European Intruders and Changes in Behaviour and Customs in Africa, America and Asia before 1800 9780860785224

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
General Editor's Preface
Introduction
European Impact in America and Africa
1 The Social and Economic Stability of the Western Sudan in the Middle Ages
2 The Horse in Fifteenth-Century Senegambia
3 Passive Resistance: Hopi Responses to Spanish Contact and Conquest
4 Social Climbers: Changing Patterns of Mobility Among the Indians of Colonial Peru
5 Indian Agriculture, Changing Subsistence Patterns, and the Environment on the Southern Great Plains
6 The Process of Farming Diffusion in the Southwest and Great Basin
7 La Traite Atlantique des Esclaves et ses Effets Économiques et Sociaux en Afrique: Le Cas du Galam, Royaume de l'Hinterland Sénégambien au Dix-Huitième Siècle
8 Dahomey and the Slave Trade: Reflections on the Historiography of the Rise of Dahomey
9 Forms and Types of Work, and the Acculturation of the Colonial Indian of Mesoamerica: Some Preliminary Observations
10 L'Acculturation des Espagnols dans le Mexique colonial: déchéance ou dynamisme culturel?
European Impact in Asia
11 Cloths, Clothes, and Colonialism: India in the Nineteenth Century
12 The Coming of the Europeans
13 Bounty from the New World
14 The Introduction of American Food Plants into China
15 From Betel-Chewing to Tobacco-Smoking in Indonesia
16 Opium Smoking in Ch'ing China
17 The Structure of Cities in Southeast Asia, Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries
18 Female Roles in Pre-Colonial Southeast Asia
19 Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India
Index

Citation preview

An Expanding World Volume 30

European Intruders and Changes in Behaviour and Customs in Africa, America and Asia before 1800

AN EXPANDING WORLD The European Impact on World History, 1450-1800 General Editor: A. 1. R. Russell-Wood EXPANSION, INTERACTION, ENCOUNTERS

1 The Global Opportunity

2 3 4 5

Felipe Ferndndez-Armesto

The European Opportunity Felipe Ferndndez-Armesto The Globe Encircled and the World Revealed Ursula Lamb Historiography of Europeans in Africa and Asia Anthony Disney Establishing Exceptionalism Amy Turner Bushnell

TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE

6 Scientific Aspects of European Expansion William Storey 7 Technology and European Overseas Enterprise Michael Adas TRADE AND COMMODITIES

8 Merchant Networks in the Early Modern World Sanjay Subrahmanyam 9 The Atlantic Staple Trade (Parts I & II) Susan Socolow 10 European Commercial Expansion in Early Modern Asia Om Prakash II Spices in the Indian Ocean World M.N. Pearson 12 Textiles: Production, Trade and Demand Maureen Fennell Mazzaoui 13 Interoceanic Trade in European Expansion Pieter Emmer and Femme Gaastra 14 Metals and Monies in a Global Economy Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Girdldez 15 Slave Trades Patrick Manning EXPLOITATION

16 The Worlds of Unfree Labour Colin Palmer 17 Agriculture, Resource Exploitation, and Environmental Change Helen Wheatley 18 Plantation Societies in the Era of European Expansion Judy Bieber 19 Mines of Silver and Gold in the Americas Peter Bakewell

GOVERNMENT AND EMPIRE

20 Theories of Empire, 1450-1800 David Armitage 21 Government and Governance of Empires A.J.R. Russell- Wood 22 Administrators of Empire Mark Burkholder 23 Local Government in European Empires A.J.R. Russell-Wood 24 Warfare and Empires Douglas M. Peers

SOCIETY AND CULTURE

25 Settlement Patterns in Early Modern Colonization, 16th-18th Centuries Joyce Lorimer

26 Biological Consequences of the European Expansion

Kenneth F. Kiple and

Stephen V. Beck

27 28 29 30

European and Non-European Societies (Parts I & II) Robert Forster Christianity and Missions l.S. Cummins Families and the Expansion of Europe Maria Beatriz Nizza da Silva European Intruders Murdo MacLeod and Evelyn Rawski

THE WORLD AND EUROPE

31 Facing Each Other (Parts I & II)

Anthony Pagden

Please note titles may change prior to publication

An Expanding World The European Impact on World History 1450-1800

Volume 30

European Intruders and Changes in Behaviour and Customs in Africa, America and Asia before 1800 edited by Murdo J. MacLeod

and Evelyn S. Rawski

First published 1998 in the Variorum Expanding World Series by Ashgate Publishing Published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

This edition copyright © 1998 by Taylor & Francis, and Introduction by Murdo 1. MacLeod and Evelyn S. Rawski. For copyright of individual articles refer to the Acknowledgements. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library elP data European Intruders and Changes in Behaviour and Customs in Africa, America and Asia before 1800. (An Expanding World: The European Impact on World History, 1450-1800: Vol. 30). l. Africa-Social life and customs. 2. AsiaSocial life and customs. 3. America-Social life and customs. 4. Africa-Civilization-European influences. 5. AmericaCivilization-European influences. 6. Asia-Civilization-Foreign influences. I. MacLeod, Murdo J. II. Rawski, Evelyn S. (Evelyn Sakakida). 303.4'82'09 US Library of Congress CIP data European Intruders and Changes in Behaviour and Customs in Africa, America and Asia before 1800/edited by Murdo 1. Macleod and Evelyn S. Rawski. p. cm. - (An Expanding World: The European Impact on World History, 1450-1800: Vol. 30). Includes bibliographical references. Hardback. I. Acculturation. 2. Civilization, Modem-European Influences. 3. First contact of aboriginal peoples with westerners. I. MacLeod, Murdo J. II. Rawski, Evelyn Sakakida. III. Series. GN366. E87 1998 98-23610 303.48'2-dc21 CIP ISBN 13: 978-0-86078-522-4 (hbk) AN EXPANDING WORLD 30

Contents Acknow ledgements General Editor's Preface Introduction

VII-IX

xi-xiii xv-xxvi

EUROPEAN IMPACT IN AMERICA AND AFRICA

2

2 3

4

5

6

7

8

9

The Social and Economic Stability of the Western Sudan in the Middle Ages M. Malowist

2

The Horse in Fifteenth-Century Senegambia Ivana Elbl

15

Passive Resistance: Hopi Responses to Spanish Contact and Conquest E. Charles Adams

41

Social Climbers: Changing Patterns of Mobility Among the Indians of Colonial Peru Karen Spalding

57

Indian Agriculture, Changing Subsistence Patterns, and the Environment on the Southern Great Plains Paul H. Carlson

77

The Process of Farming Diffusion in the Southwest and Great Basin Joseph C. Winter

87

La Traite Atlantique des Esclaves et ses Effets Economiques et Sociaux en Afrique: Le Cas du Galam, Royaume de I' Hinterland Senegambien au Dix-Huitieme Siecle Abdoulaye Bathily

97

Dahomey and the Slave Trade: Reflections on the Historiography of the Rise of Dahomey Robin Law

123

Forms and Types of Work, and the Acculturation of the Colonial Indian of Mesoamerica: Some Preliminary Observations Murdo J. MacLeod

155

VI

CONTENTS

10 L' Acculturation des Espagnols dans Ie Mexique colonial: decheance ou dynamisme culturel? Solange Alberro

173

EUROPEAN IMPACT IN ASIA

11 Cloths, Clothes, and Colonialism: India in the Nineteenth Century Bernard S. Cohn

189

12 The Coming of the Europeans K.T. Achaya

241

13 Bounty from the New World K.T. Achaya

259

14 The Introduction of American Food Plants into China Ping-ti Ho

283

15 From Betel-Chewing to Tobacco-Smoking in Indonesia Anthony Reid

295

16 Opium Smoking in Ch'ing China Jonathan Spence

315

17 The Structure of Cities in Southeast Asia, Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries Anthony Reid

347

18 Female Roles in Pre-Colonial Southeast Asia Anthony Reid

363

19 Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India Lata Mani

381

Index

419

Acknowledgements The chapters in this volume are taken from the sources listed below, for which the editor and publishers wish to thank their authors, original publishers or other copyright holders for permission to use their material as follows:

Chapter 1: M. Malowist, 'The Social and Economic Stability of the Western Sudan in the Middle Ages', Past and Present XXXIII (Oxford, 1996), pp. 3-15. Copyright © 1996 by Oxford University Press. Reprinted with permission. Chapter 2: Ivana Elbl, The Horse in Fifteenth-Century Senegambia', Journal of African Historical Studies XXIV, no. 1 (Boston, Mass., 1991), pp. 85-110. Copyright © 1991 by the African Studies Center, Boston University. Chapter 3: E. Charles Adams, 'Passive Resistance: Hopi Responses to Spanish Contact and Conquest', in ed. David Hurst Thomas, Columbian Consequences, Vol. I, Archaeological and Historical Perspectives on the Spanish Borderlands West (Washington, D.C., 1989), pp. 77-91. Copyright © 1989 by the Smithsonian Institution. Chapter 4: Karen Spalding, 'Social Climbers: Changing Patterns of Mobility Among the Indians of Colonial Peru', Hispanic American Historical Review L, no. 4 (Durham, N.C., 1970), pp. 645-664. Copyright © 1970 by Duke University Press. Reprinted with permission. Chapter 5: Paul H. Carlson, 'Indian Agriculture, Changing Subsistence Patterns, and the Environment on the Southern Great Plains', Agricultural History LXVI, no. 2 (Berkeley, Calif., 1992), pp. 52-60. Copyright © 1992 by the University of California Press. Reprinted with permission. Chapter 6: Joseph C. Winter, 'The Process of Farming Diffusion in the Southwest and Great Basin', American Antiquity XLI, no. 4 (Washington, D.C., 1976), pp. 421-429. Copyright © 1976 by Joseph C. Winter and the Society for American Archaeology. Chapter 7: Abdoulaye Bathily, 'La Traite Atlantique des Esclaves et ses Effets Economiques et Sociaux en Afrique: Le Cas du Galam, Royaume de I'Hinterland Senegambien au Dix-Huitieme Siecle', Journal of African History XXVII (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 269-293. Copyright © 1986 by Cambridge University Press.

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------------ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ---------------

Chapter 8 Robin Law, 'Dahomey and the Slave Trade: Reflections on the Historiography of the Rise of Dahomey', Journal of African History XXVII, no. 2 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 237-267. Copyright 1986 by Cambridge University Press. Chapter 9: Murdo 1. Macleod, 'Forms and Types of Work, and the Acculturation of the Colonial Indian of Mesoamerica: Some Preliminary Observations', in ed. Cecilia Frost, Michael C. Meyer and Josephina Zoraida Vazquez, Labour and Labourers through Mexican History (Tucson, Ariz., 1979), pp. 75-92. Copyright © 1979 by the University of Arizona Press. Chapter 10: Solange Alberro, 'L' Acculturation des Espagnols dans Ie Mexique colonial: decheance ou dynamisme culturel?', L'Homme: Revue fran~aise d'Anthropologie XXXII (Paris, 1992), pp. 149-164. Copyright © 1992 by Editions de I'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Chapter 11: Bernard S. Cohn, 'Cloths, Clothes, and Colonialism: India in the Nineteenth Century', in ed. Annette B. Weiner and Jane Schneider, Cloth and Human Experience (Washington, D.C., 1989), pp. 303-353. Copyright © 1989 by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Reprinted by permission of the Smithsonian Institution Press. Chapter 12: K.T. Achaya, 'The Coming of the Europeans', Indian Food: A Historical Companion (New Delhi, 1994), pp. 163-178, 253-254. Copyright © 1994 by Oxford University Press, New Delhi. Reprinted with permission. Chapter 13: K.T. Achaya, 'Bounty from the New World', Indian Food: A Historical Companion (New Delhi, 1994), pp. 218-238, 257-259. Copyright © 1994 by Oxford University Press, New Delhi. Reprinted with permission. Chapter 14: Ping-ti Ho, 'The Introduction of American Food Plants into China', American Anthropologist LVII (Washington, D.C., 1955), pp. 191-201. Copyright © 1955 by the American Anthropological Association. Chapter 15: Anthony Reid, 'From Betel-Chewing to Tobacco-Smoking in Indonesia', Journal of Asian Studies XLIV, no. 3 (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1985), pp. 529-547. Copyright © 1985 by the Association for Asian Studies, Incorporated . Reprinted with permission. Chapter 16: Jonathan Spence', 'Opium Smoking in Ch'ing China', in ed. Frederic Wakeman and Carolyn Grant, Conflict and Control in Late Imperial China

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ix

(Berkeley, Calif., 1975), pp. 143-173. Copyright © 1975 by the University of California Press. Chapter 17: Anthony Reid, 'The Structure of Cities in Southeast Asia, Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries', Journal of Southeast Asian Studies XI, no. 2 (Singapore, 1980), pp. 235-250. Copyright © 1980 by Singapore University Press Private Ltd. Chapter 18: Anthony Reid,' Female Roles in Pre-Colonial Southeast Asia', Modern Asian Studies XXII, no. 3 (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 629-645. Copyright © 1988 by Cambridge University Press. Chapter 19: Lata Mani, 'Contentious Tradition: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India', Cultural Critique VII (New York, 1987), pp. 1 17-156. Copyright © 1987 by Cultural Critique. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press. Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity.

General Editor's Preface A. J. R. Russell- Wood An Expanding World: The European Impact on World History, 1450-1800 is designed to meet two objectives: first, each volume covers a specific aspect of the European initiative and reaction across time and space; second, the series represents a superb overview and compendium of knowledge and is an invaluable reference source on the European presence beyond Europe in the early modern period, interaction with non-Europeans, and experiences of peoples of other continents, religions, and races in relation to Europe and Europeans. The series reflects revisionist interpretations and new approaches to what has been called 'the expansion of Europe' and whose historiography traditionally bore the hallmarks of a narrowly Eurocentric perspective, focus on the achievements of individual nations, and characterization of the European presence as one of dominance, conquest, and control. Fragmentation characterized much of this literature: fragmentation by national groups, by geography, and by chronology. The volumes of An Expanding World seek to transcend nationalist histories and to examine on the global stage rather than in discrete regions important selected facets of the European presence overseas. One result has been to bring to the fore the multicontinental, multi-oceanic and multinational dimension of the European activities. A further outcome is compensatory in the emphasis placed on the cross-cultural context of European activities and on how collaboration and cooperation between peoples transcended real or perceived boundaries of religion, nationality, race, and language and were no less important aspects of the European experience in Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Australia than the highly publicized confrontational, bellicose, and exploitative dimensions. Recent scholarship has not only led to greater understanding of peoples, cultures, and institutions of Africa, Asia. the Americas, and Australasia with whom Europeans interacted and the complexity of such interactions and transactions, but also of relations between Europeans of different nationalities and religious persuasions. The initial five volumes reflect the changing historiography and set the stage for volumes encompassing the broad themes of technology and science, trade and commerce, exploitation as reflected in agriculture and the extractive industries and through systems of forced and coerced labour, government of empire, and society and culture in European colonies and settlements overseas. Final volumes examine the image of Europe and Europeans as 'the other' and the impact of the wider world on European mentalites and mores. An international team of editors was selected to reflect a diversity of educational backgrounds, nationalities, and scholars at different stages of their professional careers. Few would claim to be 'world historians', but each is a

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recognized authority in his or her field and has the demonstrated capacity to ask the significant questions and provide a conceptual framework for the selection of articles which combine analysis with interpretation. Editors were exhorted to place their specific subjects within a global context and over the longue duree. I have been delighted by the enthusiasm with which they took up this intellectual challenge, their courage in venturing beyond their immediate research fields to look over the fences into the gardens of their academic neighbours, and the collegiality which has led to a generous informal exchange of information. Editors were posed the daunting task of surveying a rich historical literature and selecting those essays which they regarded as significant contributions to an understanding of the specific field or representative of the historiography. They were asked to give priority to articles in scholarly journals; essays from conference volumes and Festschriften were acceptable; excluded (with some few exceptions) were excerpts from recent monographs or paperback volumes. After much discussion and agonizing, the decision was taken to incorporate essays only in English, French, and Spanish. This has led to the exclusion of the extensive scholarly literature in Danish, Dutch, German and Portuguese. The ramifications of these decisions and how these have had an impact on the representative quality of selections of articles have varied, depending on the theme, and have been addressed by editors in their introductions. The introduction to each volume enables readers to assess the importance of the topic per se and place this in the broader context of European activities overseas. It acquaints readers with broad trends in the historiography and alerts them to controversies and conflicting interpretations. Editors clarify the conceptual framework for each volume and explain the rationale for the selection of articles and how they relate to each other. Introductions permit volume editors to assess the impact on their treatments of discrete topics of constraints of language, format, and chronology, assess the completeness of the journal literature, and address lacunae. A further charge to editors was to describe and evaluate the importance of change over time, explain differences attributable to differing geographical, cultural, institutional, and economic circumstances and suggest the potential for cross-cultural, comparative, and interdisciplinary approaches. The addition of notes and bibliographies enhances the scholarly value of the introductions and suggests avenues for further enquiry. I should like to express my thanks to the volume editors for their willing participation, enthusiasm, sage counsel, invaluable suggestions, and good judgment. Evidence of the timeliness and importance of the series was illustrated by the decision, based on extensive consultation with the scholarly community, to expand a series, which had originally been projected not to exceed eight volumes, to more than thirty volumes. It was John Smedley's initiative which gave rise to discussions as to the viability and need for such a series and he has overseen the publishing, publicity, and marketing of An Expanding World. As

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XlIl

General Editor, my task was greatly facilitated by the assistance of Dr Mark Steele who was initially responsible for the 'operations' component of the series as it got under way; latterly this assistance has been provided by staff at Variorum.

The Department of History, The Johns Hopkins University

Introduction Murdo J. MacLeod and Evelyn S. Rawski European Impact in America and Africa European invasions of the Asian and African landmasses before 1800 were very different in their gross effects to those of America and Oceania. Centuries of trade and other contacts between the contiguous continents of the 'Old World' had led to exchanges of goods, animals and diseases. Such exchanges had sometimes been the result of serious economic needs, but, as M. Malowist concludes in his essay in this volume, contacts had not always brought development (see chapter I). If we disregard the ephemeral Viking landings in Newfoundland and other more fabulous incursions, however, the Americas had been isolated from Europe, and indeed from the rest of the world, since the crossings of the Bering Straits millenia before. I On the other hand Europeans were ill-prepared for the environmental and epidemiological hazards of the humid tropical forests. In such regions - Central Africa or Amazonia - Europeans raided for slaves or goods which they could remove quickly, or remained in forts or on islands on the coasts and used surrogates for penetration inland. 2 Thus sub-Saharan Africa, while sharing much of Europe's stock of animals and pathogens, had extra tropical disease pools of its own as a defence, whereas the Americas, except for their own tropical rainforests, presented welcoming landscapes by and large, but little resistance to the major epidemic diseases of Eurasia and Africa. Previous contacts, then, plus a unique and hostile disease structure, helped Africans resist outside intrusions; the opposite was the case in the Americas. 3 I For contacts between Asia and Europe see, for example, Jacques Anquetil, Les routes de la soie: des deserts de l'Asie aux rives du monde occidental: vingt-deux siecies d'histoire (Paris, 1992), and Denis Sinor. Inner Asia and its Contacts with Medieval Europe (London, 1977). Another large bibliography discusses the centuries of trans-Saharan trade. A pioneer was Robert Ricard. More recent are Vi tori no de Magalhues Godinho. 0 'Mediterraneo' saariano e as caravanas do Ouro. Geografia economica e social do Saara Occidental e Central do XI ao XVI seculo (Sao Paulo, 1956). and Mark Dyer. Central Saharan Trade in the Early Islamic Centuries (Boston, 1979). See also John Day. The Great Bullion Famine of the Fifteenth Century'. Past and Present LXXIX (1980). pp. 3-54. 2 E.g .• Robin Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa, 1550-1750; The Impact of the Atlantic; Slave Trade on an African Society (New York, 1991). and Dauril Alden. 'Indian Versus Black Slavery in the State of Maranhao During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries'. in ed .• Richard L. Garner and William B. Taylor. Iberian Colonies, New World Societies; Essays in Memory of Charles Gibson (Private Printing, 1985). pp. 71-102. 3 Compare the many works of Sherburne F. Cook and Woodrow W. Borah, e.g .• Woodrow

xvi

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Before the mid-eighteenth century Western Europeans had not solved the logistical problem of how to transport large numbers of soldiers or settlers great distances from their ports of origin. As a consequence their invasions were undermanned and they commonly resorted to divide and conquer tactics. using previous or newly provoked rivalries to incite wars in which they hoped to lead the winning side. Much has been made of European technological and military advantages. and some such as firearms were manifest. but modern students of the tactics and culture of warfare now present a more complex picture. In the Americas. with allies such as smallpox. pigs. cattle and horses. Europeans had little reason to change their ways of waging war. In Angola and the Congo. as John Thornton points out. it was the Europeans. facing a hostile and unfamiliar environment and short of troops. who were forced to adapt their ways of war. rather than the Africans. 4 Moreover. where African customs of warfare did change we have been too quick to suppose that such changes were brought on by outside forces. As Ivana Elbl demonstrates in her study of the warhorse in fifteenthcentury Senegambia. it was mostly the demands produced by the play of internal politics within the region that led elites to look beyond their borders for more horses to import for an increased military role (see chapter 2). As the above discussion of the ways of war shows. we are now less inclined to write grosso modo about European impositions of new ways. and more interested in the social and attitudinal differences among the invaded peoples. Some individuals. groups and cultures resisted the invaders to the point where they disappeared or triumphed. Others resisted passively. adapted selectively from the new panorama offered. accommodated. or even welcomed the new dispensation with apparent enthusiasm. The different social structures present among the native peoples at the time of the European appearance obviously assume greater importance when trying to assess its impact on them. Judith Zeitlin. in her innovative essay on the isthmus of Tehuantepec. studied three Native American nations in a similar environment and undergoing the same Spanish forms of exploitation. Responses ranged from cultural disintegration to ingenious adaptation and cultural cohesion. Her explanation for these differences rests mainly on the varied forms of social structure among these three peoples before the Spaniards arrived there. 5 W. Borah, 'America as Model: The Demographic Impact of European Expansion Upon the NonEuropean World', in ed., Ursula Lamb, The Globe Encircled and the World Revealed (Aldershot, 1985), pp. 131-139, with Philip D. Curtin, Disease and Imperialism before the Nineteenth Century (Minneapolis, 1990), and his 'The End of the "White Man's Grave"? Nineteenth-Century Mortality in West Africa', The Journal of Interdisciplinary History XXI, no. I (1990), pp. 63-89. 4 John K. Thornton, 'The Art of War in Angola, 1575-1680', in ed., Douglas M. Peers, Waifare and Empires: Contact and Conflict Between European and Non-European Military and Maritime Forces and Cultures (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 81-99. 5 Judith F. Zeitlin, 'Ranchers and Indians on the Southern Isthmus of Tehuantepec: Economic Change and Indigenous Survival in Colonial Mexico', Hispanic American Historical Review LXIX,

- - - - - - - - - INTRODUCTION - - - - - - - xvii Among the Hopi of New Mexico, E. Charles Adams in his essay in this volume sets out a whole series of factors affecting acculturative impact (see chapter 3). The Hopi used their relative isolation, subsistence economy, lack of goods desired by the Spanish, plus determined cultural solidarity, evasion and diplomacy to weaken many of the impacts of the new regime. But diseases and new domesticated plants and animals, some of which they gradually welcomed, brought great changes in diet, dress and land use. In the same vein John Thornton has noted that the Kingdom of Kongo was more receptive to outside goods, people and mores than other neighboring states. Its conversion to Catholicism, for example, was not superficial, and was accepted by a large part of the masses. Catholicism became widespread, but also increasingly African. Portuguese priests were too few to impose orthodoxy, and local beliefs and internal political dynamics were such that the new religion could not be used as an instrument of foreign domination - to such an extent that when large numbers of Europeans arrived much later, they rejected this native Christianity as heretical or even pagan. In this case a cohesive but foreign religious tradition was adopted, and then used not only as an instrument of integrative power by the kingdom's rulers, but also as an element of cultural resistance. 6 Thornton had also linked the early Afro-Catholicism of Kongo and elsewhere on the African west coast to new religious blends and adaptations which led to the Voodoo religions of the Caribbean. These belief systems, he claims, should not be thought of as Christian deviations or African retentions, but rather as the results of dynamic movement, and of much more local and temporal give and take than we have supposed. 7 European invasions did not only create oppression and colonialism. Their impact was fluid, in many places even chaotic, and such societal upheaval created opportunities as well as disasters. Some individuals among the native peoples, especially those accustomed to power and the attitudes and behaviours coming from it, were able with great speed, to adopt the customs of the new elites and became, in Karen Spalding's words, 'social climbers' (see chapter 4). The native peoples of Africa and America were, of course, pragmatic. They adopted tools, clothes, materials and foodstuffs selectively, when they saw them as useful or culturally appropriate. As we have seen in the case of the no. I, (1989), pp. 24-60. See also Nancy M. Farriss, Maya Society Under Colonial Rule: The Collective Enterprise of Survival (Princeton, 1984). 6 John K. Thornton, 'The Development of an African Catholic Church in the Kingdom of Kongo, 1491-1750', in ed., J.S. Cummins, Christianity and Missions. 1450-1800 (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 237-257; Jean Nsonde. 'Christianisme et religion traditionel1e en pays koongo aux XVIIeXVlIIe siec1es', Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines XXXII. no. 128, pp. 705-711. 7 John K. Thornton, 'On the Trail of Voodoo: African Christianity in Africa and the Americas', The Americas XLIV, no. I (1988), pp. 261-278.

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INTRODUCTION

Senegambian warhorse, adoption of new mores often depended more on internal needs and demands than on outside forces. On the southern Great Plains of North America native people eagerly took to wheat bread, sugar, coffee, liquor, the horse and firearms and all before steady contact with Europeans had even begun. As Paul Carlson has pointed out however, these speedy adoptions eventually changed migration patterns, and shifted people from agriculture to nomadism, trading and raiding, all of which in time radically altered their way of life (see chapter 5). Joseph C. Winter suggests a different sequence of changes in a different part of North America, the (U.S.) Southwest and the Great Basin (see chapter 6). There, the idea of widespread agriculture was introduced, but apparently did not much alter old habits of food collecting, at least at first: speedy adoption of new goods and foodstuffs on the southern Great Plains; deliberate delays in the more mountainous and arid areas to the west. But once the Southwest and the Great Basin were subject to the introduction of vast herds of European sheep and cattle, the ecology of the region was profoundly modified and new cultivation, dress and diet took over. As Winter demonstrates, European invasion unleashed forces in many regions which secondarily, and later, changed everyday diets, dress, and work. The invasion of the Americas caused an enormous population collapse, most notably in the densely inhabited areas of Central Mexico and the Andes. Introduced domesticated animals soon filled, and may have helped to cause, these demographic vacuums. Yet, one result, for the reduced numbers of native survivors, was more plentiful food, and a diet more heavily dependent on meat. 8 Africans lost great numbers of able-bodied adults to the slave trade, although these losses were probably less catastrophic than the ones in the Americas. In any event European invasion brought new foodstuffs, some of them from America, such as maize, cacao, and chile peppers. The Europeans and the slave trade stimulated subsidiary demand, even in nations well inland. As Abdoulaye Bathily points out here, the needs of the slave trade encouraged increased growing and trading of millet to the coast, and the corresponding decline of other cultigens (see chapter 7). Of course, the stimulus that large-scale slave raiding gave to the importation and use of firearms on the slave coast is well known. 9 More firearms also contributed to the increased militarization of coastal West Africa, and the resulting warfare, just as in the case of Spalding's social climbing individuals, created winners and losers among the coastal states. Robin Law's essay identifies Dahomey as one of these winners, its rise as a military power closely tied to the slave trade (see chapter 8). 8 John C. Super. Food. Conquest. and Colonization in Sixteenth-Century Spanish America (Albuquerque. 1988). 9 W.A. Richards. 'The Import of Firearms into West Africa in the Eighteenth Century'. Journal of African History XXI. no. I (1980). pp. 43-59.

INTRODUCTION

xix

In spite of both the noxious and stimulating effects of the slave trade, tropical Africa successfully defended itself against European occupation of any major areas before 1800. Not so in America, where Spaniards and Portuguese had seized almost all the densely inhabited areas of sedentary populations before the end of the sixteenth century. This European presence made day-to-day contacts more frequent, and European demands were more immediate. Large numbers of Native Americans were at first enslaved, and forced to migrate long distances. The shipping of Nicaraguans to Panama and Peru, and the slave raiding on the lesser Caribbean islands to replenish labour supplies in Hispaniola and Cuba are the most egregious examples. 1o After the abolition of the slave trade in Amerindians, these peoples continued to work in Spanish or Spanish-dominated employment. Some of these workplaces, such as cattle haciendas, introduced native workers to new animals, diets and clothes, but otherwise interfered little in cultural lives. Other more intensive agricultures, such as sugar, and true industries such as silver mining and textile mills (obrajes) brought closer supervision, the use of new tools and techniques, and even the need to learn at least the rudiments of appropriate Spanish. As MacLeod's essay points out, the different impact of these varied workplaces and specific jobs on Native American mores has been little studied (see chapter 9). Europeans soon found that they had to adopt the ways of war of the peoples of Kongo and Angola if they hoped to prosper, or indeed to survive at all, in that hostile new environment. As Thornton has shown, religion, especially in areas where European clergy were few in numbers or poorly supported, involved much more mutual accommodation and imaginative reconfiguration on all sides than has been assumed. We also know that Europeans, sometimes scornfully as in the case of tortillas, sometimes gladly after initial hesitations as in the case of chocolate, took to the foods of the lands they invaded. But, as Solange Alberro explains in her contribution, we know too little about the lifestyles of the new settlers, and their incorporation of local diet, clothing, medicines, methods of child rearing, speech, and much else (see chapter 10). The question which she poses about these new mores, whether they represent in their 'acculturation' a decadence in the culture of the conquerors, or a dynamic new variation of the Western European model, is surely too dependent on the value judgments of each observer. What is apparent is that European invasions of Africa and America produced mixed results. Tragic population losses and forced migrations, increased militarism and forced labour were accompanied by new foodstuffs, for both sides of the encounters, new clothes, 10 The classic study of the enslavement of Native Americans is by Jose Antonio Saco, Historia de la esclavitud de los indios en el nuevo mundo, seguida de la historia de los repartimientos y encomiendas (Havana. 1932). The Nicaraguan slave trade and its impact are discussed in Linda Newson, Indian Survival in Colonial Nicaragua (Norman, Oklahoma, 1987).

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weapons, daily habits, and beliefs. II These introductions, pernicious or beneficial or both, radically transformed the mores of both the invaders and the invaded.

European Impact in Asia With the exception of inner Asia, where Russian expansion eastward, motivated in large part by the European demand for sables, clashed with Manchu expansion westward in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the commodities affecting Asian diet, dress, and demography travelled into Asian societies on maritime routes. Japanese, Chinese, and Malay traders were active participants in the Europe-Asia trade, with Malay traders dominating the southeast Asian ports where Chinese and Japanese traders came to buy and sell. European sailing ships also carried Jesuit missionaries to various regions of Asia, where they played important roles as cultural purveyors from the sixteenth century onward. The Jesuits achieved great success in the Philippines: 'no other people ... prior to the late nineteenth century, had even in the history of the Church been so thoroughly evangelized as were the Filipinos' .12 They converted perhaps a half a million Japanese by 1615. The Manchu rulers of China during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) employed Jesuits as astronomers, mapmakers, painters, and artisans - even, in negotiations with the Russians, as diplomatic advisors. The Jesuit influence on Asian arts and music followed from their religious activities. They trained Japanese and Filipino artists to produce iconic paintings for the church. Jesuit painters at the Qing court introduced Western perspective into Chinese painting, and were at least partly responsible for the imperial interest in Western clocks. The high-prestige, extremely expensive furniture made of zitan wood during the Qing dynasty betrayed the strong influence of the French rococo style in its carvings of entwined leaves, shells, roses, and other blooms. 13 Even though many would agree with the statement, 'La musique occidentale ne plaisait pas aux oreilles des Orientaux', 14 Qing emperors were intrigued by the II Alfred J. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (Cambridge, 1986). 12 John N. Schumacher, 'Syncretism in Philippine Catholicism: Its Historical Causes', Philippine Studies XXXII (1984), pp. 252. 13 Santiago A. Pilar, 'Philippine Painting: The Early Chinese Heritage', Arts of Asia XXIV, no. 6 (1994), pp. 62-70; C.R. Boxer, 'Some Aspects of Portuguese Influence in Japan, 15421640', Transactions and Proceedings of the Japan Society of London XXXIII (1936), p. 35; Boda Yang, 'Castiglione at the Qing Court: An Important Artistic Contribution', Orientations XIX, no. II (1988), pp. 44-51; Tian Jiaqing, 'Zitan and Zitan Furniture', Orientations XXV, no. 12 (1994), p. 46. 14 H.J. de Graaf, 'L'influence involontaire de la civilisation Neerlandaise sur les Indonesiens des XVlle et XVIIIe siecles', Travaux des Col/oques Internationaux d'Histoire Maritime VIII (Paris, 1970), p. 599.

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xxi

harpsichord and clavichord, introduced into China during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by the Jesuits. They appointed Jesuits as court musicians and ordered that European musical theory be incorporated into the imperially sponsored compilation on Chinese musical theory produced in the early eighteenth century. The penetration of Western instruments and songs into Chinese popular culture, however, dates only from the late nineteenth century. IS Similarly, despite the early introduction of Western choral singing and instruction in playing European musical instruments in mission schools, Western musical influence in Japan was abruptly halted by the expUlsion of the missionaries and suppression of Christianity in the 1620s and re-emerged only in the late nineteenth century.16 South and Southeast Asia was the centre for world trade from the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries. In addition to spices, the region produced two important exports: cotton and sugar. Sugar cane, which was first hybridized in India, was introduced into China by the third century Be, and became a cash crop in the south. Sugar cane cultivation expanded in Japan only in the eighteenth century, when domainal lords sought to increase their revenues through promotion of the crop. Cotton originated in Southeast Asia and had been diffused to Korea and through China by the fourteenth century. Japan was growing a variety of cotton adapted to its winters by the sixteenth century, but the Japanese shortstaple cotton produced a thick yam and was not a substitute for the thin, light, longer staple cottons of southeast Asia. The upmarket demand for high quality cotton textiles was dominated, even in southeast Asia, by Indian cloths. Indian printed cottons - the same chintzes and other patterned cloths that created a new fashion in Europe - were imported into Japan in the seventeenth century, where they were called sarasa. Indian fabrics covered the tobacco pouches and purses of the ordinary householder, while adorning the underwear, sleeve linings, and even the bedding covers of the rich, and inspired Japanese textile design in new directions. 17 Everything about European dress, from wigs to canes and handkerchiefs, seems to have fascinated Asian rulers during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Amangkurat II the ruler of Surakarta (r. 1677-1703), was dubbed 'the Admiral Sunan' because he was so fond of wearing Dutch naval uniform; Hideyoshi, the late sixteenth-century unifier of Japan, was 'so enamoured of Portuguese dress and costume that he and his retainers frequently wear this 15 Joyce Z. Lindorff. 'The Harpsichord and Clavichord in China During Ihe Ming and Qing Dynasties'. Early Keyboard Studies Newsletter VIII. no. 4 (1994). p. 1-8. 16 Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan, vol. 5 (Tokyo, 1983), p. 283. 17 Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce. 1450-1680, vol. I, The Lands Below (New Haven, 1988), pp. 90-94; de Graaf, 'L'intluence involontaire de la civilisation Neerlandaise', pp. 598-99; Heita Kawakatsu, 'The West vs. Japan in Hislorical Perspective', Journal of Japanese Trade and Industry V (1983), pp. 46-47; Takezo Osumi, Printed Cottons of Asia: The Romance of Trade Textiles (Tokyo, 1962), chap. 2.

xxii - - - - - - - INTRODUCTION - - - - - - - - apparel' .18 Although the Qing emperors never, as far as we know, wore European dress in public, album paintings depicting the Yongzheng emperor (r. 1723-1735) in a curled wig and Western coat, vest, and breeches reveal their exotic appea1. 19 European dress became an emblem of elite status. In Java, where Dutch colonization provided sustained cultural contact, the right to don Dutch dress was reserved for the ruling elite and certain palace servants. Dutch dress was supplanted in the late eighteenth century by a notion of 'dressing Javanese style' which formed part of an emerging notion of 'Javanism'. Elsewhere, the interest in European dress was short-lived, with fundamental changes in the dress of commoners occurring only much later. Not until the 1940s did Chinese men abandon their long gowns in favour of Western trousers and a modified Western jacket; Chinese women's fashions were modernized but the 'switch to Western dress styles did not come until the 1960s and 1970s. Even in Japan, where Western clothing came into vogue following the Meiji Restoration (1868), Western-style clothing coexisted with the traditional kimono into the early twentieth century.20 We must conclude that the European impact on Asian clothing was less profound than the Asian impact on European clothing; this included not only the design impact of Indian cotton textiles but the adoption of cotton underwear. 21 Moreover, as Bernard Cohn explains in his article here (see chapter II), the English East India Company found the Mughal rulers of India practising a complex symbolic system centered on clothing exchanges which they eventually adopted in creating their own colonial hierarchy. A similar generalization might be made concerning the European impact on Asian diets. Chapters 12 and 13 by K.T. Achaya demonstrate that the European advent had only minimal impact on Indian diets, while by contrast, the Indian curry, kedgeree, mulligatawny, punch, toddy, and arrack entered the English language and became familiar items of consumption for Englishmen. In Japan, where the sixteenth-century Portuguese legacy is perpetuated in the words for bread (pan), sponge-cake (kasutera) and caramel (karumeru, karumeira), the Portuguese/Spanish practice of frying game combined with previously known techniques of cooking in deep fat to produce the Japanese tempura, deep-fried 18 John Pemberton, On the Subject of 'Java' (Ithaca, 1994), p. 58; de Graaf, 'L'influence involontaire', pp. 598-599, 600. On Hideyoshi see a letter from Father Francisco Passio dated 1594, quoted in Boxer, 'Some Aspects of Portuguese Influence in Japan, 1542-1640', p. 52. 19 Wu Hung, 'Emperor's Masquerade - "Costume Portraits" of Yongzheng and Qianlong', Orientations XXVI, no. 7 (1995), pp. 25-41. 20 Pemberton, On the Subject of 'Java', pp. 58, 65. Valery M. Garrett, Chinese Clothing: An Illustrated Guide (Hong Kong, 1994), pp. 99, 101, 102, 107. 21 Beverly Lemire, 'A Good Stock of Cloths; The Changing Market for Cotton Clothing in Britain, 1750-1800', Textile History XXII (1991), pp. 311-28; John Irwin and Katharine B. Brett, Origins of Chintz (London, 1970).

INTRODUCTION - - - - - - - - - - - xxiii bits of fish and vegetables that were sold in street stalls in the nineteenth-century Tokugawa capital, Edo. Cookbooks during the Edo period featuring namban (literally 'Southern Barbarian', referring to the Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese) dishes were published during the Tokugawa period, so there was a dissemination of knowledge concerning foreign cuisines to the reading public, but the new foods never seriously impinged on the structure of the traditional diet. Rice continued to be the staple diet for the majority of the population throughout south India and Southeast Asia; it dominated Chinese, Korean, and Japanese diets. 22 New World plants like the cashew nut, papaya, avocado, sweet pepper and tomato were only peripherally incorporated into Asian cuisines. Of the many vegetables and fruits entering India from the New World, only the chili pepper (Capsicum annuum, c. !rutescens), found immediate and widespread acceptance. The chili pepper also found an important dietary niche in southwest China as a source of vitamin C and carotene. 23 The New World plants also affected certain regions by expanding the boundaries of marginal agriculture. In China, as the article by Ping-ti Ho demonstrates (see chapter 14), New World crops such as the sweet potato, maize, and the Irish potato entered Asia through maritime routes in the sixteenth century and were adopted on marginal soils, enabling settlement of peripheral lands and stimulating population growth. Nor did European influence fundamentally alter habits of alcohol consumption, at least in the period before 1750. The strength of Islam in Southeast and South Asia may at least partially explain its negligible impact in these regions, while East Asians seem to have clung to their own rice wines and other alcoholic beverages. It was in the areas of narcotic consumption that the European impact was greatest. Betel nut chewing was deeply enmeshed in the social and ritual life of southeast Asians and the people of south India. Anthony Reid explains in his article (see chapter 15), the long drawn out process by which tobacco, introduced in the sixteenth century, first supplemented, then gradually supplanted the betel nut. In Japan, tobacco caught on almost immediately. Despite edicts from the seventeenth century onward prohibiting its use, tabako was smoked in long, thin pipes by both men and women. Chinese adapted the bottle to the uses of snuff, one of the forms in which tobacco was consumed during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. During the Qing dynasty, China produced the exquisite snuff bottles that have been collected by Europeans ever since. 24

22 Boxer, 'Some Aspects of Portuguese Influence in Japan', p. 57; Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan, vol. 8, p. 3, vol. 2, p. 306. 23 Frederick J. Simoons, Food in China: A Cultural and Historical Inquiry (Boca Raton, Florida, 1991), pp. 52-53. 24 Mattoon M. Curtis, The Book of Snuff and Snuff Boxes (New York, 1935), pp. 16, 23, 41,94.

xxiv - - - - - - - - INTRODUCTION Like tobacco, opium was initially presented to Asian consumers as a medicinal drug. Unlike tobacco, which like the betel nut became a signifier of sociability, opium smoking was primarily a solitary activity. Jonathan Spence's essay (see chapter 16) recounts the method by which the British processed opium, raised its potency, and marketed it with great success in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century China. Before 1750, Asia's cities were the largest in the world, and had achieved their size because of domestic rather than European stimuli. Edo, the capital of the Tokugawa shogunate (1600-1868), held more than a million people in the last half of the seventeenth century; Peking, the capital of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) was approximately the same size. 25 As Anthony Reid notes in his article in this volume, Southeast Asian cities grew with the expansion of maritime trade (see chapter 17). While much smaller in absolute numbers, sixteenth-century cities like Melaka and Ayutthaya, and seventeenth-century cities like Acceh and Banten, were large with respect to the total population of their regions. Asian societies varied widely in their kinship and family organization. In contrast to the patrilateral descent system of South and East Asia, Southeast Asian societies were characterized by bilateral descent. Korea, like Japan, may have also adhered to a bilateral descent system in earlier centuries. During the Koryo dynasty (918-1392) in Korea and the Heian period (794-1160) in Japan, women could inherit equally with brothers and newly-weds resided with the wife's family. Daughters could rule in their own right in ancient Korea and Japan, something that was not permissible in the patriarchal, patrilineal society of China in historic times. 26 Anthony Reid's article (see chapter 18) indicates that several Southeast Asian societies permitted women the freedom to engage in trade, to divorce their husbands, and even to rule. But Reid also points to the long-term growth of male domination, supported by Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, and Chinese traditions. European colonization did not reverse this historical trend. As Lata Mani argues in her article (see chapter 19), the onset of British colonial rule served to reify the Hindu scriptural voice and to represent the inferiority and victimization of women as emblematic of Indian culture. Even though the British did eventually outlaw the practice of widow immolation known as sati, the European impact on Asian gender relations remains problematic.

25

Gilbert Rozman, Urban Networks in Ch'ing China and Tokugawa Japan (Princeton, 1973),

chap. 6. 26 On Korea, see Martina Deuchler, The Confucian Transformation of Korea: A Study of Society and Ideology (Cambridge, Mass., 1992); on Japan, see William H. McCullough, 'Japanese Marriage Institutions in the Heian Period', Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies XXVII (1967), p. 103-67; The Cambridge History of Japan, vol. I, Ancient Japan, ed. Delmer M. Brown (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 258-60.

INTRODUCTION - - - - - - - - xxv

Select Additional Bibliography Alatas, Syed Hussein, The Myth of the Lazy Native (London, 1977). Alberro, Solange, Les Espagnols dans Ie Mexique colonial, Histoire d'une acculturation (Paris, 1992). Chang, K.C., Food in Chinese Culture: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives (New Haven, 1977). Deffontaines, Pierre, 'L'introduction du betail en Amerique Latine', us CaMers d'Outre Mer X (1957), pp. 5-22. Eltis, David, 'Trade Between Western Africa and the Atlantic World Before 1870: Estimates of Trends in Value, Composition and Direction', Research in Economic History XII (1989), pp. 197-239. - , and Jennings, Lawrence C., 'Trade Between Western Africa and the Atlantic World in the Pre-Colonial Era', American Historical Review XLIII (1988), pp. 936-959. Hemming, John, Red Gold: The Conquest of the Brazilian Indians, 1500-1760 (Cambridge, 1978). Hunwick, J.O., 'Religion and State in the Songhay Empire, 1464-1591', in ed., I.M. Lewis, Islam in Tropical Africa (London, 1966), pp. 296-317. Irwin, John, 'Indian Textile Trade in the Seventeenth Century: (I) Western India', Journal of Indian Textile History I (1955), pp. 5-33. Lewicki, Tadeusz, West African Food in the Middle Ages: According to Arabic Sources (Cambridge, 1974). Lockhart, James, 'Views of Corporate Self and History in Some Valley of Mexico Towns, Late Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries', in his Nahuas and Spaniards: Postconquest Central Mexican History and Philology (Stanford, 1991), pp. 39-64. L6pez, Adalberto, 'The Economics of Verba-Mate in Seventeenth-Century South America', Agricultural History IV (1974), pp. 493-509. Massarella, Derek, A World Elsewhere: Europe's Encounter with Japan in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New Haven, 1990). Miller, Christopher L., and Hamell, George R., 'A New Perspective on IndianWhite Contact: Cultural Symbols and Colonial Trade', Journal of American History XXIII (1986), pp. 311-328. Numbers, Ronald L., ed., Medicine in the New World: New Spain, New France, and New England (Knoxville, 1987). Pearson, M.N., Before Colonialism: Theories on Asian-European Relations, 15001750 (Oxford, 1988). - , Towards Superiority: European and Indian Medicine, 1500-1700 (Minneapolis, 1989). Pires, Benjamin V., 'Mutual Influences Between Portugal and China', trans. Marie I. Macleod, Revue de Coree (Seoul) VI (1988), pp. 76-83.

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Rodney, W., 'Jihad and Social Revolution in Futa Djalon in the Eighteenth Century', Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria IV (1968), pp. 269284. Sahlins, Marshall, 'Cosmologies of Capitalism: The Trans-Pacific Sector of "The World System"', in ed., Nicholas B. Dirks, Geoff Eley and Sherry B. Ortner, Culture/Power/History (Princeton, 1994), pp. 412-55. Sangar, S.P. 'Houses and Household Items in Seventeenth-Century India', Panjab University Research Bulletin (Arts) (Chandigarh) XVIII, no. I (1987), pp. 175-200. Scammell, G.V. 'England, Portugal, and the Estado da India, c. 1500-1635', Modern Asian Studies XVI (1982), pp. 172-92. Schwartz, Stuart, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550-1835 (Cambridge, 1985). Sinha, Pradip, 'Approaches to Urban History: Calcutta (1750-1850)" Bengal Past and Present LXXXVII (1968), pp. 10&-19. Vogt, John, Portuguese Rule on the Gold Coast, 1469-1682 (Athens, 1979). Wallis, H. 'The Influence of Father Ricci on Far Eastern Cartography', Imago Mundi XIX (1963), pp. 38-45. Washbrook, D.A ",ogress and Problems: South Asian Economic and Social History, c. 17..:.v-1860', Modern Asian Studies XXII, no. 1 (1988), pp. 5796. Wilks, I., 'The Rise of the Akwamu Empire, 1650-1710', Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana III (1957), pp. 3-21. Witek, John W., 'The Seventeenth-Century European Advance into Asia - A Review Article', Journal of Asian Studies LlII, no. 3 (1994), pp. 864-80.

1

The Social and Economic Stability of the Western Sudan in the Middle Ages M Malowist IT IS WELL-KNOWN THAT AFRICAN SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC STRUCTURES

remained stable from an early date until the twentieth century. I propose to discuss here certain questions concerning the states of the western Sudan during the later Middle Ages; states which achieved a level of development in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, beyond which they were unable to advance before the Moroccan invasion of 1591, which began a decline that lasted several centuries. I shall draw 011 some analogies with eastern European countires, which during the eleventh and twelfth centuries were at more or less the same level of economic development as the western Sudan two centuries later. In so doing I am discounting the important differences of time and place. For what interests me is why Sudanese social and economic structures did not develop further, whereas those of eastern Europe underwent profound changes in the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. I intend, in fact, to attempt to pinpoint those elements of social and economic progress and more particularly of stagnation which were to be found in Mali and its successor state, Songhai; and in so doing I hope to contribute to the general discussion on economic incentives in primitive societies. Agriculture was the basis of life for the vast majority of people in the two extensive regions in question, a primitive agriculture which had hardly yet adopted either the iron tools or two- and three-course rotation of crops which had been widespread in western Europe for some considerable time. In the western Sudan the soil of the savannah and the wide open spaces encouraged a relatively small popUlation to retain the method of burning vegetation in order to fertilize the cultivated area. In many parts of eastern Europe this method was long out-of-date, yet agricultural productivity there seems to have remained very low. In both cases a subsistence economy predominated among the peasantry, though a certain amount of exchange of products was necessary particularly because of differences in the natural environment. There seems to have been little social division of labour. Crafts and agriculture were still not separated in any clear-cut way. Until the thirteenth century and perhaps even the

EUROPEAN INTRUDERS

2 4

PAST AND PRESENT

NUMBER

33

fourteenth, a considerable number of craftsmen in the Slav lands lived in villages and were also engaged in agriculture. Only in the thirteenth century did all crafts begin to be concentrated together, especially in the towns. Mention should be made here of "service villages", which probably existed up to the eleventh and maybe to the twelfth century and traces of which are preserved in the place-names of Slav countries. These were settlements whose inhabitants were tied to fixed services, often consisting of delivering to the prince or to his officials certain craft products, such as pots and weapons. The existence of this service system shows that many products were difficult to purchase, even for powerful men who wanted to be certain of obtaining them. It is further proof of low economic productivity in the Slav lands. Archaeological investigation has demonstrated the existence of towns in eastern Europe before the thirteenth century. But apart from a few exceptions like Prague - which, according to some sources, was an important slave-market in the tenth and eleventh centuries - Kiev or Wollin, the evidence is that these towns were tiny groupings of people around princely residences and were inhabited only by a small number of craftsmen and possibly merchants, whose main task was to satisfy the needs of the prince, his officials and their courts. Relations between town and countryside must have been rather limited at first, although the towns naturally received their supplies from the surrounding district. The archaeological evidence also shows that these towns covered such a limited area that it W!lS impossible for their inhabitants to engage in agriculture within them. In the economic life of a few more important towns, luxury products in particular played a considerable role, but these products, which were destined for a very limited section of the population, cannot have been very common. It is often said that the great landed estate developed in Poland in the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries and a little earlier in Bohemia. TIllS is also the period when serfdom was becoming more and more prevalent. This process could have taken place only at the expense M the free indigenous population. There was, however, another source of slaves, or rather of serfs, although it seems to have been of less importance, namely, prisoners of war taken during the frequent invasions by Poles, Czechs and Russians of the lands of their temporarily weaker neighbours. It is known that these captives were often settled by the conquerors on their lands and obliged to cultivate them and pay taxes. No one seems to have asked whether, among the Slavs, prisoners taken in the course of invading enemy territory

EUROPEAN IMPACT IN AMERICA AND AFRICA - THE WESTERN SUDAN IN THE MIDDLE AGES

5

were useful in the slave trade. The lack of sources does not permit us to resolve this problem. But it should be remembered that slaves originating in the Slav lands were common everywhere in the Muslim world up to the eleventh century. And the sale of prisoners of war cannot be altogether excluded. Our evidence for the economic life of the Mali Empire in the western Sudan is thin and very scattered but some conclusions can be drawn from it. This immense state was established by the Malinke tribe, who subjected a large number of different peoples dwelling between the upper courses of the Niger and Senegal rivers and the western limits of the Niger bend. The Mali Empire also exercised strong influence over the Berber tribes of southern and central Sahel. According to the evidence of two Sudanese chronicles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, based on ancient traditions, the Mali or rather MaHnke were warriors and traders.' Taking into consideration the structures of more recent and better known Mrican states, it may be said that the Malinke were a kind of privileged group within the empire. From them were drawn not only the royal clan of Keita but also an aristocracy of powerful families, who surrounded the sultan and supplied the high officers of state. As for the native merchants active in Mali, they were called Wangara, which shows that they belonged to the great ethnic group of the Mandingoes. We do not know for certain what the obligations of subjects were towards the sovereigns of Mali and its successor, Songhai. The Malinke were undoubtedly liable to military service. They were probably summoned frequently, for according to Sultan Mansa Musa in 1324-5, his empire used to wage incessant war against the infidels.' Written sources also mention the right to lodging which the sultan's subjects owed him in the Mali period. No doubt there were other dues to the sovereigns and their officials, paid probably by the free population, but their character is not known. As for territories conquered by the Mali, we know that they paid tribute to the sovereigns. Thus the sultan collected two thirds of the taxes paid (in gold) by the townsmen of Timbuktu. 3 The town and small but 1 Mahmoud Kati ben el-lHidj el-MotaouakkcI, Tarikh el-Fettach [Chrolliqlle du ChercheurJ, French translation by O. Houdas and M. Delafosse (Paris, 1913), p, 65· 2 Ibn Fad! Allah AI-Omari, Masiilik el Absar fi Mamalik el Amsar [VA/rique mains I'Egypte], French translation by Gaudefroy-Demombynes (Paris, 1927), p.81. • Abderrahman ben Abdallah ben Imran ben Amir es-Sa'adi, Tan'kh es-Soudan, [Chrollique du Soudan], French translation by O. Houdas (Paris, 1900), p, 40.

3

4

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33

relatively rich principality of Jenne sent its tribute to the senior wife of the sultan. The peoples engaged in washing gold sifted from the river sand of Bambuk-Galam and Bure paid tribute in kind. ~ Privileges bought by merchants, who exported gold in exchange for salt and other foreign commoditirs, probably constituted a valuable source of revenue for the royal treasury. Our knowledge of the dues rendered by the population to the monarch is therefore very limited. The authors of the two Sudanese chronicles reveal very clearly that during the period of the Mali Empire the institution known by scholars as the "castes" was already in existence. These were groups of sultan's slaves, who occupied a particular piece of land and were liable to uniform dues in kind. I have analysed this phenomenon in another place 5 and wish here merely to draw attention to the striking analogy between these "castes" and the inhabitants of "service villages" in the Slav world during the early Middle Ages. I believe that, in both cases, the emergence of these institutions was caused by the low productivity of the societies in question and that the sovereigns and dominant social groups needed to compel a section of their subjects to produce a surplus of essential articles, a sufficient supply of which could not be guaranteed in the markets. But I do not think that the nature of the renders was always determined by the occupation of the people in question. There is every likelihood that even those who appear in the sources as smiths or other craftsmen also cultivated their fields or lived off fishing; for it is improbable that there was any large number of professional craftsmen in a peasant society living at the stage of a subsistence economy. Employing a term invented by E. Heckscher for a different purpose, however, one could speak in this case too of a barbaric prosperity. This is well shown in the narrative of Ibn Batoutah, the famous traveller of the mid-fourteenth century. He tells us that during his stay in Mali he could easily obtain food supplies in each locality he passed through. Everywhere peasants offered travellers necessary provisions in exchange for small quantities of salt or luxury commodities like spices and jewels. 8 It is evident that the only essential commodity which the Mali peasants lacked was salt, which they had to import from the Sahara. From an examination of AlI Ibid., p. 21; AI-Omari, p. 58. • M. Malowist, Wielkie pans twa Sudallu Zachodniego w poznym sredlliowieczll [The Great States of the Western Sudan in the Later Middle Ages] (Warsaw, 1964), pp. 147-9, 380-2. • Ibn Batoutah, Voyages, French translation by C. Defremery and B. R. Sanguinetti, vol. iv (Paris, 1858), pp. 392-4.

- - - - EUROPEAN IMPACT IN AMERICA AND AFRICA THE WESTERN SUDAN IN THE MIDDLE AGES

5 7

Omari's writings, which come from the same period and are based on Sudanese accounts, it may be concluded that particularly agriculture and fruit-gathering, and also, in certain parts of the country, hunting and the rearing of livestock, assured the Mali peasants of a relatively prosperous and independent life, satisfying their needs without much contact with the outside world. 7 This prosperity did not demand any great efforts on the part of the Mali peasants. Their needs in clothing and shelter were much less than those of the European peasantry. The wide expanses of savannah were well suited to a rudimentary agriculture, based on firing the countryside and using the wooden hoe as the principal tool. These open spaces also offered enough opportunities of food supply for a population which in any case increased relatively slowly. Collecting fruit yielded much necessary food, particularly in southern Mali, and it was often done by women and children. Thus the Mali peasants did not need to intensify their labour. Their small surplus production probably sufficed to procure them salt and a few luxury objects, if only modest ones at first. In the internal life of the Mali countryside, therefore, I can find no incentives which might have encouraged the peasants to improve and intensify their methods of work and consequendy to change those old social structures which were so closely bound up with the agricultural system, such as the system of large families cultivating their land in common. We must now ask whether these incentives could not have come from outside: that is, either from merchants or from the state. Arab travellers from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries all tell us that Mali towns - Timbuktu, Gao and lesser places - were in general well supplied with victuals, and there is no doubt that the towns obqrined some of their provisions by trade with the peasantry. The rural areas had a surplus of agricultural and animal products which was dispatched for sale in the towns. Ibn Batoutah and other sources indicate that the western Sudan even exported a certain amount of millet and rice to the Sahel regions, not only to Walata but also farther towards the districts where rock-salt and copper were exploited for import into the Sudan.s Yet the export trade of agricultural and animal products was not of sufficient quantity to cover the cost of importing salt, copper, silver and other commodities from the Sahara, North Africa, Egypt and Europe. The really valuable Sudanese commodities were gold and slaves. Both were at 7 AI-Omari, pp. 61-2. • Ibn Batoutah, pp. 378, 391, 431-2; Leo Africanus, Description de l'A/rique, cd. A. Epaulard (Paris, 1956), ii, pp. 455, 463.

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33

the disposal of sovereigns of Mali and later Songhai, and likewise of native and Arab-Berber merchants who visited or established themselves in the country. Arab and Sudanese sources show that the Mali emperors collected tribute in gold from the regions of Bambuk-Galam and probably Bure. Cadamosto and certain Portuguese authors, relying no doubt on native accounts, have left us a description of the traffic in gold exchanged for salt bctween Sahel, Timbuktu, Jcnne, Gao the Mali capital and the areas supplying gold.' We do not have any figures relating to this trade but the indirect evidence gives some indication of the scale of the trade in gold and in particular of its export northwards. It should be remembered here that dul'ing the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries there was an acute shortage of precious metals in Europe and in the Muslim lands and that the only really important source of gold was in the western Sudan and its hinterland. This metal had no place in local internal trade for its value was too high. Instead we see that salt, Mahgreb and Egyptian cloths, copper, weapons and horses from North Africa and even from Europe were paid for in gold. In this connection the accounts of Malfante, Cadamosto and Leo Africanus are quite explicit, and give a good deal of information on the subject. Valentim Fernandes and Malfante tell us that even in their own day - in the mid-fifteenth century - gold had the same value as silver in the Sudan.lO We know that the Sudan did not possess any silver mines and that this metal was imported. In any case, even if Cadamosto and Malfante exaggerated, it must be noted that from the foreigners' point of view the price of gold in the Sudan was very low, probably because there was an abundance of it in comparison with local needs. The Maghreb, Egyptian and Sudanese sources give a good deal of information about the activities of the large number of North African and Egyptian merchants who visited the large towns of Mali and later Songhai in order to buy gold. It is well known, thanks especially to the narrative of Leo Africanus, that Jewish jewellers from the Maghreb often settled in southern Morocco, the Sahara and • Delle navigazioni e f)iaggi di Messer A/vise da Ga'Da Mosto genti/uomo Veneziano, ed. R. Caddeo (Milan, 1929), pp. 196-7; P. Cenival and T. Monod, Descn'ption de I'Afrique de Geuta aSenegal par Va/entim Fernandes, I506-7 (Paris, 1938), pp. 84 if.; Leo Africanus, vol. ii, pp. 464, 468-9, 471, etc.; C. de la Ronciere, "La decouverte d'une relation de voyage datee du Touat en decrivant en 1447 Ie bassin du Niger", Bulletin de /a Section de Geographie, (Paris, 1918), pp. 28, 31. 10 Valentim Fernandes, pp. 60, 94; de la Roncicre, loco cit., p. 32.

- - - - EUROPEAN IMPACT IN AMERICA AND AFRICA - THE WESTERN SUDAN IN THE MIDDLE AGES

9

even the Sudan, evidently in order to intercept some of the gold transported northwards and to buy it at a low price. l l Jaime Cortesao has drawn historians' attention to Portuguese sources of the early fifteenth century, according to which Portuguese gold currency was at that time based on importing from Morocco gold which must have come from the Sudan. The same author is of the opinion that it was above all in Sudanese gold that Morocco paid the import costs for European and Levantine goods brought by the Genoese and the Venetians 12 - a suggestion confirmed by several Italian documents. It should be added that Sudanese trade was not the only way in which Sudanese gold in large quantities reached Egypt and the Near East. Sudanese pilgrims, who each year visited Egypt and the holy places of Islam in Arabia, brought with them very considerable quantities of gold to spend on the journey and on arrival in Cairo, Mecca and Medina. The greatest expenses were incurred by the sultans of Mali and Songhai, members of their families and high officials. 13 A substantial amount of gold was at the disposal above all of the sovereigns, who collected it as tribute and certainly too in the form of taxes from merchants. According to Al-Omari and later sources, the fourteenth-century sultans of Mali and the sovereigns of Songhai in the following century would give away a good deal of gold as presents or payments to Muslim scholars and civil and military officials. 14 It is obvious that gold was a very important source of revenue for the sultans of Mali and Songhai and similarly for their entourage and for all powerful men in the western Sudan. It is, however, impossible to determine just how much gold was at the disposal of the sultans and the ruling classes of Mali; similarly nothing can be said about the quantities exported. The sources of gold supply were not, however, directly controlled by the sovereigns of Mali. They received the metal as tribute from animistic peoples inhabiting regions loosely attached to the empire or even situated outside its frontiers. The sultans were extremely careful in their relations with these peoples. They even gave up imposing the Islamic faith there for fear that any coercion might 11 11

Ibid., pp. 28, 31; Leo Africanus, vol. i, pp. 87-90, 93, vol. ii, pp. 422-3.

J. Cortesao, Los Portugueses-Historia de Americay de los pueblos americallos,

vol. iii (Barcelona/Buenos Aires, 1947), p. 506. U AI-Omari, pp. 77-9; Tarikh el-Fellach, pp. 25-6, 58 ff.; Ibn Khaldoun, Histoire des Berberes et des dynasties musulmalles de l' Afrique Septentrionale, ed. Slane, vol. ii (Paris, 1927), pp. II2-3. " AI-Omari, p. 66.

7

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33

reduce the flow of gold. IS We hear repeatedly that the gold suppliers were exceedingly suspicious of foreigners, with whom they conducted only dumb barter in order to procure the salt wliich they needed. These accounts are probably exaggerated but they do show that neither the sultans of Mali nor the merchants could completely subdue the suppliers of precious metal. It was feared that at any moment they might break off deliveries and so Mali wished to maintain as friendly relations as possible with them. Nothing is known of the volume of gold production in powdered or lump form. But the sources suggest that from the thirteenth century onwards, the extraction of gold somewhat increased in the vast hinterland of Mali and Songhai, a development which may be attributed to growing demand. It is generally accepted that the setting up of Portuguese trading stations on the Atlantic coast and in particular at Sao Jorge da Mina considerably decreased the flow of gold towards the Niger region and the Mediterranean. I do not wish to discuss this view here but I do not believe it to be entirely justified. The description of the Sudan given by Leo Africanus and likewise in the Sudanese chronicles shows that in the early sixteenth century there was plenty of gold on the markets of the large towns of Mali and Songhai and that it was exported among other places to North Africa and Egypt. 18 At this period Mali was declining but it was replaced in the Niger bend by Songhai, another very powerful state which controlled most of the commercial routes leading from the tropical zone towards the Maghreb and Egypt. But it seems that the political influence of Songhai over the southern parts of this area was not so well consolidated as that of Mali. The sources of the Songhai period do not mention any tribute paid by the miners to its sultans. So it is probable that their revenues in this field were limited to rights exercised over Wangara merchants, who secured relations with the Bambuk-Galam, Bure and High Volta districts, whence the metal came. It might also be asked whether American gold imported into Europe did not affect, in a negative way, this sector of the Sudanese economy. However that may be, the town of Jenne was still considered an important commercial centre for this precious metal during the first half of the seventeenth century. 17 It is quite evident from all that I have said here that the gold trade was an extremely significant factor in the economic life of the Sudan and a most important source of revenue for its sovereigns arid Ibid., p. 58. Cf. 11. II. IT Tarikh es-Souda'l, p.

Ii

It

22.

EUROPEAN IMPACT IN AMERICA AND AFRICA - THE WESTERN SUDAN IN THE MIDDLE AGES

II

wealthiest social groups, notably officials, merchants and Muslim scholars. But there was yet another source of wealth, probably no less considerable. This was the traffic in black slaves with Muslim countries. It is commonly recognized from the accounts of El-Bekri and other Arab writers that slaves were already being exported in the time of ancient Ghana and that this trade developed particularly from the period of occupation of North Africa by the ArabsY The trade was conducted during the Mali period too. Ibn Battuta frequently mentions the presence of slaves in the houses of well-to-do people and he also tells us something about the slave trade with North Africa. Its scale cannot be estimated but we do know that there were numerous black slaves in Egypt and the Maghreb and that they were also to be found in Muslim Spain. n In the two last instances they probably came in particular from the western Sudan. Thanks to the accounts of Valentim Fernandes' informants we have some idea of the trade between the Berbers and Senegal, where the nomads regularly exchanged horses for slaves destined for Morocco. 2o From the middle of the fifteenth century the Portuguese followed the example of the Tuareg in importing horses and other merchandise in order to buy slaves and gold. Sources for the slave trade in Mali territory are not available, although the slave-markets at Timbuktu and Gao, which were under Songhai rule in the early sixteenth century, are relatively well known. It is often claimed that there was one great difference between the two successive empires of Mali and Songhai. According to certain contemporary authors, Mali was a pacific state, whereas Songhai cruelly oppressed its subjects, ravaging neighbouring territories during frequent warlike expeditions and reducing to slavery the inhabitants of the lands upon which they had encroached. I am not convinced that this contrast is justified. For we know almost nothing of the political and military history of Mali, whereas the military expeditions organized by the sultans of Songhai are described in great detail in the two Sudanese chronicles. The provenance of black 11 R. Mauny, Tableau geographique de l'Ouest africain au Moye/l Age d'apres les sOl/rees ecrites, la tradition et l'arclzeologie (Mcmoires de l'Institut Franc;:ais d'Afrique Noire, no. 61, Dakar, 1961), pp. 336-7. 11 Ibn Iyas, Journal d'un bourgeois du Caire Histoire des Marnelouks, vol. ii (Paris, 1960), pp. 60, 161; M. K. RadziwiU, Podroi do Ziemi Swiftej, Syrii i Egipru, 1582-4 [Travels to the Holy Land, Syria and Egypt] (Warsaw, 1962), pp. 141, 159-60; A. N. Poliak, Les re-ooltes populaires en Egypte Ii l'epoque des Mamelouks et leurs causes economiques (Paris, 1936), pp. 272-3; C. Verlinden, L'esclavage dans l'Europe medievale, vol. i (Bruges, 1955), pp. 210, 226, 388, 757-8. 20 Va1cntim Fernandes, p. 70.

9

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slaves in the Maghreb and Muslim Spain is attested by a variety of sources of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. According to AlOmari, Mansa Musa the famous sultan of Mali said, during his stay in Cairo in 1324-5, that Mali was conducting unceasing warfare against the infidels. 21 In my view, the economic aim behind these wars was to capture slaves for export northwards. The great slave-markets at Timbuktu and Gao, which figure in the early sixteenth-century description of Leo Africanus, do not seem to represent a situation which was in the least novel. Fifty years earlier, Cadamosto tells us that the Tuareg regularly bought slaves in the western Sudan and he states this while describing the trade of these nomads with Timbuktu. 22 There is no doubt, therefore, that the slave trade was being conducted on the banks of the Niger during the period of Mali !:upremacy. But it cannot be denied that the Songhai conquest of the bend in the great river may have caused an increase in this traffic. Songhai possessed a relatively powerful military organization by comparison with its neighbours and derived considerable advantages from this in frequent invasions of adjacent territories. The Songhai often took a large number of prisoners. At the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries some of these captives were settled by Sultan EI-Hadj Muhammad in special villages, whose inhabitants were treated as the sovereign's slaves.23 This policy was probably pursued by the following members of the Askia dynasty, though there is nothing in the sources about this. Furthermore, we know that after each large-scale and successful expedition, there was a resurgence of the slave trade at Timbuktu and Gao. Slaves of both sexes and of all ages were sold, even children, the prices varying with the quality of the slaves and in relation to supply and demand.24 And during the second half of the fifteenth and far into the following century, the slave trade in the Niger area seems to have been even more widespread than that organized by Europeans on the AtlantIc coast and in the Gulf of Guinea. The Polish traveller, Duke Christopher Radziwill saw slave-markets in Egypt in 1582, when Negro transports often holding 2,000 persons appeared each week from Algiers and other west African ports. 26 It must be concluded that a significant proportion of these people was bought in the western and central AI-Omari, p. 81. Ca'Da Mosto, pp. 187-8. OJ Tarikh el-Fettach, pp. 141, 159-60. I t Cf. n. II. I I Radziwill, op. cit., pp. 141, 159-60.

11 II

EUROPEAN IMPACT IN AMERICA AND AFRICA THE WESTERN SUDAN IN THE MIDDLE AGES

11 13

Sudan. The history of the Mamlukes also mentions people coming from this area, who sometimes rose to positions of importance, U although in general the condition of slaves recently introduced into Egypt was most lamentable, provoking them to revolt. It is thus clear that there was a great number of slaves from the western Sudan to be found in North Africa and Egypt in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Arab and Sudanese sources show that slave hunting presented no great difficulties in the Songhai period. The author of the Tarikh e/-Fettaclz explicitly says so in citing a statement by the sons of Daud, Sultan of Songhai, in the second half of the sixteenth century.27 Whether it was always restricted to the inhabitants of foreign territories is not clear. The two Sudanese chronicles mention several regulations of Songhai sultans forbidding third parties to sell "caste" individuals belonging to the sovereign. From these same sources we have proclamations of sultans banning in addition the sale of descendents of people freed from slavery or even of certain freemen. IS The author of the TariMz e/-Fettach adds that these royal mandates were not always carried into effcct. 29 From the early sixtcenthcentury taxation list of royal slaves it can also be seen that some of these people were bound to give the prince each year a small number of children, boys and girls, destined to be exchanged for horses. 3o From all that I have said about the trade in gold and slaves, it is clear that these two branches of the west Sudanese economy were extremely valuable for Mali and for its successor, Songhai. It was for the most part owing to the export of gold and slaves that the western Sudan could supply itself with salt, horses, weapons and Maghreb, Egyptian and even European luxury products. These Sudanese export commodities were at the disposal above all of sultans and their families, officials and other rich men of the country and notably of merchants, both Arab-Berber and native, and Muslim scholars, who, as is well known, received gold from sovereigns and were often slave-owners. I believe, tllerefore, that throughout the period under consideration, neither sultans nor members of the dominant class were particularly interested in reorganizing the country's economy with a view to any marked expansion in production. They had no need .. Ibn Iyas, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 60, 161. 27 Tarikh el-Fettach, p. 195 . .. Ibid., pp. 13 sqq . .. Ibid. 3. Ibid., p. 109.

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33

to do this. The author of the Tarikh el-Fettach tells us that towards the middle of the sixteenth century the Songhai sultans possessed many goods for which the inhabitants - their slaves, or rather their serfs - were obliged to do agricultural work on behalf of the sovereign. The two Sudanese chronicles also relate that the sultans of Songhai sometimes granted to pious scholars or descendants of the Prophet groups of "castes" with all their chattels and obligations. The same conclusions can be drawn from a few references in AI-Omari's account of mid-fourteenth-century Mali.31 These features, however, were not fully developed. In all likelihood, revenues derived from the gold and slave trades were of prime importance to the sultan and ruling classes of Mali and Songhai, whereas taxes paid by the agricultural population played a secondary role. Undel the prevailing conditions, any incentive towards intensifying agriculture and other vital sectors of the country's economy could not have come from the state and the ruling classes. I have already suggested that the peasants forming the great majority of the population were no longer interested in such changes, so that in the circumstances both Mali and Songhai were condemned to social and economic stagnation. No one needed to make any changes in this field. The abundance of gold and the slave trade held up social and economic progress, and Songhai in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was not much different from Mali two centuries earlier. This stagnation was not restricted to their economic life; the same phenomenon is noticeable in the structure of the state, in its military organization and even, despite a few appearances to the contrary, in the culture of the western Sudan on the eve of the Moroccan invasion. At the beginning of this article I mentioned some analogies between the situation in eastern Europe during the early Middle Ages and in the western Sudan from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. Yet the peoples of eastern Europe developed in a different direction. The natural wealth of eastern Europe, modest compared with that of the Sudan, demanded much effort in order to profit by it. A certain balance of power between the states which had been formed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries meant that reciprocal invasions could bring significant gains to no one. And German pressure on Bohemia and Poland constituted a very serious threat. In these circumstances the princes, the lay and ecclesiastical aristocracy, were forced to take more interest in developing their own landed resources . .. Ibid., pp. 16,52-3; AI-Omari: p. 66.

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15

This was possible, however, only with the co-operation of the peasants. All the while peasant obligations were uncertain and peasants were afraid of being deprived of their surplus production, they had no interest in improving their working methods. Lords, on the other hand, were in no position to increase their demands on their serfs, for the latter could easily run away. Princes and lords who wished to develop their property economically were thus compelled to encourage their subjects to work more intensively and to introduce new methods, particularly in connection with agriculture. They achieved these aims by introducing the German or rather Western custom whereby peasant dues were not only regulated but also reduced. Commutation of services and renders in kind into money rents, begun in Bohemia in the early thirteenth century and carried into effect a little later in Poland, already reflected the development of agriculture and progress in the social division of labour. These methods were applied not only to agriculture but also to the economic life of the towns and in the mines of several eastern European countries. They accelerated the economic and social progress of the peoples in this area and marked the beginning in the thirteenth century of a long process of development.

13

2 The Horse in Fifteenth-Century Senegambia Ivana Elbl

Horses, and in particular horses supplied by the Portuguese, may well have played the role of a catalyst in the political changes taking place in Senegambia in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It has been suggested that the overseas supply of horses through the Atlantic trade may not only have changed the character of warfare in the region, but that it also resulted in a disruption of the existing balance of power and in the decline of the lolof Empire, the main political body in the area. The supply of horses was first linked to the downfall of lolof by lean Boulegue, in his pioneering thesis on fifteenth-century Senegambia. 1 Boulegue was also the first to point out a connection between the political fortunes of Senegalese states and their access to European trade goods. Recently, developing this hypothesis further, he has suggested a link between acces to horses and the pre-European strength of the northern Senegalese states, and tied their weakening to a redistribution of supply in favour of Kajoor, Siin and Saalum. 2 In this, Boulegue is not alone;3 Philip D. Curtin,4 lean Suret-Canale, and Boubacar Barry,S also considered horses and their ·1 would like to express my gratitude to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, whose generous support in the form of doctoral and post-doctoral fellowships made possible much of the research for this article. Software limitations at the journal made it necessary to omit most Arabic accents and to replace some old Portuguese accents by letter equivalents; interventions are marked by square brackets, e.g. nenhuu[mJ. 1 J. Boul~gue, "La S~n~gambie du milieu du XYe si~c1e au Mbut du XYlIe si~c1e" (Ib~se, Universilt de Paris, 1969), 203-204.

3~me cycle,

2 J. Boul~gue, Le Grand Jolof(XlIle-XVle sUe/e) (paris, 1987),75,153, ISS, 162, 166. 3 A critical synthesis of such views is found in Robin Law, The Horse in West African History: The Role of the Horse in the Societies of Pre-colonial West Africa (London, 1980), 178. 4 In 1975, Philip Curtin mentioned access 10 remounts ~ one of the contributing factors in the destabilization of Jolof (Economic Change in Precolonial Africa: Senegambia in the Era of the Slave Trade (Madison, 1975), 11). The observation w~ only a marginal remark, but is frequently quoted by other scholars and therefore ~ had considerable impact

5 Suret-Canale and Barry considered the trade in horses an ~t of the negative impact of the Portuguese presence on Senegambian history (J. Suret-Canale and B. Barry, "The Western Atlantic Co~t to 1800," in J.F.A. Ajayi and M. Crowder, cds., History of West Africa, 2nd ed. (London. 1976), I. 458, 462-63). Suret-Canale had presented a similar idea already in the first edition of the History of West Africa, where he mentioned horses ~ one of the articles of the generally damaging Portuguese trade that w~ "inevitably" linked to "the empire's downfall" (J. Suret-Canale. "The

16

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IVANA ELBL

overseas supply important for shifts in the Senegambian balance of power during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The period in question certainly saw a number of significant political changes in Senegambia: the decline and eventual disintegration of the lolof empire, the rise to power of the coastal states, especially Kajoor and Siin, and fmally the ascendancy of Fuuta Tooro and Kaabu as regional powers. How many of these changes, however, can be tied in with modalities of access to horses or, for that matter, with the Portuguese horse trade? The ~swer is contingent on an examination of three issues: the historical role of horses in western West Africa, the effect of Portuguese imports, and finally, the specific role of horses in political changes within Senegambia. Access to horses could have played a major socio-political role if a rise can be documented in the importance of horses in the social or military sphere, if this rise was directly related to major historical processes of the time, and if the supply of horses was unevenly distributed. Under such conditions, the Portuguese horse trade may have been the catalyst conceptualized by Boulegue and others, always providing that its volume was sufficiently large, that it favoured certain areas over others, and that the disadvantaged areas did not have access to alternative supply. Only if all these conditions are met can we consider Boulegue's thesis valid

The Historical Role of Horses in Western Africa The concept of the horse as an instrumental factor in political and social prc:x:esseS in West Africa, especially in state formation, enjoys wide acceptance. Its principal advocates include lohn D. Fage, Roland Oliver, and Nehemiah Levtzion, whose views are the more influential for being found in widely read surveys.6 Oral history lends significant weight to this interpretation, for many legends do refer to small groups of stranger horsemen as founders of states and cultural heros} Horses came Western Atlantic Coast," in ].F.A. Ajayi and M. Crowder, cds., History (London, 1971). I. 389, 394).

0/ West Africa.

1st ed.

6 ].0. Fage, A History 0/ Africa (London. 1978),69. See also ].0. Fage. A History 0/ West Africa (Cambridge, 1969).8; R. Oliver and ].0. Fage, A Short History 0/ Africa (Hatmondsworth, 1970), 70; R. Oliver and B.M. Fagan, Africa 111 the Iroll Age. c. 500 B.C. to A.D. 1400 (Cambridge, 1975).67-8; N. Levtzion. Allcient Ghana and Mali (London. 1973). 14; N. Levtzion, "The Early States in the Western Sudan to 1500," in ].F.A. Ajayi and M. Crowder, eds., History 0/ West Africa (London. 1976), 120; N. Levtzion, "The Western Sudan and Maghrib." in R. Oliver, ed., The Cambridge History 0/ Africa (Cambridge, 1977), vol. 3, 386-7. For a review of these opinions see Law, The Horse, 181-82. 7 For a review see Oliver and Fagan, Africa ill the Iroll Age. 67-68, 181-83; Jack Goody, Technology. Traditioll and the Stale 111 Africa (London, 1971),58-69; ].0. Fage, "Upper and Lower Guinea," in R. Oliver, Cambridge History 0/ Africa (Cambridge, 1977), m, 477-78; ].0. Fage, A History 0/ Africa, 63-67, 99-100, 105-107; (vor Wilks, "The Mossi and Akan States, 1600-1800,"

EUROPEAN IMPACT IN AMERICA AND AFRICA THE HORSE IN FIFTEENTH·CENTURY SENEGAMBIA

17 87

to represent an imponant factor in West African political life, both as instruments of mobility for troops and as symbols of political and military power. As Fage put it, their [the newcomers'] advent must have meant a considerable enlargement of the scale of political organization, and perhaps too a more precise institutionalization of its modes of operation. Their possession of horses and their access to regular supplies of such animals in a land in which they could be bred only with considerable difficulty, must have enabled them ot exert power over appreciably greater distances than earlier rulers. 8 The introduction of horses could significantly upset or alter the standing balance of power, even though the establishment of cavalry in itself did not necessarily guarantee decisive military advantage. 9 Moreover, in many parts of West Africa, environmental conditions and in some cases settlement patterns limited substantially both the employment of cavalry and horse· keeping in general. 10 Fortified, walled settlements and difficult terrain represented a formidable obstacle for cavalry even where other environmental factors happened to be favourable. II However, the most serious obstacle to horse·keeping were diseases spread by the tse·tse fly.12 The main health hazard to the horse in West Africa is trypanosomiasis. Law mentions two different vectors of this disease (which exists in multiple forms): Trypanosoma bruce; and Trypanosoma v;vax. Trypanosoma brucei is carried mostly by the fly Glossina morsitans, and Trypanosoma vivax by Glossina pa/palis and Glossina IOllgipalis. Trypanosoma brucei, usually fatal to horses, induces fever and a progressive swelling of the belly, scrotum and hind parts of the animal. Given the incidence of its fly carrier, it is the disease of the savanna. Trypanosoma vivax, on the other hand, induces a chronic illness with symptoms of recurrent fever, lethargy, and overall deterioration. It is in Ajayi and Crowder, eds .• History of West!tfrica. I. 349. In Senegambia. historical heroes are very oflen remembered in association with their horses (Curtin. Economic Change. 221). 81.0. Fage. A History of Africa (London. 1978).69. See also Curtin. Economic Change, 221; Law, The HorSt, 184-196; and also note 3. 9 See Fisher, '''He Swalloweth the Ground with Fierceness and Rage': The Horse in Ihe Central Sudan," Part I, "Its Introduction." Journal of African History 13 (1972): 367-73; and Part 2. "Its Use." Journal of African History 14 (1973): 357-60; Humphrey 1. Fisher. "The Eastern Maghrib and the Central Sudan." in R. Oliver, ed .• Cambridge History of Africa (Cambridge. 1977).m, 306-310; and R. Law. The Horse. Chs. S and 7. 10 See Law. The Horse. Ch. 5. lllbid.• 136-40.

12 See Law. The Horse, 76-78; Curtin. Economic Change. 222.

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IVANA ELBL

characteristic for the border zone between the savanna and the forest, and in riverine areas.! 3 In Sene gambia. with the possible exception of coastal swamps and heavily forested areas. the terrain was quite suited to cavalry warfare. but horse breeding was difficult l4 and the toll exacted by Trypanosoma brucei was high. especially in the case of imported mounts. As Cadamosto observed. IS Li caualli in questo paexe sono molto apresiadi perche Ii hano con grandissima difficultade che Ii vien menadi per terra de queste barbarie nostre ... e ancho perche non pono viuer molto per li gran caldi ... e si se Ingrassano tanto che per fona moreno de vna malaria che i non pono pisar e crepano.

[Horses are much valued in this land because they are acquired with the greatest of difficulty. being brought overland from our Barbary .•. and also because they cannot live through the great heat ... and they grow so fat that they inevitably die of a disease that prevents them from urinating] The quality of stock. as elsewhere in West Africa. decreased with each generation. 16 and the life expectancy was 10w.l7 Horse owners had therefore to depend to a great degree on imports from regions favourable to horse breeding. Senegambia was quite fortunate in this respect. because of its proximity to the horse-breeding areas of Mauritania. 18 and especially because the western trans-Saharan routes offered well13 Law. The Horse. 77. 14 The problems with breeding resulted. according to Epstein. from both the environment and lack of skill (H. Epstein. The Origin o/the Domestic Animals 0/ Africa (New York. 1911). n. 44648.472). Curtin stressed the environment factor and the lack of mares (Curtin. Economic Change. 222). Valentim Fernandes supports the environmental theory when he declares summarily. speaking about Senegambia. that: "Cauallo nenhuu[m] nace e[m] Guynee ne[m) pode alli viuer" [No hU'S~ is either born in Guinea or can live there). V. Fernandes. 0 Manuscrito "Valentim Fernandes." cd. A. Baillo (Lisbon. 1940).80. IS Viagens de Luts de Cadamasto e de Pedro de Sintra (Lisbon. 1948).47. 16 Epstein. The Origin. II. 463. Epstein's theory is consistent both with the testimony of the early written sources and the more recent processes. which in Senegambia and neighboring regions resulted in such specific breeds as the Sahel HU'Se. the River Horse of Senegal. the Footank6 Horse. and the B616dougou/Banamba Horse (all West African varieties of the Barb) and widespread "Pony of the South,.. Jiving between the upper Senegal and Niger rivers (Epstein. The Origin. 446-48. 472). 17 See notes 14 and IS. above. 18 10 the more recent period. Mauritania-bred horses constituted tt.e majority of stock imported to Senegal (Curtin. Economic Change. 222). The question is. however. whether this was the case already in the flftcenth century. Early Arab and European sources mention the scarcity of horses among the Sanhaja ("Kitab a1-Istibsar" [c. 1135). in N. Levtzion and J.F.P. Hopkins. trans. and cds•• Corpus 0/ Early A.rabic Sources lor West African History [Cambridge. 1981). 144; Cadamosto.

EUROPEAN IMPACT IN AMERICA AND AFRICA THE HORSE IN FIFTEENTH·CENTURY SENEGAMBIA

19 89

established access to horses bred in Morocco. The imports of horses from North Africa, principally from western Morocco, to Senegambia are mentioned at some length by all early European sources. 19 The presence of horses in Senegambia and the neighboring areas is well documented prior to contact with the Portuguese. The earliest Arab sources even mention horses as important status symbols in ancient Ghana and, later on, in the Takrur,20 suggesting that horses were introduced into westernmost Africa well before the growth of Manding influence in that area in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Mali, whose power in the late thirteenth and in the fourteenth centuries reached, at least nominally, to Senegambia, the Guinea Rivers, and Fuuta Jaloo,21 already possessed a large body of elite cavalry, consisting mostly of noble commanders and their retinue. 22 Viagens ,25; Fernandes. 0 Manuscrilo. 4748, 55). However, the presence oC horse herds in Jara (Fernandes, 0 Manuscrilo, 47) and the improving climate in southern Mauritania (0. de Puigaudeau, "Arts et coutumes des Maures. Chap. II, Vie mat~rielle, 1 • L'Habitation [suite], 5. Notice sur quelques-unes des principales villes anciennes," Hesplris - Tamuda, 9, Case. 3 [1968). 369-70), indicate at least a possibility oC using the southern pasturages as a convalescence area Cor the Moroccan 00= transported across the desert and eventually as breeding grounds.

19 Cadamosto (1455) reported that the "Arabs" (Sanhaja merchants) brought many Barbary horses and other merchandise to sell in the land of the blacks (Viagens, 17,29) and that the horses were ordered Crom and distributed throughout Senegambia by a network of Sanhaja traders/clerics (Ibid., 29, 30, 39). Duarte Pacheco Pereira (1480s) stressed the area around Safi as the main source of horses destined Cor Sene gambia (D. Pacheco Pereira, Esmtraldo dt Situ Orbis, ed. A.E. da Silva Dias [Lisbon, 1905, reprint 1975). 59). Fernandes (1507-1508), similarly to Pacheco Pereira, identified Safi as the main source region oC horses imported to Sene gambia across the Sahara (Fernandes, 0 Manuscrilo, 47). 20 aI-BaIai (c. 1(68), the Kitab al·lslibsar (1135), aI·Idrisi (c. 1154) and Ibn Sa'id (1269) all mention horses as an important royal status symbol in ancient Ghana (aI-BaIai, "Kitab aI-masalik wa-'I-mamalik," in Levtzion and Hopkins, Corpus, 80; "K.itab aI-lstibsar," Ibid., 147; al-Idrisi, "Nuzhat aI·mushtaq fi ikhtirnQ aI-aCaq," Ibid., 110; Ibn Sa'id, "K.itab bast aI-ard fi'l-tul wa-'I·'ard," Ibid., 186. The most original accounts are those oC aI·BaIai and aI-ldrisi. A century apart and, unlike the other two sources, written independently oC each other, they reflect well the ceremonial usage at the Ghana court. Ibn Sa'id (1269) provides also a specific reference to Takrur (Fuuta Tooro) (Ibn Sa'id, "K.itab bast aI-ard," Ibid., 18.5). 21 See Levtzion, "The Early States," I, 117; and also aI-'Umari, "Masalilc aI-absar," in Levtzion and Hopkins, Corpus, 261.

22 According to aI- 'Umari (c. 1337-1338), "His [the ruler's of Mali) army numbers about 100,000, of whom about 10,000 are cavalry mounted on horses and the remainder infantry without horses or other mounts. . .. The people of this kingdom ride with Arab saddles and in respect of most Ceatures of their horsemanship resemble Arabs, but they mount their horses with the right foot. contrary to everybody else" (aI-'Umari, "Masalik aI-absar," 266). Ibn Battuta (1352-1353) reported that each/arba (provincial military commander) had mounted and infantry retinue and provided a valuable description oC the Malian cavalry as mounted archers: "Each/arari has a quiver suspended between his shoulder blades and a bow in his hand and rides a horse" (Ibn Battuta, "Rihla," in

20

-------------EUROPEANINTRUDERS 90

IVANA ELBL

The antiquity of Senegalese horsemanship and its connection with North African horse supply are supported by linguistic evidence. As Law argued, in all major Senegalese languages, Wolof, Sereer, and Pulaar, the word "horse" is derived from an Arabic rool23 The Senegambian horse-owning tradition was strong enough to influence even the languages of the peoples living south of the Cassamance River, such as the Landuma and the Balante, who also use derivatives from the Arabic,24 whereas coastal areas that became integrated into broader trading networks through subsequent contact with the Manding - e.g. Sierra Leone, Grain Coast and Ivory Coast - derive their words for "horse" from the Mande root. 25 The predominance of the Arabic root in Senegambia may also serve as evidence of the reliance on North African supply, whereas the interior of Western Sudan relied originally more on local small-sized breeds (horses smaller than 140 cm in height), adjusted to the West African environment. Law suggested that the "ponies" of the Western Sudan were autochthonous to West Africa, but unsuitable for mounted warfare. According to him, the build-up of cavalry in Mali became possible only after large-scale imports of full-size horses had begun in the fourteenth-century, Levtzion and Hopkins, Corpus, 290-91). Law suggested that the growth of the cavalry foree in Mali was a relatively recent fourteenth-century development resulting from Mansa Musa's pilgrimage to Mecca (Law, The Horse, 28 and 121). This does not appear plausible on several grounds. First, it would have been difficult to build a sizeable cavalry on imported mounts in less then twenty years that passed between Mansa Musa's pilgrimage and aI-'Uman's report. Second, Donald R. Wright's research suggests that cavalry was instrumental already at the time of its foundation by Sundjala (Donald R. Wright, The Early History 0/ Niumi: Stl/le~nt and Foundation 0/ a Mandinlw State on the Gambia Rivtr [Athens, Ohio, 19771, 12). Third, the use of cavalry in western Sudan was heralded already in the twelfth century by aI-ldrisi: "he [the ruler of Ghana) has a corps of anny commanders who come on horseback ..... (al-idrisi, "Numat aI-mushtaq," in LevlZion and Hopkins, Corpus, 110). 23 Wolof/ars and Sereer pis are very likely derived Crom the Arabic/aras Cor horse, as Law suggested (Law, The Horse, 6-7). The etymology ofputu, the Pulaar word Cor horse, is less c1Cl!!'.

24 Horse is/alas in Balante and a/a/ats in Landuma, both clearly derived from the Wolof/ars (lbid.,6).

2S The word for horse in Soninke is si, in Malinke and Bambara so, in Susu sona, in Bulom and Temne asoe, in Vai and Kisi and Grebo so, and in Kru sou (Ibid., 6). Interestingly enough, the Mande root can also be distinguished in a number of Lower Guinea languages: thus so in Ewe and Fon, esin in Yoruba and esi in Edo (Ibid.).

- - - - EUROPEAN IMPACT IN AMERICA AND AFRICA - - THE HORSE IN FIFTEENTH-CENTURY SENEGAMBIA

91

following the pilgrimage of Mansa Musa. 26 Epstein, however, suggests, that West African ponies were a product of the naturalization of Barb and Dongola full-sized breeds that crossed the Sahara at different points in time and became gradually dwarfed as a result of unfavorable conditions: 27 As these breeds are of very different racial types, either oriental, Barb or Dongola, or combining Oriental and Dongola, Oriental and Barb, or Dongola and Barb features, their small size may be attributed solely to the adaptation to an inferior environment in which cattle, sheep and goats have likewise become dwarfed. Law considered this theory insufficiently supponed by evidence,28 but it is consistent with more recent processes which, in Sene gambia and the neigboring regions, led to the appearance of such specific breeds as the Sahel Horse, the River Horse of Senegal, the Foutanke Horse and the Beledougou/Banamba Horse (all West African varieties of the Barb), and the widespread "Pony of the South," extant between the upper Senegal and Niger rive rs. 29 Moreover, the early spread and subsequent regressive breed evolution of North African horses in the western Sudan is attested through the historically documented presence of many small-sized local breeds. The earliest reference to the such a breed in the western Sahel is that of al-Bakri in 1068.3 0 Around 1269, Ibn Sa'id reponed that the horses in the Takrur (Fuuta Tooro) "are shon and not swift."31 In the early founeenth century, small local breeds seem to ha ' I . n spread well throughout the entire western savanna as far as the eastern branch v' the Niger, and were used extensively for mounted warfare by Mossi raiders.3 2 The most striking characterization of local West African breeds is provided by al-'Umari (1337-1338):33

26 Law, The Horse, 24-29, 121-22. 27 Epstein, The Origin, II, 463. 28 Law, The lIorse, 3-4, 24-27. 29 Epstein, The Origin, 446-48, 472. 30 aI-BaIcri, "Kitab aI-Masalik," 81.

31 Ibn Sa'id, "Kitab bast aI-ard, "18S. 32 aI-'Umari's description or the mounted archers periodically attacking Mali, riding horses that were "cross-bred with slit noses" (aI-'Umari, "Masalik aI-absar: Ibid., 268) probably rererred to the Mossi. For the identification or the Tatar-like attackers with Massi, see Levtzion, Ancient Ghana and Mali,87. 33 aI-'Umari, "Masalik aI-absar," Corpus, 263.

21

EUROPEAN INTRUDERS

22 91

IVANA ELBL

They [people of Mali] have horses which are a variety of the Tatar cross-breed (...), and mules, but they are all very small and such is the case with all their domestic animals, cows, sheep, donkeys - none is found but ill-formed and small-framed. Al-'Umari's description agrees well with Epstein's thesis on the dwarfing of domestic animals in African conditions. 34 Epstein's argument receives additional support from the fact that small horse breeds of the western Sudan display definite Barb features 35 suggesting beyond serious doubt a North African ancestry. The Barb was the most common riding horse bred in North Africa. It was distinguished from the more valued Arab by the shape of its head and certain elements of body construction.36 Arabs, however, were traceable in a number of Maghribi breeds.37 The Barbs were taller, sturdier and more enduring than the Arabs and as such were preferred by some North African breeders.38 The famous Spanish relative of the Barb was brought to perfection in the sixteenth century, but already in the fifteenth century Spanish horses enjoyed high reputation.39 Although Senegambia seems to have relied mostly on the North African and eventually Mauritanian supply of fullbred horses,40 local stock was also available. 41 The Manding. who began to penetrate into the Gambia River basin in the late

34 Epstein. The Origin, 11,463.

35 Ibid .• 467. 36 For an extensive description and discussion of Barbs see Ibid .• 438-50. 37 See Ibid.• 441-45. The Arab influence is quile strong in horses bred in easlern Morocco (Ibid., 444-45). This may explain the popularity of horses from Safi in Senegal. Law suggested that thoroughbred Arab were bred in the Tagant area where they were brought in the late stages of the Arab penetration into the Maghrib which he dales to the sixteenth century. (Law, The Horst, 24. and section on "Horse Breedingj. Ibn Khaldun and the early Portuguese sources indicate. however, that these Arab tribes, namely al-'Udaya and al-Berabish (the O'wi Hassan tribal family belonging to the Ma'qil group) were already present in Mauritania before the arrival of the Portuguese. (Ibn Khaldun. Kilab al- 'ibar. Hisloire des Berb~res. new ed. P. Casanova (Paris. 1925-26). II. 280; Fernandes, 0 Manuscrilo. 47-48) They nomadized between Morocco and Mauritania and also between Tuat and Timbuktu (Ibn Khaldun. Kilab al- 'ibar. II. 280) and controlled trade routes leading through southcentral Mauritania, used to import horses to Senegal and Mali (Fernandes. 0 Manuscrilo. 48). It is thus possible that the horse breeding in Tagant was based on Moroccan stock and constituted an offshoot of the trans-Saharan horse trade. 38 Epstein. The Origin. 11,439.

39 Ibid.• 526. 40 Cadamosto, Viagens, 17,47; Pacheco Pereira, Esmeraldo, 59; Fernandes. 0 Manuscrilo. 47, 65.

41 Ibn Sa'id, "Kitab bast al-ard," 185; Fernandes, "0 Manuscrito," 65.

23

EUROPEAN IMPACT IN AMERICA AND AFRICA THE HORSE IN FIFTEENTH-CENTURY SENEGAMBIA

93

thirteenth century, rode both imported horses and small, sturdy Sudanese breeds,42 whose presence is documented in the Manding homeland on the upper Senegal and Niger. 43 The emphasis on horsemanship in Manding legends indicates that the Gambian Manding brought with them the tradition of a mounted noble warrior as opposed to a commoner infantryman.44 D.R. Wright traced this tradition back to the times of Sundiata. 45 In the 1330s Mali possessed a large cavalry, mounted, according to al-'Umari, exclusively on imported "Arab" horses, procured by the ruler of Mali at substantial cost and distributed among his military commanders, officials, and chiefs. 46 This would suggest a heavy reliance on the trans-Saharan supply. Later, however, Leo Africanus reported that in the Niger Bend both small local breeds and imported "good" horses were used for riding as well as for combat.47 In the fifteenth-century Senegambia, especially among non-Manding peoples imported horses appear to have formed the majority of the riding stock,48 but according to Femandes,49 some horses were also bred locally in Jolof: ... dos quaes cauallos n[em] na~e[m] nesta prouincia se n[em] muy poucos, os outros traz os christaos e mouros do sertao [of these horses but a few are born in this province, the others are brought by the Christians and the Moors from the bush] The provenance of horses is often indicative of the way horses were employed. Among the Manding. who used both imported and local breeds. the use of horses in warfare was well- and long-established. They obviously had enough replaceable stock to risk horses in battIe. In Senegal itself, the question is not so clear. As Law argued, the presence of horses in itself does not indicate that they were 42 al-'Umari. "Masalik al-absar." 263. 266; Fernandes was aware of the local horses in the Manding hinterland (Fernandes. 0 Manuscri/o, 75). but he also mentioned that the Manding bought Portuguese horses at Kantor (Ibid.) and elsewhere (Ibid., 79), and the stock bred in the Cape Verde Islands (Ibid .• 77). 43 Fernandes. 0 Manuscri/o. 75. 44 For the social and military role of horses in Mali see al- 'Umari, "Masalik al-absar," Corpus.

265-66; and Ibn Baltuta. "Rihla." Ibid .• 290. 45 Wright. The Early His/ory. 12. 46 al-'Umari, "Masalik al-absar." 266.

47 Law, The Horse, 29. 48 Cadamosto, Viagens. 17.47; Fernandes, 0 Manuscri/o, 47, 65. 49 Fernandes, 0 Manuscri/o, 65.

24 ------------EUROPEANINTRUDERS 94

IVANA ELBL

used for cavalry purposes. SO He believed that in Senegambia horses were used for warfare only after the arrival of the Portuguese who were able to supply horses in sufficient numbers. Sl But. if the scarcity of North African horses was the main reason for not using them in warfare. why did Wolof warriors not resort to using local mounts. whether imported from the western Sudan or bred locally?S2 Contacts with both Mauritania and Mali would suggest that military applications of horsemanship were known in Senegambia well before the opening of the Atlantic trade. Yet it seems that in Senegal. at the time of the Portuguese arrival. horses were rather symbols of power and prestige than effective implements of warfare. Such a function was quite common in other West African areas bordering on horse-using regions. S3 The ceremonial and prestige-enhancing function of horses was documented already in ancient Ghana by al-Bakri (c. 1068). who stated that the ruler of Ghana would parade daily through the capital on horseback to hear supplicants. S4 The Kitab al-Istibsar (c. 1135) specifies that the ruler of Ghana owned ten richly caparisoned horses. sS but al-Idrisi suggests a much stronger presence of horses in Ghana: not only the ruler but also his commanders and principal nobles participated in court ceremonies on horseback. 56 Horses were an integral feature of ceremonies at the court of Mali. S7 Both al-'Umari and Ibn Battuta specify that not only the ruler but also his retinue. military commanders and their retinue. were all mounted. S8 In fifteenth-century Senegambia. ownership of horses and the ability to appear on horseback in public carned with it at least as much social prestige as in ancient Ghana and Mali. S9 According to Fernandes. horses were bought not so much for war as for honor.60 Even horsetails conveyed prestige because they attested to SO Law. Tht Horst, 28, 52-S3, 120-121, Ch. 7 passim. S I Ibid., 52-S3. S2 In the sixteenth -l :t r

'"to

-


o o

>

.fo

~

~

c:: o

~

~

tIl

~ ~ 'ij

N

o

-

103

EUROPEAN IMPACT IN AMERICA AND AFRICA LA TRAITE DES ESCLAVES Dli GALAM

275

Les puissances maritimes etaient en guerre les unes contre les autres pour s'arracher les sources de ce 'produit'. Par ailleurs, les negriers et les armateurs pour eviter de payer des taxes refusaient de donner la valeur exacte de leur cargaison. De plus, la Compagnie du Senegal qui beneficiait des subventions de I'etat etait tout it fait assuree d'en garder Ie benefice pourvu qu'elle s'arrangeat it chaque echeance de son privilege it presenter un bilan nul. La Compagnie a tres probablement expurge de ses archives officielles les donnees chiffrees sur son activite de traite. 11 reste it developper I'enquete pour trouver des elements plus fiables. Cette remarque etant faite, I'on peut it partir des quantites enregistrees par differentes sources, et les estimations de l'epoque, tenter un calcul approximatif du volume des individus affectes par la traite de Galam. Le Tableau I montre les seuls chiffres que nous avons pu tirer des sources. Tableau I Nombre d'esc1aves traites au Galam

Annees 168 5 1686 1689 1724 Uuillet) 1727-8

15

So 116 300 700 it 800 (environ) 'Commerce nul' 3420 1500 221

1734 1755-6 1756-7 1784 1786

20 4

Source de reference ANF C6 2 ANF C6 2 ANF C6 2 ANF C6 12 Memoire de Pruneau de Pommegorge Ibidem!') Memoire anonyme 1762 Ibidem Liasse de papiers dans Ie carton C6 14 (6) Durand, II, 247

Au point de vue des regles statistiques on voit que ces donnees sont trop sporadiques pour permettre d'en deduire une quelconque tendance. Les estimations globales faites par les sources de I'epoque sont loin d'etre concordantes (cf. Tableau 2). Tableau 2 Annees 1751 (18juil.) 1752 1762 'Avant 1780'

Estimations en moyenne annuelle 1000

500 dont 400 en haute saison et 300 en basse saison 1500 'autrefois' et 'presentement' 1000-1200. Mais capacite de I'elever it 4500 1300

Sources

C61 3 Pruneau de Pommegorge C 61 4 Memoire sur la concession du Senegal Durand, II, 43

Comparant la traite de Galam it celie des autres etablissements de la Compagnie dans la concession Durand donne Ie tableau suivant: 7 • Pruneau, Memo;r~, f. 4. • ANF C6 14, liasse de papier non datee. 7 ]. B. Leonard Durand, Voyage au Senegal, 1785 et 1786 (Paris, 1803),43.

EUROPEAN INTRUDERS

104 27 6

ABDOULAYE BATHILY

Podor lie de Bilbaos Faleme Galam Goree et Albreda

300

350

600 1300

450

Ainsi Ie Galam it lui tout seul 'produisait' plus des deux tiers des esclaves traites dans toute la concession. Lin document date de 1784 avance que Ie Galam foumissait jusqu'en 1756-7, 3420 esclaves par an et ce chiffre etait tombe, depuis la reprise de possession it 1500.8 La plupart des memoires ecrits it la fin du dix-huitieme siecle et qui tentent de faire la synthese des diverses donnees estiment que Ie Galam foumissait annuellement un 'millier' d'esclaves. Tous les chiffres que nous venons de rapporter sont nettement en dessous de la realite. lis ne refietent ni Ie volume des esclaves effectivement traites au Galam ni Ie nombre d'individus deportes du Galam et des pays voisins par la traite. De nombreux facteurs ont concouru it augmenter de falion tres significative Ie nombre de gens affectes par la traite.

L'importance du taux de morta/ite Le trafic negrier au Galam a connu un taux de mortalite tres eleve. Avant I'arrivee a St. Louis, les caravanes d'esclaves du Galam devaient franchir trois etapes. A chacune de ces etapes, une fraction assez considerable d'individus mourrait. Les convois, en particulier ceux venant du Niger, devaient marcher des centaines de kilometres it pied et au surplus, Ie plus souvent, ils etaient lourdement charges d'ivoire. Comme la traite etait plus active en saison des pluies, ces convois devaient passer par des chemins difficiles it parcourir it cause de la luxuriance de la vegetation et du gonfiement des cours d'eau. La saison des pluies c'est aussi la saison ou la malaria et toutes sortes de fievres et de maladies attaquaient la population. Mais, c'est egalement la periode de I'annee ou la nourriture est la moins abondante dans les regions traversees. Pour toutes ces raisons les esclaves arrivaient extenues au Galam. Les inventaires de la Compagnie montrent qu'ils etaient pour la plupart atteints de maladies plus ou moins graves. Le chirurgien du comptoir parle de 'tayes " de 'grosses couilles ' ou hernies et de 'fievres pemicieuses' surtout qui tuent beaucoup de captifs dans la premiere semaine de I'arrivee du convoi, sans compter ceux, encore plus nombreux sans doute, qui sont morts en route de la faim et de la maladie. Souvent, les convois ne pouvaient emporter tous les captifs traites. Le restant etait garde jusqu'a la saison prochaine dans les captiveries du Fort. De meme, les captifs traites pendant la basse saison etaient egalement gardes dans les captiveries pendant six it huit mois. Or, les conditions d'hygiene etaient deplorables dans ces magasins. La situation etait d'autant plus grne que Ie Departement de Galam malgre son importance pour la Compagnie n'a jamais eu en poste des 'chirurgiens' (ou medecins) en nombre suffisant. Generalement, il n'y en avait qu'un seul a la fols. Le Commandant du Fort s'est d'ailleurs souvent plaint de leur ignorance. La pharmacie du Fort etait • ANF C6 18,

M~mojre

sur Ie

comm~ru

du Stntgal (1784).

105

EUROPEAN IMPACT IN AMERICA AND AFRICA 277

LA TRAITE DES ESCLAVES DU GALAM

elle aussi de fa\on permanente en rupture de stocks. De la sorte, les maladies contagieuses se propageaient rapidement emportant chaque annee, avant l'arrivee des convois de St. Louis, pres de la moitie des individus gardes dans les captiveries. Les documents de la Compagnie signalent frequemment ces pertes qui s'etendaient souvent aux employes europeens eux-memes ainsi qu'en temoigne, a titre d'exemple, la correspondance du Commandant du Fort datee du 12 juillet 1732: La disette des remedes dont la pharmacie est toute epuisee, et I'ignorance des chirurgiens, m'oblige de vous envoyer par cette occasion tous les malades parce que vous serez plus en etat de les faire soigner. Je vois avec douleur qu'il n'en echappe un, et que cette mortalite continue sans relache, soit a defaut de captiverie, soit a I'ignorance des chirurgiens, soit a la contagion generale, qui a regne cette annee sur les hommes et sur les bestiaux, ou soit a tous ces inconvenients reunis ensemble, qu'il faut s'en prendre, j'ai perdu environ 60 captifs, et 160 baufs. Jay actuellement 180 captifs.' La mortalite dans Ie Fort etait encore plus elevee dans les annees de penurie de mil. On verra que la Compagnie a eu des difficultes serieuses a assurer I'approvisionnement des captiveries en mil au dix-huitieme siecle acause de la crise de subsistance qui a sevi dans tout Ie Haut-Senegal a cette epoque. La descente des convois du Haut Fleuve a St. Louis constituait la troisieme etape du peri pIe des esclaves de Galam. La, aussi, un fort taux de mortalite est a noter. Bien que Ie voyage du Fort Saint-Joseph a St. Louis ne durait que de six jours a deux semaines ce n'etait pas une croisiere pour les captifs. Entasses dans les barques et maintenus aux fers, ils etaient exposes aux moustiques qui pullulaient Ie long du fleuve a cause de I'existence, encore a I'epoque, de forets galeries. Le paludisme prenait ainsi son lot du convoi. De plus, les sources signalent que Ie changement de climat entre Ie Haut et Ie Bas du Fleuve provoquait aussi des • affections de poitrine' chez beaucoup de captifs: II est impossible de garantir les captifs qui viennent de ce comptoir (Galam), des rumes, des fluxions de poitrine et d'autres maladies qui leur sont occasionnees par Ie changement de climat. II arrive a peu pres aux captifs venant de Galam au Senegal ce qu'il arrive aux Europeens nouveaux debarques a la concession. lis sont aussy surpris par Ie froid que nous sommes par Ie chaud, temperamment avant qu'ils soyent accoutumez a l'air du bas de la concession. lo

Un rapport de la Compagnie date d'octobre 1754 a etabli qu'entre Juillet et Novembre de chaque annee on enregistre a St. Louis trente deces par mois parmi Ie convoi venu du Galam. 11 L'etat de sante defectueux dans lequel arrivaient les convois de Galam etait sou vent avance comme pretexte par les armateurs charges de faire Ie plein a St. Louis pour rester Ie plus longtemps dans I'ile. Les commandants de navires preferaient attendre plusieurs semaines, voire deux mois et plus, avant de charger, de peur que les pertes en cours de traversee de I'Atlantique ne fussent trop elevees. Durant tout Ie dix-huitieme siecle, une vive controverse • ANF C6

/I

(12

juillet 1737).

10

ANF C6 14 (31 octobre 1754).

II

Ibid.

106

EUROPEAN INTRUDERS 27 8

ABDOl"LAYE BATHILY

opposa la Compagnie et les armateurs 3 ce sujet car, tant que les esclaves n'etaient pas embarques, ils etaient 3 sa charge ainsi que les equipages.12 De tout ce qui vient d'etre dit 3 propos de la mortalite du trafic negrier au Galam, il n'est pas exagere de deduire que pour un esclave embarque pour I' Amerique, trois autres au moins sont morts sur Ie penible chemin separant I'interieur de St. Louis. C'est 13 un fait d'une grosse importance qui a jusqu'ici echappe aux historiens de la traite negriere en Senegambie. En poussant I'enquete on pourrait certainement decouvrir des situations semblables dans d'autres regions de I'interieur du continent.

Autres points de destination des con't'ois d' esc/ans de Galam

Le Galam ne fournissait pas des esclaves qU'3 la Compagnie du Senegal. II y avait durant tout Ie dix-huitieme siecle plusieurs autres points de destinations pour les esclaves captures dans Ie Haut Fleuve et les pays voisins. - Assez souvent, la concurrence des comptoirs de la Gambie a attire un nombre plus ou moins important de convois en direction de ce fleuve. Selon Pruneau de Pommegorge, exagerant quelque peu, en 1734, Ie commerce fut nul au Fort Saint-Joseph, toutes les caravanes ayant ete detournees vers la Gambie 3 la suite d'un conflit opposant les Jula au Fort Saint-Joseph.13 Les archives anglaises et les recits d'explorateurs comme Francis l\loore et Mungo Park ainsi que les aventures de Job Ben Salomon alias Ayuba Suleyman Jallo 14 montrent toute l'importance du Galam comme centre d'approvisionnement de la Gambie en esclaves au dix-huitieme siecle. La plupart des captifs pris au Galam meme etaient conduits par Ie chemin de la Gambie car Ie Commandant du Fort a eu 3 se plaindre souvent de ce que les habitants des villages riverains du Senegal arraisonnaient les convois pour les obliger 3 liberer ceux des leurs qui etaient pris. On peut estimer que la Gambie a pris, bon an mal an, I'equivalent du quart du nombre d'esclaves traites par les Fran~ais au Galam. - Le developpement de la traite de la gomme dans Ie Bas Fleuve et dans la Moyenne Vallee fut aussi 3 I'origine de I'intensification de la traite des esclaves au Galam. Les Maures eurent recours 3 une main d'ceuvre servile tres importante pour la cueillette de la gomme et les aut res taches qu'impliquaient Ie transport,le gardiennage, et Ie pesage de ce produit. En consequence, ils multiplierent les razzias dans tous les pays du Fleuve et au Galam notamment. Selon nos estimations on peut chiffrer Ie nombre des esclaves tires du Galam par les Maures 3 environ vingt pour cent du volume annuel moyen de la traite fran~aise au dix-huitieme siecle (2500) dans ce pays. - La traite europeenne favorisa egalement la traite interieure dans toute la Senegambie. Des esclaves rejetes par les negriers pour cause de malad ie, malformation, vieillesse, et les femmes et les enfants etaient cedes par les marchands locaux au Galam meme ou transportes dans les pays voisins ou ils trouvaient preneurs. Au Galam, les hommes • pieces d'Inde' constituaient la majorite ecrasante des cargaisons destinees aux comptoirs europeens alors que Ie marche interieur des esclaves 3 partir du Galam n'etait d'ailleurs pas Ie monopole A:'-iF C6 14 (zjuillet 1754). Voir notr~ anicl~ A. Bathily, •Job Ben Salomon', in C. A. Julien (ed.) Les Africains (Paris, 1978) VI, 191-2Z7 . II

13

.. Ibid.

EUROPEAN IMPACT IN AMERICA AND AFRICA LA TRAITE DES ESC LAVES DU GAL."M

107 279

desJula. Les employes de la Compagnie Ie pratiquaient ainsi que Ie personnel subalterne. Les responsables du Fort Saint-Joseph se sont souvent rendus coupables de trafic c1andestin au detriment de la Compagnie. Certains d'entre eux faisaient vendre leurs captifs jusqu'en Gambie. A leur retour de Galam, les convois avaient I'habitude de s'arreter dans Ie village de Sor (dans la banlieue de St. Louis) et parfois dans Ie Walo sous Ie pretexte de preparer la reception Ii S1. Louis. En fait, c'etait I'occasion de vendre Ii des courtiers, qui les attendaient it ces points du Fleuve, les captifs appartenant aux membres des equipages. Toutes les sources s'accordent sur Ie fait que les esclaves originaires du Haut Fleuve constituaient au dix-huitieme siecie la majorite de la population servile de St. Louis. Ainsi, sans mentionner les deces occasionnes par les guerres ayant conduit Ii la capture des esclaves, I'on voit que Ie volume de personnes affectees directement par la traite au dix-huitieme siecle a ete beaucoup plus considerable que ne I'affirme P. Curtin dans son ouvrage remarquable par ailleurs, Senegambia in the Era of the Slave Trade (Madison, 1975). Du point de vue de la dynamique de I'histoire des societes africaines, les etudes statistiques portant sur Ie volume des esclaves deportes en Amerique it partir de la Cote n'eclairent, quelque soit leur degre de precision, qu'un petit coin du sombre tableau de la traite negriere. A partir de tout ce qui vient d'etre dit, il n'est pas exagere de supposer que les pays du Haut-Senegal-Niger ont perdu en moyenne, par an, entre 10,000 et 15,000 personnes mortes ou capturees et deportees a la suite des activites de traite menees Ii partir du Galam en faveur des debouches de la Cote senegambienne. Nous n'avons pu pousser nos enquetes dans les archives portugaises pour evaluer la part du Haut-Senegal-Niger dans Ie trafic negrier du Golfe de Guinee et des' Rivieres du Sud'. Cependant les recits de voyage de I'epoque sont sans equivoque sur I'importance de I'axe reliant notre region aux comptoirs portugais de Guinee et Ii la Sierra Leone. Trafic negrier et evolution des' termes de l' echange' Les termes de I'echange esclave-articles de traite ont connu une progression remarquable au dix-huitieme siecie passant de 16 barres en 1714 it 130 barTes vers 1800. Avant d'expliquer les causes de cette variation resumons, dans Ie Tableau 3,Ies donnees concordantes que nous avons recueillies pour differents moments de cette evolution. Le • prix' de I'esclave-etalon ou piece d'Inde l5 etait evalue en barre. La barre representait une unite de compte valant £4 (Iivres) au Galam et £6 sur la cote. La hausse du prix de l'escIave apres avoir connu une phase relativement stable dans Ie premier quart du dix-huitieme siecle fut plus rapide it partir du debut des annees 30. Elle connut une progression rapide dans les dernieres annees du dix-huitieme siecle. Plusieurs facteurs lies les uns aux autres expliquent ce phenomene: - la concurrence anglaise en Gambie. Chaque fois que Ie prix baissait de fa~on inconsideree les Ju/a detournaient les caravanes vers la Gambie OU ils esperaient les ceder Ii meilleur compte . .. La' piece d'lnde' designait un esc\ilve dans la force de I'age, entre 14 et 3S ans, qui n'avait aucune infirmite.

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Tableau 3 Annt!es 1714 17 15 171&--17 1718 1732 1735 1754 1755-8 1782-4 17 8 5 1793-1800

'Prix' de la piece d'Inde en barres 16

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basse saison haute saison basse saison haute saison

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33 en basse saison 40 en haute saison + 3 barres en plus com me 'presents' 60 70-80 100--130

- la suppression du privilege de la Compagnie a partir de la reprise de possession en 1778 a impulse la traite libre. II en resulta une vive concurrence entre les negriers et qui causa I'emballement du prix que I'on note pour cette periode. - la pression des Jula fut a I'origine de la fixation du double taux a partir de 1732; un tarif de haute saison plus eleve et qui etait destine a encourager les Jula a apporter leurs cargaisons en cette epoque de I'annee OU les difficultes de communication et de ravitaillement etaient plus grandes a I'interieur. C'est en quelque sorte une • prime de mauvaise saison' qui etait ainsi consentie. L'esclave etait echange contre un lot d'articles de traite forme de deux categories: les marchandises fines, et les marchandises basses. On appelait marchandises fines les articles suivants: - I'argent monnaye et ouvrage les armes a feu la toile noire les cornalines ron des les cornalines longues I'ambre jaune les bassins de cuivre les cristaux fins la poudre l ' Tous les autres articles etaient consideres comme marchandises basses (pataques, tissus, quincaillerie, alcools, etc.). Tout I'art de la traite consistait a faire entrer Ie moins de marchandises fines dans I'assortiment propose aux partenaires africains. Au Galam, les esclaves etaient echanges en priorite contre les armes afeu. La mauvaise facture de ces armes necessitait leur renouvellement constant. En consequence, la dependance militaire des etats a I'egard du commerce II

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EUROPEAN INTRUDERS

110 282

ABDOULAYE BATHILY

fran~ais s'est accrue. Ce dernier tira un enorme profit de cette branche de commerce. Des 1720,Ie fer ouvrage (pataques) commen~a a occuper la deuxieme place apres les armes a fev. Le directeur de la concession considerait comme 'une revolution extraordinaire' Ie fait que les marchands locaux qui n'avaient jamais demande de fer precedemment en exigent desormais pour toutes les transactions. 17 Encore en 1786, Saugnier, un negrier tres familier des voyages de Galam, note que des que Ie fer manquait, les transactions etaient interrompues. C'est la un autre resultat de l'etat de guerre. La guerre a gene la production locale de fer, elle a cree dans Ie meme temps un besoin plus important de ce metal dans to us les pays de la region. Les tissus de toile noire etaient destines principalement au marche maure. Au dix-huitieme siecle, les Maures echangeaient la gomme contre les tissus europeens. En comparaison des pays cotiers, les alcools occupaient une place relativement modeste dans les echanges. Mais les Jula musulmans ne dedaignaient pas d'en prendre sur les comptoirs pour aller I'echanger •au dela de Galam' dans les pays a populations non musulmanes. Dans Ie Galam proprement dit c'est I'aristocratie qui etait Ie principal consommateur de cet article.

Flux et reflux du traftc negrier au dix-huitieme siecie Le rythme du trafic negrier a connu des amplitudes variables au cours du dix-huitieme siecle. Des periodes de prosperite et de declin se sont succedees de maniere irreguliere. Deux phases de prosperite sont a noter pour 1714-40 et 1783--9°' Les annees 1741-54 sont des annees moyennes. Une baisse tres sensible est perceptible en 1755-8 et 1790-1800. Un phenomene est demeure constant et eleve dans l'ensemble de la periode, c'est la demande europeenne. Malgre les aleas du trafic de Galam, jusque vers les annees 1780, ce pays fournissait les esclaves a meilleur marche que tout Ie reste de la Senegambie. La zone cotiere etait epuisee et seul l'interieur pouvait repondre a la demande en expansion. La direction du Fort Saint-Joseph avait comme principale tache de mettre en reuvre tous les moyens, diplomatiques et militaires, pour assurer la satisfaction de la demande. Nous verrons plus bas ce qu'il en fut dans la realite. Contrairement it la these de Philip Curtin, ce ne sont pas les guerres locales qui ont determine Ie rythme de la traite, mais la demande exterieure qui a multiplie les guerres esclavagistes. Dans Ie contexte de cette sollicitation permanente de la demande exterieure, l'offre a pu varier en volume selon des circonstances particulieres. On peut dresser ainsi les facteurs de hausse et de baisse de l'offre sur Ie marche des comptoirs.

Facteurs conjoncturels de hawse de l'offre Nous I'avons deja signale,la saison sec he est beau coup plus propice it la traite pour les Jula. Les communications sont plus faciles. Le ravitaillement est moins cher apres les recoltes. Selon la coutume, la guerre et Ie pillage sont 17

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111

EUROPEAN IMPACT IN AMERICA AND AFRICA LA TRAITE DES ESCLAVES DU GALAM

28 3

menes principalement en cette saison parce qu'il y a du butin disponible et Ies expeditions militaires sont plus aisees. - Les periodes de famines et Ies crises alimentaires sur Iesquelles nous reviendrons constituent aussi un facteur de hausse de I'offre. - Les guerres etaient quasi permanentes. La correspondance de Ia Compagnie montre tout l'interet qu'elle portait aux relations entre les etats. - L'arrivee d'une cargaison d'articles de traite au Fort attirait davantage lesJula. - La concurrence instauree apres la suppression du privilege de la Compagnie aux lendemains de la Revolution de 1789, provoqua un certain temps une hausse de I'offre. FacteuTs de Teflux de la tTaite /Tanfaise au Galam

Le reflux de la traite s'explique lui aussi par plusieurs causes. Outre celles que I'on devine aisement a partir de ce qui vient d'etre dit notons: - La concurrence anglaise et portugaise en Gambie et dans les rivieres du Sud. - Les crises politiques au Futa Toro. La Revolution islamique intervenue au Futa Toro en 1775, par exemple, contribua a ralentir Ie trafic et me me a l'arreter quelquefois entre 1787 et 1806. Cette gene inspira a la Compagnie d'explorer la possibilite de relier Ie Galam a St. Louis par voie terrestre afin de se soustraire a 'Ia tyrannie' du regime islamique au Futa Toro et aux aMas du trafic fluvial. Durand, directeur de la concession, fit en personne Ie voyage d'exploration en passant par Ie Bawol et Ie Ferio. Rubault, un agent commissionne par lui, fit une expedition similaire. Mais cette solution comportait des difficultes insurmontables pour la Compagnie et a plus forte raison Ies traitants particuliers. La suppression de la Compagnie mit fin ace projet. 18 D'ailleurs en 1806 un traite de paix fut signe entre Ie gouverneur de la colonie et Ie Futa Toro et qui allait faciliter Ie passage des navires montant au Galam.1t Mais Ie reflux de la demande etait principalement du aux methodes commerciales de la Compagnie que des temoins de I'epoque decrivent comme brutales et deloyaies a I'egard des partenaires africains, et trop conservatrices au point de vue de ses propres interets a long terrne. Malgre les conventions arretees en accord avec Ies Jula et l' aTistocTatie sur Ie prix a payer, Ie Directeur du Fort tenait rarement ses promesses. Dans ses instructions en date du 9 decembre 1716, Andre Brlie, Directeur General de la Concession, recommandait au nouveau Directeur de Galam: Ce que je lui enjoint tres expressement de faire payer la quantite des marchandises portees suivant Ie tarif que je lui remets: attendu que les Guaincas (Jaxanke] m' ont appris que si on leur payait legalement ce qui doit leur revenir ils n'iraient point en Gambie. 1o 11 C'est cette route terrestre qui fut inauguree par I'explorateur Mollien en 1818: Gaspard Theodore Mollien, D;coufJ~rt~ du sourus du Senegal d d~ la Gambit m 1818 (Paris, 1820). 11 ANF C6 22, 1787, une copie de ce traite se trouve en fran"ais et en arabe dans les liasses. 10 Manuscrit de la Bibliotheque l'ationale (B.N.), Paris, no. 93 39 (9 decembre 1716).

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C'est encore Brtie qui se fait I'echo des plaintes des habitants du Galam contre la brutalite de la Direction du Fort. Dans Ie meme document il ecrit plus loin: Comme iI connait les Negres depuis qu'i1 est it la concession, il do it savoir comme moi qu'ils sont tous grands questeurs, qu'il faut etre patient it les ecouter, et les payer au moins de bonnes paroles quand on ne leur donne rien, et enfin observer un temperament milieu entre la fermete et la timidite, parce que les deux extremes sont egalement dangereux. Et quand on est dans un lieu ou I'on n'est pas les plus forts la leurre du renard qui ne lui est pas inconnue, convient mieux que celie du lion ... Le bon procede avec lequel la Cie veut qu'il en use avec les Guiancas sans les prendre it la barbe,les menacer et les battre retablira non seulement la traite des captifs mais encore celie de I'or. II Ces instructions demeurerent lettre morte. Le memoire de Pruneau de Pommegorge deja cite (1752) et Ie Memoire sur le commerce du Senegal (1762) contiennent de veritables requisitoires contre les methodes de gestion du • Departement de Galam'. Pruneau estime qu'une bonne gestion aurait pu accroitre la traite au Galam: J'estimerai que la traite des Noirs faite au Fort St. Joseph pendant la basse saison seroit beauco'·!"' "Ius considerable, si on n'avoit pas etabli,je ne scais par quel esprit, deux tarifs, le 24 barres pour les captifs provenant des Sarracolets, des Mandingues el ues autres Marchands Negres, I'autre de 2 pieces i de toile noire qui ne sont que 1 S Barres it 6 barres la piece pour ceux provenans des Maures. On a meme chicanne avec ces derniers pendant plusieurs annees, pour ne leur payer que 2 pieces ou 12 Barres. Cette difference de tarif a fait manquer plusieurs fois, it rna connoissance, des traites avec eux, et ils ont prefere les vendre aux Sarracolets qui leur en donnent jusqu'it 30 mares d'or par piece. 11 y auroit encore une autre consideration it faire la dessus; c'est que ces maures portent, ou chargent leurs compatriotes de porter cette matiere aux Interlopes Anglois qui viennent traiter it Portendikk ou it Arguin, de qui ils reljoivent en echange deux pieces de toile noire par once, au moyen de quoi leurs captifs, pieces vendues aux Sarracolets 3 onces d'or chacun, leur produisent 6 pieces de toile noire par tete, au lieu de 2 ou 2 pieces 1que nous leur donnons. 11 y a une infinite de bevues semblables qui se passent it la concession du Senegal, ou I'on s'assujettit pour I'ordinaire a ce que les predecesseurs ont fait, ou ont trouve etabli, soit par defaut de capacite, soit parce qu'un serieux examen des diverses operations de commerce de cette concession demanderoit trop de travail et de recherches. 1I

L'evo/ution de /'economie atlantique et Ie declin du trafic negrier au Galam la fin du dix-huitieme et au debut du dix-neuvieme siec/es

a

A partir de la fin du dix-huitieme siec1e, deux groupes d'interets tres puissants developperent une vive campagne contre la traite de Galam. Le premier representait les negociants de la gomme soutenus par Ie capital industriel du textile. et la finance parisienne qui estimait que la traite des esclaves n'etait plus utile au Senegal et demandait au gouvemement royal de supprimer les subventions et I'appui militaire aux traitants de Galam. Apres la dissolution de la Compagnie ce groupe continua sa propagande en vue de 11

IbId.

II

Pruneau,

AUmoir~.

113

EUROPEAN IMPACT IN AMERICA AND AFRICA LA TRAITE DES ESCLAVES DC G."LAM

28 5

!'abandon du Galam. Pour lui, il fallait accorder la priorite a la Moyenne Vallee ou s'echangeait la gomme. Ce meme groupe fut a l'origine de la signature de la convention du 25 Mai 1740 entre la Compagnie des Indes et la Royal African Company. Au terme de cette convention, la France devait fournir a la Grande Bretagne pendant 10 ans, 360,000 livres de gomme par an et la Grande Bretagne 200 'captifs pieces d'Inde' aux colonies fran~aises d'Amerique.23 Cependant, la convention ne fut appliquee que trois ans (1744). Les milieux negriers s'y opposerent vivement. Apres la Guerre de Sept Ans, ce meme groupe s'employa a faire revivre la dite convention. II inspira de nombreux Memoires de la part d'une foule de gens anonymes pretendant avoir 'passe plusieurs annees au Senegal'. L'objectif vise par ses etudes etait d'amener Ie gouvernement royal a retirer son soutien au parti negrier, operant principalement au Galam, et a appuyer, au contraire, les negociants de la gomme. Le deuxieme groupe etait represente par les gros trafiquants negriers operant dans Ie Golfe de Guinee. Ceux-Ia estimaient que Ie Galam etait un marche trop petit par rapport a celui du Golfe. Le gouvernement devait retirer ses subventions a la Compagnie et s'interesser beaucoup plus it la Cote ou Ie pavilion fran~ais avait du mal a soutenir la concurrence de ses rivaux. Apres la suppression de la Compagnie, la campagne contre la traite de Galam prit d'autant plus d'ampleur que celle-ci etait tom bee entre les mains des petits traitants particuliers, les Petits Blancs et les Mulatres de St. Louis. u Les troubles de l'epoque revolutionnaire et les guerres de Napoleon entrainerent un declin rapide de la traite de Galam. II.

LE MIL: SA PLACE DANS LE TR."FIC NEGRIER

Jusqu'ici, les historiens n'ont pas suffisamment insiste sur les liens directs entre I'esclavage et la traite des produits vivriers. Or la traite negriere aurait ete impossible sans Ie ravitaillement constant des captiveries et des navires negriers en produits vivriers. Le continent africain fut non seulement depouille de ses hommes et femmes valides mais ceux qui sont restes ont vu leurs produits de subsistance raRes par les trafiquants d'esclaves. Les transactions sur Ie mil, denree vivriere de base en Senegambie, furent un facteur d'une grande importance dans I'histoire economique de la region au dix-huitieme siecle. Le rythme de la traite des esclaves au Galam etait largement conditionne par les disponibilites en mil dans les magasins des forts: les responsables de ces forts devaient suivre attentivement la situation des recoltes au Galam et dans les pays voisins. En cas de mauvaise recoite, ils avisaient aussitot la Direction de la Concession: La Cie ne doit point etre surprise de voir que depuis trois ans Galam n'a fourni que tres peu de captifs dans la basse saison parce que Ie mil y a ete d'une rarete etonnante. J'avoue meme, Messieurs, que sans les precautions que j'ai prises pour avoir du mil j'aurais ete aussi embarasse que les autres, si je n'avais profite de IS

Ibid. Une copie de ce traite est inseree dans Ie manuscrit de Pruneau. Andre Delcourt,

La Fra"ce et It!s etablisummtsfra"fa;S au S;"egal mtrt! 171J t!t 176J, memoire IFAN no.

t7 (Dakar, 1952), a fait un long commentaire de ce traite . .. Voir M. Lamiral, L'Afriqut! I!t It! p/!Uplt! ajJricai" (Paris, 1789).

114

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I'absence des Maures pour I'envoyer de cote et d'autre traite de mil sans m'arreter

aaucun lieu precis cependant, traite que j'ai vu fuir avec chagrin des que les Maures ont ete arrives en ce pays quoique je puisse nourrir d'ici aux barques 300 captifs.16 Au Galam Ie probleme du ravitai11ement en vivres se posait en des termes d'autant plus pressants que plus d'un millier d'esclaves etaient gardes dans les captiveries pendant les six a sept mois que durait la saison seche. Par ailleurs, il fallait du mil pour pourvoir a la ration journaliere du personnel subalterne des comptoirs. Meme Ie personnel europeen completait son ordinaire avec du mil dans les cas, assez frequents, de rupture de leur ration. A defaut de froment, de feves ou de gruau, la farine de mil entrait dans la fabrication du pain et de la 'boui11abes'. Le Departement de Galam a resolu de fa~on plus ou moins satisfaisante Ie probleme du ravitaillement en mil. Nous avons pu reperer deux sortes de situations extremes: les situations ou Ie ravitaillement a ete tres bon et des situations de penuries graves.

Annees de bonne traite de mil En 1743, la correspondance revele qu'on [Galam] a traite une grande provision de mil pendant la basse saison ... Nous avons demande au Sieur Boucar de prendre to utes les mesures pour faire des amas de ce grain et lui avons fait passer to utes les marchandises necessaires a cet effet." L'annee suivante, 'on a traite une bonne provision de mil au Galam'.17 En 1750, la traite du mil en Galam fut si abondante que ce comptoiren envoya par deux fois au bas de la concession qui en manquait. t8 Deux campagnes de traite menees en juin et juillet 1751 rapporterent des quantites si considerables que Ie Galam en envoya encore a St. Louis. Mais la traite de 1755 fut la plus •extraordinaire'. 'Elle en promet encore cette annee [1756]. Nous en avons tire 500,000 livres qui ont permis de faire subsister Ie bas de la concession'. 30

t.

Les annees de penurie de mil Dans une correspondance datee du 6 aout 1720, Ie Directeur de Galam fait etat de serieuses difficult.:s de ravitaillement. II explique cela par la guerre entre Ie Xaaso et Bambuxu, deux royaumes voisins du Galam, 'qui a. tellement trouble Ie pays qu'a peine nous pouvons avoir des vivres pour notre subsistance journaliere'.11 En 1731, les pillages commis par les Ormans desorganisaient tout Ie trafic y compris celui du mil. lS En 1737, Ie Departement confronte II des difficultes de transport, s'en remit aux Hawbes (lawbe ou bucherons) qui allerent lui en chercher au Bundu avec leurs anes. Mais les quantites obtenues en mars ne lui permettaient pas de tenir au dela de juin. 33 La guerre ayant eclate entre Ie Bundu et Ie Bambuxu en 1744, la traite du mil en souffrit a nouveau. Cette meme an nee, les Maures ayant accapare Ie ANF ANF 10 ANF Sl ANF .. ANF

II

17

C6 C6 C6 C6 C6

7 (18 decembre 1723). II ANF 12 (28 avril 1741). II ANF 13 (30 janvier 1751, 20 aout 1751) . .. ANF II ANF 7 (18 decembre 1728). I I (Ier mars 1737).

C6 U (IS juillet 1743). Cft U (16 novembre 17S0). C6 14 (IS mars 17S6). C6 10 (10 juin 1731) .

115

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28 7

mil sur Ie marc he en revendant cette denree contre des toiles, la Compagnie fut contrainte de payer Ie ravitaillement beaucoup plus cher.'· La situation fut beaucoup plus critique en 1753: • Jamais la concession n'avait vu une famine si generale dans Ie pays. Elle s'etend depuis Bisseaux [Bissau] jusqu'en Galam.'3~ Et Ie 5 septembre on apprenait que la famine eta it si grande au Galam que les navires ne disposaient que de dix jours de grains. 3' En 1754, tous les pays du fleuve etaient en proie a la famine et Ie Departement informait la Compagnie sur la forte mortalite dans les captiveries a cause du manque de mil. 37 Une bonne recolte enregistree en aout 1754 n'avait pu redresser la situation a cause de I'afflux des refugies des pays voisins. 38

Mouvement du prix du mil Le prix du mil a connu une forte oscillation acause des recoltes deficitaires qui ont marque I'essentiel de la periode, mais aussi de la speculation de la Compagnie et de son personnel. Le Tableau 4 donne quelques releves du prix du mil au cours du dix-huitieme siecle. Tableau 4 Annees

Quantites de mil

17 16

4 barriques

Un moule u de sel

barrique 4 barriques zo livres 8 moules zo moules 100 moules I moule (3 livres) I moule I barrique (100 livres)

Z5 livres de sel

I

I73 Z

1737

Vers 1780 17 83-5 1786

Termes de I'echange

barrique de sel livres de sel I moule de sel I • patte' de fer Une once d'ambre IZ sols Z4 sols Z sols + 6 deniers 1

Z

Malgre Ie caractere fragmentaire des donnees dont nous disposons, les sources suggerent que Ie Galam et les pays du Haut Fleuve en general ont subi une forte ponction de cette denree alimentaire de base au dix-huitieme siecle. La Compagnie et son personnel, les Maures et les Jula, tous organise rent la speculation autour du mil. On en devine les consequences sur la vie des populations. Golberry nous a laisse un temoignage tres edifiant sur les methodes de la Compagnie et de ses plus hauts responsables comme Pierre David, Directeur de la Concession: L'annee 1744 fut fort seche dans cette partie de l'Afrique: on pouvait des Ie commencement de cette annee, prevoir que les recoltes seraient mauvaises; Ie vent d'Est avait regne avec une constance pemicieuse depuis Ie mois de novembre 1743; les pluies de cette annee - III n'avaient pas ete considerables et par consequent les I i ANF C6 14 (zo juin 1753). u ANF C6 13 (24 fevrier 175Z). so ANF C6 13 (5 septembre 1753). n ANF C6 14 (12 ftivrier 1754). II ANF C6 14 '(3 juin 1754). ' f Un moule (ou muud) pcsait environ 2,3 livres.

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debordemens qui fertilisent les terres basses du Bambouk, ne l'avaient pas ete non plus; les recoltes de riz, de mals, de feves et de pois pistaches, et celle du mil, avaient ete ou devaient etre fort mediocres, et les Bamboukains avaient a peine assez de ces differentes graines pour se nourrir. 11 fallait occasionner une disette; il y parvint. Ses agens de Galam avec des verroteries, de I'ambre, du corail, de I'agate, cornaline, reussirent a tirer de Bambouk une grande partie des graines de subsistance, indispensable pour la nourriture des habitants et ces accaparements furent emmagasines au fort Saint-Joseph. On suscita ensuite les Negres Kassons contre les Bamboukains, on provoqua des eruptions [sic] de ces sauvages sur les terres du Bambouk, qui (urent brulees, pillees, ravagees et des Ie mois de mai 1744, Ie pays eprouvait la crainte et la famine. Pendant que cette conjuration s'executait en Galam, M. David accaparait tout Ie mil des environs de I'ile Saint-Louis du Senegal et ses magasins en contenaient assez, pour en charger plusieurs bateaux. Les Negres du Bambouk presses par la disette, demanderent des vivres au Galam, mais n'en obtenaient pas; les agens de M. David leur repondaient, que c'etait au gouverneur du Senegal qu'il fallait s'adresser, que ses magasins de I'ile Saint-Louis etaient remplis de mil, et que lui seul pouvait leur donner des secours. Les rois du Bambouk envoyerent par terre des ambassadeurs a M. David, pour Ie supplier de leur vendre du mil; il etait prepare a ce denouement; il promit des secours aux Bamboukains, s'embarqua sur Ie Senegal Ie I I juillet 1744, suivi de plusieurs batimens charges de mil, arriva a Galam Ie 6 septembre suivant, se fit bien solliciter, et vendit son mil, et les accaparements de Galam, au poids de I'or, aux Bamboukains affames, qui s'estimerent encore bien heureux de I'acheter au prix qu'il voulut y mettre; ils commen~aient a ressentir to utes les angoisses de la famine. M. David vit tout Ie Bambouk ases pieds, et perdit soixante et onze jours aGalam et a Kaignou, it traiter avec les chefs du Bambouk de I'or en echange des denrees de subsistance qu'il leur donnait; il accomplit ainsi sa speculation, au milieu des benedictions de ces simples et stupides Bamboukains, qui n'avaient pas devine, que la disette qu'ils eprouvaient etait son ouvrage, et qui dans leur detresse, les benissaient comme leur sauveur. On assure que cette operation valut cinq cent mille francs dont la compagnie des Indes eut la plus petite part, dont M. David garda pour lui trois cent mille (ranes, et dont une partie fut partagee entre les agens affides de ce gouverneur. co

Role respectif de la degradation du climat et des effets de la traite sur la jrequence des crises alimentaires au dix-septibn~dix-huitieme siecles La periode de la traite flit une periode de crises alimentaires chroniques au Galam comme dans toute la Senegambie, ainsi que I'a montre un travail de Charles Becker en 1982'" En ce qui concerne Ie dix-septieme siec1e et la premier~ moitie du dix-huitieme siec\e, nos donnees recoupent celles de cet auteur. four ce qui est de la seconde moitie du dix-huitieme siec1e, notre enquete semble indiquer que Ie Galam beneficia d'une periode relativement humide comparee au reste de la Senegambie. En confrontant les sources il apparait que les crises alimentaires (urent, la •• X. M. Golberry, F,ag".~,1S d'un voyag~ ~n Aj,iqru (Paris, 1802) . .. C. Becker, • Les conditions ecologiques et la traite des esclaves en senegambie' (Kaolack, Nov. 1982, doc. Roneo).

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LA TRAITE DES ESC LAVES DU GAL."M

Tableau 5 Annees

Secheresses

1688-9 1710 17 19 1729-30 1730-1 1736-7 1743 1747--9 1750 1751-8

x x

Famines ou disettes x x X

x x x x

x x x

x

plupart du temps, provoquees ou en tous cas aggravees tant par les effets de la traite (guerre, pillage, speculation sur les denrees vivrieres par la Compagnie) que par les deficiences climatiques en depit de la recurrence de celles-ci et de leur coincidence avec celles-lit. Le Tableau 5 recapitule les resultats de notre enquete en la matiere. III. LA TRAITE FACTEUR DE DECLIN DE LA FORMATION ECONOMIQUE ET SOCIALE DU GALAM AU DIX-HUITIEME SIECLE

II ressort de notre enquete sur Ie Galam it I'ere des negriers, que Ie Haut Fleuve constitua au dix-huitieme siecle Ie moteur de la traite fran~aise en Senegambie.

Contribution des compagnies negrieres

a l' accumulation capitaliSIe

Les multiples faillites enregistrees dans I'histoire de la Compagnie du Senegal, et de la Royal African Company, pourraient suggerer que les activites de ces Compagnies negrieres n'etaient pas rentables. II est vrai que la Direction parisienne de la Compagnie du Senegal, par exemple, se plaignait souvent, ainsi que nous I'avons signale, de la lourdeur de ses charges en personnel et en infrastructures. II faut ajouter que jusque vers 1740, la Compagnie eprouva de serieuses difficultes it se faire rembourser ses creances par les planteurs des Antilles qu'elle fournissait en esclaves. Ces faits sont cependant insuffisants it accrediter I'idee selon laquelle la traite aurait ete une operation menee it perte ainsi que Ie suggerent les conclusions de Philip Curtin dans son ouvrage sur la Senegambie. Les faits que nous venons de signaler dans ce chapitre suggerent un point de vue diametralement oppose it celui de cet historien dont Ie merite reste, cependant, d'avoir pose Ie debat sur Ie terrain de I'economie politique. En 1762, Ie memoire anonyme auquel nous nous sommes rHere plus haut critiquait en termes seve res les declarations des responsables de la Compagnie du Senegal qui avaient, dit-il, trop tendance it maquiller la realite de la situation financiere de leur entreprise: Dans les annt~es 1727 et 1728, la compagnie voulut absolument se dHaire de cette concession, et pour prouver qu'elle lui etoit it charge, elle disoit qu'elle lui coutoit

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18 millions, tant en faux frais qu'en pure perte; mais elle n'ajoutait pas qu'illui etoit du 35 millions a Saint-Domingue de la vente des neg res et autres denrees, provenant du Senegal pendant 9 annees. U L'enquete minutieuse d'Andre Delcourt qui ne semble pas avoir retenu I'attention de Curtin, a revele des elements importants qui meritent d'etre rappeles brievement pour appuyer notre propos. Les changements frequents de denomination et les cessions successives du privilege de la Compagnie du Senegal ne sont pas, rigoureusement parlant, des preuves de faillite. En realite, ce sont presque toujours les memes actionnaires qui se regroupaient pour former les differentes societes avec differents noms apres chaque faillite declaree. Aux dix-septieme et dix-huitieme siecles, la traite au Senegal etait entre les mains d'une poignee d'administrateurs qui se transmettaient leurs actions de maniere hereditaire. Ces administrateurs se recrutaient pour la plupart dans la finance parisienne, I'armement rouennais,la haute administration royale et la cour elle-meme. Certains administrateurs etaient dans Ie meme temps actionnaires dans des groupes apparemment rivaux de la Compagnie comme la Societe d'Angola et la Societe de Guinee. lis se livraient a de multiples combinaisons financicres qui etaient couvertes par Ie gouvemement royal malgre leur illegalite. II ne pouvaient en etre autrement quand I'on sait que des personnalites aussi importantes que Dupleix de Bacquencourt, Fermier General et frere du celebre Dupleix, Colonisateur des lndes, etaient actionnaires de la Compagnie du Senegal!f3 Quoiqu'il en soit, les participants de la traite de Galam comme Pruneau (de Pommegorge), jugeant les activites de la Compagnie, et Saugnier (1786), traitant particulier, sont unanimes Ii considerer que cette traite fut une operation rentable malgre toutes les difficultes qu'elle causait it ceux qui eurent a I'entreprendre. Selon les estimations trcs minutieuses de Pruneau qui connaicbien la matiere pour avoir ete teneur de livre au Galam, Ie profit annuel de la Compagnie pourrait avoir depasse les 100 %: Le total du prix d'achapt de 500 noirs § 400 dans la haute saison § 100 dans la basse 70 marcs d'or et de to utes les depenses generalement quelconques que doit faire Ie comptoir de Galam montant a 116107,£ qu'il faut deduire sur 37,0400 faisant Ie produit des Noirs esclaves et or transportes et vendus, les premiers dans nos colonies, I'autre objet en France, i1 resteroit encore de benefice la somme de 7,0.47.98£ cy 7,047,9 8 £." Saugnier, lui-meme traitant negrier, avance un taux de benefice similaire et il s'en explique: On y traite en abondance, or, morphil, pagnes et mille autres objets. La traite y est des plus avantageuses ... Le voyage de Galam est Ie plus utile que I'on puisse faire pour Ie benefice, et Ie plus dangereux pour les peines et fatigues auxquelles on est sans cesse expose. n .. A!'IiF C6 14, llfemo;re sur Ie S;"egal (176a) .

.. Voir les developpements de Delcourt, La Franu etles etablissmlnltsfra"fais, sur cette question . •• Pruneau, Memo;re, ANF C6 a7 (175a) . .. Saugnier, Relat;ons de plus;eurs voyages Ii la coU d' Afrique, Ii Maroc, au Se,.egal, Ii Goree, Ii Galam etc. (Paris, 1797,), 195.

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Ainsi on peut confirmer sur ce point la these d'Eric Williams selon laquelle la traite negriere a contribue Ii l'accumulation primitive ducapitalen Europe. u Les perdants de la traite furent, Ii coup sur, Ie petit personnel europeen et la population du Galam dont nous allons maintenant etudier I'evolution des conditions en cette ere des negriers.

L'importance des articles de La manufacture europeenne et son impact sur l'industrje domestique L'etat de guerre, en brisant I'appareil de production, ou tout au moins en hypothequant son deploiement, ouvrit la voie au declin de plusieurs branches de cette industrie. Prenons Ie cas du textile: cette branche tres active Ii l'epoque precoloniale commen~a Ii connaitre un net ralentissement dans son expansion. Pour deux raisons au moins: (1°) les difficultes de la culture du coton et de l'indigo comme celie de toutes les cultures; (2°) la perte du marche maure qui avait ete un de ses principaux debouches Ii l'epoque precoloniale. Les Maures echangeaient leur gomme contre des tissus europeens (les fameuses 'guinees') et par consequence ils n'etaient plus grands consommateurs des cotonnades du pays de Galam. On peut en dire autant des marches du fleuve et des pays cotiers. II est remarquable de signaler Ii cet egard qu'li partir de la seconde moitie du dix-huitieme siecle, ni les marchands maures, ni Ie comptoir St. Joseph ne trouverent lucratifs de revendre dans les regions cotieres les tissus de Galam alors qu'au dix-septieme siecle et au debut du dix-huitieme siecle, on I'a vu, la Compagnie considerait cette activite comme l'une des plus profitables. Le declin semble etre encore plus manifeste pour la metallurgie du fer. Des 1720, Andre Brile considerait comme une 'revolution extraordinaire' Ie fait que les JuLa Jaxanke qui n'avaient jamais demande de fer en exigeaient cette annee-lli. La Compagnie n'ayant pas assez de provisions de cet article dans ses magasins de St. Joseph et de St. Louis, les JuLa descendirent avec leurs caravanes en Gambie pour chercher du fer ouvrage aupres des comptoirs anglais.· 7 Durant la seconde moitie du dix-huitieme siecle, Ie Galam devint progressivement importateur de fer. II est probable que la regression ainsi enregistree soit Ie resultat de I'extension de l'insecurite nee de I'etat de guerre. Les pillages et les deplacements incessants de la population avaient sans doute cree des conditions defavorables Ii la survie de la metallurgie. En revanche, signe des temps, I'industrie de guerre semble etre entree dans une ere de croissance si I'on en juge par les importations massives de fer et surtout l'extension de la production domestique de la poudre Ii fusil. Mungo Park rend compte de ce phenomene pour Ie Kingi. La poudre etait fabriquee par un melange de nitrate obtenu localement avec du souffre importe soit par les Maures soit par les Jula faisant Ie trafic avec les comptoirs europeens. Au Gajaaga les forgerons etaient les specialistes de cette nouvelle industrie. U

Perturbation des circuits d'echanges precoloniaux En se consolidant, la traite atlantique se subordonna Ie reseau traditionnel des echanges tant sur Ie plan local que regional. Cette evolution est perceptible .. E. Williams, Capitalism and Slav"y (Londres, 1956); voir·aussi W. Rodney, How Europe underdn:eloped Africa (Londres, 197z). U P. David, Journal tl'un voyage fait a Bambouc m 1744, prismtt, publii et commentt par A. Delcourt (Paris, 1974) . .. ANF C6 6 (u juin 17zo).

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a travers

la reorientation du reseau, I'introduction massive des articles europeens et la preponderance de I'escla"'e dans les exportations du Galam. Certains auteurs ont insiste sur la survivance et meme la croissance du commerce transaharien au dix-huitieme siecle et meme au dix-neuvieme siecle. Mais ils oublient de preciser que Ie reseau caravanier de cette periode etait integre de fa~on directe ou indirecte au systeme atlantique qui en commandait, en derniere instance, I'orientation. Les caravanes maures operant au Haut Senegal revendaient leurs produits so it sur la cote saharienne, soit a des intermediaires mediterraneens qui les faisaient parvenir a l'Europe. La realite est qu 'a partir du seizieme siecle 'Ia victoire de la caravelle sur la caravane', etait une realite historique." II est tout aussi certain qui I'essor de la traite europeenne sur Ie Senegal et la Gambie ruina a la longue Ie negoce traditionnel des Jula Ie long de ces voies d'eau. Les Jula furent confines de plus en plus a un role de relais sur ces axes. La dispersion extraordinaire des Jula du Haut Fleuve au dixseptieme-dix-huitieme siecles dans Ie Haut Niger et les Rivieres du Sud50 est moins Ie signe d'une croissance de leurs activites que la preuve de leur marginalisation progressive resultant de la perturbation des circuits, marginalisation a laquelle ils tentaient de trouver un remede par I'emigration. Pour renforcer davantage ce point de vue, on notera, en plus, que I'etablissement des comptoirs europeens dans Ie pays ruina les marches locaux. Ces comptoirs devinrent les points vers lesquels convergeaient toutes les caravanes aussi bien celles vendant les produits destines aux comptoirs que celles vendant des produits de consommation locale. Les transformations sociales : prodromes de la dependance La traite ajete les fondements de la decadence des formations sociales de toute la region senegambienne. L'etat de guerre qu'elle a engendre a bouleverse la geopolitique region ale. Les mutations sociales de la periode ont conduit a la generalisation de l'etat de guerre de fa~on permanente. La traite a consolide Ie processus de la militarisation de l'etat. Au Galam proprement dit la periode a ete marquee par l'accentuation de la violence dans les processus sociaux. Notamment, les relations de servitude et de dependance s'amplifierent et Ie pouvoir politique entra dans une phase de crise aigue manifestee par des guerres civiles endemiques. Le monopole exerce par I'aristocratie sur les armes a feu obtenus aupres des comptoirs permit a celle-ci de renforcer son systeme de domination et d'exploitation des autres classes et groupes de la societe. Cependant Ie renforcement du pouvoir entraina ala longue la perte de celui-ci. A la fin du dix-huitieme siecle et au debut du dix-neuvieme siecle les guerres civiles et les invasions des etats voisins aboutirent a la desintegration politique du royaume de Galam. La mise en place de la traite 'Iicite' loin d'inverser cette tendance I'accelerera au contraire. La conquete coloniale en sera d'autant facilitee. 51 .0 V. M. Godinho, L'eco,.omu de rempire portugais au 15e et au 16e siecie (Paris, 1969). I. Tabule Gerurna, interview it Jaw.ra, Departernent de Bakel, Senegal, rnai 1978. II Voir les details de ce phenornene dans rna these, 472-93.

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CONCLUSION

Ainsi I'etude de cas que nous venons de presenter about it a des conclusions sensiblement differentes de ce\les de Philip Curtin pour la Senegambie,$1 et d'autres auteurs pour la region ouest africaine i I'ere du trafic negrier. U L'idee maitresse qui semble s'en degager est que la traite negriere a constitue un facteur de declin des formations sociales des pays cotiers aussi bien que de I' hinterland. Meme sur Ie plan des consequences demographiques de la traite, les donnees avancees dans cet article prouvent que Ie deb at est loin d'etre clos. II est encore necessaire d'entreprendre des recherches monographiques pour arriver a cerner les contours du phenomene majeur que constitue la traite atlantique dans I'histoire africaine.

II Philip D. Curtin, Econo",ic Change in Precolonial A/rica: Smega",bia in tire Era tire Slave Trade, (Madison, 1975). .. Voir entre autres J. D. Fage, A History 0/ West A/rica (Cambridge, 1969)·

0/ -

8 Dahomey and the Slave Trade: Reflections on the Historiography of the Rise of Dahomey Robin Law THE historiography of the kingdom of Dahomey, which emerged as the most powerful state on the' Slave Coast' of West Africa l in the early eighteenth century, is immensely rich. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Dahomey was one of the African states best known to Europeans, and was described in a large number of published accounts by European visitors: in particular, it was one of the very few indigenous states of Africa whose history was the subject in this period of a European book, Archibald Dalzel's History of Dahomy, published originally in 1793. 2 This contemporary documentation of Dahomey's pre-colonial history was supplemented during the colonial period by a considerable body of descriptive anthropological literature, including especially the very substantial and influential works of Le Herisse (191 I) and Herskovits (1938).3 Because of this relative abundance of easily available published material relating to it, Dahomey has featured prominently in discussions of the nature of pre-colonial African societies; and in particular, since its rise coincided with the development of the Atlantic slave trade, Dahomey has very commonly served as a case study in debates over the impact of the slave trade upon African societies. Of especially great importance has been the use of Dahomey by the economic anthropologist Karl Polanyi to illustrate his concept of an 'archaic economy', supposedly an intermediate type between 'primitive' and modern capitalist economies, and more generally to support his argument for the need to apply (in Weberian terminology) a 'substantivist' rather than a 'formalist' approach to the study of pre-capitalist economies, in his very influential book (whose title is plagiarized in that of the present article) Dahomey and the Slave Trade (1966).4 Partly because of the influence of Polanyi's work, Dahomey has also figured prominently in the recently fashionable debate about the application of Marxist theory to, and the identification of 'modes of production' in, pre-colonial Africa: at a conference investigating African' modes of production' held in the U.S.A. in 1977, for example, two separate papers dealt with Dahomey.5 • Earlier versions of this paper were read at seminars at the University of Stirling in 1984 and at the Centre of West African Studies of the University of Birmingham in 1985. The writer's thanks are due to those who participated in discussion on those occasions, and also to Robert Smith and John Reid, who generously supplied relevant material and ideas. I I.e. that part of the coast between the River Volta and the Lagos channel. • Archibald Dalzel, The History of Dahomy, an Inland Kingdom of Africa (London, 1793; reprinted, with a new introduction by J. D. Fage, 1967). 3 A. Le Herisse, L'ancien royaume du Dahomey (Paris, 1911); Melville J. Herskovits, Dahomey, an Ancient West African Kingdom (2 vols, New York, 1938). • Karl Polanyi, with Abraham Rotstein, Dahomey and the Slave Trade,' An Analysis of an Archaic Economy (Seattle, 1966). • Both papers have since been published: Roberta Walker Kilkenny, 'The slave mode of production: precolonial Dahomey', in Donald Crummey & C. C. Stewart, eds, Modes

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Ironically, however, this abundant tradition of historical wrltmg on Dahomey has been, thus far, a predominantly cannibalistic one, in that successive writers have in general depended upon earlier published accounts more than upon any original research. Most reinterpretations of Dahomey and its history, including that of Polanyi, have rested upon a critical re-reading of earlier literature rather than upon the deployment of new data. To date the only study of early Dahomian history to make extensive use of new unpublished material is that of Akinjogbin (1967),' and even Akinjogbin's work, although an important advance over earlier studies in terms of its documentary base, makes use of only a limited range of the available archival material, and begins its detailed treatment of the history of the Slave Coast only in c. 1714, thus failing effectively to deal with the critical formative period which preceded the emergence of Dahomey as the dominant power in the area. 7 Evidently, advance in our understanding of the origins and significance of the rise of Dahomey depends critically upon further research, making more effective use of the quite substantial documentation available for the early history of the Slave Coast.' In the meantime, however, the present article offers the less ambitious venture of a critical review of the existing historiography of the rise of Dahomey. It is offered in the belief that such a review, while no substitute for further research, is a necessary preliminary to it. If the conclusions suggested in this article are necessarily tentative, they will hopefully help to clarify the questions to which future research might be expected to provide more convincingly documented answers.

0/ production in A/rica,' Th~ Pr~colonial Era (London, 1981), 157-73; K.

P. Moseley, 'The political economy of Dahomey', R~uarch in Economic Anthropology, II (1979), 6~0. For other Marxist attempts to identify 'modes of production' in Dahomey, cf. Honorat Aguessy, 'Le Dan-Home du XIXe siecle: etait il une societe esclavagiste?', Ret-oue Franfaise d'Etudes Politiques A/ricaines, L (1970),71-91; Georg Elwert, Wirtscha/t und Herrschaft von' Daxome' (Dahomey) im 18 Jahrhundert " (jkonomi~ des Sklavenraubs und G~sellscha/tsstruktur 1724 bis 1818 (Miinchen, 1973). • I. A . Akinjogbin, Dahom~y and its Neighbours 1708-1818 (Cambridge, 1967). 7 Important archival material not utilized in Akinjogbin's work includes Dutch records , the potential value of which may be gauged from the published collection by Albert Van Dantzig, ed., The Dutch and the Guinea Coast 1674-1742 : A Collection 0/ Documents/rom the General State Archive at The Hagu~ (Accra, 1978), and the Letter Book of the Royal African Company covering the period 1681--99 in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (MS Rawlinson, C. 745-7), the Slave Coast material in which is summarized by Albert Van Dantzig, 'Some late seventeenth century British views on the Slave Coast', in Actes du Colloque International sur les Civilisations Aja-Ew~ (Cotonou 1-5 Decemhre 1977) (Universite Nationale du Benin, Cotonou, n.d.), 85-104. Another invaluable and neglected source for the early Slave Coast is an anonymous and undated (but clearly 1710S) manuscript description of the kingdom of Whydah: 'Relation du Royaume de Judas en Guinee, de son Gouvernement, des Moeurs de ses habitans, de leur Religion, et du Negoce qui s'y fait' (Archives Nationales, Section Outre-Mer, Paris: Depot des Fortifications des Colonies, Cotes d' Afrique, MS 104). • The writer is currently engaged in research on the history of the Slave Coast in the period 1500--1740, and acknowledges with gratitude financial support received from the Nuffield Foundation, the British Academy, and the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland.

EUROPEAN IMPACT IN AMERICA AND AFRICA DAHOMEY AND THE SLAVE TRADE THE RISE OF THE SLAVE TRADE

A~D

125 239

THE EMERGENCE OF DAHOMEY

The section of the West African coast later known as the' Slave Coast' was originally discovered by the Portuguese in the 1470s, but did not become important in the Atlantic trade until much later. There is in fact no record of any Portuguese trade with the area until 1553, when an attempt was made to open up trade with the kingdom of Po po (later known as Great Popo) on the western Slave Coast.' Although this venture was reportedly unsuccessful, the purchase of slaves from the Slave Coast area appears to have begun within a few years thereafter. 10 The most important indigenous state in the area at this period was the kingdom of Allada, east of Great POpO.ll By the beginning of the seventeenth century the Portuguese were driving a regular trade with Allada, mainly in slaves, which were purchased principally for use in the sugar plantations of Sao Thome and BrazilY It does not appear, however, that this trade was on any great scale: in 1620 it was reported that only one or two Portuguese ships called at Allada each year. 13 The Portuguese were displaced by the Dutch as the principal traders in the area in the late 1630s,14 but this change does not appear initially to have led to any very substantial increase in the scale of the trade, since the Dutch at first merely took over the existing trade in slaves to Brazil: in the 1640S the Dutch seem to have purchased only about 500-600 slaves annually in Allada. 15 The real expansion of slave exports from the area probably began only with the development of sugar production in the Dutch Caribbean colonies during the 1650S. The growth of the trade was further stimulated by the entry of English and French traders, seeking • 'Relatorio de Jacome Leite a el-Rei', 8 Aug. ISS3, in Antonio Brasio (ed.), ]'v[onumenta Missionaria Africana: Africa Ocidental (several vols, Lisbon, 1952-), II, 292. 10 Slaves called' Arara " which seems to be a name associated with the Slave Coast area, are documented in Peru from the I 560s onwards: Frederick P. Bowser, Th~ African SlafJ~ in Colonial Peru 1524-1650 (Stanford, 1974), 4cr3. For the application of the name , Arara', cf. also Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran, La Poblaci6n Negra d~ Mexico: Estudio etnohist6rico (2nd ed. Mexico City, 197:Z), 13:Z-3. 11 Akinjogbin, Dahomey, II, suggests that Allada was founded only in c. 1575. However, Allada is already referred to (as' Arida ') in a report from Benin, to the east, in 1539: 'Carta dos Missionarios do Benim a D.J080 III', 30 Aug. 1539, in Brasio, Jlfonumenta Missiontiria, II, 82. Allada is marked on Portuguese maps (as' Arida' or 'Arda') from 1570 onwards: Armando Cortesao and Avelino Teixeira da Mota (eds), Portugaliae Monumenta Cartographica (5 \'ols, Lisbon, 196o), III, pI. 266 (map of Fernao Vaz Dourado, 1570), and IV, pI. 407 (anonymous map, attributed to Sebastiao Lopes, c.1570) .

.. Pieter De Marees, Beschryt'inghe end~ Historische Verhael t'an H~t Gout Koninckrijck t'an Gunea (originally published 1602; ed. S. P. L'Honore Naber, The Hague 191Z), 23cr1. Other goods purchased by Europeans at Allada during the seventeenth century included cotton cloth and stone beads (both bought for re-sale on the Gold Coast) and i\'ory. IS 'RelaS'ao de Garcia Mendes Castello Branco', 16:z0, in Brasio, Monumenta Missionaria, VI, 470. U The earliest evidence of significant Dutch trade at Allada seems to be a Portuguese complaint of 1636:' Consulta do Conselho de Estado', 16 Jan. 1636, in Brasio, 1\,fonumenta Missionaria, VIII, 348. 16 Ernst van den Boogaart and Pieter C. Emmer, 'The Dutch participation in the Atlantic slave trade, 1596-1650', in Henry A. Gemery and Jan S. Hogendorn, eds, The Uncommon Market: Essays in th~ Economic History of the Atlantic SlafJ~ Trade (New York, 1975), 360, give a total of 4, 8:z8 slaves purchased at Allada during 1637-45.

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slaves for their own Caribbean colonies: the English first entered the Allada trade in 1663,18 and the French a few years laterY By the 1680s the English had eclipsed the Dutch as the principal purchasers of slaves in the area. During the same period, the main centre of the trade shifted from Allada to the small coastal state of Whydah, originally a dependency of Allada, to the south-west: this development was initiated by the French, who transferred their main factory from Allada to Whydah in 167 1,18 with the English following suit in 1682 11 and the Dutch in 1698.20 Most of the slaves sold through Whydah, however, continued to be supplied by Allada. 21 From the 1680s onwards, there was also a revival of Portuguese trade, stimulated by the expansion of sugar production in Brazil: the Portuguese were already trading at \Vhydah by 168 1,22 but the real expansion of their trade occurred from the I 690S onwards, when they began to rival the English as the main slave traders in the area.23 Traders from Brandenburg and Denmark also appeared briefly as significant purchasers of slaves in the area during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. 24 During the second half of the seventeenth century the volume of slave exports expanded dramatically. By 1670 it was estimated that 3,000 slaves were being purchased in Allada annually, mostly by the Dutch;25 and by 1688 Allada and Whydah together were reported to be exporting nearly 20,000 annually, the majority of these being taken by the English. 2S These figures, 11 Public Record Office, London (hereafter, PRO), CO. 1/17, letter of Capt Stewart, Ardra, 18 Sept. 1663, in 'Extract of letters from Cormantine and other places in Affrica'. Either then or soon after an English factory was established in Allada: cf. ibid. CO. 1/19, 'A Breife Narrative of the Trade & Present Condition of the Company of Royal Adventurers of England Trading into Africa', 166S. 17 The first recorded French contact with AlJada seems to have been in 1666: Abdoulaye Ly, La Compagnie du Senegal (Dakar, 1958), 94-5. A French factory was established in Allada in 1670: 'Journal du Voyage du Sieur Delbee', in J. de Clodore, ed., Relation de ce qui s'est passe dans les Isles et Terre Ferme de [,Amerique, pendant la derniere gUeTre avec I'Angleurre et depuis en execution du Traitte de Breda (Paris, 1671), II, 347-473. II Jean Barbot, 'Description des Cotes d'Affrique' (MS of 1688, in PRO, ADM. 7/83°), IIIe Partie, 133-4. 11 Van Dantzig, 'Some late seventeenth century British views', 86-8. 20 Albert Van Dantzig, Les Hol/andais sur la Cote de Guinee Q /'epoque de I'essor de I'Ashanti et du Dahomey 1680-1740 (paris, 1980),74. The Dutch factory at Allada had been destroyed in a local war in 169z. 21 Cf. WiI1iam Bosman, A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea (London, 170S; reprinted 1967),343 . • 2 Bodleian Library: Rawlinson, C. 74S, letter of John Thorne, Ophra (the port of Allada),o4 Dec. 1681. .. See the statistics of ships going from Brazil to the' Costa da Mina' (roughly equivalent to the Slave Coast), in Pierre Verger, Flux et reflux de la traite des negres mtre Ie Golfe de Benin et Bahia de Todos os Santos du XVIIe au XIXe siecie (Paris, 1968), 65 z-4· .. Material on Brandenburg trade with the Slave Coast can be found in Adam Jones, ed., Brandenburg Sourcesfor West African History 1680-1700 (Wiesbaden, 198s,esp. 18-zo, 164-S, 18Q-(6); for Danish trade on the Slave Coast, see Georg N0rregard, Danish Settlements in Wed Africa 1658-1850 (Boston, 1966), esp. 65-8, 95. U 'Journal du Voyage du Sieur Delbee', 436-7; corroborated by 'Short Memoir on Trade within the present limits of the Charter of the West Indian Company', 1670, in Van Dantzig, The Dutch and the Guinea Coast, II. U 'Relation du Voyage fait en Guynee en 1687 sur la Fregate .. La Tempeste" par Ie Sieur Du Casse', in Paul Roussier (ed.), L'Etablissmmt d'Issiny 1687-1702: Voyages de Ducasse, Tibierge et D'Amon Q la Cote de Guinee (Paris, 1935), 14-15.

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which probably reflect optimistic estimates of potential exports rather than actual shipments, doubtless overstate the real scale of the trade, and it seems certain that exports were not sustained at these levels from year to year,27 but both the rapid growth and the enormous volume of slave exports are clear enough. In the late I 690S Whydah was said to be visited sometimes by as many as SO ships in a year, and to be capable of supplying 1,000 slaves every month;28 and in the early eighteenth century slave exports from Whydah and neighbouring ports are alleged to have reached a peak of over 20,000 annually.29 These figures do not seem greatly exaggerated, even a conservative calculation putting slave exports from the area at over 10,000 annually on average from the 1690S to the 1730S, and over 15,000 annually in the 1700S and 1710S. 30 In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, indeed, this area was the main centre of the slave trade from Africa, and it was at this period that it acquired, in consequence, the appellation of the 'Slave Coast '.31 On any reasonable assumptions about the population of the Slave Coast area, it seems clear that slave exports in this period must have had very severe demographic effects, probably inflicting actual depopulation rather than merely inhibiting population growth. 32 The value of the trade increased even more dramatically than its volume, since slave prices rose fourfold between the 1680s and the I 720S. 33 After the peak in the early eighteenth century, however, slave exports fell somewhat. In the 1780s exports from Whydah, then the seaport of Dahomey, were estimated at only 5,000-6,000 annually.34 This decline in the slave trade of Whydah was due primarily to the diversion of trade to neighbouring rival ports, but the total of slave exports from the entire Slave Coast during the later eighteenth century was usually lower than in the 1700S and 1710s.3$ The kingdom of Dahomey (alternatively, and apparently originally, known as Fon) was initially a state of only minor importance in the hinterland of Allada. Traditions current in recent times (but not recorded earlier than the I 860s) claim that it was founded by a prince of the royal family of Allada who had migrated north after a disputed succession to the Allada throne,36 and ., Cf. the calculations of Patrick Manning, • The slave trade in the Bight of Benin', in Gemery and Hogendorn, The Uncommon Market, 117, which would reduce exports from the Slave Coast to 1,700 annually on average in the 1660s and 5,500 in the 1680s . .. Bosman, New and Accurate Description, 343, 362a . .. William Snelgrave, A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea and the Slat'e Trade (London, 1734; reprinted 1971),2. 30 Cf. !'.1anning, • The Slave Trade in the Bight of Benin', 117. " The first published appearance of this name seems to be in Bosman, New and Accurate Description, originally published in Dutch in 1704 . .. See the illustrative calculations of Patrick Manning, Sla~'ery, Colonia/ism and Economic Growth in Dahomey, 1640-1960 (Cambridge, 1982), 32-4, 340-3. as Richard Nelson Bean, The British Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade 1650-1775 (New York, 1975),139-47. In terms of the local cowry shell currency, slave prices rose from 72 Ib of cowries per slave at Allada in 1681 to 300 Ib at Whydah in 1724; PRO, T. 70/20, Invoice of Goods most in demand at Arda Factory, 15 Jan. 1680/1; T. 70/7, Abstract of letter of Tinker and Humfreys, Whydah, 26 Aug. 1724. 3. Robert Norris, Memoirs of the Reign of Bossa Ahadee, King of Dahomy (London, 1789; reprinted 1968), 62. 3. Cf. Manning, 'The slave trade in the Bight of Benin', 117, 122. 3. The earliest recording of the claimed traditional link with Allada appears to be that by Sir Richard Burton, A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome (originally published 1864; ed. C. W. Newbury, London, 1966), 106-7.

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it certainly seems originally to have been regarded as a dependency of Allada. It was probably founded during the second quarter of the seventeenth century,37 and is first mentioned in contemporary sources (under the name Fon) only in the 1680s, when it became known as a source of slaves brought for sale at the coast. 3S In the early eighteenth century, however, under a king called Agaja, Dahomey suddenly emerged as the major power in the Slave Coast area. Having repudiated its allegiance to Allada in 1715,38 Dahomey proceeded to overrun the coastal area, conquering Allada itself in 1724 and Whydah in 1727. The phenomenal rapidity of Dahomian expansion is illustrated by a reported remark of Agaja himself in 1728, that whereas his grandfather (the founder of the state) had conquered only two 'countries', his father eighteen, and his brother (and immediate predecessor) forty-two, he himself had taken no less than 209.40 Although itself compelled to pay tribute to the kingdom of Oyo, in the interior to the north-east, for almost a century (1730-1823), Dahomey thus emerged as the dominant power on the Slave Coast, its hegemony being overthrown only by the French conquest in the 1890S. The French initially preserved a truncated Dahomey as a client kingdom, but in 1900 the last king of Dahomey was deposed and the kingdom ceased to exist as a political entity. The people associated with the kingdom, usually called the Fon, nevertheless retain their cultural identity down to the present day. Although Dahomey first appears in contemporary records in the 1680s, Europeans knew very little of the kingdom until the Dahomian conquest of the coastal area in the 1720S, which brought it for the first time into direct contact with the European traders at the coast. The earliest account of Dahomey based upon first-hand experience is in fact a letter written from the Dahomian capital at Abomey by an English trader, Bulfinch Lamb, taken captive at the conquest of Allada in 1724.41 A number of works describing Dahomey were published during the eighteenth century, the most irnportant being those of William Snelgrave (1734), Robert Norris (1789), and the already mentioned History of Archibald Dalzel (1793).42 Snelgrave's work gives, essentially, an account of the Dahomian coast in the 1720S, based principally upon what Snelgrave heard and saw on two voyages to the area in 1727 and 1730: on the first occasion, he visited the Dahomian army then encamped at Allada and talked to the Dahomian king Agaja himself. Norris's work is basically a history of the reign of Agaja's successor Tegbesu (who died in 1774), based mainly on oral evidence collected in Dahomey in the S7 Norris, Memoirs of the Reign of Bossa Ahadu, xvi, estimated the date as c. 1625, and has generally been followed by more recent writers. Agaja, king of Dahomey in the 17205, was only the fourth ruler. 31 The earliest reference so far noted is a mention of • Fumce Lant' in a Dutch document of 1680, cited by Ray A. Kea, Settlemmts, Trade and Polities in the SeventeenthCentury Gold Coast (Baltimore, 1982), 401, n. 168. The earliest record of the name Dahomey is in French documents of 1716, cited below, n. 39. 3' Archives Nationales, Paris (hereafter, AN), B. 1/9, f. 125, letter of Bouchel, Juda (i.e. Whydah), 30 Jan, 1716; B. 1/19, f. 2V, idem 22}une 1716. -I, 209 . .. Cf. Le Herisse, L'ancien royaume du Dahomey, 291. 16 'Relation du Voyage fait en Guynee ... par Ie Sieur Du Casse', in Roussier, L'etablissement d'[ssiny, 15; Akinjogbin, Dahomey, 24 . .. David Henige and Marion Johnson, 'Agaja and the Slave Trade: another look at the evidence', History in Africa, III (1976), 57-67; David Ross, 'The anti-slave trade theme in Dahoman history: an examination of the evidence', History in Africa, IX (1982),263-71.

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There was, first, considerable stress on the military efficiency of Dahomey, which had made possible the rapid conquest of the coastal states of Allada and Whydah, despite the numerical inferiority of the Dahomian forces engaged (and despite also the readier access of the coastal peoples to supplies of imported European firearms). As a French account published in 1730 observed, the Dahomian army • was not numerous ... but they were select troops, both brave and well disciplined, led by a Prince full of valour and prudence, and under him by experienced officers, ... obedient and submissive to their chiefs'Y Snelgrave in 1727 likewise admired the discipline of the Dahomian forces, which he described as 'marching in a much more regular Order than I had ever seen before [i.e. in Africa] ... [a] sight ... well worth seeing even by us Europeans', and attributed this superiority of discipline to the existence of a core of regular troops, recruited as young boys and systematically trained. 68 Subsequent writers confirm the existence in Dahomey of some sort of standing army, recruited at least in part by a levy of young boys.68 Warfare in Dahomey was in some measure professionalized: although there was a universal obligation of military service, this was in practice invoked only in terms of emergency, and fighting was normally left to the standing army of trained specialists. 70 More generally, there was much stress on the warlike orientation of Dahomian life and values - 'a people bred solely to war and rapine', in the words of Dalzel. 71 The militarization of Dahomian institutions extended even to the king's wives, a section of whom were armed and organized as a military force, which usually served as a royal bodyguard but took the field on campaigns on occasions of crisis: these female soldiers fascinated European observers, who inevitably christened them, after Classical models, the' Amazons'. 72 Secondly, and in close connection with the first element, there was great stress upon the brutality of Dahomian conduct towards war captives, who were (it was alleged) customarily slaughtered in great numbers, and their decapitated skulls exhibited to glorify Dahomian military successes. Already in 1724, Bulfinch Lamb initiated this theme, reporting that after the conquest of Allada •there was scarce any stirring for Bodies without Heads; and had it rain'd Blood, it could not have lain thicker on the Ground'; arrived at the Dahomian capital Abomey, Lamb found that the king 'has already set his two Chief Palaces round with Mens Sculls, as thick as they can lie on the Walls one by another, and are [sic] such as he has kill'd in War'.'3 A second European visitor to Abomey in 1728 found himself, as a mark of special royal favour, treated to a triumphal exhibition of 'eight heads of conquered kings'.74 This brutality related not only, and not even primarily, to excesses Jean-Baptiste Labat, Voyage du Chet)alier des Marchais en Guinee, Isles f)oisines, et 1730), I, xi . •• Snelgrave, New Account, 77-9. The presence of young boys in the Dahomian army in 1727 is also reported by Smith, New Voyage, 192. it See esp. Pruneau de Pommegorge, Description de la Nigritie (Amsterdam, 1789), J 64. 70 Cf. Dalzel, History, x. 'I ibid. 26. 71 For eighteenth-century accounts of the' Amazons', see e.g. Snelgrave, New Account, 126; Pruneau de Pommegorge, Description de la Nigritie, 181; Norris, Memoirs, 94, 108-9; Dalzel, History, xi, 176. " Lamb, in Smith, New Voyage, 173, 186. ,. AN, C. 6/25, item 128, letter of Delisle, Dahomey, 7 Sept. 1728. 17

a Cayenne (4 vols, Paris,

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committed in hot blood on the field of battle, since most of those killed were apparently captives taken alive and kept to be sacrificed publicly in religious ceremonies. The theme of human sacrifice in Dahomey is already prominent in the account of Snelgrave, who witnessed the sacrifice by decapitation of 400 war captives in 1727, besides seeing a pile of (so he was told) 4,000 heads from sacrifices offered after the conquest ofWhydah earlier in the same year. 75 The stress on human sacrifice became obsessive in later works such as those of Norris and Dalzel, who report in lurid detail not only the mass slaughter of victims at royal funerals, but also the holding of regular annual ceremonies (the' Annual Customs ') at which human victims were killed in honour of deceased kings of the dynasty.76 Snelgrave had also reported allegations that the Dahomians ate the bodies of their sacrificial victims, but this charge of cannibalism tended to drop out of the image of Dahomey in later accounts, presumably because of lack of subsequent corroboration. 71 These two elements - militarization and human sacrifice - are already established in the image of Dahomey in Snelgrave's account in the 1730S. Norris in the 1780s adds a third element - royal despotism. He harps upon the arbitrary tyrannies of the king (including frequent executions of officials and seizures of property), and also upon the abject subservience of his subjects, who were only exceptionally driven to protest or rebellion: he concludes' they are all slaves to the king'. 78 This stress on royal absolutism is further elaborated by Dalzel, who describes Dahomey as no less than • the most perfect despotism that exists, perhaps, on the face of this earth'. 79 Norris and Dalzel seem especially concerned to demonstrate the extinction in Dahomey of any rights of private property. Thus there were no hereditary titles in Dahomey, official posts being filled by appointment by the king;80 and indeed, no inheritance of private wealth at all, the king being' universal heir' to his subjects and inheriting all the property (including wives and children) of his subordinate officials on their deaths. 8! Royal tyranny is alleged indeed to have extended (despite the contradiction this involves) even to the destruction of the family itself, children being requisitioned from their parents at an early age, brought up under royal control without knowledge of their parents, and held at the disposal of the king, who distributed some of the girls as wives to favoured followers at the Annual Customs: the motive for this extraordinary practice being that there may be no family connections, or combinations; no associations, that might be injurious to the king's unlimited power. Hence, each individual is detached, and unconnected; and having no relative for whom he is interested, is solicitous only for his own safety; which he consults, by the most abject submission, and obedience. 82 ,. Snelgrave, New Account, 31, 48-9. ,. ~orris, Memoirs, esp. 86-111; Dalzel, History, esp. 204-5, 224-6, 22 Burton, Mission to Gelele, 344 . •• Norris, Memoirs, 173.

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137 25 1

exaggerated, for example, the scale of human sacrifice in Dahomey, but it is clear that Dahomey did practise such sacrifices on a scale unusual in AfricaY Snelgrave's allegation of cannibalism was certainly unfounded, but it probably reflects a local stereotype of inhumanity, applied to the Dahomians by their African victims, rather than a European invention. 88 The Anti-Abolitionist picture of Dahomian despotism was clearly overdrawn, but not without substance. It appears, for example, that chiefly titles in Dahomey were in fact basically hereditary rather than appointive, but the king did have to approve and might on occasion alter the succession to them. 8v Likewise, although the property of a deceased chief was indeed surrendered to the king, it was normally then handed back to the chief's successor in office, but the king did appropriate part of the dead man's estate as a sort of death duty. 90 The claim that all the children born in Dahomey were seized by the king is both fantastic in itself and contradicted by abundant evidence of the existence of family groupings and connections in eighteenth-century Dahomey, but it is not totally without basis, being apparently a misunderstanding (or perhaps a deliberate misrepresentation) of a selective levy of children which did indeed occur, to recruit wives for the royal harem and soldiers for the Dahomian army. VI Even Norris's apparently wild assertion that the Dahomians were' all slaves to the king' is no mere rhetorical exaggeration, but a reasonable translation of an authentic principle of Dahomian political ideology, which represented the entire kingdom, including its people, as the personal property of the king.v2 The essential plausibility of the Anti-Abolitionist image of Dahomey is that its three component elements - militarism, human sacrifice, and royal autocracy - evidently hang together in a convincingly logical interrelationship. The dominance of martial values and attitudes in Dahomian society clearly promoted the hierarchization of authority which concentrated power in the hands of the king, who was simultaneously the war leader, and the patrimonial conception of the kingdom as the king's private property was probably encouraged by the fact that both Dahomey's original foundation and its subsequent expansion were effected by military conquest. 93 Equally, control over the standing army must ha"e been an important prop of royal power in practice. Human sacrifice sen'ed to express and glorify both Dahomian militarism (since most of those sacrificed were war captives, and their sacrifice served to advertise Dahomian military successes) and royal power (since the 87 See further Robin Law, 'Human sacrifice in pre-colonial West Africa', African Affairs, LXXXIV, 334 (1985),67-9 . • 8 It may be noted that on the Slave Coast (as elsewhere in Africa) Europeans also were suspected of being cannibals: Barbot, 'Description des Cotes d'Affrique', HIe Partie, 136; Bosman, New and Accurate Description, 365 . • 1 Cf. W. J. Argyle, The Fon of Dahomey: A History and Ethnography of the Old Kingdom (Oxford, 1966),70. 10 Cf. Le Herisse, L'Ancien Royaume du Dahomey, 84-6. 11 See esp. Pruneau de Pommegorge, Description de la Nigritie, 164-5. U Le Herisse, L'ancien royaume du Dahomey, 55, 243 . .. The Dahomian conception of royal authority, however, stresses rather the concept of the purchase of land rights, which seems to have its origin in the fact that the founders of Dahomey, being immigrants, had originally secured land by making payments to the local authorities, before confirming their position by conquest, ibid. 244, 281.

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victims were killed, technically, not for the Dahomian gods but exclusively in honour of deceased kings of the royal dynasty).94 It is also noteworthy that essentially the same picture of Dahomian society and institutions is presented in later works, whose authors cannot be supposed to have had any interest in buttressing the Anti-Abolitionist case. During the nineteenth century, after the slave trade had been declared illegal, the British government sent a series of emissaries to Dahomey, in an attempt to persuade the authorities there to ban the export of slaves and promote the export of palm oil as an alternative, and also to end human sacrifices. Despite occasional optimism about the prospects for reform, the ultimate results were disappointing. 95 A number of accounts of Dahomey were published by British visitors to Dahomey in this period, the most substantial and informative being those of Forbes (1851) and Burton (1864). Unsuccessful diplomatists such as Forbes and Burton sought to understand and explain why their proposals for reform were resisted, and the answer to them seemed clear: it was the militaristic character of Dahomey, which was inseparable from human sacrifice and the sla\'e trade, the two principal mechanisms whereby the war captives obtained were disposed of.98 In part, no doubt, this persistent stress upon Dahomian militarism reflected direct borrowing from earlier published sources such as Dalzel's History; and certainly it was reinforced by the fact that the image of a militarized society could be made (as will be seen shortly) to serve Abolitionist as well as Anti-Abolitionist polemical purposes. (Later in the nineteenth century, Dahomey's militaristic character and consequent hostility to the reforms required for modern economic development would be cited in support of yet a third cause, to justify the European colonial conquest. 97 ) But primarily it seems to reflect the realities of Dahomian society. In the nineteenth century, indeed, it may well be that the militaristic character of Dahomey was even more marked than earlier, since in 1818 a king of Dahomey, Adandozan, had been deposed for his lack of military success (and consequent failure to secure an adequate supply of war captives for sacrifice to his predecessors),98 and his successor Gezo self-consciously sought to emphasize his military prowess in order to point the contrast with his predecessor and thus legitimate his usurpation of the throne. Gezo carried Dahomey to the peak of its military success, in particular defea~ing her traditional enemy Oyo in 1823 and thereby ending the payment of tribute to that state. He also increased the scale of human sacrifices in Dahomey, and greatly expanded the size of the standing army, turning the' Amazons' into .. Cf. Law, • Human sacrifice', 73-5. Also the illuminating analysis of the' Annual Customs' by Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, • La fete des coutumes au Dahomey: historique et essai d'interpretation', Annales: E .S.C., XIX (1964), 696-716. "' See further, Susan Hargreaves, • An ideological interpretation of Dahomian politics 1818-1864' (M.A. dissertation, Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham, 1978) . • 0 Frederick E. Forbes, Dahomey and Ihe Dahomans (2 vols, London, 1851; reprinted 1966); Burton, Mission 10 Gelele; cf. also J. A. Skertchly, Dahomey As II Is (London, 1874). For a very useful analysis of the picture of Dahomey presented in these works, see David Ross, • Mid-nineteenth century Dahomey: recent views vs. contemporary evidence', History in Alrica, XII (1985), 307-23. t1 Edouard Foa, Le Dahomey (Paris, 1895), esp. 263, 313. I. Forbes, Dahomey, I, 7; Le Herisse, L'ancien royaume du Dahomey, 315.

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a regular contingent of the Dahomian field army.98 He could therefore quite plausibly protest to Forbes in 1850 that my people are a military people, male and female; my revenue is the proceeds of the sale of prisoners of war ... I cannot send my women to cultivate the soil, it would kill them ... All my nation - all are soldiers, and the Slave Trade feeds them. lOO The only important respect in which the eighteenth-century image of .Dahomey was significantly modifed in the nineteenth was with respect to the issue of royal autocracy. Later writers such as Forbes and Burton do somewhat qualify the earlier picture of unlimited royal power, recognising that the king's power was in practice restricted by the ideological traditions of the kingdom and by the balancing power of the chiefs. lOl In part, this reflected specific historical events of the early nineteenth century: whereas Dalzel had declared that 'So great is the veneration of the Dahomians for their Sovereign, that their history produces no instance of a deposition', 102 the later writers were well aware that there had been such a deposition, of Adandozan in 1818. But in part also, it reflected the official propaganda of King Gezo in his dealings with the British. Anxious to conciliate the British, but at the same time to yield no significant concessions, Gezo regularly professed himself personally convinced of the rightness and sense of their proposals for reform, but constrained by the limitations of his political position within Dahomey: royal power may well have been more effective in Dahomey than it was politic to let the British understand. We can readily accept, however, the general point that the ideology of royal absolutism in Dahomey masked to some extent the rule of an oligarchy. Beyond the rule of the military despot can be discerned the domination of a military class. The highly militaristic character of the Dahomian state is at least in great part intelligible as a consequence of the historical circumstances of its origins. Although there is little contemporary documentation of Dahomey prior to the 1720S, traditions recorded in the mid-eighteenth century suggest that it had had its origins in a gang of bandits: the king of Dahomey, some said, was originally 'a trader in hens who withdrew into the woods, where he formed a gang, with which he made himself into a formidable bandit',l03 Alternatively, or perhaps at a second stage, he had been a mercenary, who 'had discovered the secret of gathering nine to ten thousand men, whom he paid and hired out to those who need his services ... and always to the one who paid the most' .104 These stories might reflect no more than the hostile propaganda of Dahomey's enemies, but they seem quite credible, inasmuch as Dahomey still exhibited certain features reminiscent of a bandit or mercenary gang at the time of the conquest of the coast in the 1720S. Agaja's original intervention in Allada in 1724 was as a mercenary: according to .. Law, 'Human sacrifice', 69; Le Herisse, L'ancien royaume du Dahomey, 58,67. 100 Parliamentary Papers, 1852 (1455), vol. L1V: Papers Relative to the Reduction of Lagos, item 13, inclosure 3, Journal of Lieutenant Forbes, on his Mission to Dahomey, entry for 4 July 1850; cf. Forbes, Dahomey, II, 187-8. 101 See esp. Forbes, Dahomey, J, 82-3; II, 17; Burton, Mission to Gelele, 159· 101 Dalzel, History, ix. lOS AN, C. 6/25, Pruneau and Guestard, •Memoire pour servir a I'intelligence du commerce de Juda', 18 March 1756. 104 Pruneau de Pommegorge, Description de la Nigritie, 153.

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Snelgrave, he came to assist a rebellious prince of Allada, in return for • a large Sum of Money',lOS and it was apparently only at a later stage that he broke with this prince and seized power in Allada for himself. The organization of the Dahomian army was evidently in some degree commercialized, the soldiers being paid by results, receiving a money payment for each live captive taken or head removed from a slain enemy, both captives and heads being surrendered to the king at the end of the campaign. loe And at a critical point of low fortune, after suffering serious military reverses, in 1729 Agaja is said to have revived his army by recruiting' many Banditti of other Nations' .107 THE ABOLITIONIST RIPOSTE: THE IMPACT OF THE SLAVE TRADE

The image of Dahomey as a militaristic and despotic monarchy, given to the practice of human sacrifice on an extravagant scale, is therefore difficult to avoid. It was not, in fact, normally rejected even by the Abolitionists of the eighteenth century - though John Atkins, who defended the Dahomians against the charge of cannibalism as well as attributing humanitarian motives to their wars of conquest, is an exception. lOS The issue for most of the Abolitionists was rather: how, and why, had Dahomey come to be the sort of society which it was? Snelgrave had claimed that the cycle of warfare, captivity and sacrifice had existed in Africa since' time out of Mind'. The Abolitionists sought to argue rather that the militarization of societies such as Dahomey was a new phenomenon, which was itself a consequence of the slave trade. On this hypothesis, of course, the brutality of Dahomian society served to reinforce rather than to undermine the moral case against the slave trade. The argument that the European demand for slaves was itself a cause of wars in Africa is already implicit in the work of John Atkins in 1735, though, as has been seen, he applied this interpretation to the cases of Allada and Whydah rather than to Dahomey.loe It was made more explicit, and given a clearer historical form, by William Smith (1744), who observed, apparently with specific reference to the Gold Coast, that the Discerning Natives account it their greatest Unhappiness, that they were ever visited by the Europeans. They say that we Christians introduc'd the Traffick of Slaves, and that before our Coming they liv'd in PeaceYO The argument was elaborated by the American Abolitionist Anthony Benezet, in a work published originally in 1771. Benezet claimed that Smith's remark 10' 101 10'

Snelgrave, New Account, 7. Ibid. 37-8. Ibid. 128. One of the' bandits' recruited on this occasion was probably Ashangmo,

chief of Little Popo (on the western Slave Coast), who is said to ha\'e ser\'ed for a time in the Dahomian army before defecting back to Little Po po in 1737: cf. ~orris, ,\1emoirs, 50; C. C. Reindorf, History of the Gold Coast and Asanlf (2nd ed. reprinted, Accra, 1966), 37· 108 Atkins, Voyage to Guinea, 122-32. 10' Ibid. 17 2 • 110 Smith, New Voyage, 266. Smith had visited Whydah in 1727, and is assumed by Akinjogbin . Dahomey, 18-19, to be referring here to the Slave Coast; but this passage occurs in a section of Smith's work which he presents (cf. New Voyage, 243) as reporting the impressions of another trader, Charles Wheeler, who served not at \Vhydah but (as shown by the personnel registers in PRO, T. 70/1446-7) on the Gold Coast.

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is supported by a study of early European accounts of Africa, which show that the Africans then generally lived in peace amongst themselves; for I do not find, in the numerous publications I have perused on this subject, of there being wars on that coast, nor of any scale of captives taken in battle, who would have been otherwise sacrificed by the victors. The subsequent prevalence of war, Benezet inferred, was due to the slave trade, the Africans having become' corrupted by their intercourse with the Europeans' and incited to warfare by 'drunkenness and avarice'.lll The claim that African wars were caused by the European market for slaves thereafter became a commonplace of Abolitionist polemic, and the argument was soon applied to the specific case of Dahomey. Thus Forbes in 1851 was in no doubt that his description of Dahomey served' to illustrate the dreadful slave hunts and ravages, the annihilations and exterminations, consequent on this trade .... These wars are directly and instrumentally the acts of the slave-merchants at Whydah and its neighbouring ports'. 112 Although not originally worked out with reference to the specific case of Dahomey, this Abolitionist argument clearly worried the Anti-Abolitionist historians of Dahomey, Norris and Dalzel. Norris insisted that according to his reading of the records, Africa had always been like this: That the wars which have always existed in Africa, have no connexion with the slave trade, is evident from the universality ofthe practice of it between communities in a savage state. The oldest writers, as Leo, and others, have represented the Africans as living in a continual state of war, and rapine, long before the commerce with Europeans was introduced among them. 113 Dalzel suggested that the history of Dahomey itself, which waged continuous warfare during a period of (after the 1720S) declining slave exports, refuted the view that African wars were stimulated by the slave trade,114 He also reports that Lionel Abson had put the issue to the king of Dahomey (Kpengla, the successor of Tegbesu) himself, and that the monarch had obligingly declared: In the name of my ancestors and myself I aver, that no Dahoman man ever embarked in war merely for the sake of procuring wherewithal to purchase your commodities .... Weebaigah [Wegbaja, an early king of Dahomey) ... fought and conquered all his neighbours ... Did \Veebaigah sell slaves? No; his prisoners were all killed to a man. lib There was an obvious difficulty in this interpretation, that Dahomey was clearly more militarized than the kingdoms of Allada and Whydah which 111 Anthony Benezet, Some Historical Account of Guinea (2nd ed., London, 1788 ; reprinted 1968), 51-2. m Forbes, Dahomey, I, iv, 139. Cf. also the analysis of Dahomian history by J. Leighton Wilson, Western Africa,' its History, Condition and Prospects (New York, 1856),204-5. 113 Norris, Memoirs, 173. The citation of Leo (i.e. Africanus) here seems somewhat disingenuous, since the societies he was describing (in the interior of West Africa in the sixteenth century), although not trading with the Europeans, were certainly involved in the trans-Saharan slave trade. 114 Dalzel, History, 27. 116 Ibid. 218- 1 9. Wegbaja is regarded in recent tradition as the second ruler of Dahomey, but Norris and Dalzel make him the third.

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preceded it in the coastal area: Dalzel acknowledged, for example, that human sacrifices had been' seldom and inconsiderable' in Whydah, by comparison with Dahomey.ll8 This might seem to suggest that militarism was indeed a recent rather than an ancient feature of African societies, but !\orris was ready with an ingenious explanation. Dahomey, he suggested, had always been the same, in the interior, beyond the knowledge of the Europeans, until its conquest of the coast in the 1720S: isolated from the civilizing influence of trade with Europe, the Dahomians had preserved the archaic character once common throughout Africa . It was not that the Dahomians, under the influence of the slave trade, had become more militaristic; rather it was Allada and Whydah which had, through their involvement in the Atlantic trade, 'declined from their ancient ferocity of temper, ... grown voluptuous and effeminate, and lost every spark of their martial fire', thus leaving them an easy prey to the more conservative Dahomians. 117 Among recent historians, the Abolitionist picture of an originally peaceful society corrupted into violence by the European slave trade has exercised considerable influence. It was, for example, adopted and elaborated by W. E. B. Du Bois in his pioneering study of !\egro history published in 1915 . Du Bois asserted that the evidence showed the supercession in West Africa of early coastal cultures characterized by city democracy and developed craft industries, by despotic militaristic empires such as Dahomey (and also Asante). His picture of Dahomey is wholly negative - 'a fierce and bloody tyranny with wholesale murder . . . Dahomey was the last word in a series of human disasters': the origins of the change are attributed unequivocally to the slave trade, and to the warfare which it encouraged. 118 From Du Bois, as well as directly from the earlier Abolitionist sources, the view that Dahomey's despotic and militarized character was a consequence of its involvements in the slave trade was transmitted to later historians, including especially Basil Davidson (1961).118 For historians such as Du Bois and Davidson, seeking to project a more sympathetic picture of pre-colonial African societies, part of the attraction of this interpretation was clearly that it served to externalize in some degree the responsibility for many of the unattractive features which they found in these societies. The alternative Anti-Abolitionist view denying the commercial origins of Dahomey's wars has also, however, persisted. Karl Polanyi' s insistence on the irrelevance of the profit motive in the determination of Dahomian policy, for example, clearly owes a great deal to eighteenth-century Anti-Abolitionist sources such as Dalzel. 120 More explicitly, writers such as Fage (1969) and Ronen (1971) have drawn upon the Anti-Abolitionist interpretation of Dahomey, including in particular Lionel Abson's report of King Kpengla's Ibid. Z5 . Norris, Memoirs, 137. The origins of this interpretation can be traced in earlier sources: the contrast between the cowardly coastal peoples and more warlike and brutal nations in the interior goes back to Bosman, New and Accurate Description, 395-8 ; the explanation that the coastal peoples (or at least those of Whydah) had been rendered effeminate by trade is found already in Snelgra\'e, New Account, 3-4 . 118 W. E. B. Du Bois, The .Vegro (London, 1915),67-8,154; d. also idem, The World and A/rica (first published 1946; reprinted New York, 1965), 77, 16z. lit Davidson, Black Mother, Z4Z-5 . uo There is a clear echo of Dalzel, e.g. in Polanyi, Dahomey and the Sia~'e Trade, 35. 11f

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pronouncement on the issue, to deny that African wars can be explained wholly, or even mainly, in terms of the slave trade. 121 Somewhat paradoxically, for these writers this alternative view also serves to vindicate the dignity of African societies, since the denial that their history can be understood in terms of the impact of the European trade supports a claim for the essentially autonomous character of their historical development, which is explained in terms of internal dynamics rather than of external influences. In this controversy, the balance of the evidence clearly favours the Abolitionist view. Dahomey itself was, after all, a new state - founded according to Norris in around 1625 - and no evidence available either in the eighteenth century or subsequently suggests that it had been preceded by any similar states in the same area. It is difficult, therefore, convincingly to present Dahomian militarism as a survival from primitive antiquity. More generally, whatever may be true of the rest of Africa, evidence from the Slave Coast does seem to bear out the Abolitionist view of an increasing, rather than a diminishing scale of warfare. Although the earliest accounts of the area do of course allude to wars, the sources offer a clear enough impression that by the 1690S the scale and frequency of wars on the Slave Coast was significantly greater than earlier. 122 One especially interesting feature of the wars of this period was the increasing resort, by both Allada and Whydah, to the hiring of mercenary soldiers, recruited especially from the Gold Coast to the west.123 (This use of Gold Coast mercenaries on the Slave Coast may in fact have been pioneered by the Europeans, since the earliest recorded instance appears to have been by the Dutch, in a local dispute at Offra, the port of Allada, in 1687. 124 ) The Anti-Abolitionists cited this use of mercenaries as evidence of the decline in martial spirit of the coastal peoples,125 but the commercialization of warfare which it implies seems itself a significant new phenomenon. The rise of Dahomey in the interior was clearly only a part of a wider process of increasing warfare, and of the increasing professionalization of warfare, in the Slave Coast area. Given the coincidence in time between this process of militarization and the growth of the Atlantic slave trade, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the two developments are in some way linked. Dahomey itself, as has been seen, was known at the coast as a source of slaves by the 1680s, and its military organization was geared towards the collection of slaves, soldiers being obliged to surrender all their captives (as well as the heads of slain enemies) to the king in return for a money payment. The fact that the king paid four times as much for a live captive as for a head created an incentive for the capture rather than the killing of enemies. 128 Dalzel, it is true, claimed 121 J. D. Fage, 'Slavery and the Slave Trade in the context of West African history', J. Afr. Hist. X (1969), 401-2; Dov Ronen, 'On the African role in the trans-Atlantic slave

trade in Dahomey', Cah. d'Et. Afr. XI (1971), C)-IO. I .. For the wars of the I 690s, see esp. Bosman, New and Accurate Description, 32c)-30, 332-3, 335-6, 396-8. 1U Ibid, 362a, 395-6. 124 Letter of Van Hoolwerff to Directors of the Chamber of Amsterdam, 10 Feb. 1688, in Van Dantzig, The Dutch and the Guinea Coast, 3 J. 116 Norris, Memoirs, 137; Dalzel, History, 6. ItO In 1727 the king paid (in cowries) [,1 for each adult male captive, lOS. each for women and children, and ss. for heads: Snelgrave, New Account, 38.

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that since many of those captured were sacrificed, slave-gathering could not have been a source of profit to the king, but the statistics do not support him.127 Slaves were not, of course, gathered only for export, since (quite apart from those sacrificed) many were retained for use within Dahomey itself. The king distributed some of the captives in reward to his chiefs, and kept others for his own use.l28 Of especial importance was the use of slave labour on the royal farms, which supported not only the king and his palace establishment but also the standing army, thus facilitating the professionalization of the military forces. 128 The large-scale use of slave labour on the royal estates in Dahomey is already attested in the 1720S,130 and may well (since it is not reported in the earlier Slave Coast kingdoms) represent a Dahomian innovation: in Whydah earlier, it appears that the royal estates were cultivated rather by corvee labour contributed by the chiefs. 131 But the undeniable importance of slavery within the Dahomian domestic economy is quite compatible with the supposition that it was the growth of overseas demand for slaves which was the principal stimulus for the militarization of societies such as Dahomey. Another aspect of the link between warfare and commerce was of course the role of European firearms, which began to be imported in considerable numbers into the Slave Coast in the 1680s, to supplement and ultimately replace the javelins and bows which were the traditional missile weapons of the area.132 The effective use of firearms on the Slave Coast was probably pioneered by the Gold Coast mercenaries employed there: certainly, the first war in which firearms are known to have played an important role was that in which Ofori, a refugee chief from Accra established at Little Popo (west of Great Popo) on the western Slave Coast and hired by the king of Allada, attacked Whydah in 1692.133 Dahomian tradition suggests that the Dahomians, despite their inland situation, had obtained firearms (presumably in exchange for slaves) before the end of the seventeenth century ,134 and certainly by the 1720S they were in the forefront of arms technology, their forces being equipped exclusively with muskets and swords, and having abandoned the javelins and bows in use earlier.13& This adoption of firearms may well have some bearing upon the professionalization of Dahomian 127 Dalzel, History, xii. But in 1727 the price of a slave at the coast was £15 (Bean, The British Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, 147): since the king paid only {,I for each captive (cf. above, n. 17.6) he would need to export only a very small proportion of the captives taken to cover his costs. 12. Snelgrave, New Account, 37, 39, Of over 1,800 captives on this occasion the king sacrificed 400 and presented 200 to his chiefs, but it is not stated how many were sold rather than kept for the king's own use; ibid. 36, 39, 40. 128 Cf. Le Herisse, L'ancien royaume du Dahomey, 90. 130 Snelgrave, New Account, 106. 131 • Relation du Royauml.' de Judas', 78-9; Labat, Voyage du Chevalier des J.1archai!, 11,9 8- 100. 132 Cf. R. A. Kea, • Firearms and warfare on the Gold and Slave Coasts from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries',J. Afr. Hist. XII (1971),192-4,217.. 133 Ofori was unable to press his attack against Whydah because of a failure of supplies of gunpowder; Bosman, New and Accurate Description, 332. 13. Recent tradition claims that \Vegbaja was the first Dahomian king to use firearms, obtained through Whydah: Le Herisse, L'ancien royaume du Dahomey, 60, 84. In the eighteenth century, howe\'er, Wegbaja was remembered as a king who still used the bow, firearms being not yet known: Dalzel, History, 219. 136 Snelgrave, New Account, 27, 32, 56, 77-8.

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military organization, the creation of a regular army being designed to produce the superior standards of drill and discipline required for effective use of the new weapons. The counter-arguments of historians such as Fage and Ronen, stressing the non-commercial motivation of Dahomey's wars, do little more than reproduce the evidence of eighteenth-century Abolitionist writers, perhaps with insufficient critical attention to the polemical context of their assertions. In fact, Dalzel's insistence on the absence of a commercial motivation in Dahomey's wars is somewhat undermined by his own account of the origins of the attack on Whydah in 1727, which follows Snelgrave in claiming that Agaja wished to secure access to supplies of imported European goods, especially of firearms.13s In this instance, of course, Dalzel felt obliged to defend Snelgrave's interpretation against the alternative view of John Atkins, attributing Abolitionist objectives to Agaja; but other examples of the relevance of commercial motives to Dahomian military policy can be found in Dalzel's own account of the wars of King Kpengla in the 1770S and 1780s. 137 But even if we ignore these contradictions, and accept that the conscious motives of Dahomian rulers in waging war were normally noneconomic, this does not dispose of the issue, since the dominance of noneconomic values encouraging war itself may have had economic causes. As Christopher Wrigley has pointed out, in response to Fage: 'War is a habit, an institution ... War-boys naturally believe in war, but the question remains: what brought the war-boys to the fore? '138 It is of limited sense to invoke Dahomian militarism as an explanation of Dahomey's aggressiveness, when it is precisely the historical origins of Dahomian militarism which are at issue. A more comprehensive critique of the tradition of seeing the Atlantic slave trade as the key to understanding Dahomian history has been offered more recently by Werner Peukert (1978).138 Although Peukert's book deals with the second half of the eighteenth century, its conclusions clearly have implications for the earlier period also. Peukert not only cites the customary evidence for the non-commercial motivation of Dahomey's wars; he also, and more importantly, adduces statistical evidence for the unimportance of the Atlantic trade. On Peukert's analysis, the Atlantic trade accounted for only a small proportion of national income in Dahomey - he suggests only one fortieth of the whole - and an unimportant proportion even of state revenues. The argument, however, is far from being conclusive. Its statistical basis is weak, involving problematical assumptions about Dahomey's population and agricultural output: an alternative calculation by Patrick Manning (1982) would raise the share of the Atlantic trade in the national income to IS per cent,140 and both sets of figures must be regarded as having an essentially illustrative rather than a probative value. Assessment of the importance of the Atlantic trade must also, of course, be based upon qualitative as well as 131 137

138

Dalzel, History, 7-8, 26. Ibid, 166, 207.

Christopher Wrigley, 'Historicism in Africa', African Affairs, LXX, 279 (1971),

114- 1 5.

UI Werner P~ukert, Der Atlantische Sklavenhandel von Dahomey I750-I797 (Wiesbaden, 1978); for an assessment of this important work, cf. Marion Johnson, 'Polanyi, P~uk~rt and th~ political ~conomy of Dahomey', J. Afr. Hist. XXI (1980),395-8. 110 !\'tanning, Slavery, Colonialism and Economic Growth, 44.

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on quantitative considerations, and account needs to be taken of the crucial role played for the Dahomian state not only by imported firearms (whose importance Peukert tends to discount) but also by imported luxury items, which could be distributed to attract and secure the allegiance of followers, and by the cowry shells which served as currency in local markets. The importance of imported goods in royal largesse was already clear in the 17 20S, when Bulfinch Lamb noted that the king of Dahomey' gives away Booges [cowries] like Dirt, and Brandy like Water '.141 The importance of cowry shells should especially be stressed: in the second half of the seventeenth century, it appears that between a third and a half of the value of imports into the Slave Coast was normally in cowries.142 It is somewhat ironic that Peukert points to the existence of a flourishing local exchange economy in Dahomey as part of his argument for the downgrading of the significance of overseas trade. But this flourishing local trade, lubricated by a currency of imported cowry shells, was evidently, in large measure, itself a consequence of the booming Atlantic trade. 143 FROM WAR-BAND TO KINGDOM: THE CONSTRUCTI\'E ASPECT OF DAHOMIAN STATECRAFT

Stress on the military character of the Dahomian state, common to both Abolitionist and Anti-Abolitionist traditions in Dahomian historiography, is valid enough, but it raises difficulties in understanding the kingdom's success in achieving political stability. Obsession with Dahomian militarism tended to produce a picture of Dahomey as no more than an organization of military thugs, terrorizing the populace. This implicit image was, indeed, made explicit in the mid-nineteenth century by Forbes, who declared that' This great nation, is no nation, but a banditti . .. ' .ltt This characterization was approvingly cited by Burton, who opined that' The object of Dahomian wars and invasions has always been to lay waste and destroy, not to aggrandize the empire by conquest and annexation.'u~ A later nineteenth-century writer drew the logical enough conclusion that' Dahomi can conquer, but cannot assimilate the conquered peoples ... I t is really a political organization, and if the monarchy were overthrown, Dahomi would cease to exist.'u6 In the event, of course, the Fon people did in fact survive the destruction of the '" Lamb, in Smith, Nf!W Voyagt', 173. m At Allada in the mid-seventeenth century normally a third of the value of imports was in cowries : Olfert Dapper, Naukellrigt' Besc/mjt'ingt' der •.Jjrikamsdle G.',ust.", {Amsterdam, 1(68),491. By the 1680s the proportion had risen to a half : PRO, T. 70/20, Invoice of goods most in demand at Ardra Factory, 15 Jan. 1680/1; ibid. abstract (If letter of William Cross, Ophra, 13 June 1681; cr. Barbot, 'Description des Cotes d'Atfrique', Ille Partie, 142-3. At Whydah in 1694 the proportion was two-fifths: Thomas Phillips, , Ajournal of a voyage made in the Hannibal of London', in Awnsham Churchill and John Churchill, eds, Collection oj Voyages and Trat'els (London, 1732), \'1, 227, ... The suggestion of Manning, Slat'ery, Colonialism and Eml/o",j,- Groft·th, 24, that " monetized exchange economy, employing some other form of currency, pre-dated the introduction of cowry shells by the Europeans, seems hi.:hly improbable. ,.. Forbes, Dahomey, I, 19 . ... Burton, Mission to Gelelt', 260, 264 n. 25 . ... A. B. Ellis, Tht' Ewt'-Speaking Peoples oj the Slo,'t' Co(/St of Wl'St ..Jjrim (London, 1890), 197-8.

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Dahomian monarchy in the 1890s, demonstrating a deeper and more widespread identification with the Dahomian state than these authors had been prepared to believe. Dahomey may have begun as a mercenary or even a bandit band; but it clearly succeeded in turning itself into something more. In fact, even the Anti-Abolitionist historians of the eighteenth century do give some clues as to why the Dahomian state should command loyalty as well as fear, although these observations stand in some contradiction to the general picture of oppression and exploitation into which they are embedded. Norris, for example, noted the success of the Dahomians in assimilating conquered populations, so as to create 'one people', which he attributed to intermarriage and the toleration of local religious cults (referring specifically to the contin'uation at Whydah of the worship of the python, the national cult of the old Whydah kingdom 147 ). He also conceded that royal despotism in Dahomey had positive as well as negative consequences, in restraining the misgovernment of subordinate officials, to such effect indeed that 'there are ... but few instances of personal injuries in this country'. 148 Dalzel observed that the taxation system of Dahomey was in some degree redistributive rather than purely oppressive, much of the royal revenue being distributed in largesse to officials and even to ordinary Dahomians, so that 'the money which flows into the royal coffers, from the King's subjects and vassals, thus circulates again among the people'.uv In the nineteenth century also, European visitors to Dahomey were at least occasionally impressed by the efficiency of its administration, one British envoy in 1848 remarking that the Dahomian 'police, fiscal and judicial arrangements, excited my admiration, and are worthy of a people much farther advanced in the scale of civilization' .150 But throughout the pre-colonial period Dahomian despotism continued to be interpreted normally in a negative sense, as tyranny, and such insights remained isolated, without prompting a general revaluation of the nature of the Dahomian state. In the twentieth century, however, more sympathetic attitudes towards African culture, combined with more detailed familiarity with the working of Dahomian institutions (or at least with local recollections of their earlier working), prompted a more positive view of the Dahomian state, seeing bureaucratic efficiency rather than arbitrary tyranny. This more positive perspective, celebrating the Dahomian administrative achievement rather than condemning its oppressiveness, is especially evident in the two most substantial descriptions of Dahomian institutions available, those of Le Herisse (1911) and Herskovits (1938).151 In particular, these works present In Norris, Memoirs, 2; for the case of the \\'hydah snake-cult, cf. ibid. 105 n. Some discussion of the manipulation of local religious cults by the Dahomian monarchy can be found in P. Mercier, 'The Fon of Dahomey', in Dary)) Forde (ed.), African Worlds: Studies in the Cosmological Ideas and Social Values of African Peoples (London, 1954), 210-34· 141 Norris, Memoirs, 90-1. Ut Dalzel, History, xiii. lO. Parliamentary Papers, 1849 (399), vol. XXXIV, Missions to the King of Ashantu and Dahomey, item 2, inclosure, Report by B. Cruickshank, Esq., of his Mission to the King of Dahomey, 9 Nov. 1848. 161 Le Herisse, L'ancien royaume du Dahomey; Herskovits, Dahomey. For a more recent work reproducing this picture of a high degree of effective centralization, cf. Jacques Lombard, 'The Kingdom of Dahomey', in Dary)) Forde and P. M. Kaberry, eds, West African Kingdoms in the Ninetunth Century (London, 1967), 70-92.

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a picture of detailed administrative interference in basic economic activities, including the organization of agricultural production, as well as of an all-pervasive system of taxation. Their picture of the degree of effective central control exercised by the Dahomian authorities may well be idealized and exaggerated, as has been powerfully argued in an important critique by Argyle (1966), who stresses rather the limitations to royal power and the persistence under the Dahomian monarchy of essentially autonomous village and kin groups.162 On this point, however, some caution is required, since Argyle's evidence for the autonomous functioning of these local groups is drawn from anthropological literature of the colonial period (principally, in fact, from Herskovits' own work), and relates therefore to a period after the Dahomian state had ceased to exist: it is perhaps unsurprising that such material should generate the impression of a rather shadowy state which impinged only occasionally and ineffectively upon the lives of ordinary people. If Le Herisse and Herskovits certainly exaggerated the degree of effective political centralization in pre-colonial Dahomey, Argyle very probably greatly understates it. Dahomey does appear to have been more effectively centralized and more efficiently administered than the generality of pre-colonial African states, and the character of its political system clearly does help to make more intelligible the stability of the Dahomian state. Neither Le Herisse nor Herskovits attempted to situate the emergence of Dahomey's centralized administration in any sort of historical context. The suggestion that Dahomey's royal autocracy might be interpreted as a constructive response to the problems created by the Atlantic slave trade, creating an oasis of order in the face of the chaos promoted by slave-raiding, was made, however, by Davidson (1961),153 and more elaborate analyses along similar lines were offered a little later by Polanyi (1966) and Akinjogbin (1967).m. Polanyi's interpretation of Dahomey's participation in the slave trade depicting the Dahomians as a 'noncommercial inland nation' drawn only reluctantly into selling slaves because of their need for supplies of imported firearms, is clearly enough derived from the eighteenth-century Anti-Abolitionist historians. More interesting and more original is his treatment of the nature of the Dahomian state. Drawing upon Le Herisse and Herskovits, he sees Dahomey as above all 'a planned economy'. 165 In economic terms, the Dahomian state is presented as marked not by the organization of exchange for profit, but by 'redistribution': as Dalzel had already suggested, taxation and largesse served to circulate goods among the population. Central control of basic economic activities was directed to ensuring subsistence for all, essentially a matter of welfare rather than exploitation. The slave trade itself was subject to rigorous state control, which kept it isolated from the local economy. The purpose of all this administrative The Fon of Dahomey . Davidson, Black IWother, Z44-5 . ••• Polanyi, Dahomey and the Slave Trade; Akinjogbin, Dahomey and iu Neighbours. Polanyi's work is in fact an elaboration of an analysis originally offered a few y~ars earlier by his associate Rosemary Arnold, • A port of trade: Whydah on the Guin~a coast' and • Separation of trade and market: great market of \\'hydah', in Karl Polanyi, Conrad M. Arensberg and Harry W. Pearson, eds., Trade and Market in the Early Empires: Economies in History and Theory (New York, 1957), 154-76, 177-87 . ••• Th~ phras~ is actually Arnold's: 'Port of trad~', 155. ... • 63

Argyl~,

EUROPEAN IMPACT IN AMERICA AND AFRICA DAHOMEY AND THE SLAVE TRADE 26 3 control was to protect the traditional social order from erosion by the corrosive impact of market forces. Independently ofPolanyi, and from a rather different perspective, Akinjogbin offers an interpretation of Dahomian history in some respects remarkably similar. For Akinjogbin the problem presented by the slave trade was essentially one of political order. The traditional political system represented by Allada, based on kinship and characterized by decentralization, proved incapable of containing the disruptive influence of the slave trade, as slave-raiding and competition for control of the new Atlantic trade gave rise to increasing warfare and disorder. Dahomey was consciously conceived by its founders as a new sort of kingdom which would be strong enough to impose order in the face of the slave trade. Traditional legitimacy based on kinship was rejected in favour of military force, and the idea of the state as a larger version of the family replaced by stress on universal subservience to the king, thus facilitating the incorporation of conquered groups. The Dahomian state, Akinjogbin claims, was • very close ... to the modern idea of a national state'ISS - a curious formulation, since his own stress on royal autocracy, administrative centralization and the use of force to crush traditional institutions suggests that what he has in mind is rather the model of Enlightened Despotism. As has already been seen, Akinjogbin follows John Atkins in maintaining that the original intention of Dahomey's rulers was to suppress the slave trade altogether. This proved impossible, but the trade was brought under control as a state monopoly. Since their publication, the interpretations of Polanyi and Akinjogbin have attracted a great deal of detailed criticism, and it is clear that they cannot be sustained in their original form.ls7 First, it is evident that both writers greatly exaggerate the degree of effective centralization in Dahomey; to take a single instance, the state monopoly of overseas commerce which is central to both their analyses did not, in fact, exist. ISS Akinjogbin, uncritically reflecting some of the wilder elements in the eighteenth-century European image of Dahomey, also greatly exaggerates the decline of the family as the basic unit of social and political organization. ls9 Both Polanyi and Akinjogbin seem also to attribute to the rulers of Dahomey an unrealistic measure of disinterested benevolence. Polanyi's account of the • redistributive' character of the Dahomian state, although illuminating up to a point, fails to perceive the essentially ideological character of this ,·ision of the Dahomian state, which was propagated precisely in order to mask the exploitative reality; as Forbes

... Akinjogbin, Dahomey, :Z5; cf. :Z03. For criticisms of Polanyi, see e.g. Catherine Coquery- Vidrovitch, . De la traite des esclaYes it I'exportation de I'huile de palme et des palmistes au Dahomey: X IXe siecle', in Claude Meillassoux, ed., The Development of Indigenous Trade and Markets in West Africa (London, 1971), esp. 107-14; Peukert, Der Atlantische Sklavenhandel, esp. chapter :zo; Moseley, 'Political economy of Dahomey', esp. 73-6; Manning, Slavery, Colonialism and Economic Growth, esp. 41-2. On Akinjogbin, see Robin Law, 'The fall of Allada, 1724 - an ideological revolution?', J. Hist. Soc. Nigeria, v, i (1969), 157-63; David Ross, 'European models and \Vest African history: further comments on the recent historiography of Dahomey', History in Africa, x (1983), 293-305. 1•• See further Robin Law, 'Royal monopoly and private enterprise in the Atlantic trade: the case of Dahomey',J. Afr. Hist., XVIII (1977),555-77· m Akinjogbin repeats, for example, the misleading statement that titles in Dahomey were not hereditary: Dahomey, 38, 100. In

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remarked in the mid-nineteenth century, for all the public vaunting of the generosity of the king's gift-giving, he received in taxes considerably more than he distributed in largesse. 160 Likewise, the close control (short of monopoly) exerted over the Atlantic trade is better understood as deriving from an essentially economistic desire to squeeze revenue out of it than from a supposed' substantivist' concern to protect traditional social values. Even more critically, Akinjogbin grossly understresses the militaristic character of the Dahomian state, which in his account is attenuated into the possession of an efficient standing army. The central institution of human sacrifice hardly figures in his work. In addition, neither writer offers a satisfactory answer to the critically important question of how far, in fact, Dahomey was an innovative polity, organized in a manner radically different from its predecessors. Polanyi's account, which combines evidence relating to Whydah before the I720S, with material on Dahomey later, to form an essentially ahistorical composite picture, is systematically obscure on this point. Akinjogbin's position is clearer, stressing the radical break between Dahomey and its predecessors, but not altogether convincing, since it is evident that he greatly exaggerates the contrast. His claim that the kings of Dahomey self-consciously sought to present themselves as the founders of a new order, breaking with the traditional past, seems unwarranted: rather, at least by the late eighteenth century, they projected themselves as the legitimate successors to the kingship of Allada, and their installation ceremonies involved rituals at Allada as well as at the Dahomian capital at Abomey.161 There was also a great deal of institutional continuity between Allada and Whydah and the later Dahomey. It has been shown, for example, that the organization of overseas commerce in Dahomey largely replicated that of the earlier kingdoms,162 and the same is clearly true of many other aspects of Dahomian political organization. It is sometimes claimed, for example, that Dahomey adopted a new system of royal succession, which is held to have strengthened royal power: in Allada, it is suggested, the succession probably circulated among segments of the royal lineage, whereas in Dahomey it passed from father to a designated (normally the eldest) son. l63 But in fact this linear system of succession was no Dahomian innovation at all, being attested earlier in both Allada and Whydah. lU Similarly, the inheritance of chiefs' property by the king and the levy of girls to recruit royal wives, which so impressed Norris and Dalzel in the eighteenth century, were not peculiar to Dahomey, but are likewise para lie lied in the earlier kingdoms. ISS This raises the possibility that Forbes, Dahomey, II, 173-4. Law, 'Fall of Allada', 16z; Jacques Lombard, 'Contribution a I'histoire d'une ancienne societe politique du Dahomey: la royaute d' Allada', Bull. I .F.A .N, XXIX, i-ii (1967),57, The Allada installation ceremony is mentioned by Dalzel, History, ZZ7 n. I" Law, 'Royal monopoly', 55er6!. 113 C. W. Newbury, The Wester" Slave Coast and its Rulers (Oxford, 1961), 13; Argyle, The Fon of Dahomey, 5er8 . ... For royal succession at Allada, see Dapper, Naukeurige Besch,ijvi"ge, 493; AN, C. 6/zS, item 33, letter of BoucheI, Xavier (i.e. Savi, capital of Whydah), z6 June 1717. For Whydah, see Voyages aux Cotes de Guin~e et en Ame,ique(Amsterdam, 1719),4 I-Z; Bosman, New Account, 366. "6 For royal inheritance rights at Allada, see Dapper, Naukeu,ige Besch"jvinge, 493; for Whydah, see Phillips, 'Journal of a voyage', Z19. The seizure of girls for the royal harem is reported in Whydah: Bosman, New and Accurate Descriptio", 345. 110 111

N····,

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2 65

even the Dahomian conception of the state as the personal property of the king, which seems to be linked to these practices, was part of a common fund of ideological traditions rather than an innovation related to the particular historical circumstances of the origins of Dahomey. It is clear, in fact, that in many respects, as Argyle has explicitly argued, Dahomey developed and adapted pre-existing institutions and values rather than instituting something wholly new. 16e Such continuities are, indeed, unsurprising. Dahomey itself was (at least according to recent tradition) a direct offshoot of Allada, and presumably therefore derived its political traditions from the latter; and in any case (as Akinjogbin himself acknowledges in particular contexts) the incorporation of Allada and Whydah in the 1720S is likely to have led to the takeover of elements of their institutions and organization. 187 The success of the kings of Dahomey in stabilizing their state and legitimizing rule probably depended as much upon the manipulation and modification of pre-existing principles of political organization and ideology as upon the formulation of any new principles suited to the changing conditions of the times. Certainly, a great deal more research is required, especially on the political organization of Allada and Whydah before the 1720S, in order to clarify how far and in what respects Dahomey differed from its predecessors. At present, it is at least clear that there were significant differences. Judicial authority, for example, was more effectively concentrated in the king in Dahomey. Dahomian tradition claims that in early times custom permitted private citizens to put to death thieves caught in the act, notifying the king only after the event by taking the decapitated heads of such executed criminals to the royal palace; but that an early king of Dahomey, Wegbaja, prohibited this practice and reserved the punishment of thieves to himself.u8 That this is a recollection of a real event rather than a mythological charter is suggested by the fact that precisely this form of private justice against thieves is attested in seventeenth-century Whydah in a contemporary source. lee Tradition also asserts that, although the offering of human sacrifices at royal funerals had existed earlier, the regular commemorative sacrifices at the Annual Customs were initiated by King Agaja;170 and this too is supported by the contemporary accounts of Allada and Whydah before Agaja's time, which refer to sacrifices at royal funerals but give no hint of any killing of human victims at the regular annual ceremonies. 171 Dahomey's military organization also seems unparalleled in the earlier kingdoms, even if the levy of boys to recruit soldiers was an extension or adaptation of an earlier practice. The royal monopoly of the disposal of war captives likewise seems to be a genuine Dahomian innovation. It may be questioned also whether either Polanyi or Akinjogbin offers a really convincing explanation of the relationship between Dahomey's distinctive political structure and the challenge of the slave trade. In particular, both writers strain plausibility in presenting Dahomian expansion in essentially defensive terms, as a response to external threats and pressures. I t is not easy to discern these external threats in the traditional narratives of

... cr. 117 cr.

Argyle, The Fon of Dahomey, esp. 56, 73, 102, 173. Akinjogbin, Dahomey, 64 n. 3, 100--1. 1" Le Herisse, L'ancien Toyaume du Dahomey, 290 • ... Barbot, 'Description des Cotes d'Affrique', IIle Partie, 136. 110 Forbes, Dahomey, II, 88; Le Herisse, L'ancien Toyaume du Dahomey, 51. 111 cr. Law, 'Human sacrifice', 67.

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the foundation of Dahomey, in which the founding fathers appear rather, without equivocation or apparent shame, as invaders and aggressors. 172 If the rise of Dahomey had anything to do with the slave trade, as indeed seems very likely, the warrior band out of which it developed were more probably slave-raiders than the organizers of resistance to the slave trade. In addition, Akinjogbin's insistence that Dahomey was conceived from its foundation as a new form of state serves to obscure the crucial process whereby the transformation from a war band to a state, from destruction and crude exploitation to constructive statecraft, was effected. In the coastal areas, at least, this transition was slow to become apparent. Even in 1730 the impact of Agaja's conquests seemed to Snelgrave wholly destructive: 'the Countries being laid waste by his former Wars ... he is King in name only for want of Subjects, by reason of his having destroyed in so cruel a manner the Inhabitants of all the Places he has conquered '.173 The shift from extermination and enslavement to incorporation of the conquered peoples was perhaps marked by the temporary shift of the Dahomian capital to Allada in 1730, which may have been intended to claim the mantle of its former kings;174 and more critically by the negotiation of an agreement for the re-settlement in Whydah of a portion of its inhabitants, following the death in exile of its displaced king, in 1733.17& Akinjogbin's own narrative shows, indeed, that the Dahomian state had still not fully achieved stability by the time of Agaja's death in 1740, and that the kingdom 'had to be rebuilt almost from nothing' by Agaja's successor Tegbesu;i7I but his belief that the principles of political organization successfully applied by Tegbesu had already been devised by Agaja (and indeed by the founders of Dahomey a century earlier) leaves this process somewhat difficult to comprehend. Despite these objections, the basic thesis of Polanyi and Akinjogbin, that Dahomey's autocratic political structure was conceived by its rulers, and welcomed by their subjects, as a solution to the problems of order posed by the slave trade, remains attractive. One principle of Dahomian political organization which, although curiously unmentioned by either Polanyi or Akinjogbin, seems relevant to this issue is the convention that natives of Dahomey, including slaves as well as freemen, should not be sold out of the country, except of course for some serious offence. In The effect of this was, of course, to offer protection against sale to the coast to those incorporated within the Dahomian state, even as they were being organized for the more effective enslavement of others, a guarantee no doubt especially welcome to those incorporated by conquest, who would otherwise feel vulnerable to ". For these traditions, see esp. Le Herisse, L'ancim royaume du Dahomey, 276-89. Versions of these traditions current in the eighteenth century evidently differed in detail from those told recently, but presented the same picture of aggression: d. Norris, Ilfemoirs, xiii-xiv. I " Snelgrave, New Account, 129. m Though Akinjogbin, Dahomey, 89, suggests that the move was prompted rather by considerations of military security. The capital was moved back to Abomey in 1744. mAN, C. 6/25, letter of Levesque, Juda, 20 Nov. 1733 {Iettre de nouvelles}; B. 3/363. letter of Dionis to Ministre de Marine, 10 Aug. 1734. Akinjogbin, Dahomey, 98, lays little stress on this episode. m Akinjogbin, Dahomey, 110. 177 Le Herisse, L'ancien ,oyaume du Dahomey, 56, 245, 291; already attested (in connection with slaves on the royal estates) by Snelgrave, New Account, 107.

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seizure for export. Without some such restriction on the' internal' recruitment of slaves for export, indeed, it is difficult to see how any state could preserve stability and order in a period of massively increasing demand for slaves. 17s This rule, it is true,like so many other aspects of Dahomian political organization, was probably not a Dahomian innovation, since a similar convention seems to have existed, at least in theory, earlier in WhydahY' But it seems significant that it is insisted upon in Dahomian tradition with such great emphasis. In Whydah, the operation of this convention was clearly undermined by the frequency there of civil wars, in which captives were freely enslaved, as well as by the weakness of the central authority which was presumably expected to enforce it.lsO Its combination in Dahomey with a powerful central authority made it much more effective. Together with the establishment of a single Dahomian authority over an area previously politically fragmented, the operation of this rule would have had the effect of bringing the process of enslavement and its consequent violence under some degree of control, possibly reducing the overall scale of enslavement for export and certainly externalizing its burden onto those beyond the Dahomian frontiers. Dahomey thus represented, as Manning has recently suggested, a 'rationalized system' of slave-trading, following the anarchy of uncontrolled war and enslavement which had preceded its rise. lSI Even though the early kings of Dahomey had themselves been major contributors to and profiteers from this anarchy, their ultimate triumph was no doubt widely welcome for the relative peace which it promised.

". Cf. Walter Rodney, • Gold and SInes on the Gold Coast', Trans. Hist. Soc. Ghana, x (1969), 24-6. m 'Relation du Royaume de Judas', 86. ,oa For the collapse of royal authority and civil wars in Whydah in c. 1710--27, cf. Akinjogbin, Dahomey, 41-2, 50--3, 72-3. '81 Manning, Slavery, Colonialism and Economic Growth, 42.

9 Forms and Types of Work, and the Acculturation of the Colonial Indian of Mesoamerica: Some Preliminary Observations Murdo J. MacLeod

This paper touches on some aspects of the acculturation of the colonial Indian of Mesoamerica. It is limited to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and most of the evidence by far comes from the southern part on the region. Conclusions offered here are more in the nature of suggestions for discussion or signposts to some lines of inquiry.1 Acculturation, of course, is both cognitive and noncognitive. In this context it is the events, processes, and periodizations whereby Indians adopted, rejected, or had forced upon them, Spanish and European styles of dress, diet, daily habits, attitudes (commercial and otherwise), religion and language. It is also more subtle and uncons· cious changes in world view and ways of thinking. In a conquest society acculturation often involves elements of force or pressure, which leads to such complications as cognitive changes reluctantly adopted, or to a whole series of conscious and unconscious rejections, themselves very much part of the acculturation process. In this paper I will pay more attention to the more overt and obvious manifestations of acculturation - in general what colonial Spaniards understood when they spoke of Indians "becoming ladino". Acculturation has been of concern to anthropology for some time, and there are many works of theoretical sophistication written from this point of view. Nevertheless, many anthropologists have had a somewhat synchronic or "static" view of acculturation, showing more concern with the individual phenomenon, either alone or in aggregate, or with the institutions and devices whereby Indians defend themselves against acculturation. 1 My thanks to the following who offered comments on this paper at various stages: Paul B. Ganster, Bernardo Garda Martinez, James Lockhart, Julius Rubin, and William B. Taylor. I did not always accept their advice and responsability for the contents is mine.

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Some have looked at acculturation in illuminating ways - but with time almost completely neglected as a factor. Thus there are several excellent studies where ethnicity and ecology are combined to explain the preservation of Indian identity, adaption and survival in an increasingly capitalist, sophisticated, acculturative and dominant society. Yet the way these Indian groups, in Chiapas for example, spring full grown from their ethnic heritages and ecological niches in these works, has caused historians to scorn some of the truncated "historical" introductions which anthropologists sometimes begin with in a sort of effort to placate the inexorable gods which govern the great cycles of the birth, aging and deaths of people and societies. Some anthropologists themselves are growing uneasy at these ahistorical interpretations, and in fact, they are bringing historical concerns to the study of acculturation more than historians':! Other anthropologists have used an ethnic and geographical approach, which, in some cases, has the advantage of introducing economic and demographic pressure as a much more central factor. Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran's thesis of the zonas de refugio did much to help us to draw an ethnic map of Indian survival in Mexico, and, at least in a secondary way, the events and pressures of history are introduced as explanations of how the map came to be the way it is. (He has also looked at the survival and elimination of specific practices and customs.) a Basically, most anthropologists interested in acculturation have used history retrospectively. A given phenomenon is found today, it is explained synchronically as part of the total culture of a group, and then history is examined for corroborative evidence as to origins. Just how acculturation takes place, or rather accumulates over time, seems to be of minor interest - for logical reasons internal to their work no doubt. Historians have produced vast quantities of evidence on the Mesoamerican colonia Indian. Concerns have incuded legislation, demog. 2 The whole Harvard-Chiapas project has produced se\'eral excellent ethnographic and ecological analyses, but the historical introductions are perfunctory and leap from event to event with schematic descriptions of colonial institutions. See for example, Evon Z. Vogt, Zinacantan: A Maya Community in the HighlandJ 0/ Clliapas (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), and George A. Collier, FieldJ 0/ the Tzot:il, tile Ecological Bases Of T,-adition in Highland Chiapas (Austin, 1975). A young anthropologist shows his concern at the lack of historical concerns in these work.s in Waldemar R. Smith, "Class and Ethnicity in the Fields of the Tzouil", Peasant Studies, 6 (1977), 51·56. See also Grant D. Jones' introductory remarks in AnthropolOgy a"d Histm'Y in Yucatdn, Grant D. Jones, cd. (Austin, 1977), xi·xiv. a Gonzalo Aguirre BeltrAn, Regiones de refugio (Mexico, 1967). and "El go· bierno indlgena en M~xico y el proceso de aculturaci6n", America lndigena, 12 (1952), 271-297.

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raphy, periodization of social change, the history of institutions which affected the Indian, such as encomienda or tribute, and the evolution of the more overt and deliberate kinds of Spanish-Indian relations. The leading histories have been macro-histories of truly huge implications containing vast quantities of data, or specific and local studies of people and institutions which do not generalize. Studies which combine the two have not been much interested in the detailed and specific history of acculturation:' Another topic which has interested historians is Indian resistance. How have Indians organized, or been allowed to organize, broker or "barrier" institutions to defend themselves against intrusions they do not willingly accept, and in what circumstances has this adaptive resistance resulted in riots or full scale rebellions with nativistic overtones. Ii There have also been some excellent works on specific aspects of acculturation. The role played by religion and the great missionary orders in the "spiritual conquest", and the acculturative work of some of the early educational institutions set up for the children of the Indian nobility come immediately to mind. These are good exam· pIes of the preference shown by historians for the study of the more explicit and deliberate types of acculturative institutions.1! How then does acculturation or adaptation take place and affect the individual or the group over time? How does the scholar com· bine the anthropologists' interest in the subject with the historians', or some future historians', interest in accumulation of factors over time? A few scholars have suggested ways of doing this, but it must be admitted that the methods involved are little more than simple 4 The great histories of colonial New Spain have had their own concerns, and some of them, such as the periodization, causes and results of Indian social change are basic to the study of acculturation. Many of them also contain ideas and material needed by those with other concerns. Ii For preliminary theoretical remarks on broken, see Eric Wolf, "Aspects of Group Relations in a Complex Society", American Anthropologist 58 (1965), 1071·1076. For specific Indian institutions with broker or "barrier" functions, see for example, Gonzalo Aguirre Beltmn, Formas de gobierno indigena (Mexico, I 95l1) , or my Spanish Central America, Q socio·economic history, 1520·1720 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 19i1l) , lI26·lI29. For revolt, nativism, and war :IS responses to acculturation, see Nathan \VachteI, La vision des vaincus. Les 1ndiens du Perou devant la conqulte espagnole, 15JO·1570 (Paris, 1971), especially his discussion of the Mixton War and the Chichimecas in Part Three. As a gelleral survey of Mexican colonial revolts, see Luis Gonzalez Obreg6n, Rebcliolles indio genas 'Y precursores de la independencia mexicana en los siglos xvi, xvii, 'Y xviii, 2nd ed. (Mexico, 1952). I! E.g., Robert Ricard, Conqu~te Spirituelle du Mexique (Paris, 19311); Jose Maria Kobayashi, La educacion como conquista, Empresa jranciscana en Mexico (Mexico, 1974).

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and basic beginnings.7 Presumably such early ideas as I will present here will lead to more elaborate and satisfying formulations. For the moment I have placed some of the main aspects of historical acculturation in four categories, which can be described as: I) Taxation; 2) Economic Geography; 3) Comparative Demography; and 4) Work. My early findings on the first three categories will be summarized briefly, and I will then discuss work and acculturation at greater length. These four categories are, of course, interdependent and interrelated. Taxation seems to have been the main coercive mechanism used by the Spanish authorities, at least in peacetime, to make the subject colonial population contribute and conform in a standardized way. In the context of Mesoamerica the taxation in question was the Indian tribute. For a general theory of taxation, for its history, and for the acculturative implications of the various types of colonial taxation one need look no further than Gabriel Ardant. 8 The late Jose Miranda contributed further with an excellent, detailed and chronological history of Indian tribute. 9 This, together with my own documentary research and the publication of some of the most important sixteenthcentury tributary records, has resulted in a large body of detailed and theoretical materia1. 10 Some of my findings can be summarized briefly. After some early hesitancy, the tribute was finely tuned, sometimes explicitly, more often not, to push Indians towards certain kinds of work and crops. By the 1550s it was beginning to discourage the intricate polyculture of the pre-Colombian Indian, the preconquest almost oriental "gardening" of central Mexico, and to thrust the Indian toward the production of the staples needed in the large centers of consumption 7 A stimulating article is Alphonse Dupront, "De l'acculturation", XII- Congres International des Sciences histOTiques, Rapports, Vol. 1 (Vienna. 1965). 7·s(;. Of course there is a strong movement in anthropology. the Levi·Straussian structuralists, which would deny the validity of lineal historical enquiry. at least for anything but the writing of elegies. See Octavio Paz. C14ude Levi·Strauss 0 eI nuevo /est{n de ESopo (Mexico. 1967), especially p. 87 passim. Perhaps the writing of an elegy such as Tristt;s Tropiques is enough. 8 Gabriel Ardant. Histoire de I'lmpdt, 2 vols. (Paris. 1971) and above all. Theorie Sociologique de l'Impot, 2 vols. (Paris, 1965). For brief suggestions on how his ideas can be applied to the theme of rural peasantries. see my "The Sociological Theory of Taxation and the Peasant", Peasant Studies, 4 (1975), 2·6. 9 Jose Miranda, EI tributo indigena en la Nueva Espana durante el siglo xvi (Mexico, 1952). 10 E.g., Archivo General de la Nadon, El libro de las tasaciones de pueblOS en la Nueva Espana, Siglo XVI (Mexico, 1952).

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maize and beans, of course, plus wheat, wool, beef and pork.l l And, of course, the tribute helped the dissemination of new and originally unpopular crops or animals, such as wheat, silk and cattle, by forcing the Indians to pay in these commodities or to look after wheat fields or herds of cattle. By demanding part of the tribute in Spanish coinage, after starting with tributes in kind, and then drifting in some cases too closely to a completely monetary tribute, given the falling Indian population and the consequent shortage of local foodstuffs, the auhorities forced the Indian to hire out his labor for wages, or to enter the market with his goods in order to earn money, or to turn to the hacienda for tributary sponsorship and protection. 12 Thus, through taxation, a considerable part of the Indian tributary's daily effort became devoted to working at tasks set by Spaniards or to growing crops for the market. Yet the tribute was neatly balanced to prevent the Indian from becoming too market-oriented. The purpose was not, after all, to produce large numbers of Indian merchants or entrepreneurs, although petty traders and some few Indian capitalists were encouraged. The tribute, then, played a large part in transforming the Mesoamerican Indian into a more or less hispanized peasant, tied to the urban market and to the hacienda or monocultural plantation. (All this was fought stubbornly by some Indian villages and authorities - the other side of the acculturation coin. Their efforts to prevent the escape of partly acculturated IndiaJ.ls to towns or haciendas were prolonged, and intermittently effective.) 18 Turning to economic geography, it is clear that economic activities in an age of slow and difficult communications most affected those who were closest to them in distance. And, of course, different activities have different degrees of work intensity, and varying sizes of "catchment" areas for their labor supplies. Thus, in order to study 11 For the \'ast polyculture and plant use of the Indians of the early sixteenth century, some of it already becoming a memory by the 15705, see Francisco Hern:indez, Historia Natural de NUt:IJ(J Espana 2 vols. (Vots. 2 and II of Obras Completas) (Mexico, 1959). For the simplification of the tribute to one or two items per village, see Miranda, El Tributo"" IS, liS, 125. El libro de las tasa· ciones ... is full of examples of these changes, e.g., pp. 49-51. 12 The inattentive mistake and overadjustment to the tributary mechanism whereby all tribute was exacted in cash, did not affect all villages, and was quickly corrected to a mixture of agricultural goods, usually maize, and money. See Miranda, El Tributo ..• , 88-90, 204-207. There are many examples in El libro . de las tasaciones. On the tribute's role in fomenting European agriculture see Miranda, El Tributo"" 186, 197-202. The drift of Indians to the hacienda where the haccndado would pay the tribute of his new employees is found in many documents, but especially in Archivo General de la Naci6n, Mexico (hereinafter AGN), General de Parte, VIII. See also SiMo Zavala, "Orfgenes coloniales del peonaje en Mexico", EI Trimeslre Economico, 10 (1944), 711-748. 13 E.g., AGN, Indios, Vol. lI, f. 82; Vol. 4, ff. 79v.-80, 8l1v.-S •• 97v.·98 passim.

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the acculturative effects of the various Spanish occupations it becomes necessary to draw up a schematic economic geography of Mesoamerica. Some examples of this "mapping" are as follows. In the lands most desirable to Spaniards Indians were driven out or came into frequent contact and were assimilated. (Some good soils were far from large markets and thus remained Indian longer.) In the highland areas of the south the remote, colder, higher areas of poorer soils saw the survival of more "Indian" cultures. Indians close to Spanish cities, royal highways, ports, inns, or labor intensive workplaces "became ladino" more rapidly than others. It may be possible to draw up a continuum of geography and acculturation ranging from the most isolated to the most exposed. H The road between Mexico City and Acapulco is an example. Villages near the road complained of having to supply Spanish foodstuffs, mules and horses, to soldiers and other travellers. At times they also were forced to supply porters, inn servants, and muleskinners, and suffered the abuses of exploitive or boisterous travellers. Villages further back from the road sometimes managed to escape from these legal obligations or illegal impositions, often much to the disgust of their cabeceras nearer to the road or to Spanish officials. Along the road itself one can see spots where the intensity of exploitation and acculturation was greater. There were poles of attraction. Generally, the nearer the Indian villages were to either end of the route, that is to Acapulco and Mexico City, the more likely they were to be pulled into Spanish dominated activities or the supplying of provisions. Following the two termini the next areas of intensity on the road were the overnight stops, especially if they contained inns run by Spaniards. The economic geography and acculturative effects of this road alone in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries would be worth further study.ll! An old interest of mine is the history of epidemics, and their relationship to population decline and depression in preindustrial societies. Colonial epidemiology has been severely neglected in Latin America, but the same cannot be said for colonial demography, and several excellent works have been published recently which give us at least a general framework for the study of colonial Indian populationYs 14 In this regard, see, Alejandra Moreno Toscano, Geogralia econ6mica de Mexico (siglo XYl) (Mexico, 1968): A. Ren~ Barbosa-Ramirez. La estTuctuTa econ6mica de la Nueva Espana, 1519-1810 (Mexico, 1971): Peter Gerhard, if Guide to the HistoTical Geography 01 Nt!UJ Spain (Cambridge. 1972). 111 AGN. Indios. Vol. 2. ff. 72. 115-116, 123v.; Vol. 3. fl. 10v .• 13. 80. 92-93. UOV •• cover the points made here. The first six volumes of the ramo HIndios" cont3in a wide variety of materials on this road. 16 The Berkeley school's most recent work is Sherburne F. Cook and 'Woodrow

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The point to be made here. however, is that comparative colonial demography has considerable importance for the study of acculturation. To be schematic, and perhaps obvious for a moment, it is clear that where Indian populations had been sparse or relatively sparse before the conquest, and where large numbers disappeared in the century following the conquest, little "Indian" culture survived, especially - and this is an equally important point - if Spaniards occupied the area in relatively large numbers. Thus, comparative raw numbers -the comparison of the number of Spaniards and Indians, their relative and comparative birth rates and death rates in a given areacan tell us much, over time, about which areas los~ parts of their Indian cultures and which preserve large parts of them. Once again, or course, it is not an "either or" proposition. Comparative demography, plus other variables, produce a whole continuum between nearly complete acculturation and a high survival of Indian culture content,11 Obviously such a study could not be comprehensive. The data are not always available in equal amounts or even in similar categories. But sample regions can be compared if carefully selected, and some useful generalizations advanced. Obviously too, comparative demography is closely related to the question of economic activity. Spaniards went to certain areas, and not to others, because the climate, soils, minerals, or size of the labor force were attractive to them. Comparative demography in a given region cannot be understood without a grasp of the principal economic activities of the region. We are, in other words, approaching the topic of labor and daily work. Similarly, comparative demography is related to the questions of economic and acculturative pressure, and to Indian defensive and offensive reactions to these pressures. Generally speaking, the greater the Spanish demand for more Indian labor, usually found in periods of export boom, the greater the economic and demographic pressure on the Indian and the more rapid the rate of his assimilation. Conversely, periods of lesser pressure, such as depressions or times Borah, Essays in Population H~tory, 2 vols. to date (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1971, 1974). More general in their approach are the following: Henry F. Dobyns, Native A meTican Historical D~mogrGPhy: A CTitical Bibliography (Bloomington and London, 1976), see his introductory essay; William M. Dene\'an, ed" The Native Population Of the Americas in 1492 (Madison, Wise.. 1976). See especially pp. 1·34 (Denevan and Borah), and compare this with pp. 77-155 (Denevan and Sanders) • 17 For an elaboration of these tendencies in Central America see my Spanish Central AmeTica, !l25·29, 344 ...7, 589. This general thesis also underlies Aguirre Beltran', Regiones de Tefugio. Was the period c.l690·c.l730 in New Spain, for example, a sort of second conquest?

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when Spaniards withdraw from certain sections of the countryside, allowed self-conscious Indian communities to react conservatively and establish the institutions and customs which slowed down or even prevented acculturation. Many Indian revolts seemed to occur at crucial moments in these cycles. A given Indian community would be left alone, at least comparatively speaking, and its colradias, cajas de comunidad, system of cargos, or other civil and religious heirarchies, would have time to become entrenched, and thus provide a focal point for a reconstitution of "neo Indian" society. Quite suddenly, sometimes over only one decade, pressure from the outside "Spanish" world would intensify, often because a new export crop or a market for it had been found, and villagers would be forced to migrate to new workplaces, to pay more taxes, to "sell" their land or plant it in the new boom crop, to give up some of the "superstitions", "rites and idolatries", as their reconstituted synchretic religions were often called, or learn new and strange work techniques. More and more strangers would appear from the dominant society and the broker and "barrier" institutions erected in the period of relative calm and isolation would prove less and less effective. The result was riot or revolt in surprisingly many cases.IS The three variables outlined above have each led us at various places to a consideration of labor, forms of work, and acculturation. Taxation was a method whereby Indians were pushed toward certain kinds of agriculture, towards a toehold in the market economy, and also a means whereby they were restrained to some perceptible degree from participation in certain sectors. Economic geography and comparative demography were both tools which helped us to measure the intensity with which pressures were applied to Indian societies, and in both cases many of the pressures which I used as illustrations -the Acapulco road, Indian villages being forced to supply land and labor for new export crops- had to do with workplaces and forms of daily work. The historian interested in this kind of research faces two major problems. The first is the field which might be described as the sociology of work. This subject, or at least those portions of it of use to historians, is undeveloped. There are a few authors who have found that changes in values and lifestyles are closely related to occupations, workplaces, and forms of work.I9 Still fewer have taken this 18 See the perceptive introductory remarks to volume 8, xxviii, in Silvio Zavala and Marla Castelo, eds., Fu~ntes pa,.~ bajo en Nueva Espana, lJJ2-1BOJ. 8 "ols. (Mexico, 1959-1946) 19 The relationships between changes in values and life

especially pp. xxila histoTia del tra(Hereinafter FH"I). styles and occupa-

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problem to the countryside (and most of the occupations were agricultural in the period under discussion here), so that, for theory one has to rely on a handful of articles.20 The other problem is the sources. There are large sets of printed documents which treat work, notably for Mexico the eight volumes compiled by Zavala and Castelo. 21 The archives in Mexico, Guatemala, and Spain contain millions of documents which have to do with work. But these documents, published or handwritten, were written mostly by employers or officials, both Indian and Spanish, and thus tend to be concerned with legislation or general problems of labor supply and management. Few documents. deign to give the reader minute descriptions of the methods used and tasks carried out in the fields, ingenios, or obraje sheds. Thus, even more than usual, the historian is faced with a complicated jigsaw, with the piecing together of many minute scraps of information. And when the historian does stumble upon a description of the daily tasks and techniques in a given industry or agriculture, it is likely to be in areas that are exotic to Spaniards, in other words, in forms of production which were Indian, such as the growing and processing of indigo and cochineal.22 Why, for example, would a Spaniard waste his time tions and fOnDS of work are analyzed directly or indirectly in. Melvin Kohn. Class and ConfOf'mit)': A Study of J'alues (Homewood. 111.. 1969); John W. Bennett. The Ecological Transition: Cultural Anthropology and Human Adaptation (New York. 1976), and his more specific study, Northern Plainsmen, Adaptive Strategy and Agrarian Life (Chicago, 1969). !lO See for example. Nathan Rosenberg. "Neglected Dimensions in the Analysis of Economic Change", Bulletin Of the OxfOf'd University Institute 01 Economics and Statistics, 26 (1964), 59-71, which, in spite of its title, is mostly concerned .with agrarian change; and Arthur Stinchcombe, "Agricultural Enterprise and Rural Class Relations", American Journal 01 Sociology, 57 (1961), 165-176. A notable article specifically concerned with an agricultural industry and its acculturative effects. is Ricardo Pozas. "EI trabajo en las plantaciones de cafe y el cambio sociocultural del indio", Revista Mexicana de Estudios Anh"opolOgicos, 111, (1952) 81-48, which deals with a modern situation. 21 FHT (See the citation in note 18). 22 See the manual written by an unknown eighteenth-century Franciscan in Guatemala, El puntero apuntado con apuntes breves, the first printed work on the making of indigo. (A facsimile edition was published by the Ministerio de Educacion in San Salvador, 1975.) On cochineal the most famous printed work of the colonial period is, Jose Antonio Alzate y Ramirez, Memoria sobre la rIaturale;a, cultibo [sic] y beneficio de 14 grana (Mexico, 1777). The illustrations are important and revealing. (This book can be found in both the Biblioteca del Real Palacio, Madrid, and the Ayer Manuscript Collection, Newberry Library, Chicago.) There are numerous seventeenth-century manuscript descriptions of the cultivation of aTiil and cochinilla, e.g .• "Relacion de como se beneficia la tinta aiiir" (1611) , in Archh'o General de India!, Seville (hereinafter AGI) , Audiencia de Guatemala, 13; "Informe sobre el cultivo y beneficio de la grana cochinilla" (Apr. 29, 1620), AGI. Audiencia de Guatemala, 14. Sometimes the

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describing the tasks, methods and techniques involved in the growing of wheat? In such cases one is forced to go back to Spain, and to cull information from manuals of agriculture or guides to farmers. This information then has to be fitted to the data available from Mesoamerica, and thus a composite picture of fair reliability emergcs. 23 In a short survey such as this, little more than the first outlines of a project, it is impossible to cover many of the industries, agricultures, and trades which were of economic and social importance in sixteenth - and seventeenth-century New Spain. I have, therefore, limited myself to an illustration -a comparison of the techniques and work tasks found in three crops. All of them -cochineal, indigo, and sugar- were cultivated in a monocultural or plantation-like fashion; that is, none of them tended to be grown very much in mixed or market gardening fashion. Thus, the gross production picture seems similar at first glance, and should make the differences in markets, styles, intensities, and acculturation all the more revealing. Obviously gross comparisons of whole industries or agricultures is only a start to the study of work as an acculturative process. Within each agriculture the different processes, skills, intensities, and lengths of work periods must be compared qualitatively and proportionately to get a more complete picture of that industry and of the specifics of acculturation associated with each task. Cochineal, a fast scarlet or red dye, was cultivated before the conquest in ways which have been described at length. The dye was a tributary item in Moctezuma's time_2-4 There were two types of cochineal, tina and silvestre. The latter grew "wild" and the crop was collected in the monte by slow gathering. "Wild" cochinillas were less succulent and were held to make an inferior dye. The making of "domesticated" cochineal dye was a process of historian is lucky enough to be able to use the techniques of the anthropologist. In a few places indigo ' is manufactured today just as it was in the eighteenth century, and the interested scholar can go to watch the process. See, Concepcion Clara de Guevara, "El ani! de los 'indios cheles' n, Ambica Indlgena, S5 (1975), 77S-796, and Ministerio de Educacion (El Salvador), Artesanla Actual del A,lil en el Departamento de Chalatenango (San Salvador, 1974). The most comprehensive work on the history of indigo seems to be that of Manuel Rubio S:incbez, Historia del anil 0 xiquilite m Cmtroamerica, 2 ,·ols. (San Salvador, 1976, 1977). (I have not yet read vol. 2.) 23 For Castille see Gabriel Alonso de Herrera, Obra de agricultura (Madrid, 1970) , first published in 151S. (My thankJ to Professor Charles Gibson for bringing this work to my attention.) See also G. Garda-Badell, Introduccidn a la historia de la agricultura espanola (Madrid, 1965). ~ "Informacion hecha por el Virrey Don Luis de Vel:uco y el Oidor Doctor Quesada IObre los tributos que los indios pagaban a Moctezuma", in, France V. Scholes and Eleanor B. Adams, eds., Documentos pqra la historia del Mexico colonial, Vol. 4 (Mexico, 1957), especially pp. 51-52. See also R. Molins Fabrega, EI Cddice mendocino y la economia de Tenochtitlan (Mexico, 1956), p. 50;

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great complexity. In Europe it was even considered to be something of a mystery. It required patient, intricate, detailed, individual work and skills which were passed on from parents to children. There was a long apprenticeship, and good nopaleros knew details about climate, altitudes, soils, water supply, cactus, and the life cycle of the insect involved. The cactus plants or nopales (opuntia cocconellifera) were set out in rows, which were regular when the terrain permitted it, and took two or three years, depending on climate and soils, before they reached sufficient maturity. During this time they had to be weeded and pruned carefully. The useful life of a nopal cactus was about ten years. When the cactus plants were ready the dye-bearing insect (coccus cacti) was placed on them. These delicate insects, sensitive to extremes of heat and humidity. were bought in local markets, or taken from cactus already in production. They were often kept for some time in the Indian grower's home under specific conditions of warmth and feeding. They were transferred to the plants in downy, delicately built, little containers which were usually called nidos in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. The insects had to be carried carefully, some fifteen at a time, and could not withstand jolting or shaking. The mother insects, pregnant when placed on the cactus, soon gave birth to hundred of offspring, and then died. The dead insects had to be picked off the plant carefully with tweezers. Only the wingless fe· males yield dye, but they outnumber the males by some two hundred to one. The new generation of insects would gravitate to the most succulent parts of the plant, sometimes with a little help from the nopalero. When they reache~ maturity, they were carefully swept off onto cotton cloths, leaving enough behind to start the next generation. Dead insects lose their dye quickly so the cochinillas had to be killed and then dried quickly. The usual method was boiling water or steam. Some claimed that the Indian sweat bath or temascal produced the best results. Then the insects were dried in the sun by frequent turning, packed into cakes, and boxed. 1£ administrators and merchants are to be believed, adulteration with flour, mud, or inferior grana often took place during this last stage. Growers could expect two or three crops a year depending on climate and soils. Rain, cold, winds, or a multitude of pests which attacked the insect, the plant, or both, made the prediction of yields impossible. The grower spent entire days in his nopalerias providing intensive care to plants and insects.2~ and Fr. Bernardino de SahagUn, Historia general de las cosas de NUnJa Espatia. 5 vols. (Mexico, 19~8), III, 287·%88. 211 This brief synopsis of cochineal production methods is a composite picture made up from several documents and treatises. E.g., Alzate y Ramirez, Memo,.ja ... ; "Relaci6n del benefici()... planta de los nopales de grana cochinilla"

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Oaxaca especially the Sierra Zapoteca and parts of the Mixteca. was the great center of colonial grana production, although Tlaxcala and Puebla had considerable plantations at times. Cochineal was also produced intermittently in Yucatan, Chiapas, and Guatemala, al· though the "wild" variety was more usual in these provinces.26 Span· iards and castas found it hard to break into this system of produc· tion or even to supervise it. It did not lend itself to standardization. It was a combination of intricate skills and experience for which non·Indians had little training, patience, or inclination. Few Spaniards attempted to break into the productive end of the trade directly. Those that did failed. Landowners who put aside small areas of their Oaxaca haciendas for nopalerias left the care and management of them almost entirely to Indians.27 It was also difficult to spread the plantations of cactus to new areas where they had not previously been known, even when nopa· leros were brought in to train the local people. Local Indians could not acquire such a long work tradition quickly, and the Spaniards -either local hacendados or officials- did not know enough of tlie production system to supervise them. 28 Intermittently this would exasperate Spanish merchants or offi· cials who wanted to expand the industry, and they would exert pressure on Indians to change their methods. But the cochineal· producing Indians possessed a skill, a knowledge monopoly or "trade secret", which made Spanish attempts to rationalize the industry or acculturate its workers either dangerous or hesitant. Indians some· times responded to such pressures by abandoning their plantations, destroying them, or by rioting and revolting. 2i The late eighteenth· century Spanish mind found this especially irritating. As one "en· lightened" planner said repeatedly, "en 10 sustancial todas las granas (1620), and "Sabre la plantaci6n y cultivo de la cochinilla", (May 21. 1620), both in AGI, Audiencia de Guatemala, 14. 28 Raymond L. Lee, "Cochineal Production and Trade in New Spain to 1600", The Americas, • (194748), 449·.73. 27 See William B. Taylor, Landlord and Peasant i,. Colonial Oaxaca (Stan. ford, 1972), 147. For the repeated efforts to supervise the trade, see Barbro Dahlgren de Jordan" prologue to her edited book, La grana cochinilla (Mexico, 1963), 15·16. 28 For the Conde de la G6mera's attemets to promote and supervise cochi. neal plantations in Guatemala, and for the reasons for their failure see, "Autos hechos en raz6n de la planta de 1a grana cochinilla" crune 15, 1618) in AGI, Audienda de Guatemala, H, and the other documents on this subject in that legajo. See also MacLeod, Spanish Central America, 172·75; Dahlgren de Jordan, La grana, 15·16. 2i Ibid., 18. See also the document entitled "Voto Consultivo del Real Acuer· do" in this book, especially pp. 89 and 92; William B. Taylor, "Town and Country in the Valley of Oaxaca, 1750-1812", in PrOllinc,s 0/ Early Mexico, 93.

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son unas", or "aunque hay variedad de nopales todos son casi de una especie ... " Why, he asked himself again and again, was it impossible to standardize production methods? (He had even invented a standard regulation model of the "nest" for carrying the pregnant insectsl) But Indians knew better and had enough badly needed expertise to resist the pressure.so Thus grana plantations tended to remain in Indian hands. Once Spaniards took them over they tended to decline. One of the problems for Spaniards was that they could not combine cochineal with cattle. Cattle damaged the nopales and were excluded from the fields. This is in striking contrast to indigo and sugar. In areas such as Oaxaca, Tlaxcala and Chiapas nearly all nopalerfas were on Indian private or village communal lands. Of course, part of the reason was that nopales could be grown on poor soils or steep soils which did not attract the Spaniards.31 Spaniards and castas, then, found themselves largely excluded from the means of production. They were rarely found in the workplace. Cochineal came to Spaniards and especially to the Crown via the tribute. Large quantities were collected as tax, especially in the first half of the sixteenth century.32 As a "faIl back" position nonIndians moved to the collection, distribution, and marketing of the finished product. Here, as long as they stayed away from the productive process, they had greater success. But even in the commercial end of the trade Spaniards and castas had problems. Most Indians were small producers, and lived in relatively isolated areas. Collecting their grana output was often difficult and involved many stops at small regional markets. Thus large capitalists preferred not to become involved at the level of the first commercial transaction. A few parish priests, and petty merchants and collectors, known as tianguero$ in Oaxaca, often Indians or castas themselves, travelled the countryside from market to market. These petty traders were scorned by the Indians and had a reputation for swindling and abusing them. Some of them were known pejoratively as "mercachifles" or "quebrantahuesos". They had neither the economic power nor the social prestige to influence Indians or their life styles.33 Once large quantities had been collected in the larger cities, and in the port of Veracruz, then the large merchant entrepreneurs took over, 110 This amusing document is to be found in Dahlgren de Jordan. La grana. See especially 194. 242-246. III AGN. Indios. Vol. 2. ff. l56-156v.; Taylor, Landl()Td and Peasant, 47. 94. 98. 32 E.g., Libro de las tasaciones, 95. 422-424_ 33 AGN. Indios, Vol. 2. ff. l72-li3v.; "Informe de Fr. Joaquin Vasco, Cura Parroco de Santa Marla Ecatepec", in Dahlgren de Jordan, La grana, 60; Antonio Vazquez de Espinosa, Compendium and Description of the W~st Indies, translated by Chules Upson Clark (Washington. D_ C .• 1942), 260.

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buying from the petty traders and muleskinners who were often little more than their strawmen.a4 It would be untrue, however, to depict cochineal as an industry which did not respond to market factors. When demand increased in Europe, and thus increased profitability, and when the factors of ship speed plus weight and space improved in the eighteenth century, so that goods could move to Europe with greater facility, the large cities and capitalists took more interest in grana. Officials began to lend money to Indians against their future harvests, or to force sales upon them to be paid in cochinea1.3li Indians were persuaded by higher prices or other inducements to plant more nopales, and to restrict areas plancted to other competing crops. This happened in the third quarter of the eighteenth century in Oaxaca, and in the early nineteenth century in Guatemala.s8 (The whole industry was destroyed by the invention of analine dyes in the 18505.) Even in the greatest days of the cochineal trade, however, outsiders were never able to invade the workplace, or to change the techniques, methods, and rhythms of production. Partly as a result of these characteristics of cochineal rural Oaxaca remained a much more "Indianish" place than many other regions. Indigo, another pre-Columbian dye crop, had a very different history after the Spanish conquest. It also differed from cochineal in its impact upon the Indians living in or near it. Indigo (indigolera sUffructiosa), which the Spanish knew as aiiil or jicilite, produces a fast blue dye, and was much prized in Europe. Unlike grana, anD was not exclusively American. It had been imported from the East Indies for centuries, and the techniques for its production and use were fairly well known. The indigo bush grows rapidly on well-drained soils or gradual slopes. It grows wild in many parts of Mesoamerica, but adapts easily to a plantation existence. Seeds were usually sown in broadcast fashion in burned-over fields just before the begining of the rainy season. Large farm animals were then left to graze the fields and tramp in the seeds. The indigo bushes had to be weeded once when they were young shoots but after that the hardy, fast-growing plants needed 34 For the larger Spanish side of the trade in the late colonial period see Brian R. Hamnett, Politics and Trade in Southern Mexico, 1750-1821 (Cambridge, 1971) . 3li Taylor, "Town and Country", 90; "Informe de Fr. Joaquin Vasco", 62·63. The point about market.! is succinctly made by Lockhart in Provinces oj Early Mexico, 29. For the determinant.! of ship speed. cargo space, and the weight. bullc. and profitability of goods, see the excellent article by L. Denoix, "Caracteristiques des navires de l'epoque des grandes decouvertes", y. Colloque el'Histoire Maritime (Paris, 1966). 88 Taylor, NTown and Country", 68-69; Manuel Rubio Sanchez, Comercio terrestre de y entre las prO'lJincias de Centroamerica (Guatemala, 1973).

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little attention. Cattle and horses would not eat the jicilite plants and so could be left in the fields to keep down the competing weeds, a symbiotic relationship impossible in the cultivation of nopales. Greedy growers would cut indigo when it was less than a year old, but most experts agreed that better results could be obtained after two or three years of growth. Jicilite was cut in the morning before the sun could wilt the leaves, and it was then dragged by sman carts to troughs full of water where it steeped for about twenty-four hours. In the early and mid-sixteenth century these small troughs were known as canoas. Later, large vats called piZas were employed. Sometimes warm water was used to hasten fermentation and to this end some obrajeros built slow fires under the canoas. The water would ferment, turn blue, and bubble. Then it would be drawn off into beating vats, leaving a mass of malodorous vegetation. In the beating vats the slimy blue liquid would be exposed to oxidation by constant beating with wooden poles. In the early days of canoas this was done by individual workers standing in the water, and involved intense labor for several hours. Later, in the seventeentncentury obrajes, horses and mules drove the poles. The larger obrajes often had water wheels for this work. After three to five hours a punto or point was reached. The puntero was a skilled expert on the right moment of coagulation. The liquid was left to settle, and then it was drained off. The sedi· ment was scooped out and dried on cloths. The indigo was then cut into bars and shipped out in boxes or bags.37 This industry must have seemed most useful to Spaniards. There was nothing arcane or mysterious about it. A few skilled men were needed, but most of the staff were laborers or machine tenders. No meticulous, individual care was needed during the growing period, or during most of the process of making the dye, for that matter. Standardization, rationalization, and inexpensive mechanization were all very possible if the industry should expand; and the growing of the plants could be combined with cattle if the hacienda were being used as a hedge against bad times, or if the Spanish owners wished to diversify. All this meant that, from the first, Spaniards interested in the industry had an inducement to supervise production, to own the land, to introduce more efficient techniques, and to introduce new notions of agriculture and labor use to the Indian population.38 37 This description is a synopsis of the material in MacLeod, Spanish Central America. 178·)81. See also the colonial manuals and modern works mentioned in note 25 above. Indigo in Europe before 1492 is discussed in William F. Leggett. Ancient and Medieval Dyes (New York. 1944), 18. 20, 22·25. 38 David Browning. El Salvador. la Tierra y el Hombre (EI Salvador. 1975). 131·)34. 225.

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Indian labor on ani! obrajes was formally forbidden, but this did not inhibit growers in Guatemala and EI Salvador. A "fine-bribe" system was so common by 1620 that it became one of the largest sources of official wealth.39 The labor needs of the indigo obraje were simple: for most of the year cowherds and a few laborers, and for about four months a nearby dependent peasantry with a few specific skills. Quite early in the seventeenth century we find Indian peons living on the indigo farms, and villages close by tied seasonally to the farms by devices such as debt or land shortage and renting. As the industry intensified in the early eighteenth century more and more Indians were dragged into its orbit, and water wheels, large carts and vats became the norm. The villagers of EI Salvador became undifferentiated peasants, living part of the year in villages, but most certainly tied for at least part of the. year to a system of Europeanized agricultural labor with a heavy market orientation.~ Indigo as an industry, because of its production methods, never presented Spanish prC)ducers with the problem of being unable to acculturate the Indian workers. Its main problems were labor supply and, above all, the finding of a large and profitable market.41 By the end of the colonial period the native peoples of the indigo areas of Central America were mostly ladinos.42 My remarks on sugar and acculturation will be brief because the characteristics of the industry, its production methods, and some of its effects have been studied in detai1.43 Sugar, a European introduction, had already solved some of its production problems before it reached America. Compared to other agricultures it required large quantities of capital and machinery. It very quickly took on all the attributes of a business enterprise. Capital outlays were so large that profit returns were emphasized far more than in other pursuits. In short, the medium or large sugar estate, and perhaps even the small trapiche, were modem in their methods and aims.",4 Indians were soon drawn into the sugar culture, in spite of the efforts of the authorities to inhibit the growth of the industry -the)' MacLeod. Spanish Central America, 187-189. 207. SI~. ~80. Ibid .• pp. 185. 192. This point is made in several places in volum:: I of Manuel Rubio S;l.nchez. Historia del Anil. 41 MacLeod. SPanish Central America, 198-200. 247. ~7~. 42 Pedro Cones y Larraz. Descripcion geogralica moral de la diocesis de Goathemala, 2 vols. (Guatemala. 1958). 43 E.g.. Noel Deerr. The History 01 Sugar (London. 1950). and especially Manuel Moreno Fraginals. EI lngenio: el Complejo Economico Social Cubano del Azucar, 2 vols. (Havana. 1964. 1965). 44 Fran~is Chevalier, Land and Society in Colonial Mexico: The Great Hacienda (Berkeley and Los Angeles. 1970). 75-82; Ward Barrett. "Morelos and Its Sugar Industry in the Late Eighteenth Century", Provinus 01 Eo,rly Mexico, 39 40

162-16~.

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wanted to emphasize wheat- and in spite of prohibitions against Indian repartimientos for sugar and against "inside" work in the mill or boiler room.41S Sugar haciendas tended to create their own culture, and some were like small independent settlements. The basic work was hard and semiskilled field labor, but Indians also became carpenters, ironworkers, wheelwrights, cart builders, and maintenance men for the machinery. Many worked inside, in spite of the pr'lhibitions, on the sorters, crushers, and vats, on the purification process and on bottling and packing.46 Many students of sugar have commented on the pervasiveness of its influence. Sainte Domingue was totally dominated by sugar, and the vast majority of people, bla.ck and white, spent their lives tied to the industry. No areas in Mesoamerica reached this extreme, but in places the impact was considerable. In Morelos Ward Barrett finds that over twelve percent of the population worked directly on sugar estates. (2,233 out of 7,065 did not work in the fields, a good indio cation of the variety and importance of the various "other" tasks involved.) About half of the population was involved directly or indirectly with the industry. Indians owned trapiches, and even a few larger estates, but it was a Spanish-dominated industry, with the land owned by Spaniards and church orders, and, to a greater extent than indigo, it tended to alter the map and the peoples' life styles. As Barrett says of Morelos, "The map supports the view that the influence of the industry was pervasive and gave special character to the region". He notes that the countryside was surprisingly urban in tone. We may be speaking of the formation of a rural industrial proletariat, tied not only to the market but to a specific "foreign" product. The accuIturative implications are large:f7 There may well be an acculturative continuum, with forms and styles of work as the main factor, stretching from cochineal through indigo to sugar. The task can be expanded. Detailed examinations of wheat farming, silver mining, sheep and cattle raising, or church construction would allow us to insert these employs into our continuum. If this continuum is meshed with our other variables of taxa· tion, economic geography, and comparative demography, then a chronological and comparative history of Indian acculturation may emerge. 45 Libra de las tasaciones, 581·583; AGN, Indios, Vol. 3, f. 20v; Vol. 4, f. 108; Vol. 10 (2), f. 45\'.; FHT, Vol 4, 255·257, 261·262, 195·298, 355·358, 431·434, 481·482; Vol. 5, 33; Vol. 6, 282. 46 FHT, Vol. 4, 295·309, 431·434, 436·439, 446·452, 462·468; Vol. 5, 33; Vol. 6, 227·229. 47 For an example of Indian ownel'Ship see AGN, Indios, Vol. 3, f. 113v. Barrett's remarks are found in his "Morelos and its Sugar Industry", 168, 170·171.

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Moreover, acculturation, and especially the acculturation connected to the sociology of work, seems a likely field for giving us a feel for the daily lives of the people, and yet it is so intimately involved by its very nature in the study of process and change that it may be a fruitful source for new generalizations about colonial society. One last caveat in a paper which already has too many of them. It would be a mistake to get rid of one set of determinants, such as law, ecology, or the study of "culture", only to replace it with a new determinism. Perhaps the brief examination of work and other factors above will add to our picture of colonial society, and thus provoke interesting research and debate.

10 L' Acculturation des Espagnols dans

Ie Mexique colonial: decheance ou dynamisme culturel? So lange Alberro

Depuis Durkheim et Boas, les problemes de diffusion et d'adaptation de traits culturels constituent un defi permanent pour I'anthropologie. Mais, consequence naturelle des grands mouvements colonisateurs des nations europeennes, c'est toujours Ie « colonise », assimile d'une certaine fa~on au « primitif » - Noirs d' Afrique et d' Amerique, Indiens du Nouveau Monde, ce laboratoire ideal des pratiques et des amenagements conceptuels -, qui a attire I'attention des specialistes. Les naturels de l'Inde, tout autant colonises et ceux qui en Chine Ie furent partiellement n'ont pas, quant a eux, fait I'objet d'etudes systematiques en ce sens, sans doute parce que les Europeens n'ont pas voulu ni pu pretendre a I'assimilation des autochtones ; peut-etre aussi parce qu'ils ont eu Ie sentiment d'etre confrontes ades cultures qu'ils percevaient globalement comme etant egales a la leur, ainsi que Ie suggerent les strategies deployees par les jesuites en Chine. L'interet des sociologues et des anthropologues ne s'est pas davantage porte sur les nombreux et complexes echanges culturels qui depuis la prehistoire n'ont cesse de s'effectuer dans Ie monde occidental; la notion de diffusion d'un trait particulier, concernant Ie plus souvent la vie materielle, tient generalement lieu d'examen du probleme tout entier, quand celui-ci n'est pas simplement abandonne aux interpretations mecanistes traditionnelles qui I'integrent alors dans Ie cadre des « conquetes », avec leur cortege d' « influences », etc.

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Dans les travaux parus it ce jour, dus pour la plupart it Herskovits et it son ecole, c'est toujours Ie vaincu, colonise, esclave, deporte ou emigre qui subit et se debrouille pour accepter, rejeter, adapter et accommoder ce que l'Occidental lui impose par Ia force, la persuasion ou la simple relation de domination. Si I'idee selon laquelle « un peuple qui en conquiert un autre peut se I'assimiler, mais alors lui-meme devient un autre peuple »1 semble evidente, elle n'a pas donne lieu it des etudes sur ce qu'il faut bien appeler I'acculturation des dominants. Or Ie Mexique colonial, privilegie par la quantite et la qualite des experiences et des processus qui s'y developperent et celles des sources qui en temoignent, peut de nouveau servir de champ d'exploration pour une enquete it ce sujet. II va sans dire qu'en l'absence d'autres tentatives de ce genre, la notre ne saurait avoir qu'un caract ere preliminaire depourvu de toute pretention it la generalisation et, moins encore, it l'etablissement d'un modele quelconque. Les situations ou domines/dominants se trouvent engages dans des processus culturels qui les concernent tous sont trop differents pour qu'on y songe actuellement. Notons toutefois que si les dominants minoritaires et expatries - ce qu'etaient les Iberiques en Amerique - furent aux prises avec des phenomenes d'acculturation, un beau film comme Le the au harem d'Archimede no us confirme, dans la scene ou l'on voit un petit Franr;:ais se pro sterner sur un tapis de priere avec la famille musulmane qui l'accueille, que meme lorsqu'ils sont majoritaires et sur leur propre terrain geographique et culturel, ces memes dominants n'echappent pas dans certains cas au processus qui nous interesse ici. Qu'il nous suffise donc pour I'instant et a I'aide d'exempies precis de poser Ie probleme de I'acculturation des Europeens, malgre les reticences inconscientes etlou implicites que cette idee peut eve iller en nous, qui sommes finalement les petits-enfants de la colonisation et les enfants de la decolonisation. Pour ce qui est de la Nouvelle-Espagne, I'impression et Ie soupr;:on que les Espagnols y subissent d'etranges et de negatives transformations psychologiques affleurent des la fin du XVI" siecle, et un Sahagun ecrit it propos des defauts et aberrations (tachas y dis/ates) affectant les Indiens que « Ies Espagnols qui y habitent, et surtout ceux qui y naissent, acquierent ces mauvaises inclinations ; ceux qui y naissent, exactement comme les Indiens, paraissent espagnols par leur aspect, mais ne Ie sont pas par Ie caractere ; ceux qui sont nes en Espagne, s'ils n'y veillent pas avec Ie plus grand soin, deviennent differents quelques annees apres leur arrivee ici. .. » ; il cons tate ainsi, avec sa perspicacite habituelle, les glissements significatifs qui s'operent entre indigenes et Europeens 2 • Mais c'est au XVIII" siecle qu'eclate la veritable « affaire» que constitue Ie probleme de l'identite des creoles. Jusque-lit, les creoles s'etaient definis non seulement comme des Espagnols en tout point semblables it ceux de la peninsule, mais encore comme des nobles, puisqu'en depit des caracteristiques reelles de l'emigration metropolitaine, tous pretendaient pratiquement descendre des conquerants 3 • Or a la.faveur de circonstances sociohistoriques particulieres que nous ne pouvons developper ici

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et qui sont d'ailleurs assez connues, les Espagnols peninsulaires de I'epoque des Lumieres, par la bouche ou la plume des fonctionnaires civils et religieux essentiellement, leur renvoient d'eux une image qui d'abord les revolte et qu'i1s finiront par accepter comme unique matrice d'identite specifique, celie qu'ils revendiquent leur etant refusee : en gros, ils ne sont plus sembI abies aux Espagnols d'Europe et leurs defauts et qualites sont desormais a peu de choses pres, ceux des Indiens. II s'agit la d'un constat irremediable, douloureux et finalement salutaire pour les creoles, en tant qu'i1s constituent un secteur appele a exercer les fonctions dirigeantes d'une nation nouvelle, constat qui constitue pour nous la preuve et Ie resultat d'un processus involontaire, inconscient et aussi peu desire qu'i1 fut inevitable. On Ie sait, malgre les sentiments puissants d'etrangete qui s'emparerent des Espagnols lorsqu'i1s decouvrirent la civilisation azteque, et en depit de certains de ses aspects tels que Ie sacrifice humain et Ie cannibalisme rituel qui leur inspirerent une horreur et une repulsion insurmontables, i1s ne cesserent, des les premiers contacts, de tenter d'exprimer la realite nouvelle a travers leur propre grille, c'est-a-dire de la ramener a du connu4 • C'est donc en la comparant avec les elements de leur propre culture - urbanisme, mceurs, ethique, culte, etc. qu'ils purent a la fois apprehender la nouveaute et la traduire en termes intelIigibles pour un Occidental. II est vrai que ce procede rudimentaire les amenait a deformer et a simplifier cette realite, a en eluder ou nier la specificite ; mais en meme temps ils la projetaient dans un champ conceptuel visant a I'universalite, ils la rendaient, ne fiit-ce que superficieliement, accessible a des mentalites et des sensibilites autres qu'americaines. Plus encore: la dynamique de I'analogie renfermait un piege qui allait se reveler un des facteurs fondamentaux des glissements syncretiques ulterieurs. En effet, I'objet compare ne peut logiquement occuper que trois positions : il est soit inferieur, soit egal, so it superieur a I'objet de reference. Dans deux de ces cas - lorsqu'il se trouve egal ou superieur -, son acceptation et son adoption sont donc eventuellement justifiees. Or, des soldats aux moines evangelisateurs en passant par les fonctionnaires et les autres, tous, avec des mobiles varies, utiliserent ce procede de comparaison. Ce faisant et sans Ie savoir, ils se predisposaient a accepter des realites nouvelles auxquelles ils succomberent parfois.

LES DERIVES INDIVIDUELLES COMME INDICES D'ITINERAIRES POSSIBLES

Avant de considerer les circonstances qui president aux deux grands types auxquels peuvent probablement se reduire la plupart des processus syncretiques, il nous faut brievement essayer de voir a partir de quels complexes culturels ceux-ci ont pu s'effectuer. Du cote espagnol, si nous connaissons assez bien les systemes de valeurs, de representations et les modeles qui furent ceux des classes dominantes castillanes, nous ne savons pas grand-chose des croyances et sensibilites populaires et de leur variation geographique, pourtant si importante

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en ce qui concerne la peninsule. Or l'emigration espagnole pendant tout Ie XVI" siecle, c'est-a-dire pendant la peri ode qui correspond a la structuration de la societe coloniale, amena surtout des hommes des provinces du sud de l'Espagne, dans la memoire desquels un passe relativement recent avait certainement laisse les empreintes d'une familiarite avec la civilisation musulmane. Non touches encore par les reformes issues du concile de Trente, qui allaient d'ailleurs tres peu les affecter en terre americaine, ces emigres y prolongerent ou au contraire abandonnerent, mais plus souvent encore, y modifierent des croyances, des sensibilites et des conduites dont on peut raisonnablement supposer qu'elles s'ecartaient des modeles en vigueur dans la classe dominante castillane. Par la suite, un processus analogue eut lieu avec l'arrivee d'individus originaires d'autres provinces, notamment de celles du nord. Du cote indigene, nous connaissons egalement Ies idees et Ies com portements propres aux nobles azteques - ou plus justement mexica -, mais ignorons it peu pres tout de l'univers des hommes du commun - Ies macehualeset de celui de nombreux groupes, en particulier des nomades du nord et des chasseurs collecteurs du sud. On comprendra que dans ces conditions il soit difficile d'apprecier de facon pertinente les variations culturelles induites par un processus syncretique. Une autre difficulte vient compliquer la tache. En effet, Ie processus est encore moins evident et concevable pour les contemporains qui Ie vecurent que pour nous-memes. C'est dire que les instances qui normalement pourraient consigner les comportements eventuellement significatifs de glissements cuitureis de Ia part d'Europeens, Ie font avec reticence et concision, non par souci delibere de dissimuler une situation imprevue et in desirable, mais plutot par incapacite it la reconnaitre comme opposee aux intentions, projets et principes affirmes de l'ordre colonial. C'est pourquoi les temoignages qui revelent cette evolution sont rares et succincts. Or ces glissements qui parfois debouchent sur de veritables complexes culturels syncretiques nous paraissent s'organiser selon divers axes qui ne s'excluent nullement. Considerons tout d'abord les Espagnols, metropolitains ou creoles, fonctionnaires, cures de paroisses perdues, encomenderos, proprietaires d'haciendas ou de mines, etc., qui en raison de leurs fonctions ou de leurs interets se trouvent appeles it vivre isoles pendant de longues periodes en milieu majoritairement indigene, situation que la geographie du Mexique multiplie non seulement dans les provinces eloignees des hauts plateaux centraux, mais encore dans les regions montagneuses relativement proches des centres vitaux de la vice-royaute. Si Ie caractere ponctuel et partiel des temoignages qui interessent ces individus interdit d'accorder une portee generale aux processus qu'ils sont, ceux-ci n'en sont pas moins des cheminements et des mecanismes possibles. Cette acculturation des Espagnols commence par I'emprunt de produits et de procedes indigenes. Ainsi, Ia tunique matelassee, escaupil (du nahuatl : ichcahuipilfl), est adoptee d'emblee par les conquerants ainsi que Ie savon indigene, amole ; Ie portage en hamac est utilise avantageusement dans certaines

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regions ou Ies communications sont difficiles, Ie molcajete de pierre vo1canique prend la place, dans la cuisine des emigres, du mortier metallique, etc. II s'agit presque toujours d'emprunts simples, Ie produit ou Ie procede indigenes se substituant a son equivalent peninsulaire qui fait defaut ou apparait moins adapte dans une structure qui neanmoins reste manifestement occidentale. Toutefois, on peut penser que certaines techniques, tel Ie portage en hamac, introduisent des modifications substantielles : alors qu'en Europe la monture porte directement Ie cavalier ou tire un vehicule dans lequel se trouve Ie passager, ce sont ici des hommes, generalement des Indiens d'encomienda assujettis au travail obligatoire, qui assurent Ie transport des Espagnols, ce qui entraine une relation particuliere entre les uns et les autres. Ces emprunts, qui obeissent a une necessite d'adaptation immediate, peuvent etre passagers ou durables, et certains d'entre eux, depassant la stricte materialite du procede ou de la technique, suscitent des modifications structurelles dans les comportements europeens. C'est Ie cas des procedes therapeutiques, magiques et de la divination, que la pensee occidentale officielle classe sous des rubriques diverses - medecine, magie blanche ou noire -, et que la sensibilite indigene et celle des Espagnols du commun per~oivent globalement comme organiquement solidaire a I'interieur d'un tout, ce que les « extirpateurs » du XVII" siecle nommaient I' « idolatrie »5. Nombreuses et variees, ces pratiques constituent a l'epoque coloniale une culture populaire dynamique, commune dans ses grandes lignes aux secteurs indigenes en voie d'acculturation, aux metis toujours plus nombreux et aux Espagnols pauvres dont Ie nombre ne cesse egalement d'augmenter au cours des trois siecles de la domination. Pour ce qui est de la participation des Espagnols a ces complexes culturels en formation, on peut deceler plusieurs degres. En premier lieu, les Espagnols peuvent laisser les indigenes se livrer a des pratiques heterodoxes dont ils sont finalement beneficiaires, allant eventuellement jusqu'a accepter Ie sort ou Ie remMe que les Indiens leur offrent d'autant plus facilement que ceux-ci sont desireux de s'imposer comme fournisseurs de procedes efficaces, les metis jouant egalement Ie role d'intermediaires entre les uns et les autres. L'etape suivante consiste a couvrir activement les « idolatres » lorsqu'ils sont inquietes par les autorites, generalement religieuses, situation frequente dans les regions reculees ou isolees a majorite indigene ou un fonctionnaire espagnol - alguazil ou alcalde - a besoin de l'appui des notables Iocaux - caciques - sans lesquels it ne saurait exercer de pouvoir effectif sur l'ensemble de la population. Or, si ces notables sont aussi des « pretres de l'idolatrie », ce qui n'est pas rare, force est de transiger avec eux et de les proteger lorsque leurs agissements sont susceptibles de leur porter prejudice6 • Franchissant Ie pas qui separe une attitude bienveillante et complice de la participation active et personnelle, nous voyons apparaitre, des la premiere moitie du XVII" siecle, la demarche consciente, deliberee et directe de l'Espagnol qui demande et utilise des procedes ou produits indigenes, Ie peyote

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par exemple, ce champignon aux proprietes hallucinatoires qui permet entre autres de « voir» objets perdus et personnes disparues'. Toujours plus avant sur cette voie, nous rencontrons les Espagnols qui se mettent a l'ecole des sorciers et guerisseurs indiens, tel ce corregidor de la ric he bourgade agricole d'Atlixco, au sud de Puebla, qui declare en 1622 avoir « etudie avec un Indien qui est mort depuis, enferme dans un cuezcomate, maisonnette ronde de terre et de paille dont usent les Indiens pour garder leurs legumes, sur une montagne d' Atochimilco, pour pratiquer la sorcellerie et savoir l'avenir », manifestant par la sa conviction de la superiorite des connaissances et des talents autochtones 8 • Finalement, l'Espagnol peut dans certaines circonstances devenir lui-meme un agent diffuseur de l'heterodoxie entendue comme produit syncretique oil l'idolatrie tient une large place. Ces glissements culturels s'operent toujours dans des contextes sociaux ou psychologiques particuliers. Ainsi fonctionnaires, encomenderos, proprietaires d'haciendas et de mines, cures de paroisse qui vivent au milieu des Indiens et dependent en grande partie d'eux pour l'exercice de leurs fonctions, de leur pouvoir ou pour leur survie, finissent par accepter et me me partager, par necessite ou osmose culturelle, l'univers materiel et l'univers affectif et mental de leur entourage. Mais tres souvent aussi, sous la pression de circonstances precises, les Espagnols se tournent vers Ies indigenes: la maladie d'un etre cher et l'angoisse que son etat suscite, Ie desir passionne de retrouver, de conquerir ou d'ecarter quelqu'un, Ie desespoir, la peur, l'amour, etc., poussent nombre d'entre eux a recourir a des pratiques empruntees a une culture qui n'est pas la leur. Nous n'en donnerons qu'un exemple : en 1600, Antonio de la Cadena demande I'autorisation des autorites pour introduire dans Ie couvent de la Conception, Ie plus celebre de la capitale, un Indien guerisseur qui assisterait sa seeur, une religieuse gravement malade 9• Nous ignorons si la requete fut entendue, mais Ie fait qu'elle a ete formulee en bonne et due forme devant les autorites competentes indique assez la generalisation d'une pratique et l'absence de doute quant a sa legitimite. Un autre facteur, sans doute Ie plus puissant de tous, est Ie concubinage, dont on sait qu'il accompagna les guerres de conquete et se generalisa par ia suite lO • II convient de rappeler qu'avant l'arrivee des Espagnols la polygamie etait reservee aux nobles et aux personnes de la maison imperiale azteque. Par ailleurs, les Espagnols etaient beaucoup moins etrangers a cette pratique qu'on veut Ie croire : non seulement les populations du sud de la peninsule conservaient Ie souvenir encore frais des meeurs musulmanes, mais les guerriers castilIans tres chretiens n'hesiterent pas durant la Reconquete a etablir ce type d'union pour sceller des alliances strategiques, certains d'entre eux arrivant a constituer une sorte de harem. Des que Cortes et ses hommes penetrent en terre mexicaine, ils acceptent les jeunes filles nobles que les seigneurs leur offrent, les chroniqueurs embarrasses utilisant alors des formules telles que « selon leur rite et coutume », « comme si c'etait sa femme », etc., afin d'attenuer la realite dans sa erudite, a savoir que des Espagnols celibataires ou maries prenaient autant d'« epouses » que les strategies du moment l'exigeaient ll .

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Apres la Conquete et a la faveur d'une situation de domination marquee entre aut res par un fort desequilibre demographique, la rarete chronique de femmes espagnoles et la deculturation des indigenes entrainant la banalisation de telles pratiques, les relations avec Ie personnel ancillaire et servile ainsi que Ie concubinage declare devinrent courants en milieu espagnol alors que paradoxalement les indigenes, davantage assujettis aux normes et aux controies imposes par les auto rites religieuses dans Ie cadre de leurs communautes, furent, Quant a eux, tenus d'observer avec rigueur la monogamie d'origine occidentale revue par Ie concile de Trente. Ce type de relation ouvre les portes toutes grandes a I'acculturation. Prenons Ie cas d'un Espagnol, Diego Romero, encomendero et capitaine au Nouveau Mexique vers 1660, qui fut envoye par Ie gouverneur dans les plaines ou vivaient les belliqueux Apaches encore paiens avec mission d'obtenir d'eux un traite sinon d'alliance, du moins de paix. A son retour, il raconta leur avoir dit qu'ils « se rappelaient silrement que son propre pere etait venu les voir, qu'il avait eu un fils et que lui-meme devait en avoir un egalement ; et Ies gentils, comprenant ce qu'il desirait, s'en vinrent et leur coutume, ils disposerent une tente nouvelle, apporterent des peaux et des cuirs, mirent au centre de la tente une peau neuve sur Ie sol, appelerent Diego Romero et I'y ayant assis, ils commencerent it danser une danse dont on dit que c'est celle qu'ils executent pour les mariages, a leur jafon, selon leurs usages de genti/s. Apres la danse, ils lui amenerent une jeune fille qu'il re~ut et avec Iaquelle il dormit ; et Ie matin suivant, les dits gentils arriverent et voyant qu'ill'avait connue, ils lui frotterent la poi trine avec son sang a eIle, qui est la fa~on dont on dit qu'ils se marient, to utes choses qu'accepta Diego Romero ... (mes italiques).12 Ce cas n'est pas unique, et nous retrouvons des situations identiques aussi bien au Yucatan que dans la region alors tres isolee des Huasteques, ou par Ie jeu des relations et des obligations familiales qui decoulaient de son concubinage avec une indienne, un a/guazil mayor en vint a participer it de veritables pratiques de cannibalisme ritueIl3. S'il n'est pas question de leur attribuer un caractere general, ces faits appellent l'attention sur les contextes qui les ont rendus possibles, Ies mobiles et les mecanismes qui Ies commanderent et que nous retrouvons, so us une forme attenuee, dans toute la colonie et interessant I'ensemble des Espagnols. A cote de l'emprunt simple d'un trait particulier it une autre culture et qu'on integre dans une structure europeenne sans lui faire subir de modification, on trouve frequemment, surtout dans les pratiques qui relevent de la magie, des manifestations qui correspondent a une reinterpretation: Ie fait exogene re~oit alors une signification qui emane des valeurs et des normes occidentales l4 • Ainsi Ie peyote est parfois utilise au xvn e siecle dans une perspective nettement indigene, comme en temoignent Ie contenu des visions qu'il suscite et Ie caractere humain qui lui est eventuellement attribue, mais Ie plus souvent dans un contexte europeen ou it semble rem placer des substances telles que la mandragore, l'elh~bore et la jusquiame. Toutefois, I'analogie structurelle souvent notable entre les

a

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complexes magiques occidentaux, indiens et meme africains ne facilite pas Ie reperage et l'appreciation de ces modifications. C'est encore la magie et les pratiques therapeutiques qui montrent Ie mieux ce mecanisme, dont la logique est bien connue : sous la pression d'une urgence, emotionnelle Ie plus souvent, Ie demandeur ou l'officiant accumule des procedes et des substances empruntes a des cultures heterogenes et consideres comrne efficaces dans chacune d'elles, leur addition garantissant l'efficacite maximale ; c'est l'analogie des elements entre eux - feves / grains de mai"s, peyote / ellebore, etc. -, et de la place qu'ils occupent aI'interieur de leurs structures d'origine respectives qui permet I'operation. Enfin, certaines conduites qui impliquent une participation Ii des formes culturelles indigenes condamnees par I'ordre colonial- concubinage, polygarnie de fait, idolatrie et cannibalisme rituel - peuvent sans doute etre expliquees par Ie « principe de coupure » degage par Roger Bastide ls • En effet, si deux univers paraissent trop differents pour que les mecanismes de l'emprunt simple, de la reinterpretation ou de I'accumulation suffisent Ii les rapprocher dans l'experience existentielle d'un individu, celui-ci, lorsque les circonstances semblent l'exiger, passe d'une categorie a une autre sans nullement les confondre. C'est ainsi que Ie capitaine et encomendero du Nouveau Mexique etait « marie» chez les Apaches et Ii Santa Fe ou se trouvait son epouse espagnole. Au gouverneur averti du « mariage » indien par des denonciations issues des milieux ecclesiastiques, il declara que ce mariage indien n'en etait pas vraiment un en termes occidentaux, reponse parfaitement coherente et entendue par ceux qui part agaient sa situation. En effet, aucune contradition ne s'imposait reellement aux yeux des fonctionnaires civils et probablement a ceux de la majorite des Espagnols qui vivaient alors au Nouveau Mexique. La situation etait vecue comme la participation inevitable et necessaire a deux mondes irreductibles et rendus pourtant complementaires dans la realite. La distinction entre « croyance » et « pratique », significative de nos jours ou l'efficacite d'un « faire » suffit a Ie justifier, nous parait depourvue de sens ici. En effet, pour des epoques et des secteurs sociaux qui per~oivent encore intimement Ie monde comrne un tout organique et solidaire d'ou n'emergent que lentement les principes de particularisation et d'individualisation, toute croyance s'incarne obligatoirement dans un complexe gestuel et rituel. C'est pourquoi, si nous distinguons les divers degres de participation des Espagnols a des ensembles culturels non occidentaux, nous n'etablissons pas de difference de nature entre la pratique et la croyance des lors que I'efficacite reconnue de la premiere entraine toujours, dans des proportions variables, I'acceptation des concepts et representations qui la sous-tendent. Ce qui ne veut pas dire que certaines croyances ne soient pas adoptees pour elles-memes, meme si en general c'est bien I'efficacite des procedes qui parait en trainer l'adhesion a un systeme mental. En effet, les cas ou les Espagnols apparaissent comme penetres par ce que Roger Bastide appelle 1'« univers quotidien de pen sees » des hommes au milieu desquels ils se trouvent immerges se presentent parfois

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et leur rarete est plus Ie result at des filtres inconscients auxquels sont soumises les sources documentaires que Ie reflet d'une realite objective. Cette participation touche des terrains d'autant plus significatifs que ce sont ceux de l'idolatrie declaree. Ainsi voyons-nous une Espagnole, probablement une creole (compte tenu de la date: 1626), epouse d'un alcalde mayor dans une region eloignee du sud-est du Mexique, se livrer a de veri tables rites paYens devant des idoles identifiees aux nuages, a la foudre et a la tempete auxquelles elle offre du copal - un encens indien - et Ie sang qu'elle extrait de ses bras l6 • Un peu plus tard (1716), c'est un ecclesiastique, lui-meme etonne par ce qui lui arrive, qui avoue avoir etabli des associations symboliques directement inspirees par Ie nahualisme, cette relation totemique d'essence indigene qui unit I'homme et l'animal, la fonction du reve revel ant ici la profondeur de I'implantation des representations dans l'inconscient du pretre l7 • Le caractere exceptionnel de ces temoignages ne permet pas de tenter une interpretation et nous nous bornerons a signaler deux points qui peuvent to utefois jeter quelque lumiere sur I'adhesion a des systemes de pensee et a la sensibilite indigenes. II convient a ce sujet de reprendre I'observation de Julio Caro Baroja qui constatait que les groupes humains consideres comme subalternes et « primitifs » par les secteurs dominants, sont generalement credites de pouvoirs mysterieusement « superieurs » a ceux que croient detenir ces derniers, leur appartenance ontologique presumee a un monde plus « primitif » donc plus « naturel » faisant d'eux les intennediaires privilegies entre les forces brutes et vives de cette meme Nature et les « civilises »18. Sans do ute Ie catholicisme tel qu'il est communement vecu est-il en fait un ensemble syncretique ou Ie culte des saints, celui des anges. celui de la Vierge Marie articulent des manifestations religieuses qui sont des reminiscences polytheisies l9 • Mais malgre ces aspects archa"iques qui facilitent l'adhesion et stimulent la ferveur populaire, Ie catholicisme peut paraltre inferieur aux formules polytheistes prehispaniques sur deux points au moins. Pour ce qui est de l'adaptation du rituel au calendrier agricole, celles-ci proposent en effet un ensemble de croyances et de pratiques beaucoup plus complet et complexe, ce qui explique leur persistance en plein XVII" siecle et me me largement au-dela, si l'on en juge par la situation actuelle, alors que les systemes theologiques et mythiques autochtones ont disparu depuis longtemps. Par ailleurs, eUes offrent une explication du monde qui peut eventuellement sembler plus satisfaisante a certains egards que celie don nee par Ie christianisme : si pour un Occidental du XVII" siecie la mort trouve son sens dans une theologie abstraite qui postule un au-delli, une transcendance et un temps pratiquement infini, la cosmovision indigene de caract ere holiste implique une solidarite organique et permanente entre forces naturelles, entites surnaturelles, flore, faune et etres humains. C'est dire que Ie nahualisme, qui etablit une relation directe et immediate entre la destinee humaine et celie de l'animal, represente pour un Espagnol un peu fruste, immerge en milieu indigene, une tentation pour l'esprit et plus encore pour la sensibilite, tentation qui ne peut que reveiller les souvenirs enfouis d'un

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tres ancien heritage culturel occidental ou I'alliance de la bete et de I'homme existait aussi, comme en temoignent encore les emblemes heraldiques europeens, les contes et legendes d'un folklore toujours vivant qui a nourri longtemps l'iconographie.

LES CONDITIONNEMENTS COLLECTIFS ET INCONSCIENTS. OU LES PI~GES DE LA « TIERRA »

Outre ces manifestations dont Ie caractere ponctuel et parfois exceptionnel suggere un itineraire plus qu'll n'etablit de resultat tangible, des formules incontestablement plus efficaces parce que plus insidieuses toucherent I'ensemble des Espagnols, selon des processus qui furent d'abord d'adaptation au milieu americain, puis d'education, ces derniers consolidant et reproduisant les modeles nouvellement formes. II y eut pour commencer tous ces conditionnements imperceptibles qui decoulent de pratiques et d'attitudes appartenant au substrat culturei Ie plus profond des populations autochtones et qui s'enracinent dans leur milieu naturel. Prenons la nourriture par excellence des Espagnols et des Indiens, soit, respectivement, k pain et la tortilla, cette galette de mais qui reste la base de l'alimentation mexicaine. Le ble, cereale la plus anciennement domestiquee par I'homme, exige des travaux planifies sur un an et meme davantage lorsqu'apparait la technique de I'assolement, travaux qui ont necessairement un caractere collectif au moins pour certaines operations comme la moisson. Les efforts qu'il requiert n'aboutissent qu'a de mediocres rendements - pour I'epoque qui no us interesse et si nous les comparons a ceux d'autres cereales telles que Ie riz et Ie mais - et les loisirs qu'il menage ne sont pas nombreux. Lorsque Ie ble est mur, il faut prendre son tour pour Ie faire moudre au moulin communautaire, et la confection du pain demande au moins un jour entre Ie petrissage, la fermentation et la cuisson dans un four egalement communautaire. Enfin la miche est destinee a tout un groupe familial et sa consommation est programmee en fonction d'une duree particuliere et de la ration quotidienne que re~oit chaque membre de la communaute. Le mais americain est alors apparu comme une cereale proprement miraculeuse par son rendement et la facilite de sa culture qui ne demande pas plus de cinquante jours de labeur par an 20 • C'est vers la fin du printemps, des que les nuages annonciateurs des pluies s'amoncellent a I'horizon que Ie paysan indien enfouit les semences dans la terre. Les premiers orages font gonfler les epis qui peuvent etre consommes tels quels, sans meme arriver a maturite. Plus tard, la confection de la tortilla n'exige que Ie trempage nocturne des grains, leur cuisson et leur broyage Ie lendemain matin, la crepe modelee etant cuite au feu de bois sur une plaque de terre. Ainsi l'activite complexe qui transforme Ie ble en pain introduit-elle des pratiques et des attitudes exigeant une organisation temporelle rigoureuse, un investissement a terme relativement eloigne, une repartition collective des taches dans Ie cadre d'une discipline avare de loisirs,

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tandis que Ie mals induit au contraire une relation au temps et a la communaute immediate et beaucoup plus lache. Les valeurs et les representations liees aux deux cultures ne peuvent alors qu'etre sensiblement differentes. Or, si les Espagnols resterent fort attaches aux charges culturelles, affectives et symboliques du ble et du pain, ils consommerent des leur arrivee et contraints par les circonstances la tortilla indienne, qu'il faut manger lorsqu'elle sort du comal de terre, toute chaude encore, devenant lourde et indigeste lorsqu'elle refroidit, a la difference du pain, et qui est liee a la presence feminine puisque ce sont toujours les femmes qui la fabriquent. Plus encore, les Espagnols ne tarderent pas a cultiver eux-memes Ie mai"s pour des raisons economiques 21 • On comprendra que l'ecole du mals et de la tortilla transforma a leur insu des peninsulaires durs au labeur, tenaces et sobres en creoles confiants et insouciants. Independamment de ces conditionnements qui tiennent au contexte americain dans ce qu'il a de plus elementaire et de specifique, les circonstances et les modalites de l'elevage et de l'education des petits enfants jouent un role egalement determinant. La culture du mals et dans une moindre mesure la fabrication du pulque - jus fermente de l'agave qui constitue la boisson la plus commune -, l'usage du bain, etc., avaient pu etre adoptes par des adultes formes selon des structures de pensee et une sensibilite d'origine europeenne, qu'ils abandonnaient ou auxquelles ils en superposaient d'autres. L'education, quant a elle, modele d'une fa~on autrement plus profonde et definitive l'esprit et Ie cceur du creole. Paradoxalement encore que tres logiquement, Ie colonisateur confie bebes et jeunes enfants a des auxiliaires indigenes, toute famille espagnole meme modeste disposant bien souvent des services de servantes indiennes et metisses, d'esclaves noires ou muHitres. Durant se~ premieres annees, l'enfant est ainsi presque totalement abandonne a des chichiguas et des pilmamas22 , au monde ancillaire de la cuisine, a celui de l'ecurie. Lorsque la famille reprend la direction de l'enfant, vers les cinq ou six ans, i! est trop tard : pour l'essentiel l'enfant est deja constitue et ce conditionnement se maintiendra en depit de l'education qui lui sera en suite dispensee. Nous retrouvons donc la double identite deja reperee dans certains cas precedemment evoques. Mais ici i! s'agit du passage de conditionnements non occidentaux a une culture qui se targue d'etre absolument europeenne, alors que jusqu'a present nous nous trouvions en face de peninsulaires aux fa~ons de penser, de faire et de sentir occidentales, qui eventuellement pouvaient participer de conduites ou de systemes mentaux qui ne l'etaient pas. Or les soins et la prime education dispenses par les chichiguas et pi/mamas concernent bien les fondements de la personnalite. Tout d'abord la langue dans laquelle sont re~us les premiers mots d'affection ou de colere et etablis les premiers contacts ne peut etre, malgre l'emprise du castillan, que celie de la nourrice. Pensons aux caresses, aux signes d'approbation que traduisent un sourire, un baiser, un regard, une menue recompense, mais aussi aux tapes, gronderies, punitions qui censurent des faits et gestes en fonction d'un code de valeurs non occidental, avec pour resultat inevitable l'interiorisation de ce meme

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code par l'enfant. N'oublions pas non plus les effets psychologiques du portage pendant plusieurs annees, Ie corps de l'enfant etroitement uni it celui de la nourrice ou de la fillette qui Ie porte, sa participation, par ce biais it toutes les activites de l'adulte, it leur distribution temporelle et spaciale, ni Ie role et les implications du bain, beaucoup plus frequent en Nouvelle-Espagne qu'il ne l'etait en Europe it la meme epoque, la prise d'aliments atout instant. .. Ces quelques annees suffisent it faconner la personnalite creole, elles mode lent durablement les relations que I'enfant puis I'adulte entretiendra desormais avec lui-meme, les autres, la nature, Ie sacre. Meme lorsque I'enfant aura recu une formation appropriee it son statut, celle-ci se superposera it la premiere, et toute sa vie cette dualite se maintiendra. S'il dechoit, c'est it la cuisine, it la pulquerfa (Ie debit de pulque), dans Ie coude it coude avec ceux qui eveillerent ses premieres perceptions et emotions qu'j} saura eventuellement se retrouver, quitte it assumer ensuite et par ailleurs ses obligations et servitudes d'Espagnol it part entiere 23 • Le milieu urbain enfin, plus precisement celui de la ville de Mexico, consolide les effets de l'education recue dans Ie jeune age au sein de la communaute domestique. Les projets officiels prevoyaient la separation des differentes communautes d'Espagnols et d'!ndiens, afin de mieux controler les secondes dans leurs quartiers par l'intermediaire des autorites civiles et religieuses, et aussi de les soustraire aux abus et aux mauvaises influences des premiers. On sa it toutefois comment tous ces groupes ethniques et sociaux ne tarderent pas it se meIer allegrement, la maison espagnole abritant sous son toit non seulement une famille etendue mais une domesticite et sa parentele, des locataires et des hotes de tout acabit, Ies relations de clientelisme, de parente spirituelle (Ie compadrazgo) et Ies interets mutuels y trouvant largement leur compte 24 • La ville tout entiere d'ailJeurs, par la distribution de ses espaces, son paysage et l'humanite qui la peuple, entretient et stimule ce qui maintenant constitue Ie fond de la personnalite du creole. Les temoignages d'etrangers et d'Espagnols peninsulaires, susceptibles de mieux percevoir en quoi la ville de Mexico differe des aut res metropoles occidentales, sont unanimes it decrire l'absence de repression des appetits, Iepeuple donn ant libre cours aux siens sans Ia moindre vergogne et sans etre aucunement inquiete par les autorites, Ie temps vecu dans l'immediat, I'insouciance, Ie voisinage des diverses categories sociales dans les memes habitats, la banalisation de la semi-nudite, etc. 2S • Les complexes socio- et psycho-culturels dans lesquels s'inscrivent les pratiques et conduites exogenes adoptees par Ies Espagnols et les derives qu'elles entrainent sont Ies moteurs les plus silrs de leur acculturation. Les conditionnements tenant it certaines pratiques indigenes, d'autant plus aisement recues qu'elles apparaissent comme inoffensives et memes benefiques, se repandirent dans tous les secteurs europeens. La marquise Calderon de la Barca, cet observateur curieux et perspicace de la premiere moitie du XIX' siecle, souligne combien les mreurs et la facon d'etre de la bonne societe mexicaine qu'elle frequente s'ecartent sensiblement des usages alors en vigueur tant en Espagne que dans les pays occidentaux qu'elle connait 26 •

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Faut-il finalement parler d' « acculturation» des Espagnols, ce qui supposerait une culture de reference en quelque sorte definie et statique, dont nos Espagnols des Indes se seraient ecartes a leur insu, ou convient-il plutot de concevoir leurs derives evidentes comme la manifestation intrinseque de leur identite d'Occidentaux, done de metis accoutumes, depuis Ie neolithique pour Ie moins, a la pratique, active et passive, de I' « acculturation », parce que la sachant d'experience Ie moyen Ie plus sur d'evoluer, done de survivre et de se developper ? En d'autres termes, on pourrait considerer la capacite des Iberiques du Nouveau Monde non comme une « perte » ou une « trahison » ou meme une « degenerescence », selon les criteres des Lumieres, que reprit ulterieurement un certain obscurantisme, mais bien comme une aptitude a nuancer et enrichir des schemes culturels deja favorables a I'adaptation. En ce sens, la culture creole apparaitrait comme une modalite du modele occidental et I'acculturation des Espagnols ne serait que leur contribution a son dynamisme intrinseque. Ce qui amenerait bien sur a penser que la capacite a modifier I' Autre est indissociable de celle a se changer soi-meme, la dialectique qui les unit etant Ie meilleur et peut-etre Ie seul facteur garantissant la vitalite d'une culture. EI Colegio de Mexico, Mexique

NOTES I. 2. 3.

4.

S.

6.

Roger BASTIDE, « Memoire collective et sociologie du bricolage », L"Annee sociologique, 1970, 3' serie, 21 : 84. Bernardino DE SAHAGUN, Fray, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva Espaiia, Mexico, Poma, 1985 : S79. Voir par exemple la « Representaci6n bumilde en favor de sus naturales ", adressee par I' Ayuntamiento (c'est-a-dire Ie Conseil municipal) de 1'« imperiale, tres noble et loyale Ville de Mexico" a la Couronne, OU I'auteur, Ie regidor lose Gonzalez de Castaileda, evoque les talents et Ie caractere noble des creoles dont iI nie resolument Ie melissage biologique (in luan E. HERNANDEZ Y DAVALOS, Colecci6n de documentos para /a historia de independencia de Mexico de 1808 a 1821, Mexico, lose M. Sandoval, imprimeur, 1877-1882, 1 : 427-4SS, 6 vol.). Sur cette question, c/. Tzvetan TODOROV, La Conquete de /'Amerique. La question de l'Autre, Paris, Le Seuil, 1982; Cannen BERNAND & Serge GRUZINSKI, De I'ldoldtrie. Une arcMologie des sciences religieuses, Paris, Le Seuil, 1988. Gonzalo DE BALSALOBRE, lacinto DE LA SERNA, Hernando Ruiz DE ALARC6N, Pedro PONCE, Pedro DE FERIA, Pedro SANCHEZ DE AGUILAR, in Tratado de las ido/atr(as, supersticiones, dioses, rilos, hechicerfas)l olras costumbres gentl1icas de las razas aborfgenes de Mexico, Mexico, Ediciones Fuente Cultural, 19S3, X et XX. Voir aussi BERNAND & GRUZINSKI, op. cit. Plusieurs documents inquisitoriaux temoignent de teUes attitudes. Par exemple, Archivo General de la Naci6n, Mexico (dorenavant AGN), Inquisition, vol. 4SS : 269, Proces contre luan Vela de Aguirre, encomendero de Homun, Yucat~n, 1611 : « ..• iI y a de nombreuses annees qu'i! connait ces ido14tres et qu'i1 mange de la nourriture et la boisson [sic) qui sont offertes aux idoles ; et comme iI ya longtemps qu'j( vit en concubinage avec Madalena Chan, fllle d'Andres Chan, grand pretre de to utes ees idollltries et sorcier bien connu, qu'i1loge d'ordinaire cbez Diego Xec y Chan, gouverneur de ce village d'Homun, grand idol4tre qui est actuellement prisonnier dans la prison de Sa Seigneurie a cause de ses idol4tries, et que ledit luan Vela de Aguirre est tres ami de ces lndiens, il a ete leur complice et a participe avec eux aux idoilltries, comme ill'a lui·metI!e declare a plusieurs pcrsonnes ..• II

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Gonzalo AGUIRRE BELTRAN, Medicina y magia. £1 Proceso de acu/turacion en la estructura colonial, Mexico, Instituto nacional indigenista, 1963 ; cf chap. 7 : « Peyotl Zacatequensi II, pp. 140-163, et notes correspondantes. 8. AGN, Inquisition, vol. 342, Expedient 3, Informaci6n contra Francisco del Castillo Maldonado, corregidor de Atlixco, por tomar peyote y semillas de ololiuhqui, ser brujo y blasfemo. 9. AGN, Bienes Nacionales, liasse 78, dossier 36. 10. Le concubinage, dont on connait la generalisation dans I' Amerique coloniale, est toutefois difficile A reperer. En effet, bien que considere officiellement comme un delit, iI n'est pas en fait per~u comme tel par I'ensemble de la population, compte tenu de la tradition indigene prehispanique concernant la polygamie des caciques et la relation de domination qui unit Espagnols et Indiens. Peu denonce, il est donc peu poursuivi et sanctionne bien que les documents revelent sa banalisation ; cf Solange ALBERRO, « EI Amancebamiento, un medio eventual de medrar en el Mexico colonial II, in Memoria dellIlo Simposio de Historia de las mentalidades, familia y poder en Nueva Espana, INAH, 1991. II. Par exemple, Francisco CERVAI'T£S DE SALAZAR, Cronica de la Nueva Espana, Madrid, Biblioteca de Autores espanoles, 1971, CCXLV, II: 25. 12. AGN, Inquisition, vol. 593, Expedient I, EI seiior fiscal del Santo Oficio contra Don Bernardo L6pez de Mendizabal, gobernador de Nuevo Mexico, por proposiciones hereticas y sospechoso de judaismo, 1661. La citation que nous donnons se trouve A la page 5. 13. AGN, Inquisition, vol. 345, Expedient 22, denuncia contra el Justicia Mayor de Nuevo Le6n, 1623 : 543. 14. Roger BASTIDE, Initiation aux recherches sur I'interpenetration des civilisations, Paris, Centre de Documentation universitaire, 1948, passim. 15. R. BASTIDE, « Le Principe de coupure et Ie comportement afro-bresilien II, Actes du XXI' Congr~ des americanistes, 1955 : 493-503. Le principe de coupure est egalement repere par Thierry Saignes chez certains metis et Espagnols qui vivent en territoire chiriguano pendant la domination coloniale ; cf « Entre Barbaros y 'cristianos' : el desafio mestizo en la frontera chiriguana II, Anuario delIH£S, 1987, 3. Tandil. 16. AGN, Inquisition, vol. 303, Expedient 24, EI padre Juan de Contreras contra doiia Maria de Montoya, porque zahuma idolos. Antequera, 1624. 17. AGN, Inquisition, vol. 878, Expedient 398, denuncia del bach iller Matias de Bejarano, San Luis Potosi, 1716, cite in AGUIRRE BELTRAN, op. cit. ; 182. L'ecclesiastique declare en effet qu'« ayant entendu dire que Dieu notre Seigneur reportait sur les animaux les sentences qui concernent les humains, iI semble que j'y ai cru quelque peu, et apres avoir reve une nuit que I'un des gamins de la maison se noyait dans un puits, j'appris a moin reveil qu'un perroquet s'etait noye II. 18. Julio CARO BAROlA, Vidas mdgicas e Inquisicion, Madrid, Taurus, 1967, I, chap. II : « Magia, personalidad y communidad II, et III : « Magia y grupo etnico, 0 la tribu magica II. 19. Peter BROWN, U Culte des saints. Son essor et sa fonction dans la chretiente laline, Paris, Les Editions du Cerf, 1984, et Marina WARNER, Seule entre loules lesjemmes. Mylhes el culle de la Vierge Marie, Paris, Rivages-Histoire, 1989. 20. F. MARQUEZ MIRANDA, « Civilisations precolombiennes, civilisation du mars II, Cahiers des Annales; A Travers les Ameriques lalines 4, 99-100, cite in Fernand BRAUDEL, Civilisation maleriel/e. economie el capilalisme. xV'-xvltt'siecle, Paris, Armand Colin, 1979, I : 133. 21. Des la fin du XVI' siecle certaines terres proches de la ville de Mexico et consacrees A la culture du mars passerent aux mains des Espagnols ; cf Charles GIBSON, Los Atlecas bajo el dominio espanol. 1519-1810, Mexico, Siglo XXI, 1967 : 333-337. II en fut de meme pour les haciendas qui produisaient Ie pulque. 22. Nourrices et fillettes porteuses. EUes meriteraient une etude; cf Padre Francisco DE AJOFRtN, Diaro del viaje que hizo en la America en el siglo XVItt, Mexico, Instituto cultural hi spano mexicano, 1964, I : 69 ; Jose Joaquin FERNANDEZ DE LIZARDI, £1 Pensador mexicano, Mexico, Centro de Estudios de Historia de Mexico/Condumex, 1987, IV: 61 ; egalement de ID., « La Educaci6n de las mujeres 0 la Quijotita y su prima II, in Obras complelas, Mexico, Universidad nacional aut6noma de Mexico, 1980, I, chap. II : 29, 35. 23. Le vice-roi Revillagigedo, un des plus remarquables du XVIII' siecle, evoquait les (( nombreux Espagnols dechus par la pauvrete et I'oisivete II qui tombaient irremediablement dans la plebe (in Inslrucciones que los Virreyes de la Nueva Espana dejaron a sus sucesores, Mexico, Biblioteca hist6rica 7.

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de la Iberia, Imprenta de Ignacio Escalente, 1873 : 289). Un peu plus tard - en 1787 -, Hip6lito VILLARROEL (En/ermedades polIticos que padecen 10 capital de esta Nueva Espana, Mexico, Miguel Angel Porrua, 1982 : 263) denon~ait avec la vehemence qui Ie caracterise les desordres auxquels se Iivraient les « Indiens, mulatres, les noirs, les lobos, coyotes, l.ambaygos, metis et costi1.oS mais aussi les Espagnols, y compris un nombre incalculable d'Europeens », dans les pulquerios qui etaient aussi des maisons de jeu et de multiples rencontres. 24. Boletln del Archivo General de 10 Nacion, Mexico, 1938, IX, I : « Sobre los inconvenientes de vivir los Indios en el centro de la ciudad » ; voir en particulier pp. 12, 13, 24 et 27. 25. AJOFRtN, op. cit. , et VILLARROEL, op. cit. Et « Discurso sobre la Policia de Mexico », in Sonia LOMBARDO DE RUlZ, Antologia de textos sobre 10 ciudad de Mexico en el per{odo de 10 llustracidn, Mexico, INAH (