¹ There is a parallel here with the debate about caste in India. For a revisionist take on caste in India, which focuses on the colonial crucible, see Dirks, Nicholas, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001)Google Scholar. The position adopted by Dirks in previous articles, and more extreme versions of colonial constructivism, are questioned by Susan Bayly who notes, “Caste has been for many centuries a real and active part of social life, and not just a self-serving orientalist fiction.” She sees the colonial caste system as neither fabricated nor “a single static system … [that] has dominated Indian life since ancient times,” a position broadly akin to the argument advanced here. See her The New Cambridge History of India IV.3: Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), quote p. 4. Similarly, for an attempt to historicize communalism in India, rather than portraying it as a purely colonial product, see C. A. Bayly, “The Pre-History of Communalism,” Modern Asian Studies 19, 2 (1985): 177–203.

² Iliffe, John, A Modern History of Tanganyika (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 318CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ Ranger, Terence, “The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa,” in Hobsbawm, Eric and Ranger, Terence, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 211–62Google Scholar.

⁴ The literature on this subject is now vast, but some of the most important case studies are Ranger, Terence, “Missionaries, Migrants and the Manyika: The Invention of Ethnicity in Zimbabwe,” in Vail, Leroy, ed., The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (London: James Currey, 1989)Google Scholar; Peel, J.D.Y., “The Cultural Work of Yoruba Ethnogenesis,” in Tonkin, E., Macdonald, Maryon, and Chapman, Malcolm, eds., History and Ethnicity (London: Routledge, 1989)Google Scholar; Chimhundu, H., “Early Missionaries and the Ethnolinguistic Factor during the ‘Invention of Tribalism’ in Zimbabwe,” Journal of African History 33, 1 (1992): 87–109CrossRefGoogle Scholar; John Lonsdale, “The Moral Economy of Mau Mau: The Problem”; and “The Moral Economy of Mau Mau: Wealth, Poverty and Civic Virtue in Kikuyu Political Thought,” both in Berman, Bruce and Lonsdale, John, eds., Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa (London: James Currey 1992), 265–314, 315–504Google Scholar; Willis, Justin, “The Makings of a Tribe: Bondei Identities and History,” Journal of African History 33, 1992: 191–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Killingray, David, “Imagined Martial Communities: Recruiting for the Military and the Police in Colonial Ghana, 1860–1960,” in Lentz, Carola and Nugent, Paul, eds., Ethnicity in Ghana: The Limits of Invention (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), 119–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nugent, Paul, Smugglers, Secessionists and Loyal Citizens on the Ghana-Togo Frontier: The Lie of the Borderlands Since 1914 (Athens and Oxford: Ohio University Press and James Currey, 2002)Google Scholar; van den Bersselaar, Dmitri, “Imagining Home: Migration and the Igbo Village in Colonial Nigeria,” Journal of African History 46, 1 (2005): 51–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harneit-Sievers, Axel, Constructions of Belonging: Igbo Communities and the Nigerian State in the Twentieth Century (Rochester: Rochester University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; and Lentz, Carola, Ethnicity and the Making of History in Northern Ghana (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press/International Africa Institute, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ Ranger, Terence, “The Invention of Tradition Revisited: The Case of Colonial Africa,” in Ranger, Terence and Vaughan, Olufemi, eds., Legitimacy and the State in Twentieth-Century Africa (London: Macmillan, 1993), 62–111CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Spear, Thomas, “Neo-Traditionalism and the Limits of Invention in British Colonial Africa,” Journal of African History 44, 1 (2003): 3–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ This argument is presented in more detail in Lentz, Carola and Nugent, Paul, “Ethnicity in Ghana: A Comparative Perspective,” in Lentz, C. and Nugent, P., eds., Ethnicity in Ghana: The Limits of Invention (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), 1–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The contribution of Sandra Greene to this same volume makes the point clearly. It is developed at greater length in Greene, Sandra, Gender, Ethnicity and Social Change on the Upper Slave Coast: A History of the Anlo-Ewe (Portsmouth and London: Heinemann and James Currey, 1996)Google Scholar.

⁷ Cohen, Anthony, The Symbolic Construction of Community (London: Routledge, 1989), 102–4Google Scholar.

⁸ For an insightful account of the ways in which memory works over time, see the introduction to Shaw, Rosalind, Memories of the Slave Trade: Ritual and the Historical Imagination in Sierra Leone (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002)Google Scholar. See also, Rosenthal, Judy, Possession, Ecstacy and Law in Voodoo (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1998)Google Scholar.

⁹ On the ideological underpinnings of the Asante monarchy, see McCaskie, T. C., State and Society in Pre-Colonial Asante (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Shaw, Memories of the Slave Trade, 10, see also 4–5.

¹¹ See, for example, Howard, Allen E. and Skinner, David E., “Network Building and Political Power in Northwestern Sierra Leone, 1800–65,” Africa 54, 2 (1984): 2–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹² Wright, Donald, “What Do You Mean There Were No Tribes in Africa? Thoughts on Boundaries—and Related Matters—in Pre-Colonial Africa,” History in Africa 26 (1999): 409–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³ In the words of Iliffe, “Early nineteenth-century Tanganyika was not inhabited by discrete, compact and identifiable tribes, each with a distinct territory, language, culture and political system … Normally one group merged imperceptibly into another” (Modern History, 8–9). For a very similar statement with respect to West Africa, see Lentz, Carola, “Contested Identities: The History of Ethnicity in Northwestern Ghana,” in Lentz, C. and Nugent, Paul, eds., Ethnicity in Ghana: The Limits of Invention (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), 137–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴ Jobson, Richard, The Golden Trade or a Discovery of the River Gambra and the Golden Trade of the Aethiopians (1st. ed. 1623; rev. ed. by Rodney, Walter) (London: Dawsons, 1968)Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Howard and Skinner, “Network Building.”

¹⁶ It is also anachronistic for the reason that not all of those Europeans who visited and wrote about Africa can be said to have belonged to nation-states.

¹⁷ For an extended discussion of the problems with European labels, see Mark, Peter, A Cultural, Economic, and Religious History of the Basse Casamance since 1500 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1985), ch. 2Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Bakary Sidibé of the Oral History Division in Banjul has coordinated the collection of this important oral documentation.

¹⁹ In their run-down of the peoples of the Gambia, Hughes, Arnold and Perfect, David do not mention the Bainuks. See their book, A Political History of the Gambia, 1816–1994 (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2006), 12–24Google Scholar.

²⁰ Roche, Christian, Histoire de la Casamance: conquête et résistance, 1850–1920 (Paris: Karthala, 1985), 23Google Scholar.

²¹ He also referred to “Usol,” which appears to indicate the village of Thionk-Essil. This would have been a Bainuk settlement before becoming Jola. Mark, A Cultural, Economic, and Religious History, 26–27. The term “Floup” is a source of some confusion because at times it has been taken to refer to a particular subgroup, while at others it has been used for all those we today call Jola.

²² Mark, A Cultural Economic and Religious History, 19; Roche, Histoire, 26.

²³ Wright, Donald, “Beyond Migration and Conquest: Oral Traditions and Mandinka Ethnicity in Senegambia,” History in Africa 12 (1985): 335–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁴ The full description is missing from De la Courbe's published account, but it is available through the plagiarized text of J. B. Labat in 1728. Linares, Olga F., “Deferring to Trade in Slaves: The Jola of Casamance, Senegal in Historical Perspective,” History in Africa 14 (1987): 113–39, cite p. 20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁵ Roche, Histoire, 22–23.

²⁶ Wright, “Beyond Migration,” 336, refers to Mandinka traditions that claim a direct origin from Mali and others which refer to the settlers having come through Gabou.

²⁷ Interview with Jerreh Demba et al., Kabadio, 19 Feb. 2004.

²⁸ Jobson, The Golden Trade, 42–47.

²⁹ Ibid., 47–48.

³⁰ Moore, Francis, Travels into the Inland Parts of Africa (London: E. Cave, 1738), 24Google Scholar.

³¹. Ibid., 52.

³² The trading networks of the Bainuk have been examined by Brooks, George, Eurafricans in West Africa: Commerce, Social Status, Gender and Religious Observance from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century (Oxford and Athens: James Currey and Ohio University Press, 2003), 44–49Google Scholar. Alvares d'Almada referred to the Bainuk trade at Geregia in his account, dating from around 1570. Mark, A Cultural Economic and Religious History, 14–15.

³³ Moore, Travels, 29.

³⁴ Ibid., 30.

³⁵ Ibid., 35–36.

³⁶ On the strategies used to defend against enslavement in the sub-region, which included retreating into swampy areas and the building of fortifications, see Mark, Peter, “Portuguese” Style and Luso-African Identity: Precolonial Senegambia, Sixteenth–Nineteenth Centuries (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002)Google Scholar; and Hawthorne, Walter, Planting Rice and Harvesting Slaves: Transformations along the Guinea-Bissau Coast, 1400–1900 (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2003)Google Scholar.

³⁷ By way of an anecdote, Moore himself refers to the hostile reception accorded to a vessel that ran aground in the Casamance, a theme echoed in a number of Portuguese sources.

³⁸ A detailed account of the deep-rooted impact of slave trading on one Jola society, based on shrine histories, is provided in Baum, Robert, Shrines of the Slave Trade: Diola Religion and Society in Precolonial Senegambia (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar. The changing involvement of the Jola, traced through European sources, is provided by Linares, “Deferring to Trade,” 113–39.

³⁹ Linares, Olga, Power, Prayer and Production: The Jola of Casamance, Senegal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Moore, Travels, 36.

⁴¹ There is a lack of consensus on the etymological origins of the name “Jola.” The anthropologist Louis-Vincent Thomas took “Di-ola” in the language of the Jola themselves to mean “all the visible living.” Louis-Vincent Thomas, Les Diola; essai d'analyse fonctionnelle sur une population de Basse-Casamance, M émoires de l'Institut Français d'Afrique Noire (Dakar: IFAN, 1958). Mark suggests the name is rather of Wolof origin, but without providing any further explanation, in A Cultural, Economic and Religious History, 7. But it is also widely believed that the name comes from Mandinka, where it means “someone who pays back.” Jonathan Vaughan Smith, “The Jolas of Senegambia, West Africa: Ethnolinguistic Identity and Change across an International Border,” Ph.D. thesis, University of Oregon, 1993, 157. This is the version I have repeatedly encountered in the field.

⁴² According to Lovejoy's estimates, 201,400 slaves were exported across the Atlantic from the Senegambia in the eighteenth century, as compared with 677,400 from the Gold Coast and 1,278,600 from the Bight of Benin (largely synonymous with the Slave Coast). Lovejoy, Paul, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), table 3.4, 50Google Scholar.

⁴³ On the Volta River trade, see Johnson, Marion, “Asante East of the Volta,” Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana VIII, 1965Google Scholar; and Maier, D.J.E., Priests and Power: The Case of the Dente Shrine in Nineteenth-Century Ghana (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Hernaes, Per, Slaves, Danes and African Coast Society (Trondheim: University of Trondheim, Department of History, 1995), 33Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Père Labat, Voyage du Chevalier des Marchais en Guinée, isles voisines et Cayenne fait en 1725, 1726 et 1727 (4 vols.) (Paris, 1730). For a measured assessment of the utility of such maps, see Baesjou, René, “The Historical Evidence in Old Maps and Charts of Africa with Special Reference to West Africa,” History in Africa 15 (1988): 1–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁶ I am grateful for the advice of Ole Justesen on this specific point of detail. See also Hopkins, Daniel, “Peter Thonning's Map of Danish Guinea and Its Use in Colonial Administration and Atlantic Diplomacy 1801–1890,” Cartographica 35, 3–4 (1998): 99–122CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁷ The British collected some data, which is preserved in the District Record Books, Public Records and Archives Administration Department (PRAAD), ADM 39/4/4, “District Record Book (Ho).”

⁴⁸ Nugent, Paul, Myths of Origin and the Origin of Myth: Local Politics and the Uses of History in Ghana's Volta Region, Working Papers on African Societies, no. 22 (Berlin: Das Arabische Buch, 1997)Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ I adopt the time-scale of Amenumey, D.E.K., The Ewe in Pre-Colonial Times (Accra: Sedco, 1986), 11–12Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ Greene, Sandra, Sacred Sites and the Colonial Encounter: A History of Meaning and Memory in Ghana (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2002), 20Google Scholar.

⁵¹ For a survey, see Nugent, Paul, “A Regional Melting Pot: The Ewe and Their Neighbours in the Ghana-Togo Borderlands,” in Lawrence, Benjamin, ed., A Handbook of Eweland: The Ewe of Togo and Benin (Accra: Woeli, 2005), 29–43Google Scholar.

⁵² Cornevin's timing of the movement of the main body of Agotimes to the period after 1776 does not correspond with the Danish records. Robert Cornevin, Histoire du Togo (Paris: Editions Berger-Levrault), 108.

⁵³ Entry XI 84 for 5 May 1749, in Justesen, Ole, ed., Danish Sources for the History of Ghana, 1657–1754 (Copenhagen: Royal Danish Academy of Sciences, 2005), 766Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Sandra Greene, Gender, Ethnicity and Social Change, 37. Entry XL 108, dated Nov. 1750, in Justesen, Danish Sources, 798.

⁵⁵ Entry XI 116, dated 3 Feb. 1751, in ibid., 815.

⁵⁶ Kea, Ray, “Akwamu-Anlo Relations c. 1750–1813,” Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana X (1969): 59Google Scholar. It is claimed that before they began their inward migration the Agotime were involved in the salt trade from the Songhaw lagoon. Nene Noe Keteku, “Short History of the Agotimes” (unpub. MS in author's possession), 1–2.

⁵⁷ Entry in “Introductory Remarks,” listed under “Adampe” within “Dahomean or Slave Coast Languages,” inKoelle's, Sigismund WilhelmPolyglotta Africana, Hair, Paul and Dalby, David, eds. (Graz: Akademische Druk, 1963), 4Google Scholar. “Panyarring” was a recognized procedure for recovering debts by seizing a debtor or his kinsmen. If the debt was not settled, the person might be sold as a slave.

⁵⁸ I am grateful to Robin Law for confirmation on this point.

⁵⁹ Greene, Gender, Ethnicity and Social Change, 75.

⁶⁰ Keteku, “Short History.”

⁶¹ It resurfaced in the run-up to the 2004 elections in Ghana when the creation of a new district, separate from Ho, led to a dispute over the site of its capital. The Adaklus insisted that because they were the landowners they should be granted the district capital. This was supposed to happen, but the decision was overturned and Kpetoe was selected instead. This produced a tremendous amount of ill feeling in which deep history came to the fore.

⁶² Cornevin, Histoire du Togo, 61. The author notes that the Adames came from the borders of Lake Aheme, having fled from Dahomean attacks. He also asserts that the Zukpe and Nyitoe people came from Lekpo on the Volta, but these villages deny that they are of the same origin. Nene Keteku refers to the Nyitoe people speaking a variant of Adaklu-Ewe, which may indicate that they were there when the Agotime arrived. Interview, Kpetoe, 26 Mar. 2001.

⁶³ Keteku, “Short History,” 7.

⁶⁴ Ranger suggests the term “imagination” is not much of an improvement. See his “Invention of Tradition Revisited.”

⁶⁵ Symptomatic of this problem is the position outlined in Dirks, Nicholas, “Introduction: Colonialism and Culture,” in Dirks, Nicholas B., ed., Colonialism and Culture (Ann Arbor: Comparative Studies in Society and History Book Series, University of Michigan Press, 1992), 1–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁶ Meyer, Birgit brings this out particularly well in Translating the Devil: Religion and Modernity Among the Ewe in Ghana (Edinburgh and London: Edinburgh University Press for International Africa Institute, 1999)Google Scholar.

⁶⁷ On Sylla, see David Skinner, “Islam in Kombo: The Spiritual and Militant Jihad of Fode Ibrahim Ture,” paper delivered at the African Studies Association conference, 1990. See also Nugent, Paul, “Cyclical History in the Gambia/Casamance Borderlands: Refuge, Settlement and Islam from 1880 to the Present,” Journal of African History 48, 2 (2007): 221–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁸ This is documented at length in Roche, Histoire, chs. 6–7.

⁶⁹ National Archives of the Gambia, ARP 33/1, “Reports on Kombo, Foni and Kiang (1894–99),” Report on Kombo, Fogni and Kiang for 1898–1899 by Sitwell, Travelling Commissioner, 29 June 1899.

⁷⁰ NAG ARP 33/2 “Reports on Kombo, Foni and Kiang (1900–01 and 1906–07),” Report from the Travelling Commissioner, Sangster, 26 Sept. 1901.

⁷¹ On Jola conversion, see Fay Leary, “Islam, Politics and Colonialism: A Political History of Islam in the Casamance Region of Senegal (1850–1914),” Ph.D. thesis, Northwestern University, 1970; Linares, Olga, “Islamic ‘Conversion’ Reconsidered,” Cambridge Anthropology 11 (1986): 4–19Google Scholar; Mark, A Cultural, Economic and Religious History, ch. 6.

⁷² On the history of Christianity in the Gambia, see Frederiks, Martha, We Have Toiled All Night: Christianity in the Gambia, 1456–2000 (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2003)Google Scholar.

⁷³ Important biographical details on Mahfoudz are contained in the intelligence files that kept track of the movement and activities of marabouts across French West Africa: Archives Nationals du Senegal [ANS] 13G/384 “Casamance Affaires Politiques.” On the surveillance of marabouts, see Harrison, Christopher, France and Islam in West Africa, 1860–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁴ For further details, see Nugent, “Cyclical History.”

⁷⁵ ANS 13G/384, “Casamance Affaires Politiques,” Rapport sur la situation politique de la Casamance et programme de desarmement et de mise en main de la population (19 Aug. 1918).

⁷⁶ For a study that examines the impact of Islam on the division of labor, see Linares, Power, Prayer and Production. Her calculations of yields in more recent times suggested that they compared favorably with much of East and Southeast Asia prior to the Green Revolution (p. 23).

⁷⁷ In his attempt to isolate specifically Jola characteristics in the 1950s, Thomas noted: “The Diola knows nothing about commerce in the strict sense, that it is to say the business of exchange. It is an occupation which, in his natural pride, he believes to be disgraceful, precisely because it exempts the one who lives from it (ayasa, alanora) from working in the fields.” (“Le Diola ignore le commerce au sens strict, c'est- à-dire l'exploitation des échanges. C'est une occupation que, dans sa fierté naturelle, il croit indigne de lui, précisément parce qu'elle dispense celui qui en vit (ayasa, alanora) du travail des champs.”) Thomas, Les Diola, 283.

⁷⁸ The centrality of migration to Igbo identity formation has been noted by Harneit-Sievers, Constructions of Belonging, ch. 5; and by Dmitri van den Bersselaar, “Imagining Home.”

⁷⁹ A heightened sense of Jola sub-nationalism in the Casamance only surfaced in the period after Senegalese independence. But what is perhaps worth underlining about the Mouvement des Forces Démocratiques de la Casamance (MFDC) is that its target was never the Mandinka, who it endeavored to recruit into its guerrilla army, but the Wolof of the northern half of Senegal. In that sense, the positive interaction between Jola and Mandinka at the start of the century has had enduring consequences.

⁸⁰ Nugent, Smugglers, 21–23. For a detailed treatment, see William Hudson Bryars, “The Evolution of British Imperial Policy on the Volta, 1857–1897: From Informal Opportunism to Formal Occupation,” Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham, 1994.

⁸¹ Welch, Claude, Dream of Unity: Pan-Africanism and Political Unification in West Africa (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966), 42Google Scholar.

⁸² Welch, Dream of Unity, 47–51. Most of the business of the church was conducted in Ewe, and the Bible was translated in 1912.

⁸³ Meyer, Translating the Devil, 57–60. For a more general history of the Bremen mission, see Ustorf, Werner, Bremen Missionaries in Togo and Ghana, 1847–1900 (Legon: Christian Council of Ghana, 2002)Google Scholar.

⁸⁴ Greene, Sacred Sites, 29.

⁸⁵ Welch, Dream of Unity, 61; Lawrance, Benjamin, Locality, Mobility and “Nation”: Peri-Urban Colonialism in Togo's Eweland, 1900–1960 (Rochester, N.Y.: Rochester University Press, 2007), ch. 1Google Scholar.

⁸⁶ Ibid., ch. 5; Nugent, Smugglers, ch. 5.

⁸⁷ Ibid., 166–68.

⁸⁸ Even in those minority communities that played an important role in the history of the Bremen mission, notably Avatime and Akpafu, Ewe took precedence.