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Of Slaves and the Gift: Kabre Sale of Kin During the Era of the Slave Trade*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Charles Piot
Charles Piot
Affiliation:
Duke University
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Extract

While numerous reports in the ethnographic and historical literature on West African societies document the sale of kin into slavery during the era of the Atlantic slave trade, theorists of the trade have not dealt with the logic of selling close relatives. This article examines an instance of such sale among a Voltaic people, the Kabre, located in the hinterland of Dahomey and Ashanti, and attempts to theorize its meaning as a way of maneuvering between complementing sets of values, both human and material, that emerge at the intersection of the local Kabre ‘gift’ economy with the larger regional political economy of slaving. The essay thus examines Kabre prestational forms – and the complex conceptions of value, wealth, alienation and personhood that accompany them – and the ways in which they interacted with the currencies and slaving practices, and the distinctive forms of alienation these entailed, that entered the area during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Understanding such local forms and practices, however, requires us to depart from neoclassical modes of analysis like those typically employed by economic historians of the slave trade.

Type
Wealth in People, Wealth in Things
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , March 1996 , pp. 31 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

1 Frobenius', observations appeared in his Und Afrika sprach: unter den unsträflichen Aethiopien (4 vols.) (Berlin, 1912–1919), III (1913), 379–413.Google Scholar They were translated into French by Delord, Jacques, a missionary who lived among Kabre from 1946 to 1961, as ‘Notes et commentaires sur les Kabre de Frobenius’, Le monde non chrétien, LIX–LX (1961), 101–73.Google Scholar This translation includes extensive commentaries as footnotes in the text.

2 While the slave trade was legally abolished by the British in 1807, tens of thousands of slaves continued to be exported annually from Dahomey – the coastal entrepôt where many Kabre slaves were sent – until the 1860s; Manning, Patrick, Slavery, Colonialism and Economic Growth in Dahomey, 1640–1960 (Cambridge, 1982), 27–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Meillassoux, Claude, The Anthropology of Slavery: The Womb of Iron and Gold, trans. Desnois, Alide (Chicago, 1991).Google Scholar

4 See, for example, Héritier, Françoise, ‘Des cauris et des hommes: production d'esclaves et accumulation de cauris chez les Samo (Haute-Volta)’, in Meillassoux, C. (ed.), L'esclavage en Afrique précoloniale (Paris, 1975), 477–508Google Scholar; Warnier, J. P., ‘Traite sans raids au Cameroun’, Cah. Ét. Afr, CXIII (1989), 5–32.Google Scholar

5 While the general history of slaving in the Kabre area is known, there is no detailed information on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century exchange forms. I have thus had to draw heavily upon material on exchange from the more recent past. Still, passages in Frobenius' text (from about the turn of the century) and statements made to me by today's elders about the time when they were children (the 1910s and 1920s) indicate that today's forms of exchange (and of value and ownership) were present at least during the last century.

6 See, for instance, Guyer, Jane, ‘Wealth in people and self-realization in Equatorial Africa’, Man, XXVIII (1993), 243–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Guyer, , ‘Introduction’Google Scholar, to section on ‘Wealth in people, wealth in things’, and Guyer, and Belinga, S. M. Eno, ‘Wealth in people as wealth in knowledge: accumulation and composition in Equatorial Africa’, J. Afr. Hist., XXXVI (1995). 83–90, 91–120CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cooper, Barbara, ‘Women's worth and wedding gift exchange in Maradi, Niger, 1907–89’, J. Afr. Hist., XXXVI (1995), 121–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar These papers, and others, have been part of an ongoing set of discussions – in sessions organized at the annual meetings of the African Studies Association (USA) over the past three years – on issues of wealth and personhood in African societies.

7 On the movements of people in the Voltaic area generally, see Wilks, Ivor, ‘The Akan and Mossi states: 1500–1800’, in Ajayi, J. F. A. and Crowder, Michael (eds.), History of West Africa, 2nd ed. (2 vols.) (New York, 1976), I, 413–54Google Scholar; and Levtzion, Nehemiah, ‘Trade and politics among Dyula and Mossi-Dagomba’, in Gray, Richard (ed.), The Cambridge History of Africa, Vol. 4: c. 1790–c. 1870 (Cambridge, 1975), 181–91.Google Scholar On Kabre more specifically, see Cornevin, Robert, Histoire du Togo (Paris, 1962), 26–42, 59–74, 105–18Google Scholar; Cornevin, Robert, La République Populaire du Bénin: des origines dahoméennes à nos jours (Paris, 1981), 31–65, 159–95Google Scholar; Froelich, Jean Claude, Alexandre, Pierre and Cornevin, Robert, Les Populations du Nord-Togo (Paris, 1963)Google Scholar; and Person, Yves, ‘Brève note sur les Logba’, Études dahoméennes, XVII (1956), 35–49.Google Scholar Cornevin, Froelich, Alexandre and Person were all administrators in the French colonial government stationed in northern Togo and Benin in the 1940s and 50s. Their accounts are based on oral materials which they personally collected. Of these, Cornevin's is the most detailed and comprehensive. Still, by comparison with other areas, even his data are thin and more work remains to be done.

8 See Law, Robin, ‘Slave-raiders and middlemen, monopolists and free-traders: the supply of slaves for the Atlantic trade in Dahomey c. 1715–1850’, J. Afr. Hist., XXX (1989), 45–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Manning, , Slavery, Colonialism and Economic Growth in DahomeyGoogle Scholar; Manning, Patrick, ‘The slave trade in the Bight of Benin, 1640–1890’, in Gemery, Henry and Hogendorn, Jan (eds.), The Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade (New York, 1979), 107–41Google Scholar; Manning, Patrick, Slavery and African Life (Cambridge, 1990)Google Scholar; Wilks, Ivor, Asante in the Nineteenth Century: The Structure and Evolution of a Political Order (Cambridge, 1975), 243–309.Google Scholar

9 On tribute to, and slave-raiding by, the kingdoms in this area, see Cornevin, , Histoire, 26–42, 59–74, 105–18Google Scholar; Cornevin, , La République, 31–65, 159–95Google Scholar; Lombard, Jacques, Structures de type ‘féodal’ en Afrique Noire: étude des dynamismes internes et des relations sociales chez les Bariba du Dahomey (Paris, 1965)Google Scholar; and Wilks, , Asante, 243–309.Google Scholar On the slave merchants who bought slaves in the north and sold them at the coast, see Law, , ‘Slave-raiders’Google Scholar

10 Meillassoux, , Anthropology of SlaveryGoogle Scholar; Law, , ‘Slave-raiders’.Google Scholar

11 On Bariba, see Lombard, , StructuresGoogle Scholar; Cornevin, , Histoire, 16–42, 59–74, 105–18Google Scholar; and Cornevin, , La République, 31–65, 159–95.Google Scholar On the swings in prices of slaves at the coast, see Law, , ‘Slave-raiders’.Google Scholar

12 Cornevin, , Histoire, 16–42, 59–74, 105–18Google Scholar; Cornevin, , La République, 3–65, 159–95Google Scholar; de Barros, Philip, ‘The Bassar: large scale iron producers of the West African savanna’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of California – Los Angeles, 1985), 63–4, 68Google Scholar; Verdier, Raymond, Le pays Kabiyé: cité des dieux, cité des hommes (Paris, 1982), 187–8.Google Scholar

13 There are no data that I know of estimating the specific number of slaves that came from this area. Still, given the area's importance as a slave reserve, the far-flung reputation of the Kabre as sellers of kin, and Kabre memory itself about the practice, there must have been many thousand. Again, while providing no basis for numeration, it is nevertheless worth noting that both Kabre and Logba were among the (former slaves) interviewed by Koelle in Freetown in the 1850s when he was compiling his linguistic vocabularies; Koelle, S. W., Polyglotta Africana, or A Comparative Vocabulary of Nearly Three Hundred Words and Phrases in More than One Hundred Distinct African Languages (London, 1854).Google Scholar

14 The ethnographic present used throughout this and subsequent sections is the 1980s when I conducted fieldwork among Kabre. I address below my assumption that there are historical continuities in Kabre economic forms/practices which allow us to interpret the past from the present.

15 The notion of the ‘gift’, or ‘prestational’, economy is, of course, taken from Mauss, Marcel, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. Cunnison, Ian (New York, 1967).Google Scholar See both Gregory, Christopher, Gifts and Commodities (New York, 1982)Google Scholar, and Strathern, Marilyn, The Gender of the Gift (Berkeley, 1988)Google Scholar, for more recent articulations and elaborations of this concept that have influenced my own work. See also Battaglia, Deborah, On the Bones of the Serpent: Person, Memory and Mortality in Sabarl Island Society (Chicago, 1900)Google Scholar; Munn, Nancy, The Fame of Gawa: A Symbolic Study of Value Transformation in a Massim (Papua New Guinea) Society (Cambridge, 1986)Google Scholar; and the essays in Leach, Jerry and Leach, Edmund (eds.), The Kula: New Perspectives on Massim Exchange (Cambridge, 1983).Google Scholar

16 Those Kabre who live in northern Togo (as opposed to those who have migrated to the south) do very little cash-cropping. They subsist largely on sorghum, millet and yams. While cultivating is the exclusive domain of men, the gathering of sauce ingredients, the cooking of food and marketing in general are the domains of women.

17 See Piot, Charles, ‘Of persons and things: some reflections on African spheres of exchange’, Man, XXVI (1991), 405–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a fuller description of the Kabre system of exchange spheres. Prestations in this economy come in other forms as well. For instance, Kabre ‘wealth’ (nyim) – primarily animals, though also money, grain and tree products – that is not disposed of in this particular system of exchange will most likely find its way into the sacrificial system. Sacrifice is, of course, a form of gift giving: when the meat from sacrifices has been cooked, it is then distributed to other members of the community.

18 Gregory, , Gifts, 29–33.Google Scholar

19 For a more detailed, though somewhat differently focused, analysis of the marketing system, see Piot, Charles, ‘Wealth production, ritual consumption and center/periphery relations in a West African regional system’, American Ethnologist, XIX (1992), 34–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 The market standard is apparently calculated in the same way as the community standard – that is, according to a labor theory of value. However, certain Kabre also claimed that the consumption values of things determined their prices in the markets. Thus, a hoe blade, they said, was more expensive than a sheep because it could feed a whole family for up to two years, whereas a sheep was quickly consumed; and a sheep was more expensive than a goat because, when sacrificed, the former fed more people. I think – though I need more research to adequately determine – that these two theories of value coincide; that is, they both produce the same results.

21 Frobenius, , Und Afrika sprach, III, 407Google Scholar; Delord, , ‘Notes et commentaires sur les Kabre de Frobenius’, 160.Google Scholar

22 I am assuming, of course, that the data are reliable – that we are indeed comparing the same products (this is almost certainly the case with the clay pots and the hoe blades, at least) and that, even if the data were collected at different times of the year, this would not account for the types of fluctuations evidenced here.

23 This labor varies from species to species and, thus, so do the rules governing how the offspring are divided. For instance, because a borrower expends relatively little labor in feeding goats and sheep (they feed themselves for much of the year), he/she has rights to only one of the offspring of the borrowed animal, with the owner receiving the rest. However, the borrower of a chicken, a guinea hen, or a dog divides the offspring evenly with the animal's owner because feeding these animals requires much more labor. For instance, chickens and guinea hens are fed termites that are gathered daily from clay pots deposited in the plain, a 45-minute walk away; and, dogs are fed human food – they are given their own bowl of porridge every night with the evening meal.

24 I am indebted in this section to conversations I have had with Jane Guyer and Eric Gable about these issues and to Jane Guyer's recent stimulating article, ‘Wealth in people’. My argument is also influenced by Strathern, The Gender of the Gift, especially in terms of the way in which she ties a discussion of personhood to the larger context of the gift economy.

25 For instance, a recently married man I knew who had just become head of his extended family (because his father had recently died) once complained to me that he had become weary of the unending funeral obligations he had to fulfil. He had just finished making four large funeral prestations of beer and animals over a two-month period but was unable to come up with the gifts on his own. Thus, he had had to borrow from others and knew that his obligation to repay would interfere with his desire to fulfil other needs and embark on other projects.

26 Hogendorn, Jan and Johnson, Marion, The Shell Money of the Slave Trade (Cambridge, 1986), 104–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar, suggest that cowrie shell currency had made its way into the marketplaces of this hinterland area by at least the early 1800s.

27 Again, the historiography on this point is not nearly as explicit as one would like. It indicates, as did my informants, that raiding by Bariba was supplanted by selling at Djougou. But how and why is not clear. One hypothesis would be that Kabre entered into an agreement with the king at Djougou – who paid tribute to Bariba – that they would sell their slaves at Djougou it he stopped the Bariba from raiding them.

28 This conflict is inscribed in many ritual practices – most notably at the times of a person's birth, initiation and death. For example, when a child is first initiated, father and mother's brother exchange sharp words, accusing one another of mistreating the child and warning the other that, if such continues, they will revoke the other's rights over the child.

29 Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that the various parties were compensated for the loss of the child, it is likely that conflicts remained, especially between the child's father and the mother's brother, and between the child's mother and her brother. Further, in that marriages were tied up with long-term relationships between families, such conflicts would have had deleterious effects on the relationships between them. My guess – unfortunately, I did not pursue the point during my research – is that such conflicts lie buried within the marriage histories of many Kabre houses. I am reminded here, for instance, of the incident in Bohannan's, LauraReturn to Laughter (New York, 1964), 168Google Scholar, in which a case of witchcraft she observed was found to have had its origins in a conflict between two families over the sale of a child into slavery five generations previously.

30 See, for example, Isichei, Elizabeth, A History of Nigeria (Longman, 1983), 192–3Google Scholar, and Smith, M. G., The Affairs of Daura (California, 1978), 113–20, 243–5.Google Scholar

31 See Piot, , ‘Wealth production, ritual consumption and center/periphery relations’.Google Scholar

32 The ethical judgment must rest on the local consequences of the transactions involving people as things, since it goes without saying, of course, that Kabre who sold their kin into slavery, and in so doing fed the Atlantic slave trade, had no knowledge where these kin would end up.

33 Hawkesworth, Mary, ‘Brothels and betrayal: on the functions of prostitution’, International Journal of Women's Studies, LXXXI (1984), 81–91Google Scholar, and James, Jennifer, ‘Motivations for entrance into prostitution’, in Crites, Laura (ed.), The Female Offender (Lexington MA, 1976), 177–98.Google Scholar

34 See Hogendorn, and Johnson, , Shell Money of the Slave TradeGoogle Scholar, among others. Similar neo-classical arguments are made for slave prices in Eltis, David, ‘The volume, age/sex ratios, and African impact of the slave trade: some refinements of Paul Lovejoy's review of the literature’, J. Afr. Hist., XXXI (1990), 485–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Law, Robin, ‘Posthumous questions for Karl Polanyi: price inflation in pre-colonial Dahomey’, J. Afr. Hist., XXXIII (1992), 387–420.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 It would be interesting here – since so much attention in the scholarly literature on the slave trade has been concerned with the prices paid for slaves – to know what determined the prices at which Kabre slaves were sold. My guess would be that, as with other sales in the market, the subjective needs of individuals, rather than the objective conditions of the market, determined the price at which an individual would have been willing to sell a slave.