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Bulk Exports, Trade Tiers, Regulation, and Development: An Economic Approach to the Study of West Africa's “Legitimate Trade”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

Christopher Chamberlin
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Abstract

During the nineteenth century the export of bulk commodities from West Africa expanded at the expense of slave exports. Research has focused on the political implications of the expansion of so-called “legitimate trade” rather than on its economic character. In the interests of an economic approach, new terminology and a conceptual framework are proposed, and then applied to a historical problem—the levels of competition prevailing in the African trader networks serving the coastal ports. The conclusions of this study are related to the issue of the historical origins of African underdevelopment.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , June 1979 , pp. 419 - 438
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1979

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References

The author is a legislative assistant to Senator Paul E. Tsongas. The following individuals supplied helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article: Agnes Aidoo, Edward Alpers, Terry Anderson, Peter Duignan, Van Garner, and Lewis Gann. Support from the Public Affairs Fellowship Program of the Hoover Institution and from the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research is gratefully acknowledged.

1 Trade and politics studies abound and need not be listed here. Some important exceptions are: Curtin, Philip D., Economic Change in Pre-Colonial Africa (Madison, 1975)Google Scholar; Latham, A. J. H., “Currency, Credit and Capitalism on the Cross River in the Pre-Colonial Era,” Journal of African History, 12, 4 (1971), 599–605CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Arhin, Kwame, “The Ashanti Rubber Trade with the Gold Coast in the Eighteen-Nineties,” Africa, 42, 1 (1972), 32–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Newbury, Colin W., “Credit in Early Nineteenth Century West African Trade,” Journal of African History, 13, 1 (1972), 81–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hopkins, Anthony G., “The Currency Revolution in South-West Nigeria in the Late Nineteenth Century,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, 3, 3 (1966), 471–484Google Scholar.

2 See Thomas, Robert and Bean, Richard, “The Fishers of Men: The Profits of the Slave Trade,” this Journal, 34 (Dec. 1974), 909–10Google Scholar.

3 Brooks, George E. Jr., Yankee Traders, Old Coasters and African Middlemen: A History of American Legitimate Trade with West Africa in the Nineteenth Century (Boston, 1970), p. viiGoogle Scholar. Hopkins and Forbes-Munroe, authors of two important texts, use the term to organize nineteenth-century trade history, while other scholars, working on narrower aspects of West African trade, use it as well. Flint is exemplary: “… it is a vitally important feature of West African history that gradually after 1807 and more or less completed by 1860 ‘legitimate commerce’ replaced the trans-Atlantic trade in slaves.” Flint, John E., “Economic Change in West Africa in the Nineteenth Century,” in Ajayi, J. F. Ade and Crowder, Michael, eds., History of West Africa, Volume II (New York, 1973), p. 391Google Scholar; Hopkins, Anthony G., An Economic History of West Africa (London, 1973), p. 124Google Scholar; Forbes-Munroe, J., Africa and the International Economy, 1800–1960 (Totowa, N.J., 1976), p. 42Google Scholar. Colin Newbury is a rare exception who has used several substitutes such as “trade in tropical staples,” “sale of vegetable cash crops,” “imported African staples,” “bulk staples,” and “bulk produce.” 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), pp. 91, 93, 98.Google Scholar

4 See Klein, Martin A., “Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Legitimate Commerce in Late Nineteenth century Africa,” Etudes d'Histoire Africaine, 2 (1971), 5–28Google Scholar; Northrup, David, “The Compatability of Slave and Palm Oil Trades in the Bight of Biafra,” Journal of African History, 17, 3 (1976), 353–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Latham, A. J. H., Old Calabar, 1600–1891 (Oxford, 1973), pp. 55–57Google Scholar.

5 Wallerstein has used similar terms—“luxuries” and “essentials”—but these are not defined in terms of a price-to-weight ratio. Wallerstein, Immanuel, “The Three Stages of African Involvement in the World Economy,” in Wallerstein, and Gutkind, Peter C. W., eds., The Political Economy of Contemporary Africa (Beverly Hills, 1976), p. 36Google Scholar.

6 See Hill, Polly, “Landlords and Brokers: A West African Trading System,” Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines, 6 (1966), 356, 364CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Howard, Allen M., “Big Men, Traders, and Chiefs: Powers, Commerce, and Spatial Change in the Sierra Leone-Guinea Plain, 1865–1895” (unpubl. Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Wisconsin, 1972), p. 72, n. 37Google Scholar; Arhin, “The Ashanti Rubber Trade,” pp. 35–36.

7 European acquisition of the first tier has occupied the attention of numerous historians. See, for example, Matheson, Jane Diane, “Lagoon Relations in the Era of Kosoko, 1845–1862: A Study of African Reaction to European Intervention” (unpubl. Ph.D. diss., Boston Univ., 1974)Google Scholar; Schnapper, Bernard, La politique et le commerce François dans le Golfe de Guinée de 1836 á 1871 (Paris, 1961)Google Scholar; Patterson, Karl David, “The Mpongwe and the Orungu of the Gabon Coast, 1815–1875: The Transition to Colonial Rule” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford Univ., 1971)Google Scholar; Flint, John, Sir George Goldie and the Making of Nigeria (London, 1960)Google Scholar; Atger, Paul, La France en Côte d'Ivoire de 1843 a 1893 (Dakar, 1962)Google Scholar; Newbury, Colin W., “Trade and Authority in West Africa from 1850 to 1880,” in Gann, Lewis H. and Duignan, Peter, Colonialism in Africa (Stanford, 1969), I.Google Scholar

8 Howard, “Big Men, Traders,” p. 163; E. A. ljagbemi, “The Rokel River and the Development Inland Trade in Sierra Leone,” Odu, n.s., 3 (1970), 50. By 1825 fifty ships a year were loading for export to Europe and “no less than 15,000 native Africans were employed in felling and preparing logs.” Idem, “The Freetown Colony and the Development of ‘Legitimate” Commerce in the Adjoining Territories,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, 5, 2 (1970), 251Google Scholar.

9 Fyfe, Christopher H., “European and Creole Influence in the Hinterland of Sierra Leone before 1896,” Sierra Leone Studies, n.s., 6 (1956), 116Google Scholar.

10 Fyfe, Christopher H., A History of Sierra Leone (London, 1962), p. 207Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., p. 298.

12 ljagbemi, “The Rokel River,” pp. 62–63; Fyfe, “European and Creole,” p. 119.

13 Fyfe, A History, pp. 298, 311, 322–23; Hargreaves, John D., Prelude to the Partition of West Africa (London, 1963), p. 240Google Scholar.

14 Hargreaves, Prelude, p. 240; Fyfe, A History, p. 488.

15 Ijagbemi, “The Freetown Colony,” p. 256.

16 Howard, “Big Men, Traders,” p. 117.

17 Ijagbemi, “The Rokel River,” p. 61; Howard, “Big Men, Traders,” p. 116.

18 Fyfe, “European and Creole,” p. 122.

19 Fyfe, A History, p. 411.

20 Ibid., p. 371; Ijagbemi, “The Freetown Colony,” p. 256.

21 Fyfe, A History, p. 298.

22 See Fyfe, A History, pp. 205, 371; Fyfe, “European and Creole,” p. 123.

23 Fyfe, “European and Creole,” pp. 119, 120.

24 Schnapper, La politique et le commerce, pp. 129–32.

25 Atger, La France, p. 55. Some of the new traders on the lagoon were first tier traders dealing directly with commission houses in England, but the majority were either agents or independent traders operating in the second tier.

26 Atger, La France, p. 89.

27 Ibid., p. 94.

28 See Reynolds, Edward, Trade and Economic Change on the Gold Coast, 1807–1874 (New York, 1974), p. 81Google Scholar; Wilks, Ivor, Asante in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1975), pp. 193, 196, 684.Google Scholar

29 Dumett, Raymond, “The Rubber Trade of the Gold Coast and Asante in the Nineteenth Century: African Innovation and Market Responsiveness,” Journal of African History, 12, 1 (1971), 81, 84, 86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 In 1890, 38,019 traders were reported to have traveled to the coastal markets. Not all of them carried rubber, however. Aidoo, Agnes, “Order and Conflict in the Asante Empire: A Study in Interest Group Relations,” The African Studies Review, 20, 1 (1977), 29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 The Asantehene did attempt to profit from the rubber trade by imposing a tax of up to 50 percent on the rubber produced in the empire. Aidoo, “Order and Conflict,” p. 29.

32 According to Arhin, 70,000 to 90,000 lbs. of rubber passed through Kumasi weekly in 1898. Arhin, “The Ashanti,” pp. 34, 38. Also see Dumett, “The Rubber Trade,” p. 84.

33 Arhin, “The Ashanti,” p. 38.

34 Ikime, Obaro, Niger Delta Rivalry (New York, 1969), p. 62Google Scholar; Ryder, A.F.C., Benin and the Europeans 1485–1897 (London, 1969), p. 243Google Scholar.

35 Ikime, Niger Delta, p. 115.

36 Ibid., pp. 74, 88–89.

37 Ibid., pp. 105, 111.

38 Dike, K. Onwuka, Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta, 1830–1885 (Oxford, 1956), p. 207Google Scholar; Pedler, Frederick, The Lion and the Unicom in Africa (London, 1974), pp. 114–15.Google Scholar

39 Newbury, “Credit in West African Trade,” p. 90.

40 Flint, Sir George Goldie, pp. 142, 144.

41 David Northrup's extensive work on the Biafran hinterland has not produced much material on small-scale palm oil traders. Northrup, David, “Trade without Rulers: Pre-Colonial Economic Development in the Biafran Hinterland” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of California, Los Angeles, 1974), p. 286Google Scholar.

42 For a complete account of bulk export trade on the Gabon Estuary, see Chamberlin, Christopher, “Competition and Conflict: The Development of Bulk Export Trade in Central Gabon During the Nineteenth Century” (unpubl. Ph.D. diss., Univ. of California, Los Angeles, 1977)Google Scholar, ch. three.

43 Pi, “Tournée du Marabout dans les Riviéres Como, Remboué et leurs affluents pendant le mois de Mai 1881,” Archives Nationales, Section d'Outre-Mer (Paris, France), Gabon I, 21b.

44 Chamberlin, “Competition and Conflict,” pp. 95–97. For the period 1862–1904, archival sources in France contain reports of 102 separate incidents. But this number reflects only those trade disputes reported by the French naval station to higher naval authorities. Nearly twice as many came to the attention of the naval station but were never reported. In addition, an unknown but significant number of disputes took place without the naval station's having any knowledge of them. A total number of disputes is impossible to determine with precision, but 350 is a conservative estimate for the entire period. During the twenty-year period of frequent disputes (1875–1895), an average of ten disputes per month in the Gabon Estuary region is a conservative estimate.

45 Ibid., pp. 190–98.

46 Ibid., ch. 5.

47 The regions surveyed here do not exhaust the evidence for unregulated trade. Limited evidence from other regions such as Loango, the Gold Coast, and the Senegambia suggest the existence of chronic conflict and unregulated trade; but without further information, it is not worthwhile to present these inconclusive data here. For the Kingdom of Loango, see Martin, Phyllis A., The External Trade of the Loango Coast, 1576–1870 (Oxford, 1972), pp. 142–43, 149–52, 156, 172Google Scholar. For the interesting case of the “free trade era” of the Gold Coast during the 1830s and 1840s, see Wilks, Asante, pp. 193–96, 268–69; Reynolds, Trade and Economic Change, pp. 81–84. For the first half of the nineteenth century in the Senegambia, see Curtin, Pre-Colonial African Trade, p. 159.

48 Brunschwig, Henri, “Le troque et la traite,” Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines, 2, 7 (1962), 341CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “Expéditions punitives au Gabon (1875–1877),” ibid., p. 360.

49 Hopkins, An Economic History, pp. 154–55.

50 Forbes-Munroe makes this same point in Africa and the International Economy, p. 73.

51 Hopkins, An Economic History, p. 146; Northrup, “Trade without Rulers,” p. 286.

52 Fyfe, A History, p. 411.

53 “Extrait d'une lettre de M. le Contre-Amiral Laffon de Ladébat,” 1 Nov. 1864, Archives Nationales, Section d'Outre-Mer, Gabon I, 3; de Langle to the Minister, 19 Mar. 1867, Archives Nationales, Fonds Marine (Paris, France), BB4 855.

54 Clement to the Minister, 5 May 1876, Archives Nationales, Section d'Outre-Mer, Gabon I, 12b.

55 See Chamberlin, “Competition and Conflict,” pp. 111—12.

56 Howard, “Big Men, Traders,” p. 125.

57 See Howard, “Big Men, Traders,” pp. 124–25; Chamberlin, “Competition and Conflict,” pp. 105–06.

58 This list may be incomplete. Other states of the Delta may have engineered regulated lower tiers before mid-century, but evidence is lacking. Asante was surely an effective regulator of trade; but until the late nineteenth century, Asante exported luxury commodities such as gold and ivory, not bulk commodities. Palm oil and timber were produced in the small coastal states and particularly near the lower Volta River, but these areas were outside of Asante's control. On the productive zones and capacities of southern Ghana, see Kwamina B. Dickson, A Historical Geography of Ghana (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 122, 125, 144–47, 176, 256.

59 Latham, Old Calabar, pp. 83–84.

60 Ibid., pp. 82–83.

61 Cookey, Sylvanus J. S., King Jaja of the Niger Delta (New York, 1974), p. 88Google Scholar.

62 Ibid., p. 83.

63 Ibid., pp. 91–92.

64 Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, “De la traite des esclaves á exportation de l'huile de palme et des palmistes au Dahomey: XIX siécle,” in Meillassoux, Indigenous Trade and Markets, pp. 107–23.

65 In a useful article Robin Law has argued that the Dahomean state only briefly, if ever, enjoyed a state “monopoly” of Atlantic trade and that the growth of bulk exports from the Kingdom weakened “the royal position.” But, Law's article does not contend that a weakened royal monopoly of trade seriously affected the King's regulation of trade, which was accomplished through several controls including royal monopoly. Law, Robin, “Royal Monopoly and Private Enterprise in Dahomey,” Journal of African History, 17, 4 (1977), 556Google Scholar.

66 Newbury, “Trade and Authority,” p. 74.

67 Coquery-Vidrovitch, “De la traite des esclaves,” p. 119.

68 Manning, Patrick, “An Economic History of Southern Dahomey, 1880–1914” (unpubl. Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Wisconsin, 1969), pp. 37, 156.Google Scholar

69 Yoder, John C., “Fly and Elephant Parties: Political Polarization in Dahomey, 1840–1870,” Journal of African History, 15, 3 (1974), 430CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Manning, “Southern Dahomey,” p. 38. Law points out that the Dahomean king did not enter palm oil production and trade directly until private entrepreneurs had shown the way during the 1840s and 1850s. Thereafter, the royal monopoly gained in strength at the expense of the private sector. Law, “Royal Monopoly,” p. 575.

70 Manning, “An Economic History,” p. 37.

71 Bauer, Peter T., West African Trade (Cambridge, 1954), pp. 57–58Google Scholar, 61, 202, 204.

72 Ibid., pp. 22, 24; Bauer, Peter, Economic Analysis and Policy in Underdeveloped Countries (London, 1957), pp. 68–69Google Scholar.

73 Latham, Old Calabar, p. 59.

74 Cherry Gertzel described the attitude of the European traders stationed on shore in the Niger Delta in the second half of the nineteenth century. They viewed the direct export to Europe of bulk products as their exclusive preserve, and subverted the activities of any African trader who attempted to deal with a London commission house. Gertzel, Cherry J., “Commercial Organization of the Niger Coast, 1852–1891,” in Historians in Tropical Africa. Proceedings of the Leverhulme Inter-Collegiate History Conference (Salisbury, 1962), p. 299Google Scholar.

75 Bauer, West African Trade, pp. 56, 106.