Industrialization in 19th century Sokoto Caliphate

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In the thread alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/likeliest-african-countries-to-begin-industrializing-in-the-19th-century.409880/page-1 there was a lot of hype about the possibility of the Sokoto caliphate industrializing, so I've decided to make it into my own thread, but first some context.

Sokoto's administrative capacity was a good one, a class of good commercial elites, awesome cottage industries capable of mass producing rifles, some financial backers and access to coal. Sokoto had a large population and was generally stable, with a flourishing political/intellectual elite that was catered for by classes of artisans. Sokoto had a flourishing textile and dye industry, entire towns such as Kura were devoted to the textile production while Babba Karofi to dye production. If you could somehow give Sokoto more unity and stability, a higher population, more of the pre- industrial needed infrastructure and technology and maybe do a few changes to the Scramble and Partition of Africa (delay it or stop it in it's tracks e.g. have European imperialism in Africa but not on the grand scale in OTL instead to have a larger part of Africa never colonized) could we see an Industrialized Sokoto?
 
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In the thread Likeliest African countries to begin industrializing in 19th century, there was a lot of hype about the possibility of the Sokoto caliphate industrializing, so I've decided to make it into my own thread, but first some context.

Sokoto's administrative capacity was a good one, a class of good commercial elites, awesome cottage industries capable of mass producing rifles, some financial backers and access to coal. Sokoto had a large population and was generally stable, with a flourishing political/intellectual elite that was catered for by classes of artisans. Sokoto had a flourishing textile and dye industry, entire towns such as Kura were devoted to the textile production while Babba Karofi to dye production. If you could somehow give Sokoto more unity and stability, a higher population, more of the pre- industrial needed infrastructure and technology and maybe do a few changes to the Scramble and Partition of Africa (delay it or stop it in it's tracks e.g. have European imperialism in Africa but not on the grand scale in OTL instead to have a larger part of Africa never colonized) could we see an Industrialized Sokoto?

The link doesn't work for some reason.
 
What do you think are some ways of preventing the Scramble of Africa? Maybe you could have a situation whereby European countries acquire colonies in Africa more slowly and are more focused on trading and evangelism than acquiring colonies.
 
What do you think are some ways of preventing the Scramble of Africa? Maybe you could have a situation whereby European countries acquire colonies in Africa more slowly and are more focused on trading and evangelism than acquiring colonies.
Simplest way is to get people to take Dr Livingstone's three Cs more seriously and take up his crusade.
 
Simplest way is to get people to take Dr Livingstone's three Cs more seriously and take up his crusade.

What exactly are these three Cs?

I was thinking, would a situation whereby during the 19th century a large amount of the European population is wiped out and European countries do not have high enough numbers to colonize Africa. What if there were more African countries like Ethiopia that possessed the level of advancement to resist the Europeans?
 
What exactly are these three Cs?

I was thinking, would a situation whereby during the 19th century a large amount of the European population is wiped out and European countries do not have high enough numbers to colonize Africa. What if there were more African countries like Ethiopia that possessed the level of advancement to resist the Europeans?
Christianity, Civilisation and Commerce. Essentially, Livingstone's idea was that European nations 'modernise' Africa by trading with them, converting them to the 'one true religion' and educating them in the ways of civilisation.

Well, yeah. That would allow the Africa to catch up with Africa somewhat, but you're straying in ASB territory there.
 
Jonathan Edelstein's excellent timeline Malê Rising deals with many, many things, but at the heart is a tale about the Sokoto states industrialising and trying to come to terms with empire.

It's probably the finest timeline on the site, and seems highly relevant to your interests.
 
Jonathan Edelstein's excellent timeline Malê Rising deals with many, many things, but at the heart is a tale about the Sokoto states industrialising and trying to come to terms with empire.

It's probably the finest timeline on the site, and seems highly relevant to your interests.
That true, but it also has quite a long backstory to why the Sokoto Caliphate industrialise so its not really the Caliphate by the end of it all but rather a republic.
 
Well, yeah. That would allow the Africa to catch up with Africa somewhat, but you're straying in ASB territory there.

Please explain more on that, well anyway, Livingstone's three Cs would prevent the spread of Islam, introduce western education and the acquiring of European technology.

How do you think Sokoto could have had more stability?
 
Please explain more on that, well anyway, Livingstone's three Cs would prevent the spread of Islam, introduce western education and the acquiring of European technology.

How do you think Sokoto could have had more stability?
Its fairly simple, what you're suggesting would need either a devastating war on the scale of WWI at least (which was possible before the Scramble for Africa due to technology and strategy restrictions) or some kind of massive plague which is generally regarded as an implausible POD.

It wouldn't prevent the spread of Islam, as that had already happened, but it might push Islam out of the Sahel as for the other two points that's correct.
Possibly, as you say it had a good organisational structure so you just need a strong ruler who can create a centralised system (perhaps inspired by the spread of Western ideas) and then introduce industrial reforms.
 
Jonathan Edelstein's excellent timeline Malê Rising deals with many, many things, but at the heart is a tale about the Sokoto states industrialising and trying to come to terms with empire.

It's probably the finest timeline on the site, and seems highly relevant to your interests.

Okay, I think I'll check that out. Maybe making Sokoto become a republic, top it all of with Livingstone's three Cs I think Sokoto would be in a better position to industrialize.
 
Its fairly simple, what you're suggesting would need either a devastating war on the scale of WWI at least (which was possible before the Scramble for Africa due to technology and strategy restrictions) or some kind of massive plague which is generally regarded as an implausible POD.

It wouldn't prevent the spread of Islam, as that had already happened, but it might push Islam out of the Sahel as for the other two points that's correct.
Possibly, as you say it had a good organisational structure so you just need a strong ruler who can create a centralised system (perhaps inspired by the spread of Western ideas) and then introduce industrial reforms.

What I meant by spread of Islam was how Islam was spreading into the interior of Eastern Africa (Coastal E.A. was mostly Muslim but the interior wasn't, and Islam was spreading into Kenya and Tanzania from the coast and the Ottomans were also spreading Islam as far as Uganda) and the Southern part of Western Africa (Southern Nigeria, Ghana, Benin and Togo were mostly non Muslim but Islam was spreading into there).
 
What I meant by spread of Islam was how Islam was spreading into the interior of Eastern Africa (Coastal E.A. was mostly Muslim but the interior wasn't, and Islam was spreading into Kenya and Tanzania from the coast and the Ottomans were also spreading Islam as far as Uganda) and the Southern part of Western Africa (Southern Nigeria, Ghana, Benin and Togo were mostly non Muslim but Islam was spreading into there).
Oh, OK. That fair enough then, it that case yeah it will stop this stage of the spread of Islam.
 
Jonathan Edelstein's excellent timeline Malê Rising deals with many, many things, but at the heart is a tale about the Sokoto states industrialising and trying to come to terms with empire.

It's probably the finest timeline on the site, and seems highly relevant to your interests.

Oh, you were able to make a working link!

The link doesn't work for some reason.

Could you(SenatorChickpea) please teach me how to make a working link?
 
I'm on page 6 of this forum and still haven't found the thread you want to link to. Is it in Chat or what?

Anyway, what you seem to have done is copy its name, and then I guess used the link tool in the toolbar above, and pasted the text of its name in, and it puts bogus character sequences in for spaces which is why it is hard to use it even to search with.

What you do is, you go to the page you want to link to, go to the top of it where the full URL (starting with www.etc)is and copy that, in full. This is what you paste in the link tool's input field. I'd Preview the post before posting (an option under More Options... below to the right) to make sure the link works. The link tool is not restricted to AH addresses and therefore needs the full URL protocol to link to anything.

I wish I knew more about African history; most of what I think I know comes from Jonathan's excellent TL. But you may be in a better position than most of us to judge how plausible his developments in the region were. Note that far from trying to stop Islam, the Abacars use the progressive/radical aspects of the Sokoto Caliphate and build on them, fusing the regional version of Islam with radical humanism and populist (and at least somewhat feminist, at least in practice) politics. Also they make a deal with the devil, eventually leveraging the improved political status of the anti-slavery Republic into alliance with Britain, which does eventually turn around and swallow the region up--but not before it has already begun both to industrialize, and to propagate its radical religious humanism and democratic politics.

You tell us if that seems crazy or sensible. Jonathan always made it seem reasonable, that the necessary issues were being dealt with.
 
I'm going to say that it was my silent moral support that made the difference there. Shevek23's actual advice may have played some small part too- I'm a generous soul.


Anyway, I think the key to Africa in the nineteenth century is to understand that colonialism was going to pick up in pace from previous centuries. This was due to a myriad of reasons- the sheer mounting damage of the transatlantic trade, the technological advancements made in Europe that made colonialism possible, the way that post-Enlightenment Europe saw serious changes to the way westerners understood race and civilisation... and that's not even touching the complexities of Sahelian politics.

What was not inevitable was a full Scramble For Africa of the pace and fury that our timeline saw. I tend to think that the inciting factor there was the Franco-Prussian War. After their defeat the French stopped seeing their African possessions as expensive baubles and began seeing Africa as a chance to recover their national dignity and perhaps rebuild their strength for a second confrontation with Germany.
Once the French began expanding at a faster race, that really led to the idea that colonial possessions in Africa were the mark of national vitality and that drives a lot of people. Look at the way Germany's colonial possessions were largely driven by middle class patriot/pirates who thought Bismarck wasn't paying sufficient attention to Germany's interests (!).

So I think to maximise the success of the Sahelian states you need to

i. Slow the race for colonies. To keep the Sokoto as healthy as possible, that means keeping the UK and France from focusing their attention on the region. Perhaps look for a different end to the Napoleonic wars? Not a full victory because that will guarantee the British throw themselves into expansion. But perhaps look at Lycaeon Pictus' Dead Skunk timeline for a scenario where following an alt-hundred days the Second Empire keeps most of the 1792 borders (France is number one on the continent) but the UK is also clearly the leader of the winning coalition. This would have the advantage of an early divergence- it keeps the major colonial powers focused on crises in Europe and the Mediterranean, rather than sub-Saharan Africa.

ii. You need to find a way to stabilse the Sahel states. I'm no expert, but the early nineteenth century saw plenty of territory change hands between local polities- that weakened them in the face of the Europeans. If any one local state becomes too powerful it probably won't have much incentive to modernise until it's too late- you need a few small, strong state with decent trade networks and urban centres that can in time become part of the global trade network.

iii. When Europe does enter the region- in force, that is, beyond the existing coastal factories and corporate concessions- you need the local states to be weak enough that they're not seen as a threat that has to be destroyed, but strong enough that no one wants to go to the bother of an expensive conquest. Jonathan Edelstein has many of the African polities spend much of the nineteenth century as akin to the Raj's "Princely States," until their autonomy swings back to full independence.

iv. Most troublesome of all, and here I admit absolutely no knowledge of local cultures, you need to work out how to get rulers to even think in terms of what we'd call "modernisation." On this site we often refer to nineteenth century industrialisation as "pulling a Meiji," as if the Japanese reformers simply made a decision to catch up with the West. In fact, it was never so simple. Many of the Meiji reformers began their careers as traditionalists fighting to keep Japan isolated. If you look at China, Thailand, the Boer states, Korea, the Ottomans, Ethiopia, Russia- modernisation/westernisation/industrialisation was an incredibly dangerous and complicated process. Many of the so-called reactionaries were perfectly right about the risk it would pose to traditional communities, cultures and the authority of the state. There was never a single model for success. Also, and I think this doesn't get enough attention, like any other kind of revolution it's the point at which reform is closest to victory that it's the most dangerous- civil war and foreign intervention become dramatically more likely.
So on top of the hardly simple task of working out how the Sokoto Caliphate's economy is going to get to the point that industrialisation is possible, you need to work our what cultural changes will see its rulers, its imams, its aristocrats, its merchants and its peasants begin to change their traditional ways of life.
 
Perhaps a good patron could give survivability to Sokoto.
Maybe having the Ottoman Empire be victorious in the 1877-78 war against Russia could be good. I hear that the ottomans had good relations with the african states before the war.
 
I've been thinking maybe you could get African countries like Sokoto to want to modernize because of Livingstone's three Cs (Civilization, Commerce and Christianity). If this trio of words starting with Cs would be implemented earlier in the 19th century you could get Sokoyo interested in developing the pre-industrial infrastructure that was there in Meiji Japan. European influence could make Sokoto more stable and the large production of Cotton and Dye along their coal reserves could go a long way in the Industrialization of this country, but the only problem is how to implement the three Cs in the early 1800s. What are your thoughts on that?
 
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