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THE ROLE OF SLAVE LABOR IN GROUNDNUT PRODUCTION IN EARLY COLONIAL KANO*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2010

MOHAMMED BASHIR SALAU
MOHAMMED BASHIR SALAU
Affiliation:
University of Mississippi
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Abstract

This article reinforces the interpretation of numerous scholars who have highlighted the role of slave labor in groundnut production during the ‘cash-crop revolution’ in West Africa in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It also expands Jan Hogendorn's argument on the African initiatives involved in the expansion of groundnut production in colonial Northern Nigeria. In particular, it provides evidence of the key role of the emir of Kano (Abbas) and important merchants in the transition to groundnut cultivation and the significant use of slave labor by these large estate-holders. The article focuses mainly on the Fanisau unit of Kano.

Keywords

NigeriaWest Africaagriculturecolonialismhistoriographylaborlocal historyslaverysources
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , July 2010 , pp. 147 - 165
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

1 Both Fanisau and Panisau are used in Palmer, H. R., ‘The Kano chronicle’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society, 38 (1908), 63 and 77Google Scholar, as well as in other secondary sources, while European travelers who visited Kano during the nineteenth century used variants of these terms in their journals.

2 See B. A. W. Trevallion, Metropolitan Kano: Report on Twenty Year Development Plan 1963–1983 (London, 1967).

3 See M. J. Mortimore and J. Wilson, Land and People in the Kano Closed-settled Zone: A Survey of Some Aspects of Rural Economy in the Ungogo District, Kano Province (Zaria, 1965); and M. J. Mortimore, ‘Land and population pressure in the Kano closed settled zone, Northern Nigeria’, Advancement of Science, (1968), 677–86.

4 For further details on the soil type, see M. J. Mortimore, ‘Population distribution, settlement and soils in Kano province, northern Nigeria, 1931–62’, in J. C. Caldwell and C. Okonjo (eds.), The Population of Tropical Africa (New York, 1968), 298–306; A. Mahadi, ‘The state and the economy: the sarauta system and its roles in shaping the society and economy of Kano with particular reference to the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, 1982), 68–77; and Mortimore and Wilson, Land and People, 4.

5 For further details on agricultural production in Fanisau during the nineteenth century, see M. B. Salau, ‘The growth of plantation economy in the Sokoto Caliphate: Fanisau, 1819–1903’ (unpublished PhD thesis, York University, 2005).

6 Moitt, B., ‘Slavery and emancipation in Senegal's peanut basin: the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 22 (1989), 27–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Navetanes refers to migrant workers who moved to the Senegal region from the French colonies of Soudan, Upper Volta, and Guinea. They consisted of freeborn migrants as well as freed and escaped slaves.

8 M. Klein, Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa (Cambridge, 1998).

9 J. F. Searing, ‘God Alone is King’: Islam and Emancipation in Senegal. The Wolof Kingdoms of Kajoor and Bawol, 1859–1914 (Portsmouth, NH, Oxford, and Cape Town, 2002).

10 K. Swindell and A. Jeng, Migrants, Credit and Climate: The Gambian Groundnut Trade, 1834–1934 (Leiden and Boston, 2006).

11 ibid. 121.

12 ibid. 122.

13 J. S. Hogendorn, Nigerian Groundnut Exports: Origins and Early Development (Zaria, 1978).

14 J. S. Hogendorn, ‘The origins of the groundnut trade in Northern Nigeria’, in C. K. Either and C. Liedholm (eds.), Growth and Development of the Nigerian Economy (East Lansing, MI, 1970), 32. See also his Nigerian Groundnut Exports.

15 Hogendorn, Nigerian Groundnut Exports, 104.

16 For further discussion on this position, see, for instance, R. Shenton, The Development of Capitalism in Northern Nigeria (London and Toronto, 1986); M. Watts, Silent Violence: Food, Famine and Peasantry in Northern Nigeria (Berkeley, 1983); and Lennihan, L., ‘Rights in men and rights in land: slavery, wage labor, and smallholder agriculture in Northern Nigeria’, Slavery and Abolition, 3:2 (1982), 111–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Shenton, Capitalism; Watts, Silent Violence; and Lennihan, ‘Rights’.

18 P. E. Lovejoy and J. S. Hogendorn, Slow Death for Slavery: The Course of Abolition in Northern Nigeria, 1897–1936 (Cambridge, 1993), 145–58.

19 It should be mentioned here that Hogendorn first expressed this position in his earlier works on the changeover to groundnut production listed above.

20 Lovejoy and Hogendorn, Slow Death.

21 S. Pierce, Farmers and the State in Colonial Kano: Land Tenure and the Legal Imagination (Bloomington, IN, 2005).

22 Austin, G., ‘Cash crops and freedom: export agriculture and the decline of slavery in colonial West Africa’, International Review of Social History, 54 (2009), 1–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Most of the materials from this project were deposited with the Northern History Research Scheme at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, but Lovejoy also retained copies, which he deposited at the Harriet Tubman Institute in Canada.

24 On many issues related to the history of Fanisau or Kano emirate with which this essay is less concerned (such as warfare, slave life and labor, manumission, and slave use), the Yunusa collection could also be checked against written sources. For instance, it could be checked against colonial records, nineteenth-century European accounts and Arabic materials. Also, the collection could be checked against other oral data on Kano emirate recorded as part of projects that are not related to the 1975 research on the economic history of the central savanna, such as the oral data collected by Paul Lovejoy in the course of writing his PhD thesis on kola trade at the University of Wisconsin in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

25 For a passing reference to the origin of Fanisau, see National Archives Kaduna (NAK), KAN N.A 1/11/1, 1961–62: Ungogo history; on the record related to groundnut production in the settlement, see what follows for more details.

26 NAK Kano Prof 717/1913.

27 For further details on the economy of Kano during the nineteenth century see, for instance, P. E. Lovejoy, Caravans of Kola: The Hausa Kola Trade, 1700–1900 (Zaria, 1980); idem, ‘Plantations in the economy of the Sokoto Caliphate’, Journal of African History, 19:3 (1978), 341–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lovejoy, P. and Baier, S., ‘The desert-side economy of the Central Sudan’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 8:4 (1975), 551–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Hogendorn, Nigerian Groundnut Exports.

29 The following discussion is largely drawn from Y. Yunusa, ‘Slavery in the nineteenth century Kano’, (unpublished BA dissertation, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, 1976); Patton, A. Jr. ‘Ningi raids and slavery in nineteenth century Sokoto Caliphate’, Slavery and Abolition, 2:2 (1981), 114–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lovejoy and Hogendorn, Slow Death.

30 See NAK/SNP 354, 1907; NAK/SNP 365 1913; Hogendorn, Nigerian Groundnut Exports, 1.

31 For instance, according to Heinrich Barth's estimate in Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa Being a Journal of an Expedition Undertaken Under the Auspices of H. B. M'S Government in the Years 1849–1855 (London, 1965), I, 510, slaves constituted nearly half of the population of Kano by the middle of the nineteenth century, and a significant number were settled on plantations. Although Barth's estimate, as well as similar ones by nineteenth-century European travelers, must be viewed with caution, and though these estimates were perhaps peculiar to the royal city of Kano or birnin Kano at that time, they do force us to recognize that slaves were a substantial part of the entire Kano emirate/province population.

32 Lovejoy and Hogendorn, Slow Death, 1.

33 This included a number of non-Muslim in the Adamawa area, as well as Muslim political rivals, especially during moments of major internal political conflicts such as the Basasa of 1893–4.

34 Accordingly, they acquired plots from these ex-masters and also paid tribute in cash or kind to them.

35 For further details on royal slavery in Kano emirate see, for instance, S. Stilwell, Paradoxes of Power: The Kano ‘Mamluks’ and Male Royal Slavery in the Sokoto Caliphate, 1804–1903 (Portsmouth, NH, 2004).

36 For more details on slave desertion see, for instance, J. S. Hogendorn and P. E. Lovejoy, ‘The reform of slavery in early colonial Northern Nigeria’, in S. Miers and R. Roberts (eds.), The End of Slavery in Africa (Madison, 1988), 391–414; P. Lovejoy, ‘Problems of slave control in the Sokoto Caliphate’, in P. Lovejoy (ed.), Africans in Bondage: Studies in Slavery and the Slave Trade: Essays in Honor of Philip D. Curtin (Madison, 1986), 237–8.

37 Lovejoy and Hogendorn, Slow Death, 132–3.

38 NAK Kano Prof. 717/1913.

39 Hogendorn, Nigerian Groundnut Exports, 102.

40 NAK Kano Prof. 717/1913.

41 Hogendorn, Nigerian Groundnut Exports, 101.

42 Ubah, C. N., ‘Suppression of the slave trade in the Nigerian emirates’, Journal of African History, 32:3 (1991), 447–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 NAK Kano Prof. 717/1913.

44 Only persons in power at the household or place of communal labor have had authority to compel their wards to perform.

45 P. Hill, Rural Hausa: A Village and a Setting (Cambridge, 1972); 251–52; Mahadi, ‘State and the economy’, 191.

46 The free men in Fanisau comprised only the ex-slaves and free butchers mentioned below. It is apparent that free butchers in the settlement were barori, or clients, of the emir while ex-slaves often remained with their former masters, frequently in the latter's households. Ex-slaves could be engaged in different types of occupation, including trading. However, most of them continued to depend on their former masters for access to land, which they cultivated to make a living.

47 ‘Authorities’ here refers to privileged slaves, either based in Fanisau or in the Kano royal palace, who, among other responsibilities, often passed on orders from the emir to the rest of the population and relayed messages from the emir's slaves in Fanisau to their superiors.

48 Yusuf Yunusa Collection (YYC), testimony of Muhammadu Rabi'u (Fanisau, 13 July 1975).

49 See YYC, testimony of Muhammadu Rabi'u; testimony of Hamidu Galadiman Shamaki (Fanisau, 3 Apr. 1975); and testimony of Isyaku (Dorayi, 17 Sept. 1975). It should be noted that Isyaku, a privileged slave who worked as an overseer at the Dorayi royal estate during the colonial era, was ninety years old when Yunusa interviewed him in 1975. That said, for further evidence on this issue, see Lovejoy and Hogendorn, Slow Death, 331; Yunusa, ‘Slavery’, 55–65.

50 See Salau, ‘Fanisau’, for further details.

51 YYC, testimony of Muhammadu Rabi'u.

52 ibid.; see also Yunusa, ‘Slavery’, 56.

53 A. G. Saidu, ‘History of a slave village in Kano: Gandun Nassarawa’, (unpublished BA dissertation, Bayero University, Kano, 1981), 113. It should be mentioned here that royal and private estates at Fanisau produced more grain than was needed to feed the slave laborers; such output was sold or otherwise distributed in the interest of the slave-owners. Overall, the amount of food transported to the emir's palace at Kano alone was substantial enough to warrant naming another quarter in the Kano palace as Fanisau.

54 Mahadi, ‘State and the economy’, 461.

55 In comparison to the slave population in Fanisau, freed slaves were insignificant in number. As I have shown in another paper, ‘M. G. Smith's thesis revisited: the character of slavery in Fanisau region of Sokoto Caliphate’, in Brian Meeks (ed.), Caribbean Reasonings: M. G. Smith (Kingston, Jamaica, forthcoming), emancipation was not as widespread in Fanisau as has been assumed to be the case in the Sokoto Caliphate as a whole.

56 The fact that slaves and their descendants remained at the gandun sarki, for instance, illustrates this point.

57 YYC, testimony of Muhammadu Rabi'u.

58 P. Lovejoy, ‘Slavery in the Sokoto Caliphate’, in P. Lovejoy (ed.), The Ideology of Slavery in Africa, (Beverly Hills, CA, 1981), 235; D. Ferguson, ‘Nineteenth century Hausaland: being a description by Imam Imoru of the land, economy, and society of his people’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1973), 232.

59 Ferguson, ‘Imam Imoru’, 232.

60 YYC, testimony of Muhammadu Rabi'u.

61 ibid.; see also YYC, testimony of M. Idrisu Danmaisoro (Hausawa Ward, Kano, 7 Aug. 1975).

62 Paul Lovejoy Collection, testimony of Miko Hamshaki (Kano, 8 Sept., 19 Nov., and 21 Dec. 1969, 31 Jan. and 7 Jun. 1970). Hamshaki was 97 years in 1969, hence born in 1872.

63 YYC, testimony of Muhammadu Rabi'u. Slave flight from private estates to the royal estates was a recurrent phenomenon involving many individuals. Slaves who were engaged in productive activities at private estates were the most humiliated and wretched, hence they often went to extremes to escape the miserable working conditions at those private estates. In fact, an increasing number of these slaves fled from their masters to the gandun sarki, where, from the slaves' point of view, conditions were more favorable. By escaping from the private estates to the gandun sarki, slaves undoubtedly undermined the economic strength of their masters, while at the same time enhancing the wealth and influence of the emirs of Kano. However, their escape was not undertaken to end enslavement.

64 YYC, testimony of Isyaku.

65 Hogendorn, ‘Origins’, 39.

66 ibid. 38–40.

67 Lovejoy Collection, testimony of Miko Hamshaki.

68 Ubah, ‘Suppression’, 451.

69 ibid. 462–3.

70 ibid. 461–2.

71 Martin Klein, ‘Women and slavery in the western Sudan’, in Claire C. Robertson and Martin A. Klein (eds.), Women and Slavery in Africa (Portsmouth, NH, 1997), 76.

72 Allan Christelow, Thus Ruled Emir Abbas: Selected Cases from the Records of the Emir of Kano's Judicial Council (East Lansing, MI, 1993), 80–4.

73 ibid. 84.

74 As Lovejoy and Hogendorn rightly suggest in Slow Death, such land distribution through the emir points to several facts, including the recognition of private rights in land within the context of this colonial era.

75 For further details of the emir's land grant to Dantata, see Christelow, Thus Ruled Emir Abbas, 90; and Lovejoy and Hogendorn, Slow Death, 153.

76 Agalawa refers to a corporate group in Hausaland. Members of the group were originally lowly placed slaves in Tuareg or Berber society of the Saharan region of Africa. Once they were introduced to Kano and other parts of Hausaland, however, they assimilated the Hausa culture, emancipated themselves, established notable trading ventures and constituted communities. While in Hausaland, they also continued to share a common sense of identity.

77 Tijaniyya is a Muslim brotherhood founded in Algeria by Ahmed al-Tijani (1737–1815).

78 Tukur was the son of Emir Muhammadu Bello, while Yusuf, the son of Emir Abdullahi of Kano who died in 1882, was his cousin.

79 I am grateful to Paul Lovejoy, who provided further details on Dantata. In terms of his groundnut trading activities, however, Hogendorn stresses that, upon arrival in Kano, Dantata established a new trading organization that was based on clientage, and that it was exclusively through this organization that he participated in the groundnut boom. Hogendorn explains further that, through his trading organization, Dantata ultimately became the Niger Company's largest supplier of groundnuts. Further details on Dantata's trading activities are in Hogerndorn, Nigerian Groundnut Exports, 85–6, 108, 141, 142.