Women and trade in the Nupe–Borgu region during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

ABSTRACT

Women played a pivotal role in the economies of the Nupe–Borgu region (today, Nigeria and the Republic of Benin), a major slave supply area and transit hub for caravans and traders connecting to both the trans-Saharan and the transatlantic trade during the nineteenth century. Many not only managed households but also operated as local and long-distance traders, porters, foodstuff suppliers and financial brokers. Both contemporaneous narratives, written by men and with a male gaze, and scholarship about the region relegate women and their histories to the very margins of society. The article is based on travelers’ accounts stemming from the nineteenth century and on ethnographic studies and archival documents from the early British colonial period of the twentieth century. It brings women back into the social history of this region and demonstrates that female merchants and businesswomen were the major agents in local and long-distance trade, playing an important part in the economies of West Africa.

RÉSUMÉ

Les femmes ont joué un rôle essentiel dans les économies de la région de Nupe-Borgu (aujourd’hui le Nigeria et la République du Bénin), une zone majeure d’approvisionnement en esclaves et un centre de transit pour les caravanes et les commerçants liés à la fois au commerce transsaharien et au commerce transatlantique au dix-neuvième siècle. Nombre d’entre elles géraient non seulement des ménages, mais jouaient aussi le rôle de commerçantes locales et à distance, de porteuses, de fournisseuses de denrées alimentaires et de courtières financiers. Aussi bien les récits contemporains, écrits par des hommes et à partir d’une vision masculine, que les recherches sur la région, relèguent les femmes et leurs histoires aux marges mêmes de la société. Cet article est basé sur les récits de voyageurs datant du dix- neuvième siècle, sur des études ethnographiques et des documents d’archives remontant jusqu’au début de la colonisation britannique au vingtième siècle. Il replace les femmes dans l’histoire sociale de cette région et démontre que les marchandes et les femmes d’affaires furent les principaux agents du commerce local et à distance, jouant un rôle important dans les économies de l’Afrique de l’Ouest.

KEYWORDS:

• Borgu
• Nupe
• local and long-distance trade
• women
• nineteenth-century West Africa

MOTS-CLÉS:

• Borgu
• Nupe
• commerce local et à distance
• femmes
• Afrique de l’Ouest au dix-neuvième siècle

Acknowledgement

I wish to thank Christopher Ehret, Olatunji Ojo, Thomas Cox, Douglas Heffington, Belinda Dodson, Cymone Fourshey, Gerard Chouin, the members of the Ellis College Writers Group at Henderson State University, and Vanessa Oliveira for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. In addition, I am grateful to Richard Kuba and Paul Lovejoy who allowed me to use some of their own maps as a base for the map that appeared in this article. I would like to thank Richard Britton for the custom map he created in order to provide a visualization of both the Nupe-Borgu region and the various trade routes that ran through it during the nineteenth century. In addition, I am grateful to Christopher Ehret for the funding of the creation of the map.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Ogudu and Raka were used interchangeably for this border town between Nupe and Oyo. Raka was the name of the town in the Nupe language while Ogudu was the name the Yoruba had given to the town. Ogudu can be identified on map 1.

2. Kohnert refers here in particular to the oral history account by a Church Missionary Society (CMS) pastor from Doko in central Nupeland, in the vicinity of Bida, whom he had interviewed and who had attested the practice was still very common in the early twentieth century.

3. Nigerian National Archives Kaduna, MINPROV 654/1912–14, Notes on Nupe Life and Customs, Nigerian National Archives Kaduna, MinProv 654/1912–14.

4. Letter of Baikie to Lord John Russell, 20 August 1859. Dispatch 66, FO2/32, The National Archives, Kew Gardens, UK.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Constanze Weise

Constanze Weise is an assistant professor of history at Henderson State University in Arkansas. She received her PhD in African history from UCLA. Her research focuses on the pre-nineteenth century and early colonial cultural and political history of West Africa, with special emphasis on the intersection of politics and religion in central Nigeria. Her work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes dedicated to African history and methods, African art history, linguistics and ethnohistory. Her ethno-historical films of religious masquerades from Nigeria have been shown in the internationally touring exhibition curated by the UCLA Fowler Museum and the Musée du quai Branly, Paris, titled “Central Nigeria Unmasked: Arts of the Benue River Valley.”