6 - Exchange, 1890–1914

Summary

THE LOCAL EXCHANGE SYSTEM

Moving a marketplace, the French found, was an expeditious way of punishing an insubordinate town. After the ‘one-gun-shot war’ of April 1911 in Kétou, in which an interpreter was assassinated in the market by opponents of labor recruitment, the French moved the market from its place one kilometer outside the northern gate to a point within the old city wall. Similarly, the French in 1913 moved the market from Yévié, in the Sô valley, three kilometers northwest to Zinvié, at the request of merchant firms, and after the chiefs of Yévié had led a hold-up of palm oil in 1909. In each case the aggrieved town took advantage of the outbreak of war in 1914 to seek redress. In Kétou the townspeople began immediately to clear the old marketplace, but were halted by the administration. In Yévié two hundred armed men, led by ‘féticheurs et marabouts’, rose in rebellion in September to re-establish the market. They laid their hopes for liberation on the arrival of the Germans, and had begun work on a German flag when their revolt was suppressed.

The combination of local market exchange (in and out of the marketplace) and non-market, familial exchange formed the local exchange system. The needs of this system sometimes conflicted with the concerns of the state, as the case of Kétou indicates, and at times conflicted with the needs of the interregional exchange system as well. The French administration, as the Yévié–Zinvié example suggests, showed more interest in exports than in local commerce.