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A Note on Slavery, Seclusion and Agrarian Change in Northern Nigeria*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Gina Porter
Gina Porter
Affiliation:
University of Durham
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Extract

For geographers and others working on contemporary development issues in Africa, the historical perspective is of considerable significance. Such topics as the incidence and form of indigenous slavery and slave-trading in pre-colonial times are particularly pertinent to modern-day studies of population and rural development, and work published by historians is read with interest by researchers outside the discipline. Thus, some years ago, discussion was generated between geographers and historians on the impact of slave raiding in Nigeria's ‘Middle Belt’, initially stimulated by a paper in the Journal of African History. As the subsequent debate illustrated, the relationship between modern population density and settlement patterns and pre-colonial slavery is a fascinating one.

Type
History and Contemporary Development
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , November 1989 , pp. 487 - 491
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

1 Mason, M., ‘Population density and slave raiding. The case of the Middle Belt of Nigeria’, J. Afr. Hist., x (1969), 551–634CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gleave, M. B. and Prothero, R. M., ‘Population density and slave raiding –a comment’, J. Afr. Hist., xii (1971), 319–324CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and reply by Mason, 324–327.

2 Fisher, Humphrey J., ‘Sudanese and Saharan studies’, J. Afr. Hist., xxviii (1987), 281–293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 In Usman, Bala and Alkali, Nur (eds.), Studies in the History of Pre-Colonial Borno (Zaria, 1983), 76 n. 40Google Scholar, cited by Fisher in ‘Sudanese and Saharan studies’, 290.

4 Fisher, ‘Sudanese and Saharan studies’, 290, citing Nachtigal, G., Sahara and Sudan, 11 (London, 1980), iii (London, 1987), 131–132.Google Scholar

5 Some years ago, A. G. B., and Fisher, H. J., in their book Slavery and Muslim Society in Africa (London, 1970), 11Google Scholar, suggested widespread ownership of slaves in Borno villages.

6 Brenner, Louis, ‘The North African trading community in the nineteenth-century Central Sudan’, in McCall, D. F. and Bennett, N. R. (eds.), Aspects of West African Islam (Boston, 1971), 142–143Google Scholar; Brenner, Louis, The Shehus of Kukawa (Oxford, 1973), 95, 97, 115Google Scholar; Barth, Heinrich, Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa, 11 (London, 1965), 418Google Scholar, cited in Brenner, , ‘The North African trading community’, 142 n. 36.Google Scholar

7 Porter, Gina, ‘Perspectives on trade, mobility and gender in a rural market system’, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, lxxix (1988), 82–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 See Cohen, Ronald, The Kanuri of Bornu (New York, 1967)Google Scholar re. Kanuri culture. Ijere, Joseph, ‘Local organizations as mechanisms for rural development in Borno State, Nigeria’ (Ph.D. thesis, Michigan State University, 1983)Google Scholar, considers the water problems of Borno. Hill, Polly, ‘The relationship between cities and countryside in Kano Emirate in 1900’, West Afr. J. Sociology and Political Science, 1 (1975), 3–19Google Scholar, makes the point that in the Kano close-settled zone the water-table was so high that most houses had wells by 1900 (p. 11). Hogendorn, Jan S., Nigerian Groundnut Exports: Origins and Early Development (Zaria, 1978), 103Google Scholar, and Richards, Paul, ‘Farming systems and agrarian change in West Africa’, Progress in Human Geography, vii (1983), 19Google Scholar, both comment on the significance of the groundnut trade for female seclusion.

9 Colonial archives provide the basis for a discussion of Borno's locational problems in Porter, Gina, ‘Trade and inequality in Borno, north-east Nigeria’, in Swindell, K., Baba, J. M. and Mortimore, M. J. (eds.), Inequality and Development: Some Third World Perspectives (London, 1989), 331–58.Google Scholar

10 Cf. e.g. Robertson, Claire C. and Klein, Martin (eds.), Women and Slavery in Africa (London and Madison, Wis., 1988)Google Scholar, Introduction.

11 Smith, M. G., ‘Introduction’, in Smith, M. F., Baba of Karo: a Woman of the Muslim Hausa (London, 1955), 22, (reprint: New Haven, 1981).Google Scholar

12 Brenner, , ‘North African trading community’, 143.Google Scholar

13 See, for example, Lovejoy, Paul, ‘Plantations in the economy of the Sokoto Caliphate’, J. Afr. Hist., xix (1978), 341–368.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Lovejoy, Paul E., ‘The Borno salt industry’, Int. J. Afr. Hist. Studs., xi, 629–668Google Scholar; Lovejoy, Paul E., Salt of the Desert Sun (Cambridge, 1986), 231–234Google Scholar; Lovejoy, Paul E., ‘The Kambarin beriberi: the formation of a specialized group of Hausa kola traders in the nineteenth century’, J. Afr. Hist., xiv (1973), 633–651.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Out-migration may have been a continuing demographic feature of Borno in the nineteenth century. Vogel, in a letter to Barth (30 January 1855), apparently wrote: ‘countless emigrants to the Bauchi hills, carrying their little property, bear witness to the bad government in Bornu; the same is proved by the large ruined and deserted towns that one passes on the road’. Cited in Benton, P. A., The Languages and Peoples of Bornu, 1 (London, 1912, reprint 1968), 279.Google Scholar However, this is a translation from the original German, and Benton's translations of (Nachtigal's) German are not always as precise as they might be. (Fisher's translation of Nachtigal, Sahara and Sudan, 111, 112, 113, 115, 116 and 118 refers to Benton's translation of Schultze, in which passages from Nachtigal are cited. Also see Kirk Greene's introduction to Benton, 1 (1968), 16.) Unfortunately, the original letter has not been traced. Equally unfortunately, it is difficult to assess the extent to which Rabih's exploits, in the last decade of the nineteenth century, further contributed to population decline. Although his army laid waste many areas, and Hallam, W., The Life and Times of Rabih Fadl Allah (Ilfracombe, 1977), 160Google Scholar, for example, refers to large-scale population movements northwards and eastwards, some of the population subsequently returned (Hallam, 161), new markets were established (field evidence), and Gentil suggests (Hodgkin, T. (ed.), Nigerian Perspectives (London, 1960), 321Google Scholar) that the wealth of the country increased substantially.

16 Nachtigal, G., Sahara and Sudan, 11, 189.Google Scholar

17 Cohen, R., ‘Incorporation in Bornu’, in Cohen, R. and Middleton, John (eds.), From Tribe to Nation in Africa (Scranton, 1970), 162.Google Scholar In practice, however, Cohen suggests that they had lower status than their half brothers whose mothers were free.

18 Usoro, E. J., ‘Observed disparity in Nigerian rural poverty’, Nigerian Economic Society Annual Conf. Proceedings of 1975; Poverty in Nigeria (Ibadan, 1978).Google Scholar The other major factor contributing to the disparity between the northern Sokoto area and the Kukawa area is considered to be the size and type of household unit (Usoro, p. 208).

19 Lovejoy, , Salt of the Desert Sun, 135, 300, n. 92.Google Scholar

20 For a recent exposition of the problems of urban and other biases in research in the twentieth century see Chambers, Robert, Rural Development: Putting the Last First (London, 1983).Google Scholar