapons and tactics did not undergo a “gunpowder revolution,” continuing instead to center around horses and armor. Sudanic rulers controlled access to these resources more easily than European monarchs and they also proved effective in the major goal of campaigns: not territorial competition with other states but rather raiding for slaves. Islam played an increasing role in general life and politics of Sudanic Africa (the most powerful of these empires, Sokoto, was a nineteenth-century jihadist state). However, the potential that such a scriptural faith offered for transforming administration, law and commercial life was not fully realized by the time the region came under European rule and thus moved from its early modern to modern history.

Beyond Diversity: Women, Scarification, and Yoruba Identity

2008 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 347-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olatunji Ojo
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Christian Missions ◽  
Central Sudan ◽  
The People ◽  
Bold Line ◽  
Mother And Daughter ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Ethnic Wars

On 18 March 1898 Okolu, an Ijesa man, accused Otunba of Italemo ward, Ondo of seizing and enslaving his sister Osun and his niece. Both mother and daughter, enslaved by the Ikale in 1894, had fled from their master in 1895, but as they headed toward Ilesa, the accused seized them. Osun claimed the accused forced her to become his wife, “hoe a farm,” and marked her daughter's face with one deep, bold line on each cheek. Otunba denied the slavery charge, claiming he only “rescued [Osun] from Soba who was taking her away [and] took her for wife.” Itoyimaki, a defense witness, supported the claim that Osun was not Otunba's slave. In his decision, Albert Erharhdt, the presiding British Commissioner, freed the captives and ordered the accused to pay a fine of two pounds. In addition to integrating Osun through marriage, the mark conferred on her daughter a standard feature of Ondo identity. Although this case came up late in the nineteenth century, it represents a trend in precolonial Yorubaland whereby marriages and esthetics served the purpose of ethnic incorporation.Studies on the roots of African ethnic identity consciousness have concentrated mostly on the activities of outsiders, usually Euro-American Christian missions, repatriated ex-slaves, and Muslims, whose ideas of nations as geocultural entities were applied to various African groups during the era of the slave trade and, more intensely, under colonialism. For instance, prior to the late nineteenth century, the people now called Yoruba were divided into multiple opposing ethnicities. Ethnic wars displaced millions of people, including about a million Yoruba-speakers deported as slaves to the Americas, Sierra Leone, and the central Sudan, mostly between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.

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