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INTENSIVE SLAVE RAIDING IN THE COLONIAL INTERSTICE: HAMMAN YAJI AND THE MANDARA MOUNTAINS (NORTH CAMEROON AND NORTH-EASTERN NIGERIA)*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2013

WALTER E. A. VAN BEEK
WALTER E. A. VAN BEEK*
Affiliation:
African Studies Centre, Leiden & Tilburg University
*
The author may be contacted at: [email protected]
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Abstract

A rare document, the diary of a slave raider, offers a unique view into the sociopolitical situation at the turn of the nineteenth century in the colonial backwater of North Cameroon. The Fulbe chief in question, Hamman Yaji, not only kept a diary, but was by far the most notorious slave raider of the Mandara Mountains. This article supplements the data from his diary with oral histories and archival sources to follow the dynamics of the intense slave raiding he engaged in. This frenzy of slaving occurred in a ‘colonial interstice’ characterized by competition between three colonial powers – the British, the Germans and the French, resilient governing structures in a region poorly controlled by colonial powers, and the unclear boundaries of the Mandara Mountains. The dynamics of military technology and the economics of this ‘uncommon market’ in slaves form additional factors in this episode in the history of slavery in Africa. These factors account for the general situation of insecurity due to slave raiding in the area, to which Hamman Yaji was an exceptionally atrocious contributor. In the end a religious movement, Mahdism, stimulated the consolidation of colonial power, ending Yaji's regime, which in all its brutality provides surprising insight in the early colonial situation in this border region between Nigeria and Cameroon.

Keywords

CameroonNigeriacolonial intermediariesslave tradesourcesviolence
Type
Politics of Hunting and Raiding
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 53 , Issue 3 , November 2012 , pp. 301 - 323
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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Footnotes

*

I thank my colleagues Jan-Bart Gewald (African Studies Center) and Jan Jacobs (Tilburg University) for their valuable and constructive criticism on an earlier version of this article, as well as the anonymous reviewers for the Journal of African History. Research on the Kapsiki/Higi started in 1972–3, and proceeded with return visits every three to five years, the last one in January 2012. Grants from NWO/WOTRO, Utrecht University, the African Studies Center (Leiden), and Tilburg University are gratefully acknowledged.

References

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5 As collected by Judy Sterner, Jeanne-Francoise Vincent, José van Santen, Eldridge Mohammadou, and Godula Kosack. Many examples stem from my own fieldwork among the Kapsiki/Higi who straddle the border between the two countries.

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8 In fact only the translation is known, as the original manuscript has been lost. The translation is by L. N. Reed, made immediately after Hamman Yaji's arrest in 1927; see L. N. Reed, ‘Introduction’, in Vaughan and Kirk-Greene, Diary, 46–8.

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16 Oberleutnant Dominik, a central personage in the early history, wrote down his own recollections, independent of Yaji: see Dominik, H., Von Atlantik zum Tchadsee: Kriegs und Forschungsfahrten in Kamerun (Berlin, 1905)Google Scholar.

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20 German Colonial Archives, Berlin, R 175F FA 1, Inbesitznahme des Schutzgebietes, 120/199, Marsch Hauptmann Zimmerman Yola – Garua, May 1906. Translation from the German by the author.

21 Kanouri Archives, SNP 10/2 95p/1914, cited also in Vaughan and Kirk-Greene, Diary, 14.

22 The term kirdi means ‘pagan’ in Wandala, and in the past has been widely used throughout the region for all non-Moslem groups. Presently it is considered a deprecatory term, usually replaced by ‘montagnard’.

23 Vaughan and Kirk-Greene, Diary, 13.

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28 The ‘witch’ was probably someone caught in performing beshèngu, harmful magic. Kamale is a Higi village. See van Beek, W. E. A., The Dancing Dead: Ritual and Religion among the Kapsiki/Higi of North Cameroon and Northeastern Nigeria (New York, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Lamido Haman Belo, who ruled till 1922, was also well remembered in Mogode.

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32 Abubakar, S., The Lamibe of Fombina: A Political History of Adamawa, 1809–1901 (Oxford, 1977), 131–4Google Scholar; Lovejoy, Slavery, 296–302.

33 Lovejoy, Slavery, 323–6.

34 Earlier, the Germans had been alarmed by these contacts: German Colonial Archives, Berlin, R 175F FA 1, Organisation und Aufgabe der Verwaltung, 75/267-324, ‘Rabeh und sein Reich’, Bericht von Baron von Oppenheimer, ca 1902. See also P. E. Lovejoy and Hogendorn, J. S., ‘Revolutionary Mahdism and resistance to colonial rule in the Sokoto Caliphate, 1905–6’, Journal of African History, 31:2 (1990), 217–44Google Scholar.

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36 However, the colonial officiers only learned about this particular connection when they read the diary.

37 The Kapsiki routinely equate any subterranean chamber with a tomb.

38 Kirk-Greene, ‘View’, 151.

39 Ibid. 32–3.

40 Ibid. 34–5, and 41.

41 van Santen, They Leave, 84.

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48 Denham, Narrative of Travels, 313. This surely is an inflated figure: see Vincent, ‘Sur les traces’, 575–606; and Barkindo, Sultanate, 150. MacEachern rightly remarks that the large Arab-Kanuri expedition with which Denham was travelling must have intensified reactions from both the Mandara and the mountain peoples concerned: MacEachern, ‘Selling’, 254.

49 MacEachern, ‘Selling’, 260.

50 Barth, H. M., Reisen und Entdeckungen in Nord- und Central-Afrika in den Jahren 1849 bis 1855: Tagebuch seiner im Auftrag der Brittischen Regierung unternommenen Reise, II, (Gotha, 1857), 316–424Google Scholar.

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53 For an overview of the defensive processes generated by the slave threat, see Klein, M. A., ‘The slave trade and decentralized societies’, Journal of African History, 42:1 (2001), 49–65Google Scholar; and Bah, T. M., ‘Slave-raiding and defensive systems south of Lake Chad from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century’, in Diouf, S. A. (ed.), Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies (Oxford, 2003), 15–30Google Scholar. For a discussion on defensive structures, see David, N. et al. , Performance and Agency: The DGB Sites of Northern Cameroon (Oxford, 2008)Google Scholar.

54 van Beek, W. E. A. and Avontuur, S., ‘The making of an environment: ecological history of the Kapsiki/Higi of North Cameroon and North-Eastern Nigeria’, in Gausset, Q., Whyte, M. A., and Birch-Thomsen, T. (eds.), Beyond Territory and Scarcity: Exploring Conflicts over Natural Resource Management (Uppsala, 2005), 70–89Google Scholar.

55 Wolf called these fringe areas ‘target zones of slave-raiders’, or ‘shatter zones’. As an example, he described Central Nigeria, where the slave-raids from the south overlapped with those of the northern emirates. Wolf, E. R., Europe and the People without History (Berkeley, CA, 1982), 230Google Scholar.

56 Denham lost his horse, his clothes, and almost his life at the end of the siege, and quite miraculously managed to escape and rejoin his Arab war party: see Denham, Narrative of Travels, 341; Vincent, ‘Sur les traces’, 601.

57 Barth mentions the Mousgoum (‘Musgun’), living in an open and accessible countryside: ‘All these people hunting them down from every quarter, and carrying away yearly hundreds, nay thousands of slaves, must in the course of time exterminate this unfortunate tribe’ (cited in Barkindo, Sultanate, 50). However, the Mousgoum are still there; the impressions of the first Europeans must have been coloured by their own participation in the slave raids. See Schilder, K., Quest for Self-Esteem: State, Islam, and Moundang Ethnicity in Northern Cameroon (Leiden, 1994)Google Scholar.

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59 van Beek, Kapsiki, 45.

60 Ibid, 26.

61 See for the Marghi, the Western neighbours of the Kapsiki/Higi, see Vaughan, J. H., ‘Mafakur: a limbic institution of the Marghi (Nigeria)’, in Kopytoff, I. and Miers, S. (eds.), Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives (Madison, WI, 1977), 85–104Google Scholar. For the Mofu on their Eastern border, see J.-F. Vincent, Princes.

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65 Lord Lugard, the first Commissioner for the Northern Nigeria Protectorate had been instrumental in this: see Lovejoy, Slavery, 293–4; and Goodridge, R. A., ‘The issue of slavery in the establishment of British rule in Northern Cameroun to 1927’, African Economic History, 22 (1994), 19–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The German and French policies were far more ‘laissez faire’ based upon the vague hope that slavery would die a natural death, mixed with admiration for the Fulbe emirates: see Eckert, A. E., ‘Slavery in colonial Cameroon, 1880s to 1930s’, in Miers, S. and Klein, M. A. (eds.), Slavery and Colonial Rule in Africa (London, 1999), 133–48Google Scholar; and Weiss, H., The Illegal Trade in Slaves from German Northern Cameroon to British Northern Nigeria, Parts 1 and 2 (Helsinki, 1998)Google Scholar.

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70 Yearwood, P. J., ‘“In a casual way with a blue pencil”: British policy and the partition of Kamerun, 1914–1919’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 27:2 (1993), 234–5Google Scholar. The actual dispute over the border did not cease, though, and recently the International Court of Justice made the – hopefully – last in a long series of rulings on the issue: UN Press Release, ‘Nigeria, Cameroon sign agreement ending decades-old border dispute’, AFR/1397, 12 June 2006. For an overview, see Barkindo, B. M., ‘The Mandara astride the Nigeria-Cameroun boundary’, in Asiwaju, A. I. (ed.), Partitioned Africans: Ethnic Relations across Africa's International Boundaries 1884–1984 (London, 1985), 29–49Google Scholar. Anyway, the Fulani are well used to being in several countries and to making the most out of this situation: Franz, C., ‘Fulbe continuity and change under five flags atop West Africa: territoriality, ethnicity, stratification, and national integration’, in Galaty, J. G. and Salzman, P. C. (eds.), Change and Development in Nomadic and Pastoral Societies (Leiden, 1981), 89–114Google Scholar.

71 German Colonial Archives, Berlin, R 175F FA 1, Inbesitznahme des Schutzgebietes, 118/27, Angeblicher Grenzübergriff der Garoua-Expedition.- Untersuchungen wegen eins britische Protest, 4 Apr. 1902; RFA 175F FA 1/211-220, Britischen Anklage gegen Oberleutnant Dominik, 1902-1903; RFA 175F FA 1/73/189-191, Bericht von Gouverneur von Puttkamer an das Auswärtige Amt, 10 Jan. 1910; RFA 175F FA/1/74/41, Vorziehige Rückkehr des Oberleutnants Dominik nach Deutschland. – Bericht von Gouverneur von Puttkamer, 21 Mar. 1903.

72 German Colonial Archives, Berlin, R 175F FA 1, Inbesitznahme des Schutzgebietes, 73/100-104, Schreiben des militärischen Residenten von Brittisch-Bornou, C. Morragh (Úbersetzungen), 19–7 Apr. 1902.

73 German Colonial Archives, Berlin, R 175F FA 1, Inbesitznahme des Schutzgebietes, 73/215-217, Schreiben von Gouverneur von Putkamer, June 1902. This picture of Dominik is definitely on the rosy side, given his fierce reputation in the area.

74 German Colonial Archives, Berlin, R 175F FA 1, Inbesitznahme des Schutzgebietes, 73/55, Letter from Lord Lugard to Governor von Putkamer, May 1903; see also Wedi-Pasha, B., Die deutsche Mittelafrika-Politik 1871–1914 (Pfaffenweiler, Germany, 1992)Google Scholar.

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77 The Germans were also busy with another project, hunting for gold. Rumours had it that the Mandara mountains contained considerable gold reserves, and a real geological expedition was mounted to find the truth, in 1909: no gold! Barkindo, Sultanate, 184, n. 69.

78 Lestringant, Le Pays de Guider au Cameroun : Essai d'histoire régionale (Paris, 1964), 162Google Scholar. Translation from the French by the author.

79 Weiss, Illegal Trade; German Colonial Archives, Berlin, R 175F FA 1, Inbesitznahme des Schutzgebietes, 75/210-218, Letter of Resident Westerby to Lieutenant Von Bülow, 2 Aug. 1902.

80 Kirk-Greene, Adamawa, 84.

81 Both Mandates, the British and the French, became the British and French Trust Territories under the UN in 1946. For the British part, a plebiscite was held in December 1959. The population of the British Cameroons chose to remain with British Cameroons. Cameroon got its independence in October 1960, and a second plebiscite had to be held to decide the question finally. The Northern territories, in which the Higi reside, chose to join Nigeria while the Southern territories (now the North-West and South-West privinces of Cameroon) chose Cameroon: see Anene, International Boundaries.

82 Similar instances are reported in other places in the mountains. Sterner was ‘embarrassed to find them thanking me for saving them from the Fulbe’. Sterner, Ways, 39.

83 See Thiermeyer, H., ‘Environmental and climatic history of Lake Chad during the Holocene’, in Krings, M. and Platte, E., Living with the Lake: Perspectives on History, Culture and Economy of Lake Chad (Köln, 2004), 47Google Scholar.

84 German Colonial Archives, Berlin, R 175F FA 1, Organisation und Aufgabe der Verwaltung, 120/202, Bericht Gouverneur von Puttkamer an das Auswärtige Amt, Oct. 1906.

85 Local horses were interbred with Arabian steeds for resistance against illnesses: see Webb, J. L. A. Jr., Desert Frontier: Ecological and Economic Change Along the Western Sahel, 1600–1850 (Madison, WI, 1995), 68–70Google Scholar.

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88 This return might have been a ransom for a Yaji soldier caught during a failed raid on 12 July, but this is conjecture. Another reason might be that Sena was claimed by the Lamido of Gawar as his fief and that Yaji honored that claim, but then he did raid Sena and Kamale (for which the same holds) extensively. Mohammadou Lamidats, 264.

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96 Vaughan and Kirk-Greene, Diary, 43.

97 I. Kopytoff and S. Miers, ‘Introduction’, in Kopytoff and Miers, Slavery in Africa, 56.

98 Lovejoy, Slavery, 153–205.

99 Yaji does not mention in his diary a few raids undertaken in September 1913. Two villages near Madagali complained to the German Hauptmann Schwarz, who then forced Yaji to return the captives but did not take any other measures against him. Maybe Yaji did not record this ‘catch’ as he had to give it back. This, however, was an exception, and those two villages must have had good contacts with the German overlords. See German Colonial Archives, Berlin, R 175F FA 1, Organisation und Aufgabe der Verwaltung, 95, Marschtagebuch Hauptmann Schwarz, 1913; and Weiss Illegal Trade, 2, and 27–8.

100 Lovejoy, Slavery, 81–116.

101 Hogendorn, J. S., ‘Slaves as money in the Sokoto Caliphate’, in Stiansen, E. and Guyer, J. I. (eds.), Credit, Currencies and Culture: African Financial Institutions in Historical Perspective (Stockholm, 1999), 56–71Google Scholar; Hogendorn, J. S. and Johnson, M., The Shell Money of the Slave Trade (Cambridge, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

102 van Beek, Kapsiki; van Beek, W. E. A. and Avontuur, S., ‘Dynamics of agriculture in the Mandara Mountains: the case of the Kapsiki/Higi of Northern Cameroon and North-eastern Nigeria’, in Baroin, C., Seidensticker-Brikay, G., and Tijani, K. (eds.), Man and the Lake: Proceedings of the 12th Mega Chad Conference, Maiduguri, 2nd–9th December 2003 (Maiduguri, Nigeria, 2005), 335–82Google Scholar.

103 German Colonial Archives, Berlin, R 1001/3334/183-208, Landes- und völkerkundliche Expedition von Günter Tessman nach Neu-Kamerun 1913–19.

104 Goodridge, ‘Issue of slavery’, 29.

105 Lovejoy, Slavery, 291–317.

106 And thanks to that same sophistication, we do have Yaji's diary, without which this story could not have been told.