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Abstract
This article analyses the nature of international relations in West-Central Africa before the en masse arrival of Europeans in the late fifteenth century. Several different viewpoints are employed to describe these relations. Firstly, the different types of political units found in the region are discussed, and, secondly, regional trade, war, slavery, and norms and values are detailed to demonstrate the extent to which these practices connected African states. The argument is that these states made up a unique international system, one that was markedly different from other historical systems such as that in Western Europe. The case accordingly raises important issues about how we think about international systems, and about how international systems such as this one fit into the context of international history. In its entirety the study fills a significant void in the existing literature, which otherwise has very little to say about African international relations and its history.
Notes
1. See, for instance: E. Ringmar, ‘Performing International Systems: Two East-Asian Alternatives to the Westphalian International Order’, International Organization, lxvi, no. 1 (2012), 1–25; A. Acharya and B. Buzan, ‘Why is there no Non-Western International Relations Theory: an Introduction’ in A. Acharya and B. Buzan (eds), Non-Western International Relations Theory: Perspectives on and beyond Asia (London, 2010), 1–25.
2. J.A. Pella, Jr., Surrendering the Savannah: Africa and the Expansion of International Society (London, 2014); J. Pella, Jr, ‘Expanding the Expansion of International Society: A New Approach with Empirical Illustrations from European and African Interaction, 1400–1883’, Journal of International Relations and Development, advance online publication 22 March 2013; doi: 10.1057/jird.2013.6
3. See, for instance: B. Buzan and R. Little, International Systems in World History (Oxford, 2000); C. Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1992 (Cambridge, 1990); I. Wallerstein, The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1974); K. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York, 1979).
4. The term practice is understood here as a socially meaningful pattern of interaction amongst distinct political units, following: E. Alder and V. Pouliot, ‘International Practices’, International Theory, iii, no. 1 (2011), 4. In this sense, the term bears a strong resemblance to the term institution: H. Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (Columbia, 1977).
5. Wallerstein, The Modern World-System.
6. J. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250–1350 (Oxford, 1989).
7. Waltz, Theory of International Politics.
8. Bull, The Anarchical Society.
9. H. Bull and A. Watson (eds), The Expansion of International Society (Oxford, 1984).
10. M. Wight, ‘The Origins of Our State-System: Geographical Limits’ in H. Bull (ed) Systems of States (Leicester, 1977), 110–28.
11. L. Mair, Primitive Government (Baltimore, 1962), 61.
12. Ibid., 28.
13. Ibid., 125.
14. M. Fortes and E.E. Evans-Pritchard, ‘Introduction’ in M. Fortes and E.E. Evans-Pritchard (eds), African Political Systems (Oxford, 1940), 6–7.
15. J.D. Fage, A History of Africa (New York, 1978), 84–109.
16. The alternative argument rests upon the importance of trade and the location of trade routes, discussed below.
17. A. Mabogunje, ‘The Land and Peoples of West Africa’ in J.F.A Ajayi and M. Crowder (eds), History of West Africa: Volume One (New York, 1972), 3.
18. There were two notable exceptions to these conditions. The first a portion of coastline from roughly Cape Coast in contemporary Ghana to Ouidah in contemporary Benin, and the second the coastline south of contemporary Equatorial Guinea. In both places savannah grasslands and woodlands extended to the coast, and thus the areas provided a natural docking place for European ships in subsequent centuries.
19. Ibid.
20. Before the introduction of European crops it is believed that only the guinea-yam and oil palm were cultivated in forested areas.
21. Such societies are labelled ‘stateless’ throughout the literature, following the logic that their population numbers were relatively small and the wielding of authority was not a full-time occupation.
22. C. Potholm, Theory and Practice of African Politics (New Jersey, 1979), 14–15.
23. J. Vansina, ‘Population Movements and the Emergence of New Socio-Political Forms in Africa’ in B.A. Ogot (ed), General History of Africa (Berkeley, 1992), 72.
24. Ibid., 50.
25. E.J. Alagoa, ‘The Niger Delta States and Their Neighbours, to 1800’ in J.F.A Ajayi and M. Crowder (eds), History of West Africa: Volume One (New York, 1972), 287.
26. C. Wondji, ‘The States and Cultures of the Upper Guinea Coast’ in B.A. Ogot (ed) General History of Africa (Berkeley, 1992), 368.
27. A. Adu Boahen, ‘The Caravan Trade in the 19th Century’, Journal of African History, iii, no. 2 (1962), 410.
28. J. Thornton, Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500–1800 (London, 1999), 55.
29. R. Horton, ‘From Fishing Village to City State’ in M. Douglas and P.M. Kaberry (eds), Man in Africa (New York, 1971), 41.
30. D. Birmingham, ‘Central Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade’ in R. Oliver (ed), The Middle Ages of African History (Oxford, 1956); Ch. Didier Gondola, The History of Congo (Westport, CT, 1967), 14.
31. Thornton, Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 15.
32. A. Mabogunje, ‘The Land and Peoples of West Africa’ in J.F.A Ajayi and M. Crowder (eds) History of West Africa: Volume One (New York, 1972), 5–7.
33. P. Morton-Williams, ‘The Influence of Habitat and Trade on the Polities of Oyo and Ashanti’ in M. Douglas and P.M. Kaberry (eds), Man in Africa (New York, 1971), 80–99.
34. J.D. Fage, A History of Africa (New York, 1978), 105–6.
35. Potholm, Theory and Practice of African Politics, 15.
36. E.C. Ejiogu, ‘State Building in the Niger Basin in the Common Era and Beyond, 1000-Mid 1800s: The Case of Yorubaland’, Journal of Asian and African Studies, xlvi, no. 6 (2011), 595.
37. S. Adebanji Akintoye, Revolution and Power Politics in Yorubaland (New York, 1971), 13.
38. Ejiogu, ‘State Building in the Niger Basin’, 596–7.
39. Ibid., 598.
40. A. Adu Boahen, ‘The Rise of the Akan’ in R. Oliver (ed), The Middle Ages of African History (Oxford, 1967), 19.
41. T. McCaskie, ‘State and Society, Marriage and Adultery: Some Consideration Towards a Social History of Pre-Colonial Asante’, Journal of African History, xxii, no. 4 (1981), 483.
42. D. Lange, ‘Origins of Yoruba and “The Lost Tribes of Israel”‘, Anthropos, cvi, no. 2 (2011), 581.
43. Ejiogu, ‘State Building in the Niger Basin’, 596.
44. A. Ryder, ‘The Rise of the Benin Kingdom’ in R. Oliver (ed), The Middle Ages of African History (Oxford, 1967), 28.
45. Fage, A History of Africa, 132; Vansina, ‘Population Movements’, 52.
46. D. Birmingham, ‘Central Africa from Cameroun to the Zambezi’ in R. Oliver (ed), The Cambridge History of Africa: Volume 3 from c. 1050 to c. 1600 (Cambridge, 1977), 535.
47. A. Hilton, The Kingdom of Kongo (Oxford, 1985).
48. N.A. Fadipe, The History of the Yoruba (Ibadan, 1970).
49. Potholm, Theory and Practice of African Politics, 20.
50. Ryder, ‘The Rise of the Benin Kingdom’, 28.
51. Ejiogu, ‘State Building in the Niger Basin’, 593–614.
52. Boahen ‘The Rise of the Akan’, 25.
53. Fage, A History of Africa, 119–20.
54. Ibid., 104.
55. Boahen ‘The Rise of the Akan’, 25–6.
56. Mair, Primitive Government, 190.
57. Potholm, Theory and Practice of African Politics, 19–21.
58. J.E. Harris, Africans and their History (New York, 1998), 59.
59. Ibid., 56.
60. Interestingly, Europeans knew of Mansa Musa during the fourteenth century. An inscription on a European atlas of this time features his picture, under which reads: ‘This Negro lord is called Mansa Musa, Lord of the Negros of Guinea. So abundant is the gold which is found in his country that he is the richest and most noble king in all the land.’ Ibid, 60–1.
61. Ibid., 60.
62. L. Heywood, ‘Slavery and its Transition in the Kingdom of Kongo: 1490–1800’, Journal of African History, l, no. 1 (2009), 3.
63. Hilton, The Kingdom of Kongo; J. Thornton, ‘Demography and History in the Kingdom of Kongo, 1550–1750’, Journal of African History, xviii, no. 4 (1977), 512.
64. P. Morton-Williams, ‘The Influence of Habitat and Trade on the Polities of Oyo and Ashanti’ in M. Douglas and P.M. Kaberry (eds), Man in Africa (New York, 1971), 81.
65. For excellent conceptual discussion, see: O. Patterson, Slavery and Social Death (Cambridge, 1982).
66. M. Gervase, ‘Some Reflections on African Trade Routes’ in Z.A. Konczacki and J.M. Konczacki (eds), An Economic History of Tropical Africa: The Pre-Colonial Period (London, 1977), 231.
67. P.D. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History (Cambridge, 1984), 15.
68. B. Fagan, ‘Early Trade and Raw Materials in South Central Africa’, Journal of African History, x, no. 1 (1969), 5.
69. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History, 26.
70. J. Vansina, ‘Long Distance Trade Routes in Central Africa’, Journal of African History, iii, no. 3 (1962), 376.
71. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History, 17.
72. J. Barbot, A Description of the Coasts of North and South Guinea (London, 1732).
73. The term canoe may conjure up the wrong image here. Firsthand accounts recall canoes which reached up to seventy feet long, capable of carrying eighty people.
74. I. Wilks, ‘A Medieval Trade-Route from Niger to the Gulf of Guinea’, Journal of African History, iii, no. 2 (1962), 337–8.
75. For a detailed map, see: T.M. Ciolek, Old World Trade Routes (OWTRAD) Project (Canberra: Asia Pacific Research Online, www.ciolek.com, 1999-present).
76. G. Lydon, On Trans-Saharan Trails: Islamic Law, Trade Networks, and Cross-Cultural Exchange in 19th Century Western Africa (Cambridge, 2009), 9–10.
77. S. D. Neumark, ‘Trans-Saharan Trade in the Middle Ages’ in Z.A. Konczacki and J.M. Konczacki (eds), An Economic History of Tropical Africa (London, 1977), 128–9.
78. Ibn Battuta, Ibn Battuta in Black Africa, Said Hamdun and Noel King (trans.), (London, 1975).
79. Vansina, ‘Long Distance Trade Routes in Central Africa’, 237.
80. Boahen ‘The Caravan trade in the 19th Century’, 349–50.
81. Wilks, ‘A Medieval Trade-Route from Niger to the Gulf of Guinea’, 337–41.
82. P. Lovejoy, ‘The Role of the Wangara in the Economic Transformation of the Central Sudan in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, Journal of African History, xix, no. 1 (1978), 175–6.
83. Lydon, On Trans-Saharan Trails, 64–5.
84. Gondola, The History of Congo, 16.
85. Vansina, ‘Long Distance Trade Routes in Central Africa’, 375.
86. Gervase, ‘Some Reflections on African Trade Routes’, 231.
87. Birmingham, ‘Central Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade’, 548.
88. Wondji, ‘The States and Cultures of the Upper Guinea Coast’, 388.
89. Wilks, ‘A Medieval Trade-Route from Niger to the Gulf of Guinea’, 337–8.
90. J. Thornton, ‘The Origins and Early History of the Kingdom of Kongo, c. 1350–1550’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, xxxiv, no. 1 (2001), 97.
91. Vansina, ‘Population Movements and the Emergence of New Socio-Political Forms in Africa’.
92. Lydon, On Trans-Saharan Trails, 65.
93. K.B. Dickson, ‘Trade Patterns in Ghana at the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century’, Geographical Review, lvi, no. 3 (1966), 417–31.
94. Vansina, ‘Long Distance Trade Routes in Central Africa’, 375.
95. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History, 29.
96. M. Mwa Bawele, ‘Afro-European Relations in the Western Congo Basin’ in S. Forster, W. Mommsen and R. Robinson (eds), Bismarck, Europe, and Africa: The Berlin Africa Conference 1884–1885 and the Onset of Partition (London, 1988), 470.
97. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History, 47–8.
98. Ibid., 42.
99. Quoted in: Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History, 39.
100. P. Diagne, ‘African Political, Economic and Social Structures during This Period’ in B.A. Ogot (ed), General History of Africa (Berkeley, 1992), 13–24.
101. Vansina, ‘Long Distance Trade Routes in Central Africa’, 390.
102. J. Thornton, Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500–1800 (London, 1999), 19–41.
103. U. Sayyid Ahmad Ismail al-Bali, Some Aspects of Islam in Africa (Reading, 2008), 42.
104. R.S. O’Fahey and J.L. Spaulding, Kingdoms of the Sudan (London, 1974).
105. Wondji, ‘The States and Cultures of the Upper Guinea Coast’, 389.
106. Thornton, Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 117.
107. J. Herbst, States and Power in Africa (Princeton, 2001), 12.
108. Anonymous, A True Relation of the Inhumane and unparallel’d actions and barbarous murders of negroes or moors: committed on three English-men (London, 1672), 13.
109. Thornton, Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 16.
110. J. Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1680 (Cambridge, 1992), 74.
111. Anonymous (1672) A True Relation, 16.
112. See, for instance: F. Cooper, ‘The Problem of Slavery in African Studies’, Journal of African History, xx, no. 1 (1979), 103–25; P.D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison, 1969); P.E.H. Hair, ‘The Enslavement of Koelle's Informants’, Journal of African History, vi, no. 2 (1965), 193–203.
113. There has been extensive debate on this point however. For pioneering discussion see Curtin (1975), where he postulates that war in Africa was either the product of a need for slaves or for wider political considerations, the latter meaning that slave collection was an afterthought.
114. P. Lovejoy, ‘Slavery in Africa’ in T. Burnard and G. Heuman (eds), The Routledge History of Slavery (London, 2011), 35–51.
115. Cooper, ‘The Problem of Slavery in African Studies’, 105.
116. Lovejoy, ‘Slavery in Africa’, 35–51.
117. Thornton, Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500–1800, 16.
118. Cooper, ‘The Problem of Slavery in African Studies’, 106–10.
119. Diagne, ‘African Political, Economic and Social Structures during This Period’, 26.
120. Cooper, ‘The Problem of Slavery in African Studies’, 107.
121. Lovejoy, ‘Slavery in Africa’, 38.
122. Neumark, ‘Trans-Saharan Trade in the Middle Ages’, 129–30.
123. Hair, ‘The Enslavement of Koelle's Informants’, 193–203.
124. W.E., Abraham, The Mind of Africa (Chicago, 1962), 74.
125. Diagne, ‘African Political, Economic and Social Structures during This Period’, 26.
126. P. Manning, ‘The Slave Trade in the Bight of Benin, 1640–1890’ in H. Gemery and J. Hogendorn (eds), The Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade (New York, 1975), 127.
127. Thornton, Africa and Africans in the making of the Atlantic World, 82–8.
128. Abraham, The Mind of Africa, 46.
129. Ibid., 51.
130. J. Thornton, ‘Religious and Ceremonial Life in Kongo and Mbundu’ in L.M. Heywood (ed), Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora (Cambridge, 2002), 75–6.
131. S. Johnson, The History of the Yorubas: From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the British Protectorate (Lagos, 1921), ch. 3.
132. Abraham, The Mind of Africa, 52.
133. M. Kingsley, Travels in West Africa (London, 1897), 231–2.
134. The fetish itself – i.e. the object – could range significantly, from lakes to ornate carvings; one unfortunate Dutchman was killed in the early seventeenth century after cutting down a fetish tree.
135. J. Atkins, A Voyage to Guinea, Brazil, & the West Indies, in His Majesty's Ships the Swallow and Weymouth (London, 1737); J. Barbot, A Description of the Coasts of North and South Guinea (London, 1732); W. Bosman, A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea, Divided into the Gold, the Slave and the Ivory Coasts (London, 1705).
136. Abraham, The Mind of Africa, 61.
137. I. A. Akinjogbin, Dahomey and Its Neighbours 1708–1818 (Cambridge, 1967), 16.
138. Fortes, and Evans-Pritchard, ‘Introduction’, 23.
139. Mair, Primitive Government, 214.
140. Abraham, The Mind of Africa, 51.
141. Akinjogbin, Dahomey and Its Neighbours.
142. Thornton, Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500–1800, 99.
143. Akinjogbin, Dahomey and Its Neighbours 1708–1818, 16.
144. See, for instance: Atkins, A Voyage to Guinea, Brazil, & the West Indies, in His Majesty's Ships the Swallow and Weymouth; Abraham, The Mind of Africa, 114.
145. Lydon, On Trans-Saharan Trails, 56–7.
146. N. Levtzion, ‘The Western Maghrib and Sudan’ in R. Oliver (ed), The Cambridge History of Africa: Volume 3 from c. 1050 to c. 1600 (Cambridge, 1977), 331–462.
147. Lydon, On Trans-Saharan Trails, 81–4.