'Trust in God, but tie your camel first.' The economic organization of the trans-Saharan slave trade between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries

Journal of Global History

Volumn 1, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 219-239

  Prange, Sebastian ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60949751734     PISSN: 17400228     EISSN: 17400236     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S1740022806000143     Document Type: Review

References (92)

1. See, for instance, E. Ann McDougall, 'The Ijil salt industry: its role in the pre-colonial economy of the western Sudan', PhD Thesis, University of Birmingham, 1980, passim.
2. Heinrich Barth, Reisen und Entdeckungen in Nord- und Central-Afrika in den Jahren 1849 bis 1855, Gotha: Justus Perthes, 1857, vol. I, p. 571. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from German are the author's.
3. Lee J. Alston, Thrainn Eggertson, and Douglass C. North, 'Introduction', in Lee J. Alston, Thrainn Eggertson, and Douglass C. North, eds., Empirical studies in institutional change, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 1.
4. Cited in A. Adu Boahen, 'The caravan trade in the nineteenth century', Journal of African History, 3, 2, 1962, p. 358. The Sudan (with the adjective Sudanic rather than Sudanese) is defined throughout this discussion not as the modern state, but the region spanning from east to west between the southern edge of the Sahara and the wet tropical regions in the south.
5. Leo Africanus, The history and description of Africa and of the notable things therein contained, 3 vols., trans. J. Pory, ed. R. Brown, London: Hakluyt Society, 1896, vol. 3, p. 833;
6. cf. Murray Gordon, Slavery in the Arab world, New York: New Amsterdam, 1989, p. 113.
7. Carlo M. Cipolla, Before the Industrial Revolution: European society and economy, 1000-1700, London: Routledge, 2nd edn, 1981, p. 198.
8. Avner Greif, 'The fundamental problem of exchange: a research agenda in historical institutional analysis', European Review of Economic History, 4, 3, 2000, p. 252.
9. Avinash K. Dixit, Lawlessness and economics: alternative models of governance, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004, p. vii.
10. A recent model suggests that even in the presence of government-provided contract enforcement, informal trade networks tend to survive unless the cost of law drops below a certain threshold; see Ethan B. de Mesquita and Matthew Stephenson, 'Legal institutions and the structure of informal networks', The Harvard John M. Olin Discussion Paper Series, 419, 2003, pp. 1-37.
11. Diego Gambetta, 'Can we trust trust?', in D. Gambetta, ed., Trust: making and breaking cooperative relations, New York, London: Basil Blackwell, 1988, p. 217.
12. Cipolla, Before the Industrial Revolution, p. 198.
13. Avner Greif, 'Reputation and coalitions in medieval trade: evidence on the Maghribi traders', Journal of Economic History, 49, 4, 1989, pp. 857-82.
14. Shlomo D. Goitein, A Mediterranean society, vol. 1: economic foundations, Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967, p. 169.
15. Avinash K. Dixit and Susan Skeath, Games of strategy, New York, London: Norton & Co., 2nd edn, 2004, pp. 400-3.
16. Oliver E. Williamson, The economic institutions of capitalism: firms, markets, relational contracting, New York: Free Press, 1985, p. 20.
17. Greif, 'Reputation and coalitions', p. 859. Also see Jessica Goldberg, 'Back-biting and self-promotion in the merchant letters of the Cairo Geniza', forthcoming, on the use of language and gossip in the Geniza letters in relation to the management of agents.
18. For an assessment of the Substantivist historiography for West Africa see Gareth Austin, 'The problem of "embeddedness" and global economic history', unpublished paper for 'Third Global Economic History Network Workshop', Konstanz, 3-6 June 2004, pp. 1-3,
19. as well as Wolfgang Kaese, 'Sklaverei in Afrika: Annäherung an eine Definition', in Helmut Bley, Clemens Dillmann, Gesine Krüger and Hans-Hermann Pogarell, eds., Sklaverei in Afrika: afrikanische Gesellschaften im Zusammenhang von europäischer und interner Sklaverei und Sklavenhandel, Pfaffenmeiler: Centaurus, 1991, pp. 9-13.
20. B. Marie Perinbam, 'Social relations in the trans-Saharan and western Sudanese trade: an overview', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 15, 4, 1973, p. 416.
21. Charles R. Joy, Desert caravans: the challenge of the changing Sahara, London: Chatto & Windus, 1963, p. 13.
22. Knut S. Vikør, 'The oasis of salt: the history of Kawar, a Saharan centre of salt production', PhD Thesis, University of Bergen, 1979, pp. 9-14.
23. Harry T. Norris, The Arab conquest of the western Sahara, Beirut: Libraire du Liban, 1986, p. 1;
24. E. Ann McDougall, 'Research in Saharan history', Journal of African History, 39, 3, 1998, p. 473.
25. Boahen, 'The caravan trade', p. 355.
26. Ghislaine Lydon, 'Inkwells of the Sahara: reflections on the production of Islamic knowledge in Bilād Shinqīt', in Scott Reese, ed., The transmission of learning in Islamic Africa, Leiden: Brill, 2004, pp. 39-71.
27. McDougall, 'Research', p. 468.
28. Ghislaine Lydon, 'Writing trans-Saharan history: methods, sources and interpretations across the African divide', Journal of North African Studies, 10, 3-4, p. 306.
29. An international project to collect Arabic documents centred on Timbuktu is described in Aslam Farouk-Alli, 'Timbuktu's first private manuscript library', ISIM Review, 15, 2005, p. 51.
30. Gordon, Slavery, p. 11.
31. John Alexander, 'Islam, archaeology and slavery in Africa', World Archaeology, 33, 1, 2001, p. 56.
32. El Hage Abd Salam Shabeeny, An account of Timbuctoo and Housa, ed. J. G. Jackson, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1820.
33. The influence of long-term climatic cycles on the pattern of exchange between the Sahel and the Sahara is explored in Ian Blanchard, 'The trans-Saharan slave trade, c.1320-1520: a study of environmental change and commercial adaptation', unpublished paper for 'Slavery, freedom and unfreedom in the Middle Ages' conference, Nottingham, 23 April 2005, pp. 1-18.
34. James L. A. Webb, Jr, Desert frontier: ecological and economic change along the western Sahel, 1600-1850, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995, p. 11.
35. Philip D. Curtin, Economic change in precolonial Africa. Senegambia in the era of the slave trade, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975, p. 280.
36. E. Ann McDougall, 'Camel caravans of the Saharan salt trade: traders and transporters in the nineteenth century', in Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch and Paul E. Lovejoy, eds., The workers of African trade, Beverly Hills, London, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1985, p. 102.
37. Stephen Baier and Paul E. Lovejoy, 'The Tuareg of the Central Sudan: gradations in servility at the desert edge (Niger and Nigeria)', in Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff, eds., Slavery in Africa: historical and anthropological perspectives, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977, pp. 394-5.
38. Ross E. Dunn, The adventures of Ibn Battuta, a Muslim traveler of the fourteenth century, Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986, p. 38.
39. Hopkins, Economic history, p. 63.
40. Louis Frank, 'Mémoire sur le commerce des nères au Kaire, et sur les maladies auxquelles ils sont sujets en y arrivant [Memoir on the traffic of negroes in Cairo and on the illnesses to which they are subject upon arrival there]', trans. M. Le Gall, in Shaun E. Marmon, ed., Slavery in the Islamic Middle East, Princeton: Markus Wiener, 1999, p. 73.
41. Shabeeny, An account, p. 14.
42. John L. Wright, '"Nothing else but slaves": Britain and the Central Saharan slave trade in the nineteenth century', PhD Thesis, University of London, 1998, p. 59.
43. Austen, 'The trans-Saharan slave trade', p. 28.
44. Lydon, 'Writing trans-Saharan history', p. 297.
45. Goitein, A Mediterranean society 1, p. 276.
46. Barth, Reisen, vol. 1, p. 312.
47. Leo Africanus, History, vol. 3, pp. 828-9.
48. Riley, Sufferings, pp. 290-1.
49. Caillié suggests that the fearsome reputation these tribes acquired meant that many caravans surrendered even to inferior forces: René-Auguste Caillié, Travels through Central Africa to Timbuctoo; and across the Great Desert, to Morocco, performed in the years 1824-1828, 2 vols., London: Colburn and Bentley, 1830, vol. 2, p. 90.
50. McDougall, 'Camel caravans of the Saharan salt trade', p. 118.
51. Frederic C. Lane, 'Economic consequences of organized violence', Journal of Economic History, 18, 4, 1958, p. 402 fn.
52. H. Barth, Reisen, vol. 1, p. 194.
53. Ibn Battūta, The Travels A.D. 1325-1354. Translated with revisions and notes from the Arabic text edited by C. Dufrémery and B. R. Sanguinetti, 5 vols., trans. H. A. R. Gibb, later C. F. Beckingham, ed. H. A. R. Gibb, later C. F. Beckingham, latterly A. D. H. Bivar, Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1958-2000, vol. 4, pp. 972 and 976.
54. Ibn Khaldun, 'Kitab al-'ibar [The Book of Examples]', trans. J. F. P. Hopkins, in Nehemia Levtzion and J. F. P. Hopkins, eds., Corpus of early Arabic sources for West African history, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, p. 339.
55. James Richardson, Narrative of a mission to Central Africa, performed in the years 1850-51 under the orders and at the expense of Her Majesty's Government, 2 vols., London: Chapman and Hall, 1853, vol. 1, p. 325.
56. Dennis D. Cordell, 'Eastern Libya, Wadai and the Sanūsīya: a t{dot below}arīqa and a trade route', Journal of African History, 18, 1, 1977, pp. 31-6.
57. Paul E. Lovejoy and Stephen Baier, 'The desert-side economy of the Central Sudan', International Journal of African Historical Studies, 8, 4, 1975, p. 554.
58. Gustav Nachtigal, Sahǎrâ und Sûdân. Ergebnisse sechsjähriger Reisen in Afrika [Sahara and Sudan. Results of six years of travels in Africa], 3 vols., vol. 3, ed. E. Roddeck, Berlin, later Leipzig: Wiegandt, Hempel & Parey, later F. A. Brockhaus, 1879-89, vol. 2, pp. 239-40,
59. and Goitein, A mediterranean society 1, p. 280.
60. Richardson, Narrative, vol. 1, p. 163.
61. Abner Cohen, 'Cultural strategies in the organization of trading diasporas', in Claude Meillassoux, ed., The development of indigenous trade and markets in West Africa, London: Oxford University Press, 1971, p. 266.
62. For his original definition see Cohen, 'Cultural strategies', p. 267.
63. For a number of such case studies see for instance Philip D. Curtin, Cross-cultural trade in world history, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984, passim.
64. Kenneth Pomeranz and Steven Topik, The world that trade created: society, culture, and the world economy, 1400 to the present, Armonk, NY, and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1999, p. 7.
65. Cf. Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformations in slavery: a history of slavery in Africa, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd edn, 2000, p. 93.
66. Bernard Lewis, Race and slavery in the Middle East: an historical enquiry, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, ch. 1.
67. David P. Gutelius, 'Research notes: market growth and social change in the western Maghrib, 1640-1830', Saharan Studies Association Newsletter, 5, 1, 1997, p. 9.
68. See, for instance, Norris, The Arab conquest, passim.
69. Katherine P. Moseley, 'Caravel and caravan: West Africa and the world-economies, ca. 900-1900 AD', Review, 15, 3, 1992, pp. 531-2.
70. Curtin, Cross-cultural trade, p. 49.
71. Also see David P. Gutelius, 'The path is easy and the benefits large: the Nāsiriyya, social networks and economic change in Morocco, 1640-1830', Journal of African History, 43, 2002, pp. 27-49.
72. F. J. G. Mercadier, 'L'esclave de Timimoun', unpaginated.
73. For a recent study of the institutional development of the funduq see Olivia R. Constable, Housing the stranger in the Mediterranean world: lodging, trade, and travel in late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Cambridge: University Press, 2003, chs. 2-3.
74. Ibn Battūta, Travels, vol. 4, p. 948.
75. Lewis, Race and Slavery, p. 64.
76. For a study of the origins of the use of slave soldiers in Muslim societies see Daniel Pipes, Slave soldiers and Islam: the genesis of a military system, New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1981.
77. This practice is confirmed for early nineteenth-century Timbuktu by Caillié, Travels, vol. 1, p. 457.
78. G. Nachtigal, Sahǎrâ und Sûdân, vol. 1, p. 133.
79. George Michael La Rue, 'The frontiers of enslavement: Bagirmi and the trans-Saharan slave routes', in Paul E. Lovejoy, ed., Slavery on the frontiers of Islam, Princeton: Markus Wiener, 2004, p. 32.
80. Also see Timothy Cleaveland, Becoming Walāta: a history of Saharan social formation and transformation, Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002.
81. Humphrey J. Fisher, Slavery in the history of Muslim Black Africa, London: Hurst & Co., 2001, p. 226.
82. James Richardson, Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in 1845 and 1846; including a description of the oases and cities of Ghat, Ghadames and Mourzuk, 2 vols., London: Bentley, 1848, vol. 1, p. 188;
83. cf. Fisher, Slavery in the history, p. 225.
84. In Shabeeny, An account, p. 18 fn.
85. As cited in Edward W. Bovill, The golden trade of the Moors, London: Oxford University Press, 2nd edn, 1968, p. 236.
86. Rex S. O'Fahey, 'Slavery and the slave trade in Dār Fūr', Journal of African History, 14, 1, 1973, p. 33.
87. Webb, Jr, Desert frontier, p. 63.
88. Fisher, Slavery in the history, pp. 316ff.
89. Baier and Lovejoy, 'The Tuareg of the Central Sudan', p. 396.
90. Cf. Lovejoy and Baier, 'The desert-side economy', p. 558.
91. R. A. Austen, African economic history: internal development and external dependency, London: James Currey, 1987, p. 42.
92. Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau, 'Long-distance trade and economic development in Europe and Black Africa (mid-fifteenth century to nineteenth century)', African Economic History, 29, 2001, p. 170 fn.