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Peanuts and Colonialism: Consequences of the commercialization of peanuts in West Africa, 1830–701

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

George E. Brooks
George E. Brooks
Affiliation:
University of Indiana
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Extract

The commercialization of peanuts on the Upper Guinea Coast began along the Gambia River in the early 1830s, expanded to southern Guinea and northern Sierra Leone in the late 1830s, and Senegal and Portuguese Guinea in the early 1840s. African cultivators and traders responded to the new marketing opportunities with remarkable swiftness, and everywhere peanut cultivation spread it occasioned far-reaching economic and social changes for the societies concerned. A rapidly growing demand for peanuts in France, together with favourable changes in French tariffs, greatly benefited French and Senegalese traders in competition with British and Sierra Leonean rivals. The consequence was that the former attained a dominant commercial position on the Upper Guinea Coast by the 1860s, an advantage that would be exploited in the achievement of French political hegemony over much of the area in the colonial partition which followed.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , January 1975 , pp. 29 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

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References

2 McPhee, Allan, The Economic Revolution in British West Africa (London, 1926; reprinted N.Y., 1970), 36.Google Scholar

3 Hopkins, A. G., An Economic History of West Africa (New York, 1973), 124.Google Scholar

4 For discerning studies of early trading patterns on the Upper Guinea Coast see Rodney, Walter, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545 to 1800 (London, 1970)Google Scholar; Carreira, António, Cabo Verde: Formação e Extincão de una Sociedade Escravocrata, 1460–1878 (Lisboa, 1972)Google Scholar; and Curtin, Philip D., SenegambiaGoogle Scholar (in press).

5 For an informative general work, Auguste Chevalier, ‘Histoire de l'Arachide’, Revue Internationale de Botanique Appliquée et d'Agriculture Tropicale, xiii (1933), 722–52.Google Scholar

6 M. Adanson, ‘A Voyage to Senegal, the Isle of Gorée, and the River Gambiade’ in Pinkerton, John, A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels in All Parts of the World (London, 1814), xvi, 598–674.Google Scholar Cf. Chevalier, , ‘Histoire de l'Arachidede’, 730Google Scholar.

7 ‘Abridgement of an Account of the Natural Productions of S. Leona’, published in Wadström, C. B., An Essay on Colonization, part II (London, 1795; reprinted N.Y., 1968), 275.Google Scholar Cf. Kup, Alexander P., ed., Adam Afzelius: Sierra Leone Journal, 1795–1790 (Uppsala, 1967).Google Scholar

8 Beaver, Philip, African Memoranda: Relative to an Attempt to Establish a British Settlement on the Island of Bulama … in the Year 1792 (London, 1805; reprinted London, 1968), 347, 483–4.Google Scholar Enumerating the crops grown in the area neighbouring Bolama, Beaver lists the principal foods as rice, yams, and manioc; next he lists maize and groundnuts together: ‘[These] are also consumed in considerable quantities, though the latter is more particularly confined to the Bijuga islands, where there is also a ground pea.…’ Ibid. 347. Data on both plants are conveniently found in Dalziel, J. M., The Useful Plants of West Tropical Africa (London, 1948), 228–32, 269–71.Google Scholar Although the plants are superficially similar, there are numerous differences; the most significant in terms of the subject of this paper is that Voandzeia has a very low oil content (4½ to 6½ per cent) compared to Arachis (40 to 50 per cent).

9 See Carreira, Antonio, ‘Aspectos da influência da cultura portuguesa na área compreendida entre o rio Senegal e o norte da Serra Leoa’, Boletim Cultural da Guiné Portuguesa, xix, no. 76 (1964), 407–8.Google Scholar The Portuguese word for peanut, amendoim, is little used in Portuguese Guinea. Beaver, , African Memoranda, 484Google Scholar, records the name mancarra: ‘Country peas, … are called the ground nuts (mancara) of the Bijugas, as those I procured from Tombaly are called the ground nuts (mancara) of the Mandingos and Naloos.…’

10 Bowdich, T. Edward, Excursions in Madeira and Porto Santo (London, 1835), 211, 256.Google Scholar The plant was also fed to cattle. (Peanut tops are a valuable livestock feed, containing, pound for pound, as much nutritive value as alfalfa. Waldron, Ralph Augustus, The Peanut: Its History, Histology, Physiology and Utility [published doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1918], 335.)Google Scholar

11 Gamble, D. P., Contributions to a Socio-Economic Survey of the Gambia (Colonial Office, 1949), 58.Google Scholar

12 ‘Extracts from Observations on various Points of the West Coast of Africa, surveyed by His Majesty's Ship Ætna in 1830–32’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, II, 296–8.Google Scholar Belcher did not learn where the peanuts were shipped. He identifies his sources as merchants and others conversant with trade in the Gambia, and acknowledges that his information ‘was hastily compiled, and is believed not to be quite complete; and many other products were sent as samples, which await a reportde’.

13 R. Montgomery Martin, Possessions in Africa and Austral-Asia, vol. iv of History of the British Colonies (London, 1835), 560–1.Google Scholar See also 610 ff.

14 McPhee, , Economic Revolution, 37Google Scholar, cites M'Culloch, J. R., Dictionary of Commerce (1883), 965Google Scholar, concerning the mill.

15 The inhabitants of the Gambia had good reason to show their mettle as ‘economicmen’. The founding of Bathurst in 1816 closed the river to slaving vessels, causing caravans from the interior to be rerouted to the Casamance and elsewhere. The resources of the immediate Gambia hinterland were limited to beeswax, hardwoods, and a small number of hides. Gray, J. M., A History of the Gambia (Cambridge, 1940Google Scholar; reprinted London, 1966), 379, notes that in 1817 beeswax represented nine-tenths of the total value of exports. Gamble breaks down the 1829 exports (total £65,130) as follows: wax 41 per cent; hides 14 per cent; teak 13 percent; gum 10 per cent; ivory 6 per cent; gold 4 per cent; rice 5 per cent; and corn 3 per cent. In contrast, by 1851 peanuts represented 72 per cent of total exports (£186,404). Gamble, , Survey of the Gambia, 58.Google Scholar

16 For a discussion of the expansion of American commerce on the Upper Guinea Coast in this period see chapter 5 of the author's Yankee Traders, Old Coasters, and African Middlemen: A History of American Legitimate Trade with West Africa in the Nineteenth Century (Boston Univ. Press, 1970).Google Scholar

17 Johnson, F. Roy, The Peanut Story (Murfreesboro, N.C., 1964)Google Scholar, chapter x passim. As in Europe, elements of the better classes long disdained the peanut. Johnson remarks, ‘First it was labeled as “slave food”. Later “goobers” were synonyms of circus rowdyism, “gallery gods” obstreperousness, and festive occasions of the proletariat’, ibid. 44.

18 Wilmington, N.C. was the chief port of shipment to northern markets prior to the Civil War. A ‘Spot Listing of Peanut Prices’ compiled for Wilmington records the following wholesale prices for a bushel of peanuts:

10 July 1833: 60 to 70 cents; 13 Nov.: 60 to 70 cents; 27 Nov.: 50 to 60 cents

26 Feb. 1834: 40 to 47 cents; 29 Oct.: 50 to 60 cents

24 June 1835: 50 to 60 cents; Nov.: $1.00

Jan. 1836: JI.oo

13 May 1840: 76 to 80 cents; 3 June: 76 to 80 cents 8 Nov. 1844: $1.00

Johnson, , Peanut Story, 54.Google Scholar

19 Brooks, , Yankee Traders, 100.Google Scholar The peanut's netted, spongy, shell was/is the best ‘packaging’ for nuts in shipment, for all that the shells take up twice as much space as the nuts they protect (although the nuts represent approximately 70 per cent of the total weight). Small quantities of decorticated nuts were shipped from West Africa, but the danger from spoilage was considerably increased; contact with humid air causes acidification, which diminishes the nuts’ commercial value. The introduction of steamers after mid-century considerably shortened the length of passage to Europe, resulting in less build-up of heat in the holds and higher quality oil as a consequence. Xavier Guiraud, L'Arachide Sénégalaise: monographie d'économie coloniale (Paris, 1937), 239–41; Masson, Paul, Marseille et la colonisation française (Marseille, 1906), 471.Google Scholar

20 Ibid. 186–7. Brookhouse and associates cautioned the shipmaster to weigh nuts on board the vessel to ensure thirty-two pounds' weight to the bushel since they were obliged to sell at that weight. Bennett, Norman R. and Brooks, George E. Jr, eds., New England Merchants in Africa: A History through Documents, 1802 to 1865 (Boston Univ. Press, 1965), 279–80.Google Scholar For American commercial patterns on the Upper Guinea Coast in this period see the author's article, ‘Enoch Richmond Ware, African Trader; 1839–1850 Years of Apprenticeship’, The American Neptune, xxx, 3 (07 1970), 174–86; 4 (10 1970), 229–48.Google Scholar

21 Schnapper, Bernard, La Politique et le commerce français dans le Golfe de Guinée de 1838 à 1871 (Paris, 1961), 123.Google Scholar For additional details and background, Julliany, Jules, Essai sur le commerce de Marseille (Marseille and Paris, 1842), III, 302–6.Google Scholar

22 Villard, André, Histoire du Sénégal (Dakar, 1943), 25, 86.Google ScholarPistache de terre is the term commonly used in the French Antilles. Chevalier, , ‘Histoire de l'Arachide’, 741.Google Scholar

23 Masson, , Marseille, 470.Google Scholar

24 Hardy, Georges, La mise en valeur du Sénégal de 1817 à 1854 (Paris, 1921), 288.Google Scholar

25 Quoted in Faure, Claude, Histoire de la presqu'île du Cap Vert et des origines de Dakar (Paris, 1914), 102.Google Scholar

26 Ibid. 102–3. The costly failure of the Richard-Toll agricultural scheme in the 1820s (where peanuts were ignored) overshadowed discussion of all new projects. Official pessimism is reflected in the statement of the Minister of Marine in Nov. 1827, ‘II n'y a rien à attendre d'avantageux au Sénégal de la culture de l'indigo ni d'aucune autre culture coloniale …’. Quoted in Dessertine, A., ‘Naissance d'un port: Kaolack, ses origines à 1900’, Annales Africaines (1960), 237 n.Google Scholar

27 Schnapper, , Politique et commerce, 125Google Scholar, n. 4. See also Massen, , Marseille, 471.Google Scholar Peanuts were first introduced to France from Mexico early in the eighteenth century, where they were cultivated in the botanical garden at Montpellier, and samples were distributed to other botanical gardens in France. Chevalier, , ‘Histoire de l'Arachide’, 730–1Google Scholar.

28 Schnapper, , Politique et commerce, 16–19.Google Scholar Bouët became the adopted son of Admiral Willaumez in 1845, hence the citations Bouët-Willaumez following. Baillet, Emile, ‘Le rôle de la marine de commerce dans l'implantation de la France en A.O.F.’, Revue Maritime, series 3, no. 135 (1957), 831–40, provides an informative over-view of French commercial expansion.Google Scholar

29 Schnapper, , Politique et commerce, 19–23, 124Google Scholar n. Ordonnance of 23 July 1840; confirmed by the law of 6 May 1841. Duties on palm oil were reduced at the same time from 12 francs 50 centimes to 4 francs the hundred kilos.

30 Hardy, , Mise en valeur, 289–90.Google Scholar Likewise, only unprocessed hides could be imported into France. When the Comité de Commerce of Saint-Louis petitioned in 1828 to tanhides in Senegal prior to export to France the Ministry deferred the matter for ‘study’. Ibid. 247.

31 Ibid. 290. Sara S. Berry delineates the ramifications of this policy: ‘By reducing tariffs on raw materials while retaining them on finished goods, a government actually gives domestic processors a substantial subsidy. Suppose, for example, that without any tariffs at all, a liter of peanut oil would sell for 10 in France and that the peanuts necessary to produce it would cost 5. If both oil and nuts are protected by a 50 per cent tariff, the price of oil would rise to 15, the cost of nuts to 7.5, and the domestic manufacturer's value added (the difference between raw material cost and value of final output) would rise by 50 per cent—the same rate as the tariff. However, if the tariff on nuts is now abolished while that on oil is retained, the manufacturer's value added is 15–5 = 10, or 100 per cent over what it would have been under conditions of free trade. This is known as the “effective rate of protection”—to emphasize that the domestic producer actually enjoys a higher rate of protection than that implied by the tariff on his final product (in this example 50 per cent)'. Personal communication, 10 Jan. 1974.

32 Cultru, P., Histoire du Sénégal du xv6 siècle ã 1870 (Paris, 1910), 368.Google Scholar Jaubert also sent samples of dyes made from African plants and trees to French manufacturers around this time, but they found no market. Hardy, , Mise en valeur, 283Google Scholar.

33 Adam, Jean, L'Arachide (Paris, 1908), 17Google Scholar (Gasconi); Guiraud, Xavier, L'Arachide Sénégalaise, 34Google Scholar (Granges). Roger Pasquier notes that the honour of initiating Senegal's commerce in peanuts is claimed for a number of individuals; we await an exhaustive and authoritative discussion of the subject in his forthcoming thèse. That French trading interests in Saint-Louis were already ‘prospecting’ potential areas of cultivation is evidenced by the report of Captain Caille's expedition to the Lake Paniéfoul area in Oct.-Dec. 1839. Caille described peanut cultivation along the lake and mentioned peanuts as one of the commodities which might be exploited along the lower Senegal and the territories of Jolof and Cayor extending southwards. Saulnier, Eugène, La Compagnie de Galam au Sénégal (Paris, 1921), 136–7.Google Scholar

34 Hardy, , Mise en valeur, 288Google Scholar; Cf. Schnapper, , Politique et commerce, 125Google Scholar, n. 5.

35 Masson, , Marseille, 470.Google Scholar The Régis firm also became prominent in palm oil commerce in the Gulf of Guinea. See Hargreaves, John D., Prelude to the Partition of West Africa (London, 1963), 95Google Scholar, for a summary of Victor Régis's career.

36 Julliany, , Essai sur le commerce de Marseille, III, 304.Google Scholar Julliany reports that 1842 was the first year entire cargoes of peanuts were imported by the vessel-load.

37 Mémoire of M. Thomas, Saint-Louis, 11 Dec. 1845, 13G22 Archives du Sénégal (Dakar). French sources record some 1,500 tons of peanuts exported to France via Gorée in 1842, principally from Albreda, but including some obtained from the Cayor, Baol, and Casamance areas of Senegal, 2,600 tons in 1843, and three years later, in 1846, 6,700 tons. Villard, , Sénégal, 129Google Scholar; Bouët-Willaumez, E., Commerce et traite des noirs aux côtes occidentales d'Afrique (Paris, 1848), 51–2.Google Scholar

38 Schnapper, , Politique et commerce, 125Google Scholar, n. 5, 230; Gray, , Gambia, 384.Google Scholar Bouët contrasts the changed circumstances at Albreda: before the commercialization of peanuts a handful of French (and Senegalese) traders had obtained only an ‘assez médiocre’ quantity of hides, wax, rice, and millet; peanuts brought a prosperity ‘toujours croissant’. Bouët-Willaumez, , Commerce, 62.Google Scholar

39 Schnapper, , Politique et commerce, 123–4.Google Scholar Law of 9 June 1845; for additional details, including the development of huileries and oil-pressing machinery, Masson, Paul, ed., Les Bouches-du-Rhône; Encyclopédie departmentale (Paris, 1926), vIII, 91–4.Google Scholar

40 Bouët-Willaumez, , Commerce, 44Google Scholar; Hargreaves, , Prelude, 105–6.Google Scholar

41 Schnapper, , Politique et commerce, 125–6.Google Scholar The residue left after the oil was expressed was sold as cattle-cake, much of it to Germany. Masson, Bouches-du-Rhône, 183.Google Scholar

42 Gamble, , Survey of the Gambia, 58.Google Scholar

43 Quoted by Newbury, Colin W., ‘Prices and Profitability in Early Nineteenth-Century West African Trade’, in Meillassoux, Claude, ed., The Development of Indigenous Trade and Markets in West Africa (London, 1971), 96.Google Scholar Newbury cites Bertrand-Bocandé (1856), who observed that the seasonal migrations in the Casamance were conducted by individuals who had formerly traded to the coast with wax, ivory, and slaves. Ibid. 96–7.

44 Quoted in Gamble, , Survey of the Gambia, 59.Google Scholar See ibid. 73–8, for an informative discussion on the phenomenon of ‘strange farmers’ in the Gambia. ‘Telli-Bunkas’ means ‘men from the east’.

45 Masson, , Marseille, 470.Google Scholar

46 Bouët-Willaumez, , Commerce, 61.Google Scholar See Klein, Martin A., Islam and Imperialism in Senegal: Sine-Saloum, 1847–1914 (Stanford, 1968), 44–5Google Scholar, for thé capable leadership of Balle N'Dougou N'Dao. Klein, , ‘Social and Economic Factors in the Muslim Revolution in Senegambia’, J. Afr. Hist. sail, 3 (1972), 419–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar, offers an informative analysis of the new forces at work in the area.

47 Villard, , Sénégal, 112–14Google Scholar; Fouquet, Joseph, La Traite des arachides dans le pays de Kaolack, et ses conséquences économiques, sociales et juridiques (Saint-Louis, 1958), 42.Google ScholarKlein, , Islam and Imperialism, 45–6, 89–90Google Scholar, describes developments in this period. Dessertine, ‘Kaolack’, 243 n., cites the Minister of Marine's dissatisfaction when Faidherbe seized the area without prior consultation.

48 Etesse, Marius, Les grands produits africains (Paris, 1930), 21–2.Google ScholarFouquet, , Traite des arachides, 19–20.Google Scholar According to Whiteman's oral tradition, when Rousseau was offered slaves by the ‘chief’ of Dakar, he spurned them, saying, ‘Garde tes captifs, ils sont nos semblables, mais pour des arachides, je t'offre tout ce que tu veux d'Europe’. Ibid. 19.

49 Personal communication, 14 Mar. 1962. Batude, Fernand, L'Arachide au Sénégal (Paris, 1941), 72Google Scholar, records the price of peanuts at Rufisque in 1841 as approximately 16 francs per 100 kilos, and the ‘prix moyen base’ for the years following as: 1843–6: 16 francs; 1846–67: from 20 francs to 27 francs, 50 centimes; 1868–77: varied between 25 francs and 20 francs. These averages may be compared with those found in Guiraud, L'Arachide Sénégalaise, 163Google Scholar, for Rufisque or Saint-Louis. The prices paid for peanuts in France gradually increased in the nineteenth century: prices at Marseille were 35 francs per 100 kilos in 1847, 36 francs in 1861, and 43 francs in 1865. (5 francs = approximately $i.00) Newbury, ‘Prices and Profitability’, 93.

50 Capperon, L., ‘Bouët-Willaumez en Afrique Occidentale et au Gabon (1836–1850)’, Revue Maritime (1953), 1090.Google Scholar See also Schnapper, , Politique et commerce, 229Google Scholar, for reference to subsidies offered growers by Bouët.

51 Raffenel, Anne, Nouveau voyage dans le pays des nègres, 2 vols. (Paris, 1856), II, 123–4.Google Scholar Bouët was eulogized by the Marseille Chamber of Commerce, which was disappointed to lose such a champion of French business interests: ‘Il a favorisé la culture des arachides, fondé des villages au milieu des exploitations, présidé à l'installation de nos comptoirs de Grand-Bassam, d'Assinie et du Gabon’. Capperon, ‘Bouët-Willaumez’, 1096.

52 Hardy, , Mise en valeur, 337.Google Scholar The Compagnie de Galam attempted to foster peanut commercialization along the Senegal as far as Galam, but exports from the upper river remained insignificant until the advent of free commerce after 1848. Saulnier, , Compagnie de Galam, 187.Google Scholar

53 Fouquet, , Traite des arachides, 41–2.Google Scholar

54 Baillet, , ‘Rôle de la marine de commerce’, 837.Google Scholar

55 Batude, , L'Arachide au Sénégal, 38–9Google Scholar, describes contemporary arrangements. Batude dérives ‘navétane’ from the Wolof ‘navet’, for hivernage, the rainy season extending from June to September. May not this Wolof word, like a number of others, be derived from French(?) ‘Faire la navette’, to come and go (like a weaver's shuttle), or to ‘commute’ in modern usage, describes the longstanding practice of Frenchmen returning to Europe for the hivernage.

56 Saulnier, , Compagnie de Galam, 135.Google Scholar

57 Bouët-Willaumez, , Commerce, 64–5Google Scholar; Schnapper, , Politique et commerce, 232.Google Scholar For the 1850 commission and its findings, Hardy, , Mise en valeur, 336 ff.Google Scholar

58 Personal communication, 8 June 1974.

59 Carreira, António, ‘Aspectos históricos da evolução do Islamismo na Guiné Portuguesa’, Boletim Cultural da Guiné Portuguesa, xxi, no. 48 (1966), 425.Google Scholar Manjacs are likewise notable for their participation in peanut trade in the Gambia, where for many years Manjac mariners have manned the ‘groundnut cutters’ which bring the nuts downriver to market. When and under what circumstances this began is a subject for future study. Personal communications from Ebrima O. Camara, Oct.–Nov. 1973 and Bakari K. Sidibe, Mar.– Apr. 1974.

60 Marques de Barros, Marcelino, ‘A Mancarra’, Revista Portugueza Colonial e Maritima, 1, 2 Sem. (1897–1898), 798.Google Scholar Nhara Aurelia Correia and her husband Caetano José Nozolini established a plantation on Bolama in the 1830s employing domestic slaves, but when they began cultivating peanuts for export is uncertain. See José de Senna Barcellos, Christiano, Subsidios para a história de Cabo Verde e Guiné, 7 vols. (Lisboa, 1899–1913), IV, 203, 253.Google Scholar João Marques de Barros was a nephew of Nozolini and one of the most prominent traders in Portuguese Guinea in the 1840s and 1850s. Senna Barcellos, v, 32, and passim. Padre Marcelino Marques de Barros is the subject of a forthcoming study by Avelino Teixeira da Mota.

61 Bouët-Willaumez, , Commerce, 67–70.Google Scholar

62 Travassos-Valdez, Francisco, Six Years of a Traveller's Life in Western Africa, 2 vols. (London, 1861), 1, 260.Google Scholar

63 Demay to commandant, Aug. 1864, folder J–e–24, 2F3, Archives du Sénégal. For additional details on commerce, Brooks, Yankee Traders, 197–8.

64 Fyfe, Christopher, A History of Sierra Leone (Oxford, 1962), 239Google Scholar; Leone, SierraBlue Book, 1838Google Scholar (C.O. 272/15).

65 Fyfe, , Sierra Leone, 239.Google Scholar Heddle's partner for several years was the Senegalese Eurafrican J. F. Pellegrin.

66 Memoire of M. Thomas, Saint-Louis, II Dec. 1845, 13G22, Archives du Sénégal; Masson, , Marseille, 391Google Scholar; Schnapper, , Politique et commerce, 231, 234.Google Scholar Sierra Leoneans and British termed the coast extending from northern Sierra Leone to southern Portuguese Guinea the ‘Northern Rivers’, while Senegalese and French referred to the same area as the ‘Rivières du Sud’; this paper follows contemporaneous American usage, i.e. the ‘Rivers’.

67 Bouët-Willaumez, , Commerce, 51–2.Google Scholar

68 Ibid. 80. Allen M. Howard remarks that Sierra Leoneans contributed significantly to the expansion of peanut traffic in the 1840s and 1850s as numbers of them began to settle along the Scarcies and Sierra Leone rivers. Howard speculates that the development of peanut production in the Scarcies after 1838 was stimulated by slaves who escaped from Moria in the Melakori River. Personal communication, 21 Apr. 1974.

69 Fyfe, , Sierra Leone, 239–40, 258Google Scholar; Masson, , Marseille, 399.Google Scholar Isaacs ran afoul of the government authorities in Freetown in 1854, when he was charged with keeping slaves on Matacong Island, and fled to England. Fyfe, , Sierra Leone, 275–6.Google Scholar

70 Fyfe, , Sierra Leone, 258.Google ScholarPeterson, John, Province of Freedom: A History of Sierra Leone, 1787–1870 (Evanston, 1969), 276.Google Scholar Dr Robert Clarke, the Assistant Colonial Surgeon, wrote, ‘A beautiful pellucid oil, burning without any perceptible odour, is now expressed from the ground nut; it is almost equal to sperm oil, and sells at 6s. 6d. per gallon in the Colony. These nuts are also eaten as an article of food, and some of the Colonists prepare and use them as chocolate’; Sierra Leone: A Description of the Manners and Customs of the Liberated Africans (London, 1843, reprinted London, 1969), 135.Google Scholar

71 Bouët-Willaumez, , Commerce, 75–7.Google Scholar

72 Forbes, F. E., Six Months' Service in the African Blockade (London, 1849, reprinted London, 1969), 16.Google Scholar

73 Fyfe, , Sierra Leone, 276Google Scholar, records British efforts in 1854 to prevent Melakori chiefs from importing slaves from the Sherbro to work on peanut plantations.

74 For commerce in the Nunez, and Pongo, , Brooks, , Yankee Traders, 198–206Google Scholar; ‘Enoch Richmond Ware, African Trader’, and Mouser, Bruce L., ‘Trade and Politics in the Nunez and Pongo Rivers, 1790–1865’ (unpub. Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1971).Google Scholar

75 Mouser, Bruce L., ‘Landlords and Strangers: A Process of Accommodation and Assimilation’, unpublished paper presented to the 1974 African Studies Association convention, 15.Google Scholar

76 Mouser, , ‘Trade and Politics’, chapter VI. Amin, Samir in Le Monde des affaires Sénégalais (Paris, 1969), 11–19Google Scholar, provides a ‘roll-call’ of Senegalese traders who participated in the expansion of commerce on the Upper Guinea Coast in the nineteenth century, but with no documentation as to time and place. For a detailed account of these developments see my monograph, ‘The Commercial Transformation of the Upper Guinea Coast in the Nineteenth Century: A History of African, Eurafrican, and European Traders’ (in progress).

77 Schnapper, , Politique et commerce, 230–9.Google Scholar

78 I am indebted to Dwight, N. Syfert for the Libertan references following. Mr Syfert is preparing a Ph.D. dissertation at Indiana University on Liberian merchants and coasting trade in the nineteenth century.Google Scholar

79 Colonization Herald, 03 1839, p. 124Google Scholar, cited in U.S. House of Representatives, 27th Cong., 3rd Session. Report no. 283, Report of Mr. Kennedy of Maryland from the Committee on Commerce of the House of Representatives, 28 02 1843, 996.Google Scholar

80 Dr Wesley Johnson to Samuel Wickeson, 3 June 1841, quoted in African Repository and Colonial Journal, xvil, no. 13 (I 07 1841), 198.Google Scholar

81 Rev. John Miller in testimony presented to the Select Committee on the African Slave Trade, 30 Apr. 1849, cited in the African Repository and Colonial Journal, xxvi, no. I, 21.Google Scholar

82 Liberia Herald, I 06 1859Google Scholar, quoted in the African Repository and Colonial Journal, xxxv, no. 10, 307.Google Scholar

83 Quoted in Brooks, , Yankee Traders, 215.Google Scholar Faidherbe's opposite in the Gambia, Governor George Abbas Koolie D'Arcy, lamented at the same time (May 1860): ‘The fact is isolated in colonial history, but, while I write, I count thirty tricolours, six stars and stripes and but one union jack flying in the port of Bathurst’. Gray, , Gambia, 384.Google Scholar

84 Cited in Brooks, Yankee Traders, 147.Google Scholar

85 The report is published in Charpy, Jacques, La Fondation de Dakar (Paris, 1958), 414–20.Google Scholar

86 Schnapper, , Politique et commerce, 229–30.Google Scholar

87 Hopkins, , Economic History of West Africa, 125.Google Scholar

88 Jan, S. Hogendorn posed these stimulating questions in a letter dated 24 07 1974.Google Scholar

89 Sara S. Berry suggests a number of examples where this seems to have been the case. Personal communication, 10 Jan. 1974.

90 See R. M. and J. R.-M., “Iler ou Hilaire?,” Notes Africains, 45 (01 1950), 20.Google Scholar For an illustration, Adam, , L'Arachide, 55.Google Scholar

91 The importance of seed selection is illustrated by Famechon's description of growing conditions in Guinea: new seeds had to be imported every two or three years to maintain crop yields due to the degenerating effects of mold on peanuts grown in the wet, clayey soils. Marie, LucienFamechon, François, Notice sur la Guinée Française (Paris, 1900), 98–9.Google Scholar

92 Klein, , Islam and Imperialism, 2–3Google Scholar, compares Serer and Wolof land use in peanut cultivation, the former employing a threefold rotation system which conserves the fertility of the soil.

93 Barros, ‘A Mancarra’, 800, provokes this question: he notes that although millions and millions of tons had been exported from the Rio Grande and from Bolama Island, peanuts had not become part of the daily diet of the African cultivators. Joan M. Bird remarks that at one point in the growing cycle peanut leaves may be picked for use in sauces without inhibiting the development of the seeds. Personal communication, 6 Aug. 1974.

94 Klein, , ‘Muslim Revolution in Senegambia’, 419–41Google Scholar, discusses these and related issues.

95 Fouquet, , Traite des arachides, 14.Google Scholar