Abstract
In the final quarter of the eighteenth century the movement for the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade gathered force in Britain, the premier European slaving nation, and culminated in a ban from 1807. The British then pressured other nations to sign anti-slave trade treaties. In 1833 slavery in the British plantation colonies was entirely abolished to be followed in time by the French, Scandinavian and Dutch colonies, the South American republics, the United States (in the course of its Civil War), Spanish Cuba and finally, in 1888, the empire of Brazil.
Even the merchants themselves, fin ding that the quantity of goods thus sent for sale into the interior had a sensible influence in curtailing their own store trade, by preventing in great measure the resort of the Ashantees to the coast, were obliged to yield to the current and to carry on their business principally by means of agents employed in the same manner …
All was now cheerful bustle and activity. There was not a nook or corner of the land where some enterprizing trade had not led him. Every village had its festoons of Manchester cottons and China silks, hung up upon the walls of the houses or round the trees in the marketplace, to attract the attention and excite the cupidity of the villagers.
Brodie Cruickshank, Eighteen Years on the Gold Coast of Africa (Hurst and Blackett, 1853), II, pp. 32–3.
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A general overview of the issues discussed in this chapter can be found in Martin Klein, ‘Slavery, the Slave Trade and Legitimate Commerce in Late Nineteenth-Century Africa’, Etudes d’histoire africaine, II (1971). On the abolition of slavery and the slave trade the reader can still profit by consulting Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Capricorn, 1944), but empiricist critiques require consideration, notably
Roger Anstey, The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, 1760–1810 (Humanities Press, 1975)
and Seymour Drescher, Econocide (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977).
Nineteenth-century West Africa is covered by numerous economic historians but, as with other areas, few works are limited exclusively to this period of history. One with its strongest pages on the nineteenth century is A.G. Hopkins, Economic History of West Africa (Longman, 1973). Of note are the relevant articles in
Claude Meillassoux, ed., The Development of Indigenous Trade and Markets in West Africa (Oxford University Press, 1971) and the economic studies of Colin Newbury such as Trade and Authority in West Africa from 1850 to 1880’ in
Lewis Gam and Peter Duignan, eds, Colonialism in Africa, I (Cambridge University Press, 1969).
For this epoch in Senegambia, the reader should consult the relevant pages in Barry and Curtin’s studies cited earlier. Aspects of the impact of ground-nut exports are discussed in Ken Swindell, ‘Serawoolies, Tillibunkas and Strange Farmers: Development of Migrant Groundnut Farming along the Gambia River, 1848–95’, JAH, XXI (1980) and George Brooks, ‘Peanuts and Colonialism: Consequences of the Commercialization of Peanuts in West Africa, 1830–70’, JAH, XVI (1975).
The history of Sierra Leone is still short on analysis. Creole culture is discussed in Leo Spitzer, The Creoles of Sierra Leone (University of Wisconsin Press, 1974). For the Gold Coast in this period
see Edward Reynolds, Trade and Economic Change on the Gold Coast, 1807–74 (Longman, 1974). Freda Wolfson, ‘A Price Agreement on the Gold Coast — Krobo Oil Boycott, 1858–65’, Economic History Review, VI (1953) is worth a look.
The Saros in Yoruba-speaking lands are the subject of Jean Herskovits Kopytoff, A Preface to Modern Nigeria (University of Wisconsin Press, 1965). The strengths and limitations of their position in Abeokuta, the greatest Saro centre inland from the coast is central to Agneta Pallinder-Law, ‘Aborted Modernization in West Africa? The Case of Abeokuta’, JAH, XV (1974).
On other political and economic aspects of nineteenth-century Yorubaland, the more significant titles would include: S.A. Akintoye, Revolution and Power Politics in Yorubaland, 1840–83 (Longman, 1971); Bolanle Awe, ‘Militarism and Economic Development in Nineteenth-Century Yoruba Country — the Ibadan Example’, JAH, XIV (1973);
Babatunde Agiri, ‘Slavery in Yoruba Society in the Nineteenth Century’ in Paul Lovejoy, ed., The Ideology of Slavery in Africa (Sage, 1981);
E.A. Ayandele, The Missionary Impact on Modern Nigeria, 1842–1914 (Longman, 1966) and
T.G.O. Gbadamosi, The Growth of Islam among the Yoruba, 1841 – 1908 (Longman, 1978).
The Niger delta region is examined in K.O. Dike, Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta, 1830–85 (Clarendon Press, 1956);
G.I. Jones, Trading States of the CHI Rivers (Oxford University Press, 1963);
Obaro Ikime, Merchant Prince of the Niger Delta (Heinemann, 1968). More recent and analytically the most valuable are
A J.H. Latham, Old Calabar 1600–1891 (Clarendon Press, 1973)
and David Northrup, Trade Without Rulers (Clarendon Press, 1978).
A number of family and individual studies of the coastal compradore class exist. They include Raymond Dumett, ‘John Sarbah the Elder and African Merchant Entrepreneur-ship in the Gold Coast in the Late Nineteenth Century’, JAH, XIV (1973); A.G. Hopkins, ‘Richard Beale Blaize, 1854–1904’, Tarikh, I (1966); David Ross, ‘The Career of Domingo Martinez in the Bight of Benin, 1853–64’, JAH, VI (1965); and Margaret Priestley, West African Tirade and Coast Society (Oxford University Press, 1969). A class perspective is suggested in Edward Reynolds, ‘Rise and Fall of an African Merchant Class on the Gold Coast, 1830–70’, CEA, X (1974) and developed in Susan Kaplow, The Mudfish and the Crocodile’, Science and Society, XLI (1977).
The jihad movements, covered in the last chapter’s bibliography, dominate the historiography of the savanna region of West Africa for the nineteenth century. This rubric does not, however, really fit the empire-builder Samori, whose career is studied in three volumes by Yves Person, Samori, une révolution dyoula (Institut Fondamentale de l’Afrique Noire, 1968–75). A summary of French colonial intentions during this era exclusive of Senegal is contained in Bernard Schnapper, La politique et le commerce français dans le golfe de Guinée de 1838 à 1871 (Mouton, 1961).
For East and Central Africa, this chapter relies on books covered in other chapter bibliographies, including work by Iliffe, Andrew Roberts, D.A. Low, W.G. Clarence-Smith and J. Forbes Munro. The nineteenth century looms large in Richard Grey and David Birmingham, eds, Pre-colonial African Trade, already cited. There is an excellent study of the slave plantations on the Kenya coast and the island of Zanzibar by Frederick Cooper, Plantation Slavery in Kenya and Zanzibar (Yale University Press, 1977) and an interesting piece on the dislocations in East African women’s lives: Marcia Wright, Women in Peril’, African Social Research, XX (1975). On the Lake Nyasa region, see
Harry Langworthy, ‘Central Malawi in the Nineteenth Century’ in R. J. Macdonald, From Nyasaland to Malawi (EAPH, 1975)
and Leroy Vail, ‘Suggestions Towards a Reinterpreted Tumbuka History’ in B. Pachai, The Early History of Malawi (Longman, 1972). Tippu Tip’s memoirs are available in Swahili and English: Maisha ya Hamed bin Muhammad yaani Tippu Tip (reprint of Edward Arnold edn, 1966, Nairobi). On the Zambesi valley in the nineteenth century, sources cited elsewhere — Newitt, Isaacman, Vail and White, are the most helpful. For Angola there is in particular Clarence-Smith’s Slaves, Peasants and Capitalists in Southern Angola (Cambridge University Press, 1979) and David Birmingham, ‘The Coffee Barons of Cazengo’, JAH, XIX (1978).
Davenport’s general history is a passable introduction to nineteenth-century South African events and provides a useful bibliography. Among older works still of interest are C.W. de Kiewiet, The Imperial Factor in South Africa (Cambridge University Press, 1937)
and J.S. Galbraith, Reluctant Empire (University of California Press, 1963) are prominent. More recent is
David Welsh, The Roots of Segregation: Native Policy in Colonial Natal, 1845–1910 (Oxford University Press, 1970). There is an important revisionist interpretation of the imperial factor: Anthony Atmore and Shula Marks, ‘The Imperial Factor in South Africa in the Nineteenth Century: Towards a Reassessment’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, III (1974). The most influential and exciting research of the 1970s is collected in a book edited by the same pair, Economy and Society in Pre-industrial South Africa (Longman, 1980). Two of the contributors have produced relevant books, Jeff Guy writing on the Zulu, cited elsewhere and
Colin Bundy, Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry (University of California Press, 1979). Of a number of articles on the emergent African entrepreneurial class, Norman Etherington, ‘Mission Station Melting Pots as a Factor in the Rise of South African Black Nationalism’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, IX (1976) is an interesting example.
Another region with a fairly well-developed historiography for the nineteenth century is the Ethiopian plateau; it is, however, largely political and dynastic in character. This is the case with Sven Rubenson, The Survival of Ethiopian Independence (Heinemann, 1976);
R.H. Kofi Darkwah, Shewa, Menilek and the Ethiopian Empire, 1813–89 (Heine-mann, 1975)
and Zewde Gebre-Selassie, Yohannis IV of Ethiopia (Clarendon Press, 1975). Social and economic considerations have some purchase on
Mordechai Abir, Ethiopia: the Era of the Princes (Longman, 1968); Donald Crummey, ‘Initiatives and Objectives in Ethio-European Relations, 1827–62’, JAH, XV (1974) and Tewodros as Reformer and Modernizer’, J AH, X (1969). The standard work on Egyptian rule along the middle Nile is
Richard Hill, Egypt in the Sudan, 1820–81 (Oxford University Press, 1959).
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© 1984 Bill Freund
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Freund, B. (1984). The Era of Legitimate Commerce, 1800–1870. In: The Making of Contemporary Africa. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17332-7_4
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