² Hopkins, A. G., Economic History of West Africa (New York, 1973), 225.Google Scholar

³ See (still the best survey of West African slavery) Meillassoux, Claude (ed.), L'esclavage en Afrique précoloniale (Paris, 1975).Google Scholar

⁴ See Roberts, Richard and Klein, Martin, ‘The Banamba slave exodus of 1905 and the decline of slavery in the western Sudan’, J. Afr. Hist, XXI (1980), 375–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵ See Berg, Elliot J., ‘The economics of the migrant labor system’, in Kuper, Hilda (ed.), Urbanisation and Migration in West Africa (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1965), 161–2.Google Scholar

⁶ See Pollet, Eric and Winter, Grace, La société soninke (Diahuna, Mali) (Brussels, 1971).Google Scholar

⁷ Kane, Francine and Lericollais, Andre, ‘L'émigration en pays soninké’, Cahiers de l'O.R.S.T.O.M., Serie sciences humaines, XII, ii (1975), 177–87.Google Scholar

⁸ See Diarra, Souleymane, ‘Les travailleurs africains noirs en France’, Bulletin de l'I.F.A.N., XXX, Série B (1968), 902.Google Scholar

⁹ See A.N.S. (Archives Nationales du Sénégal) K 18, de Bakel, Cercle, ‘Questionnaire au sujet de la captivité’, 1904Google Scholar; K 14, ‘Etude sur la captivité dans le cercle de Nioro’, n.d.; K 14, ‘[Rapport sur la captivité par le] Capitaine Mazillier’, Kayes, 8 July 1894; Pollet, and Winter, , Societe, 238Google Scholar; Meillassoux, Claude, ‘Le commerce précolonial et le dévelop-pement de l'esclavage à Gũbu du Sahel (Mali)’, in Meillassoux, (ed.), The Development of Indigenous Trade and Markets in West Africa (London, 1971), 193Google Scholar; ‘Etat et condition des esclaves à Gumbu (Mali) au XlXème siècle’, in Meillassoux, (ed.), Esclavage, 125Google Scholar; A.N.S. K 19, ‘Rapport sur l'esclavage dans le cercle de Sénégambie–Niger’.

¹⁰ See, for example, Frey, Colonel H., Campagne dans la Haut-Sénégal et le Haut-Niger (1885–1886) (Paris, 1888), 234–5.Google Scholar On the importance of the Soninke region of Gadiaga (roughly speaking the Upper Senegal river valley in Senegal and Mali) in the Atlantic slave trade in eighteenth-century Senegambia, see Curtin, Philip, Economic Change in Precolonial Africa (Madison, 1975), 153–96.Google Scholar

¹¹ Most of this section is drawn from Meillassoux, ‘Commerce’.

¹² Pollet, and Winter, , Societe, 239Google Scholar, and Meillassoux, , ‘Commerce’, 193Google Scholar, give similar figures for different Soninke regions.

¹³ Pollet, and Winter, , Société, 127, 371, 529.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Ibid. 371, 377–405. Contrary to what Pollet and Winter wrote, individual family members in Soninke familes could own slaves independently although family heads firmly controlled the family slaves; A.N.S. K 14, Capitaine Mazillier, Rapport sur la captivité dans le cercle de Kayes, 8 July 1894. Contemporary documents, in fact, reveal that the first Soninke labour migrants hoped to buy enough slaves in order to constitute family units of their own; see Manchuelle, , ‘Background’, 170–5.Google Scholar

¹⁵ The earliest reference to Soninke laptots dates from the 1790s: Saugnier, , Relation de plusieurs voyages a la Côte d'Afrique… (Paris, 1791), 215Google Scholar; further reference to Soninke laptots on p. 228. In 1885, during the religious rebellion of Mamadou Lamine in the Upper Senegal region, the French estimated that 1,200 to 1,500 of those in revolt were former laptots or people who had been employed by the French. This figure probably corresponds to about 10% of the adult male population of the Upper Senegal (Gadiaga and Guidimakha) Soninke regions, a considerable figure; Frey, , Campagne, 14Google Scholar; and Capitaine Brosselard, ‘Rapport sur la situation dans la vallée du Sénégal en 1886’. quoted in Bathily, Abdoulaye, ‘Imperialism and colonial expansion in Senegal in the nineteenth century, with particular reference to… the kingdom of Gadiaga’ (Ph.D. thesis, Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham, 1975), 458.Google Scholar Census references: A.N.S. 13 G [Bakel] 189, Nov. 1888, Rapport du Capitaine Darr commandant le cercle de Bakel sur la perception de l'impôt pour l'année 1889; 13 G 191, 1894; 13 G 199, Rôle de l'impût, année 1896; i G 310, Renseignements historiques, géographiques et économiques sur le cercle de Kayes [1902].

¹⁶ See David, Philippe, Les navétanes (Dakar; Abidjan, 1980)Google Scholar; Swindell, Ken, ‘Sera-woollies, Tillibunkas and strange farmers: the development of migrant groundnut farming along the Gambia river, 1848–95’. J. Afr. Hist. XXI (1980), 93–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁷ On the secondary trade network of the Upper Senegal Soninke to the Gambia, see Curtin, , Economic Change, 75Google Scholar; Bathily, ‘Imperialism’, 75; Raffenel, Anne, Voyage dans l'Afrique occidentale… éxécuté en 1843 et 1844 (Paris, 1846), 449.Google Scholar

¹⁸ See Curtin, , Economic Change, 230–31.Google Scholar According to a sample of purchases on the Gambia River made by the British Royal African Company for the period 1684–8, twenty per cent of the cost of the slaves for European slave traders ‘went for agricultural provisions to feed slaves waiting shipment and to store ships for the Atlantic crossing’; Ibid. 230. Similar evidence in Bathily, Abdoulaye, ‘La traite atlantique et ses effets économiques et sociaux en Afrique: le cas du Galam, royaume, de l'hinterland sén-égambien au dix-huitième siècle’, J. Afr. Hist. XXVII (1986), 269–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁹ Curtin, , Economic Change, 171.Google Scholar

²⁰ See Vene, M., ‘Rapport sur les établissements anglais de la Gambie et les comptoirs français d'Albréda et de Casamance’, Annates maritimes, 82 (11 1847), n.p.Google Scholar, quoted in Amédée Tardieu, Ibid. 116.

²¹ See quotation in Klein, Martin, Islam and Imperialism, Sine-Saloum, 1847–1914 (Stanford, 1968), 177–78.Google Scholar

²² In truth, an increase in the internal slave trade, boosted by. the demands of the expanding peanut growing, did take place at first. But free labour migration soon prevailed. See Klein, Martin A., ‘Servitude among the Wolof and Sereer of Senegal’, in Miers, Suzanne and Kopytofe, Igor (eds), Slavery in Africa (Madison, 1977), 350Google Scholar; Weil, Peter M., ‘Slavery, groundnuts, and European capitalism in the Wuli Kingdom of Senegambia, 1820–1930’, Research in Economic Anthropology, VI (1984), 74–119.Google Scholar

²³ See Curtin, , Economic Change, 191–38Google Scholar, on the ‘twilight of the Atlantic Slave trade’.

²⁴ See A. N. M. (Archives Nationales du Mali) IE-44, French Sudan, Cercle de Kayes-extérieur, 1892–1893. On slave liberations in Guidimakha, see A.N.S. 13 G [Bakel] 186, no. 202, 13 May 1886; no. 655, 3 August 1886; 13 G 188, Bulletin agricole, commercial et politique, August 1888; Rapport sur la situation politique au 25 avril 1889; 13 G 190, October 28, 1890. On the political background of Guidimakha's annexation, see Méniaud, Jacques, Les pionniers du Soudan (Paris, 1931), vol. I, 272Google Scholar; Kanya-Forstner, A. S., The Conquest of the Western Sudan (Cambridge, 1969), 134–136, 141, 143.Google Scholar

²⁵ See the remarkable analysis of the pre-colonial economy of a Senegambian clerical community by Sanneh, Lamin O., The Jakhanke (London, 1979), especially 219–40.Google Scholar

²⁶ See A.N.S.O.M. (Archives Nationales [de France], Section Outre-mer), xiv, 27, 26; A.N.S., K31; K 397 (132). See also (based on French archives only): Zuccarelli, François, ‘Le recrutement de travailleurs sénégalais par l'Etat Indépendant du Congo (1888–1896)’, Revue française d'histoire d'outre-mer, XLVII (1960), 475–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁷ Interviews made at the Chambre de Koungany, Dakar, Senegal, of Lassana Diakho (nephew of the first Soninke cadi (Moslem judge) of Kinshasa, Zaïre), 13 December 1979, 24 January 1980; Lassana N'Dao, 17 December 1979; and in Koungany, Senegal, of El Hadj Mamadou Diakho, last Soninke cadi of Kinshasa, 13 December 1982.

²⁸ Fodé Diamou Tandjigora, or Diakho, popularly known as Cheikh Diamou, who had been one of the cloest companions of the religious reformer Mamadou Lamine Dramé; see Marty, Paul, ‘L'Islam en Mauritanie et au Sénégal’, Revue du monde musulman, XXXI (1915–1916), 322–3.Google Scholar Babintu Tandjigora, the first migrant to the Congo in the Kougany tradition, was a member of Cheikh Diamou's family.

²⁹ This gift undoubtedly was meant to redeem the value of the talibe's labour. Similar data in Sanneh, , Jakhanka, 160.Google Scholar

³⁰ The French enquiry into the Congo recruitments produced a list of migrants for the year 1894, which listed the names, village of origin, and occupation of some 300 would-be migrants in Dakar and Goree. The Soninke villages named in this list correspond to Cheikh Diamou's (see above, note 28) network, as recorded by Marty; references in my dissertation, ‘Background’, 210–17.

³¹ See A.N.S. K 397 (132), piece 31, Administrator Superville to Governor General French West Africa, Rapport de mission, 4 August 1896; see also pièce 29, confidential, Délégué de l'lntérieur Guy du Laurens, no. 1115, 2 August 1896.

³² Apart from the well-known case of the Mourides in Senegal, see Lubeck, Paul M., ‘Islamic networks and urban captialism: an instance of articulation from northern Nigeria’, Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines, XXI (1981), 81–3, 67–8.Google Scholar

³³ See Raffenel, Anne, Nouveau voyage dans le pays des nègres (Paris, 1856), 449–83.Google Scholar

³⁴ See Bertrand-Bocande, E., Rapport sur les ressources que prèsentent dans leur état actuel les comptoirs français établis sur les bords de la Casamance (Paris, 1858)Google Scholar, quoted by Swindell, , ‘Serawoollies’, 95.Google Scholar

³⁵ See above p. 93; Swindell, , ‘Serawoollies’, 99–104, esp. 100–101Google Scholar; These arrangements were themselves similar to those regulating the life of junior members of family groups among the Soninke (see above, p. 91), as among most Senegambian ethnic groups. This no doubt must have facilitated the transition from slave to free labour in the Gambia.

³⁶ See Roberts and Klein, ‘Banamba’; and Klein, Martin, ‘Slavery and emancipation in French West Africa’, Colloquium Paper, History, Culture and Society Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C., 5 06 1986.Google Scholar I am grateful to Professor Klein for communicating to me this recent unpublished paper.

³⁷ Numerical references on slave runaways in A.N.M. IE-44 [Kayes], Rapport de l'administrateur adjoint Duboscq, à M. l'administrateur commandant le cercle de Kayes, sur la tournée effectuée dans la province du Guidimakha du 10 avril au 21 mai 1907; and periodic reports, March, April, 1908; see also March 1909; A.N.M. IE-61 [Nioro], yearly report, 1908 (total population figure for the cercle in de Lartigue, Commandant, ‘Notice géographique sur le Sahel’, L'Afrique française, renseignements coloniaux, 5 (1898), 123)Google Scholar; also Rapport sur la politique générale, 1910; and Commissaire des Affaires indigènes Passant à M. l'administrateur commandant le cercle de Nioro, 20 April 1909. References to Soninke slave populations, above, note 9.

³⁸ Meillassoux, , ‘Etat’, 225 and 246.Google Scholar

³⁹ Roberts and Klein noted that Marka slavery ‘lacked the progressive integration that Miers and Kopytoff have attributed to other African slave systems’, ‘Banamba’, 379; description of Marka slavery, 379–82.

⁴⁰ On the woroso in Goumbou, see Meillassoux, , ‘Etat’, 237–8Google Scholar; in Bakel, A.N.S. 13 G 195, Rapport sur la captivité [by] Desmarets, 16 May 1894.

⁴¹ Quote from the archival file on the Banamba incidents kept at the Institut des Sciences Humaines in Bamako, Mali, in Pollet, and Winter, , Société, 254.Google Scholar The distinction traditionally drawn in the literature between the conditions of first and second generation slaves was never absolute: there were second generation slaves who were chattel slaves, while some first generation slaves enjoyed the condition usually ascribed to second generation slaves. See Meillassoux, ‘Etat’, and Klein, Martin A. and Lovejoy, Paul E., ‘Slavery in West Africa’, in Gemery, Henry A. and Hogendorn, Jan S. (eds.), The Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slaves Trade (New York, San Francisco, and London, 1979), 181–212.Google Scholar

⁴² See, for example, the curious story of the slaves of a certain Samba N'Diaye near Bakel who refused to work for their master yet refused to be freed by the French administrator; A.N.S. 13 G 200, Bakel, Copie du registre des réclamations pour le mois de Novembre 1897. Such behaviour had its rationale: ‘Nine tenths of the captives [slaves] who request our protection do so only in order for us to exert an effective pressure on their masters who deny them the possibility of buying themselves back, or who grant it on unacceptable conditions’, A.N.S. K 25, ‘L'esclavage en A.O.F., étude critique et positive par. M. Deherme’, 1906. See also A.N.M. IE-44, Kayes, Administrator to Governor French Soudan, [report] 4th quarter 1908; and March 1909. For similar material on other regions of West Africa Denise Bouche, Les villages de liberié en Afrique noire française, 1887–1910 (Paris, 1968), 106Google Scholar; Hopkins, Anthony, ‘The Lagos strike of 1897: an exploration in Nigerian labour history’, Past and Present, no. 35 (12 1966), 133–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴³ Likewise, in Goumbou, where the proximity of the Marka cities had encouraged the development of an exploitative system of plantation slavery, slave runaways were numerous (see above p. 97). Slaves in Goumbou reportedly left insulting their masters because they refused to give them land’. Meillassoux, , ‘Etat’, 246.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Quoted in David, , Navétanes, 123–4; 34.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ See A.N.S. 13 G 175, Bakel, Copie du régistre [du] journal [de poste] du ler and 3 juin 1879, [June 9]; see also 9 July, 1 October, 2 October [n.d., probably 29 December]; and 13 G 175, Directeur des Affaires politiques Gallieni to Governor Senegal, no. 2, Médine, 14 September 1879 and no. 5, 3, 17 October 1879.

⁴⁶ A.N.S. 13 G 195, Bakel, Rapport sur la captivité [by] Desmarets, 26 May 1894; and the judiciary case presented to the Bakel Commandant in 1897, A.N.S. 13 G 200, Copie du registre des reclamations pour le mois de juin 1897.

⁴⁷ See Le Bris, Emile, Rey, Pierre-Philippe, Samuel, Michel, Capitalisme négrier, la marche des paysans vers le prolétariat (Paris, 1976), 110–11.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ The local administrator in Goumbou noted in 1916 the numerous military recruitments of ‘young people from the cercle made either in Senegal or in neighboring districts notably in Nioro’ [my emphasis], A.N.M. IE-38, Goumbou, January 1916. This was the first report of this kind for Goumbou, while reports of migrants from the neighbouring region of Nioro had been numerous for the period preceding the First World War. The mention of Goumbou migrants in Nioro indicates that migrants probably first sought employment in Nioro before being made aware of opportunities further afield in Senegal and the Gambia. On the beginning of seasonal agricultural migration from Nioro to the Upper Senegal region, see above p. 94

⁴⁹ See de Kersaint-Gilly, F., ‘Essai sur l'évolution de l'escalvage en Afrique occidentale française. Son dernier stade au Soudan’. Bulletin de Comité d'Etudes Historiques et Scientifiques de l'Afrique Occidentale Franfaise, IX (1924), 469–78.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ See A.N.S. 2 G 20/22, Bakel, monthly report, January 1920.

⁵¹ An important witness for the interwar period, Chief Ibrahima Diaman Bathily, who governed a small Soninke district in the Upper Senegal region from 1944 to 1947, thus recorded that slaves had ceased to be pawned after 1920; Bathily, Ibrahima Diaman, ‘Notices socio-hisoriques sur l'ancien royaume du Gadiaga. Présentées, annotées et publiées par Abdoulaye Bathily’, Bulletin de I'I.F.A.N., XXXI, Serie B (1969), 86.Google Scholar The after-war period was also the time when rebellious slave veterans obtained fields from the Bakel administrator, who confiscated them from aristocratic families; see A.N.S. 2 G 20/22, Bakel, monthly report, January 1920.

⁵² See A.N.S. 13 G 200, Bakel, Copie du journal de cercle pour le mois de Février 1897, [February] 6, [1897]; A.N.M. IE-61, Cercle de Nioro, Rapport annuel, 1911. On the 1895–6 incidents in Bakel see Bouche, Denise. Villages, 94–6Google Scholar; for a fuller account, see my dissertation, ‘Background’, ch. 4.

⁵³ The traditional Soninke family was clearly thrown out of balance, see, for example, the characteristic 1923 report of the subdivision of Yélimané (cercle of Nioro) in French Soudan, which commented on the ‘incredible’ number of divorces in that year; see A.N.M. IE-61, 3rd quarter 1923.

⁵⁴ This was a recurrent complaint of Soninke elders to the French administrators; see A.N.S. 4 G 163, Rapport d'inspection, Bakel, January 1922; A.N.M. IE-66, Nioro, Report, 3rd quarter 1920.

⁵⁵ David, , Navétanes, 122.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ For example, Soninke parents reported runaway youths who intended to find employment on merchant ships in Dakar to the local French administrator in Bakel, so that they would be sent back home by port authorities. Lassana Ndao, information communicated to me following an interview in Dakar, by M. Mamadou Djimera, Dakar, 21 January 1979.

⁵⁷ See, for example, A.N.M. IE-36, Nioro, Subdivision de Yélimané, Rapport politique, September 1924. Numerical estimates for the Bakel region: see A.N.S. Fonds Sénégal, 2 D 4–9 [these documents may be reclassified under a different series number], Rapport de l'Administrateur Adjoint Gaillardon – tournée effectuée dans le Goye inférieur en février et mars 1912; 2 D 4–8 (5), Bakel, Recensement par village de la population du cercle, 1909 [census]; 2 G 36–78, Bakel, Rapport annuel, 1936; 2 G 38–78, Bakel, Rapport annuel 1938. For Mali, see A.N.M. IE-61 (Rapports politiques for Nioro, 1891–1920) and IE-36 (Rapports politiques, Nioro, 1920–49); David, , Navétanes, 132–3.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Claude Meillassoux was the first to call attention to this type of trade; Meillassoux, ‘Commerce’.

⁵⁹ See Emmanuel Terray, ‘Commerce pre-colonial et organisation sociale chez les Dida de Coçte d'lvoire’, in Meillassoux, , Développement, 145–52.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ See Perinbam, B. Marie, ‘Notes on Dyula origins and nomenclature’, Bulletin de l'I.F.A.N., XXXVI, Série B (1974), 676–90.Google Scholar

⁶¹ See Paul E. Lovejoy's remarks on the link between the slave trade and other forms of trade, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge, 1983), 102–3.Google Scholar

⁶² Ibid. esp. 163–70.

⁶³ On the importance of slave-trading by the Mossi and the Zabrame among the Akan-Asante, see Terray, Emmanuel, ‘La captivité dans le royaume Abron du Gyaman’, in Meillassoux, (ed.), Esclavage, 391–2Google Scholar; Baillaud, Emile, Sur les routes du Soudan (Toulouse, 1902), 240–1ffGoogle Scholar; Arhin, Kwame, West African Traders in Ghana in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London and New York, 1979), 55–76.Google Scholar Jean Rouch noted the connection between the first Zabrama labour migrations in Ghana and their pre-colonial slave-raiding; see ‘Problèmes relatifs à l'étude des migrations traditionnelles et actuelles en Afrique Occidentale’, Bulletin de l'I.F.A.N., xxii, Serie B, 3–4 (1960)Google Scholar; see 374–5.

⁶⁴ The dominant type of arrangement between migrant workers and their employers in this area is the so-called abusã contract, which in theory involved a sharing of a crop on a one-third/two-thirds basis: see Hill, Polly, The Migrant Cocoa-Farmers of Southern Ghana: A Study in Rural Capitalism (Cambridge, 1963), 158–9.Google Scholar On similar arrangements between slave owners and emancipated slaves at the end of the nineteenth century, see Terray, Emmanuel, ’ Captivité’, 413Google Scholar; Perrot, Claude, ‘Les captifs dans le royaume anyi du Ndenye’, in Meillassoux, (ed.), Esclavage, 370.Google Scholar As with the navetanes, both the migrant workers arrangement and those of emancipated slaves in the region may have had their origin in local family labour arrangements. See the description of such family arrangements in Augé, Marc, ‘Les faiseurs d'ombre. Servitude et structure lignagière dans la societe alladian’, in Meillassoux, (ed.), Esclavage, 457–8.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Such channels could also be created artificially: navétanes were mostly Soninke until the 1930s when the French began actively to recruit migrants in other regions; see David, , Navetanes, 59–74, 94–137ff.Google Scholar, and Manchuelle ‘Background’, chs 8, 6.

⁶⁶ See the description of pre-modern Auvergne migrants by Raison-Jourde, Françoise, La colonie auvergnate de Paris au XIX³ siècle (Paris, 1976), 67–71.Google Scholar For France in general, see the outstanding reference work by Chatelain, Abel, Les migrants temporaires en France de 1800 à1914 (Lille, 1976), esp. vol. I, 386–95, 434–53.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ See Chatelain, Migrants; also Raison-Jourde, Colonie; Corbin, Alain, ‘Migrations temporaires et société rurale: le cas du Limousin’, Revue Historique, CCXLVI, 500 (09–12 1971), 293–334.Google Scholar For further references to the enormous literature on modern migrations, see Sewell, William H., Structure and Mobility: the Men and Women of Marseille, 1820–1840 (Cambridge and Paris, 1985)Google Scholar, introduction and bibliography, and Manchuelle, , ‘Background’, esp. Introduction, 1–27.Google Scholar