Borno's Borders

Although Hiribarren's A History of Borno: Trans-Saharan African Empire to Failing Nigerian State was not what we expected, it was an engaging analysis of how the territoriality and spatiality of 19th century Borno was adopted, recycled, adapted, and maintained by Rabih and the subsequent European colonial powers who "scrambled" for the Lake Chad Region (Britain, Germany, and France). The colonial and postcolonial borders of Borno, despite deviating from the actual borders of the 19th century state, were nonetheless the basis for how the British, Germans, and French carved up the region and, in the case of British Borno, implemented indirect rule through the institutions of the al-Kanemi Shehu government that they restored. Intriguingly, Hiribarren proposes some theories for why Borno played an important role in Nigeria's borders and internal states, possibly due to the Kanuri being an ethnic minority and having a recognized ancient history that could both be factors supporting the Nigerian state. 

However, the most interesting chapter is actually the fifth, which contextualizes the production of knowledge in colonial Borno through the essays and publications of British officials  and their local informants/collaborators. Due to the paucity of sources on the indigenous co-producers of knowledge, the chapter is speculative yet undoubtedly illustrates how colonial rule in Borno was aided and abetted by historical and anthropological knowledge on the Kanuri people and the sense in which Borno, as an ancient state in the region, could be appropriated by the British who saw themselves as the next great empire in the region. Our dear friend Palmer emerges here, and he clearly benefited professionally or politically from his outdated research on Borno's past through promotions up the ranks of colonial administration. 

What would be interesting for a fuller picture of colonial/colonialist historians of Borno and their reliance on local informants is a look at French scholars in Chad or Niger who also collected oral sources and data on Kanem-Borno's long history. We're thinking of Yves Urvoy for the most part, but a look at how Kanuri, Kanembu and other groups in today's Chad and Niger were also shaping Urvoy or other French scholarship on Kanem-Borno would be interesting for ways in which they too created a feedback loop or were in turn used for political legitimizing. From reading Yves Urvoy, one gets the impression that the French colonial-era scholars were also influenced by the legacy of ancient Rome, medieval Europe, and the ubiquitous Hamitic Hypothesis.