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From Strangers to Minorities in West Africa*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

J. D. Hargreaves
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Extract

I am somewhat daunted by the honour of opening this conference; for what I have to offer is not the product of intensive scholarship but a broad and possibly contentious argument about the whole sub-continent of West Africa (roughly bounded by the Senegal river, Lake Chad and Mount Cameroon). My underlying hypotheses will be that many so-called minority problems in contemporary Africa derive from changes introduced by the creation of colonial states, rather than from some exotic African malady called ‘tribalism’ and that African experience over the last millennium may sometimes be more relevant to contemporary problems than the received wisdom of western political science. I have some fear that, to adapt a phrase of Sir Keith Hancock, these may prove no themes for scholars.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 31 , December 1981 , pp. 95 - 113
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1981

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References

1 Parliamentary Papers, 1957–8, Cmnd. 505. Nigeria: Report of the Commission appointed to enquire into the fears of Minorities and the means of allaying them, p. iii.

2 Ibid., p. 88.

3 E.g. ‘… guarantees… for… the fair treatment of the minority by the majority’ (Mrs. K. O'Shea to W. E. Gladstone, 5 Aug. 1886: Lyons, F. S. L., Charles Stewart Parnell (London, 1977), p. 292)Google ScholarPubMed.

4 For a general view of pre-colonial international relations, see Smith, R. S., Warfare and Diplomacy in Pre-Colonial West Africa (London, 1976)Google Scholar, chs. 1 and 2.

5 Wilks, I., Asante in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 267–9Google Scholar.

6 For other examples, see Peil, M., ‘The Expulsion of West African Aliens’, Journal of Modern African Studies, ix (1971), 205–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 See, for example, Skinner, E. P., ‘Strangers in West African Societies’, Africa, 33 (1963), 307–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fortes, M., ‘Strangers’, Studies in African Social Anthropology, ed. Fortes, M. and Patterson, S., (London, 1975), pp. 229–53Google Scholar; Strangers in African Societies, ed. Shack, W. A. and Skinner, E. P., (Berkeley, 1979)Google Scholar. For an early example of collaboration by historian and anthropologist, see Dorjahn, V. R. and Fyfe, C. H., ‘Landlord and Stranger; Change in Tenancy Relations in Sierra Leone’, Journal of African History, iii (1962), 391–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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12 Rattray, R. S., Ashanti Law and Constitution (London, 1929), pp. 33–46Google Scholar; Austen, R., in Miers, and Kopytoff, , Slavery in Africa, pp. 307–9Google Scholar; Amselle, , Les negotiants, pp. 31–2Google Scholar.

13 For a French translation of al-Bakri's text, see Cuocq, j. M., Recueil des sources arabes concernant I'Afrique occidentale du viiie au xvie siecle (Paris, 1975), p. 99Google Scholar.

14 Ibid., p. 77 (al-Muhallabi).

15 Ibid., pp. 299, 301, 311 (Ibn Battuta).

16 Curtin, P. D., Economic Change in Precolonial Africa: Senegambia in the Era of the Slave Trade (Madison, 1975)Google Scholar.

17 For a general view, see Adamu, Mahdi, The Hausa Factor in West African History (Zaria, 1978)Google Scholar.

18 Hill, Polly, ‘Landlords and Brokers: a West African Trading System’, Cahiers d'Etudes africaines, vi, 23 (1966), 350Google Scholar.

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20 For the example of Suluku of Biriwa Limba, threatened by the co-operation with Samori of'Mohammedan children born in their country’, see Sierra Leone Archives, Government Interpreter's Letter Book, Report by Momodu Wakka and Weeks, 2 Dec. 1886.

21 Curtin, , Economic Change, pp. 95–100Google Scholar.

22 Owen, Nicholas, Journal of a Slave-Dealer, ed. Martin, Eveline (London, 1930)Google Scholar.

23 Dorjahn, and Fyfe, , ‘Landlord and Stranger’, 397Google Scholar.

24 A. W. Short, ‘Continuity and Change in West African Foreign Relations: Problems of some Stranger Communities in Ghana in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Aberdeen, 1978, p. 29. Two other important studies of strangers in Asante are Schildkrout, Enid, People of the Zongo (Cambridge, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which concentrates on problems of ethnic identity, and Arhin, Kwame, West African Traders in Ghana in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London, 1979)Google Scholar, which is particularly valuable for economic organization.

25 Porter, A. T., Creoledom (London, 1962)Google Scholar; Peterson, J., Province of Freedom (London, 1969)Google Scholar. Both works draw heavily on Fyfe, C. H., A History of Sierra Leone (Oxford, 1962)Google Scholar.

26 Barbara, Harrell-Bond, E., Howard, A. M. and Skinner, D. E., Community Leadership and the Transformation of Freetown (1801–1976) (The Hague, 1978), pp. 31, 70–5Google Scholar; Brooks, G. E. Jr, The Kru Mariner in the Nineteenth Century (Newark, Delaware, 1972)Google Scholar.

27 Hargreaves, J. D., ‘The Evolution of the Native Affairs Department’, Sierra Leone Studies, n.s. 3 (1954), 168–84Google Scholar. These records have been well utilized in Harrell-Bond et al, Community Leadership, which forms the principal source for this paragraph.

28 Kopytoff, J. H., A Preface to Modern Nigeria: the Sierra Leonians in Yoruba, 1830–1800 (Madison, 1965)Google Scholar.

29 Adamu, , The Hausa Factor, pp. 113–16Google Scholar.

30 Diary of Fr. Borghero, April 1864, quoted in Todd, j. M., African Mission (London, 1962), pp. 82–3Google Scholar.

31 Jeng, A. A. O., ‘An Economic History of the Gambia Groundnut Industry, 1830–1924: the Evolution of an Export Economy’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham, 1978, PP. 37–40Google Scholar.

32 Klein, M., ‘Servitude among the Wolof and Sereer of Senegambia’, Slavery in Africa, ed. Miers, and Kopytoff, , p. 355Google Scholar.

33 Swindell, K., ‘Serawoollies, Tillibunkas and Strange Farmers: the Development of Migrant Groundnut Farming along the Gambia River, 1848–95’, Journal of African History, xxi (1980), 93–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 See Challenor, H. S., ‘Strangers as Colonial Intermediaries: the Dahomeyans in Francophone Africa’, Strangers in African Societies, ed. Shack, and Skinner, , pp. 67–83Google Scholar.

35 Short, , ‘Continuity and Change’, pp. 171–6Google Scholar.

36 Cohen, A., Custom and Politics in Urban Africa: A Study of Hausa Migrants in Yoruba Towns (London, 1969), pp. 103–19Google Scholar. In Ibadan the term ‘Zongo’ is kept for the cattle-market itself.

37 Peil, , ‘The Expulsion of West African Aliens’, 208Google Scholar.

38 Cohen, , Custom and Politics, pp. 115–17Google Scholar.

39 Short, ‘Continuity and Change’, ch. 3. J. Simmensen, ‘Commoners, Chiefs and Colonial Governments. British Policy and Local Politics in Akim Abuakwa, Ghana, under Colonial Rule’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Trondheim, 1975, contains an important discussion of the attempts by Ofori Atta I to extend his territorial jurisdiction over Akan immigrants who were obtaining land in Akim Abuakwa; but as Short points out (pp. 225–6, 385–8), he remained apparently content to respect the extra-territorial status of his Hausa strangers.

40 Arhin, , West African Traders, pp. 115–20 and 81–4Google Scholar.

41 Short, , ‘Continuity and Change’, p. 336 and ch. 5Google Scholar, passim, for the basis of this paragraph. There is a somewhat different interpretation in Schildkrout, , People of the Zongo, pp. 194–206Google Scholar.

42 Short, , ‘Continuity and Change’, pp. 394–6Google Scholar.

43 Harrell-Bond et al, Community Leadership, App. C and passim. 44C.O. 267/688/32348, Part 1. Sessional Paper No. 4 of 1944, Reconstitution of the Freetown City Council.

45 Banton, M. P., West African City: A Study of Tribal Life in Freetown (London, 1957)Google Scholar.

46 Cohen, Custom and Politics, esp. ch. 5.

47 Report of the Committee appointed to examine the working of the Tribal Administration (Colony) Ordinance, 1952. Copy in writer's possession.

48 These two paragraphs are based on Harrell-Bond et al, Community Leadership, which quotes from unpublished documents as well as personal observations.

49 Harrell-Bond, , Community Leadership, pp. 267–79Google Scholar.

50 The efforts of the Yoruba are described in Sudarkasa, Niara, ‘From Stranger to Alien: the Socio-Political history of the Nigerian Yoruba in Ghana, 1900–1970’, Strangers in African Societies, ed. Shack, and Skinner, , pp. 141–68Google Scholar.

51 Short, , ‘Continuity and Change’, p. 469Google Scholar; see also ch. 6 and app. 2, passim, for the argument of these paragraphs. See also Adomako-Sarfoh, J., ‘The Effects of the Expulsion of Migrant Workers on Ghana's Economy, with Particular Reference to the Cocoa Industry’, Modern Migrations in Western Africa, ed. Amin, S. (London, 1974), pp. 138–55Google Scholar.