Kola Nuts and the Central Sudan

Lovejoy's Caravans of Kola has been on this blog's reading list for quite some time. It seems to be a perfect companion to Lovejoy's even more detailed study of salt production and trade in the Central Sudan region during roughly the same period. Unfortunately for those interested in production, this study focuses more on exchange as the zone of kola growing was in the Volta basin under the rule of the Asante in the 18th and 19th centuries. Nonetheless, the two studies complement each other by illustrating how the market forces were related in the exchange of salt, natron, textiles, leather goods, and other products across a huge swathe of West Africa. Thus, as convincingly demonstrated by Lovejoy's study, the kola trade was one of the ways in which precolonial West African societies were shaped by market forces as well as linkages to the Atlantic and trans-Saharan systems. 

Even more intriguing is the analysis of the corporate kola traders of Hausaland in the 19th century, the Kambarin Beriberi, Tokarawa and Agalawa. These three groups, of Kanuri origin and "servile" backgrounds from the Tuareg lands to the north, took advantage of preexisting Islamic Hausa commercial diasporas in the Volta basin and the economic dynamism of Kano to become some of the wealthiest local traders in the Sokoto caliphate and northern Nigeria. Several chapters break down this development through the use of asali, Islam, Hausa language, large-scale caravan organization and networks established by previous Muslim traders who linked the Central Sudan with areas that later fell under the dominion of Asante. The ascent of these 3 groups points to the role of markets in upward social mobility in the Central Sudan for people of "servile" origin or those of Kanuri origin (Kambarin Beriberi) who emigrated to Hausaland in the late 18th century and early 19th century.

While we are more particularly interested in the earliest forms of this trade in kola between this region and Borno, the sources are richer for the period of 1700-1900. Consequently, our interest in how Borno's hegemonic position in the pre-jihad economy of the Central Sudan may have been linked to the kola trade before, say, 1759, remains somewhat obscure. Undoubtedly, the brief autobiographical texts of Abu Bakr al-Siddiq of Jamaica indicate a link between Jenne traders and those of Katsina and Borno by the late 18th century. Moreover, the problematic narrative of James Albert hints at links between Borno and the "Gold Coast" in the 18th century while the Fezzani trader cited by Lucas directly traveled to the region in question on behalf of the Awlad Muhammad dynasty. The Kano Chronicle likewise alludes trade in kola from Gonja to Borno through Hausaland by the 1400s or 1500s, and it is hard to imagine Borno traders not being involved with the trade in kola nuts at such early dates. This would be especially so if Borno was the dominant producer of textiles and leather products (or at least the main distribution center) for the Central Sudan before the Fulani jihad.