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The lure of Bambuk gold

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Philip D. Curtin
Philip D. Curtin
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
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Extract

Bambuhu (called Bambouk by the French) was a principal source of the gold that made West Africa famous in the Muslim world north of the Sahara from the tenth century onward—and later among the Europeans. Much of the European activity on the Senegambian coast between the end of the fifteenth and the end of the nineteenth century was attracted by the promise of wealth from the ‘gold mines’ of Bambuhu. (Actually the gold came from alluvial ores near the surface rather than deep, hard-rock mines.) Yet today the Republic of Mali, which includes Bambuhu, neither mines nor exports significant quantities of gold. The gold deposits still exist; but the gold content of the ore is not uniform, and the quantity of ore at one place is not great enough to justify a large investment in extraction plants. The evidence available suggests that gold could formerly be mined by hand only because the opportunity cost of labour was formerly very low in the second half of the dry season. With the increased labour mobility of recent decades, the opportunity cost of mine labour in Bambuhu has risen to the point of making gold mining unprofitable.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , October 1973 , pp. 623 - 631
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

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References

1 The problem of terminology is very confused because of a tendency to use the name of a sub-region for the whole. In Bundu today, for example, the whole of Bambuhu is sometimes called Nambia, though Nambia is also used more narrowly for the name of a particular kingdom within the greater Bambuhu. French terminology became quite confused for a time in the 1880s when ‘Bambuk’ was used for the larger region, yet an individual kingdom was called ‘Bambuhu’ even though no such kingdom was present in the earlier and quite authoritative surveys of Flize in 1857 and Lamartiny in the 1870s. See Flize, L., ‘Le Bambouk’, Moniteur du Sénégal et dépendances, nos. 51–2, 24 03. 1857, pt. 2, p. 3;Google ScholarLamartiny, J. J., Etudes africaines, Le Bondu et le Bambouc (Paris, 1884), 58;Google ScholarDrCohn, , ‘Le Bambouk (Soudan occidental)’, Bulletin de la société languedocienne de géographie, viii, 640–5 (1885);Google Scholar Vallière, ‘Notice sur le Bambuk’, Archives nationales du Sénégal (afterward cited as ANS), I G 85. The orthography used here for Malinke and other Senegalese languages, including place names, is as nearly as possible the official Senegalese orthography adopted in 1971. See Journal officiel de la république du Sénégal, CXVI, 623–8 (28 06 1971).Google Scholar This essay was originally presented orally at the annual meeting of the African Studies Association, Philadelphia, Pa., 9 Nov. 1972.

2 Delcourt, A., La France et les établissements français au Sénégal entre 1713 et 1763 (Dakar, 1952), 165–6;Google ScholarMachat, J., Documents sur les établissements français et l'Afrique occidentale au xviiie siècle (Paris, 1906), esp. 22–23;Google ScholarLabat, J. B., Nouvelle rélation de l'Afrique occidentale, 4 vols. (Paris, 1728), esp. II, 3–4, IV, 18–21;Google ScholarLa Brüe, ‘Mémoire stir le Sénégal’, 7 Apr. 1723, enclosed with despatch of 17 Oct. 1723, Archives nationales de la France (hereafter ANF), col., C6 10; Levens, report of 10 July 1725, Bibliothèque nationale, Paris (hereafter BN), fonda français, nouvelles acquisitions, no. 9339, fol. 141;Google ScholarCharpentier, Memorandum of 1 Apr. 1725, ANF, col., C6 9;Google ScholarDevaulx to Compagnie des Indes, 22 Mar. 1733, ANF, col., C6 10.Google Scholar

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5 Magalhāes-Godinho, V., L'économie de l'empire portugais aux xve et xvie siècles (Paris, 1969), 216;Google ScholarLabouret, Canus, J., Fournier, J., and Bonmarchand, G., Le commerce extraeuropéene jusqu'aux temps modernes (Paris, 1953), 57.Google Scholar These estimates are not annual averages, but contemporaneous estimates which normally give the figure for the best recent year. They therefore approximately represent the maximum capacity, while the actual performance over a period of years would be somewhat lower.

6 Magalhães-Godinho, Empire portugais, 216.Google Scholar

7 For recent gold mining in Bambuhu and region see Meniaud, Haut-Sénégal-Niger, ii, 171–5;Google ScholarLaserre, G., ‘L'or du Soudan’, Cahiers d'outre-mer, i, 368–74 (1948);CrossRefGoogle ScholarBelan, A., ‘L'or dans le cercie de Kédougou’, Notes africaines, no. 31, 9–12 (1946).Google Scholar

8 For traditional gold-mining techniques, see especially Ballieu, ‘Rapport sur Banbuk’, pt. 3, ANS, I G 212; Belan, ‘L'or;’ Hubert, H., ‘Coutumes indig`nes en matière d'exploitation des gîtes aurifères en Afrique occidentale’, Annuaire et mémoires du comité d'études historiques et scientifiques de l'.A.O.F.’, II, 226–43 (1917);Google ScholarMeniaud, , Haut-Sénégal-Niger, II, 175–9.Google Scholar

9 Meniaud, , Haut-Sénégal-Niger, II, 181.Google Scholar

10 For early Bambuhu political institutions, see esp. Boucard, C., ‘Relation de Bambouc’, Archives de la Marine, Paris, 50/2, fols. 6–7.Google Scholar

11 Hubert, ‘Couturnes indig`nes’, 237–8;Google ScholarMeniaud, Haut-Sénégal-Niger, II, 175–9.Google Scholar

12 Barnes, John, Evidence to House of Commons Committee on the Slave Trade, Accounts and Papers, XXV (635), 26 03 1789, 24;Google Scholar Captain Heatley, evidence in Great Britain, Privy Council, Report of the Lords of the Committee of Council for … Trade and Plantations … Concerning the Present State of Trade to Africa, and Particularly the Trade Slaves … (London, 1789), pt. I;Google ScholarDe Capellis, ‘Mémoire sur un établissement dana la rivière de Gambie’, May 1779, ANF, col., C6 17;Google Scholar‘Details historiques … de la côte d'Afrique’, ANF, col. C6 29, fols. 93–4. In the mid-seventeenth century as well, gold was carried down from Bambuhu to the coast, but Portuguese traders who dominated the trade at that time bought very little of it for sale in Europe.Google Scholar (Peres, D. (ed.), Duas descriçoes seiscentistas da Guiné de Francisco de Lemos Coelho (Lisbon, 1953), 131.Google Scholar

13 Mark-up as of 1910 as indicated by Meniaud, , Haut-Sénégal-Niger, i, 182. In the mid-eighteenth century gold was worth approximately £141 per kg in Europe, but it was bought in Gajaaga with a bundle of trade goods whose original English cost had been £40 to £50. If the mark-up between Bambuhu and Gajaaga was about 50 per cent (as it was in the late nineteenth century), the price to the producers in Bambuhu could have been no more than goods with a prime-cost-value of about £30, and it was probably somewhat less.Google Scholar