Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T07:37:32.076Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Decline or Survival? Iron Production in West Africa from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

L. M. Pole
L. M. Pole
Affiliation:
Saffron Walden Museum
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the sixteenth century most iron used in west Africa was produced within the region. Extra demand may have been met from the newly established European factors on the coast. By the end of the nineteenth century, in contrast, it was the residue in demand that was satisfied from local sources, the main bulk of iron being imported via the coast and transported inland. For the larger part of this 400-year period imported iron was cheaper than locally-produced iron. What was remarkable, then, was not that iron smelting eventually died out, but that it survived for so long and could be studied in detail in the second half of the twentieth century.

It is argued that, although the decline can be related to production constraints, such as the availability of charcoal, influences originating from the rest of the community can be seen to have prolonged the survival of local iron. The organization of labour of both the iron-smelting and blacksmithing processes, together with the way in which iron was marketed, are central to the analysis. In addition, consumption factors are of the utmost importance. Apart from the prejudice against innovation, the fact that imported iron was plainly not as suitable as local iron for the purposes to which it was put, weakened its impact. Also the ritual attitude to local iron has to be taken into consideration. The present universality of non-local sources has resulted in a change in the regard paid to the metal, but it is argued that the position of the smith is unlikely to alter significantly, since it is more related to his crucial role as supplier of tools for other essential activities such as farming, than to the production of iron itself.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 23 , Issue 4 , October 1982 , pp. 503 - 513
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Goucher, C. L., ‘Iron is iron 'til it is rust’, J. Afr. Hist. XXII (1981), 179–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 This field-work was carried out while I was Assistant Keeper at the National Museum of Ghana, Accra. Quantification was made more difficult by the fact that the activities they related to had not been regularly performed for 25 years. Every effort was made by the smiths to repeat exactly what they used to do, but some variation was inevitable. This has been allowed for in the figures.

3 Pole, L. M., ‘Iron-smelting in Northern Ghana’, Nat. Mus. Ghana, Occasional Paper, VIGoogle Scholar; Pole, L. M., ‘Iron-smelting procedures in Upper Region of Ghana’, J. Hist. Metallurgy, VIII (1974), 21–31Google Scholar; Pole, L. M., ‘Account of an iron-smelting operation at Lawra, Upper Region’, Ghana J. of Science, XIV (1974), 127–36.Google Scholar

4 Pole, L. M., ‘Iron-working in the Togo Hills; from technology to oral tradition’ (forthcoming).Google Scholar

5 Hupfeld, F., ‘Die Eisenindustrie in Togo’, Mitt, von Forschungsreisenden und Gelehrten aus den Deutschen Schutzgebieten, xii (1899), 175–94.Google Scholar

6 Nadel, S. F., A Black Byzantium (London, 1942), 259–69.Google Scholar

7 Gardi, R., African Crafts and Craftsmen (New York, 1969), 15–23Google Scholar; Sassoon, H., ‘Iron-smelting in the Hill Village of Sukur, North-Eastern Nigeria’, Man lxiv, no. ccxv (1964)Google Scholar; Vaughan, J. H., ‘Nkyagu as artists in Marghi society’ in d'Azevedo, W. (ed.), The Traditional Artist in African Societies (Bloomington, Indiana, 1973).Google Scholar

8 Nadel, , Black Byzantium, 263.Google Scholar

9 Sassoon, , ‘Iron-smelting’, 176.Google Scholar

10 Vaughan, , ‘Nkyagu’, 175.Google Scholar

11 Williams, D., Icon and Image (London, 1974), 72.Google Scholar

12 Sassoon, , ‘Iron-smelting’, 174.Google Scholar

13 Fagg, W., ‘Iron-working with a stone hammer among Tula of Northern Nigeria’, Man lii, no. lxxvi (1952).Google Scholar

14 Bascom, W., ‘A Yoruba master carver: Duga of Meko’ in d'Azevedo, , The Traditional Artist, 78, fn. 5.Google Scholar

15 van der Merwe, N., ‘Production of high carbon steel in the African Iron Age: the Direct Steel Process’, Proc. 8th PanAjrican Cong, of Prehistoric and Quaternary Studies (1977).Google Scholar

16 Pole, ‘Iron-working in the Togo Hills’.

17 See for instance, Nadel, , Black Byzantium, 264Google Scholar; Bellamy, C. V., ‘A West African Smelting House’, J. Iron & Steel Inst, lxvi (1904), 117Google Scholar; Cornevin, R., Les Bassari du Nord-Togo (Paris, 1962), 90Google Scholar; White, S. L., ‘Iron Production and Iron Trade in Northern and Central Liberia: History of a Major Indigenous Technology’, 6th Annual Liberian Studies Conf. Paper (1974), 10.Google Scholar

18 For a survey of the evidence see Sundström, L., The Exchange Economy of Pre-Colonial Tropical Africa (1974), 206–7.Google Scholar

19 White, , ‘Iron Production’, 10.Google Scholar

20 Labouret, H., Les Tribus du Rameau Lobi (Paris, 1931), 71.Google Scholar

21 Hupfeld, , ‘Die Eisenindustrie’, 181.Google Scholar

22 Cornevin, , Les Bassari, 89Google Scholar, quoting figures from Klose, H., ‘Das Bassarivolk’, Globus XXXIII (1903).Google Scholar

23 Frobenius, L., Und Afrika sprach unter den unstraflichen Aethiopien (Berlin, 1912) 111, 441, 457.Google Scholar

24 Sundström, , Exchange Economy, 206Google Scholar, quoting various sources.

25 Westermann, D., Die Kpelle (Gottingen, 1921), 38.Google Scholar

26 Bellamy, , ‘West African Smelting House’, 118.Google Scholar

27 Nadel, , Black Byzantium, 264.Google Scholar

28 Vaughan, , ‘Nkyagu’, 176.Google Scholar

29 Sassoon, , ‘Iron-smelting’, 178.Google Scholar

30 Quoted in Cornevin, , Les Bassari, 90.Google Scholar

31 Rodney, W., History of the Upper Guinea Coast (Oxford, 1970), 196Google Scholar, quoting from de Andrade.

32 Bowdich, T. E., Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee (London, 1819), 331.Google Scholar

33 Davies, K. G., The Royal Africa Company (London, 1957), 171, 235Google Scholar; Rodney, , History, 196Google Scholar; van Laun, J., ‘17th century ironmaking in south west Herefordshire’, J. Hist. Metall. Soc. xiii (1979), 58.Google Scholar

34 Barraclough, K. C., ‘An eighteenth century steelmaking enterprise: the Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire, 1759–1772’, Bull. Hist. Metall. Group, vi, 25–9.Google Scholar

36 Newbury, C. W., ‘Prices and Profitability in early nineteenth century West African trade’, in Meillassoux, C. (ed.), The Development of Indigenous Trade and Markets in West Africa (Oxford, 1971), 94.Google Scholar

36 Play, F. le, ‘A Report on the Manufacture of Steel in Yorkshire and a Comparison with the Principal Groups of Steelworks in Europe’, J. Hist. Metall. Soc. viii (1974), 43.Google Scholar

37 Bellamy, , ‘West African Smelting House’, 118.Google Scholar

38 Williams, Icon and Image, ch. 12.

39 Vaughan, , ‘Nkyagu’, 163.Google Scholar

40 Smith, A., ‘The early States of the Central Sudan’, in Ajayi, J. & Crowder, M., History of West Africa, I, 186, fn.Google Scholar

41 Meek, C. K., Northern Tribes of Nigeria (London, 1925), 11, 122.Google Scholar

42 Jeffreys, M. D. W., ‘Some notes on Kwaja smiths of Bamenda’, Man lxii, no. ccxxxvi (1962).Google Scholar

43 Information relating to iron objects in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge.

44 Vaughan, , ‘Nkyagu’, 167.Google Scholar

45 Nadel, , Black Byzantium, 259.Google Scholar

46 Griaule, M., Conversations with Ogotemmeli (Oxford, 1965), 42–6, 84–8.Google Scholar

47 Goody, J., The Social Organisation of the LoWiili (Oxford, 1967), 91.Google Scholar

48 Finnegan, R. H., Survey of the Limba People of northern Sierra Leone (London, 1965), 97–8.Google Scholar

49 Griaule, , Conversations, 43.Google Scholar

50 Pole, , ‘Iron smelting in northern Ghana’, 21, 26–8.Google Scholar

51 See for instance Bohannan, P., African Outline (London, 1966), 50.Google Scholar

52 But Hopkins, A., Economic History of West Africa (London, 1973), 246Google Scholar, refers to the continuity of production and trade over long distances throughout the period of colonial rule.