He's too good a character to pass up, isn't he?
I hadn't realized this, but we could assume that, as one of his later works, Durch die Reiche von Afrika is set in the late 1870s. Very little about the story would have to change.
Malê Rising
- Thread starter Jonathan Edelstein
- Start date
He's too good a character to pass up, isn't he?
I hadn't realized this, but we could assume that, as one of his later works, Durch die Reiche von Afrika is set in the late 1870s. Very little about the story would have to change.
Lt. Col. John Alexander, Twenty Years in Africa: A Political Officer’s Travels in the Darkest Continent (London: Collins, 1867)
Chapter Twelve: Sokoto Yet Again and Timbuktu, 1847-48
… My fourth return to Sokoto was a study in what had changed and, at the same time, what had not. The road north from Lagos – a British port now, with a naval station and a resident in charge – was well traveled, and in the territories with more enterprising rulers, it had been improved. At the border near Ilorin were several travellers’ hostels, and in the city itself were a growing number of weaving-mills, not what there would be in Yorkshire but still appearing strangely out of place in the setting. From there onward, I traveled on military roads which seemed to be used by many more travellers and merchants than soldiers, past the beginnings of navigation canals.
The dress of the people had not changed, but the way that I looked at it had. The Abacar affair two years back had made Africa all the rage at home, as Egypt had been when I was a child and India would be a few years later, and on my last visit, our own dear ladies had affected headdresses identical to what the women of Sokoto wore. The ladies of Britain, of course, had their turbans made of silk, but their colors and patterns might as well have been Fula, and whenever I spied a well-formed woman, I couldn’t help wondering how her turban might be judged in Hyde Park or Lord’s. Fortunately, fashions hadn’t travelled the other way, and the ladies of Sokoto proved too sensible to wear corsets or dozens of petticoats – an affectation that, in the event, would doubtless have caused them to melt in the heat of the day.
Throughout my progress through the Republic, I had been hearing much intelligence in the travellers’ hostels regarding other kingdoms. One name that was spoken in almost every conversation was that of El Hadj Umar Tall, a king of the Tukulor – a far-western Fula tribe which lived by its farms rather than its herds – who had united several of the nations on the upper Niger. He was married to a granddaughter of the old Sultan of Sokoto and accounted Abacar both a personal and a religious enemy, deeming him a usurper of the sultanate and a heretic in his theology. For all that, he opposed the slave trade as Abacar did and suppressed that traffic within his domains, even quoting Abacar’s teachings on that if on no other matter.
I had made up my mind to travel up the Niger and see what I could learn of this man, and when I told Abacar of this design, he asked me to carry a message. This I could not refuse, so I found a place in a caravan northwestward.
From Sokoto to Timbuktu is some six hundred miles, much of it passable only by land. To the north, the climate becomes steadily drier and the land turns to scrub and then to desert; above Ansongo, where the river becomes navigable again, there are places where the dunes extend all the way to the water’s edge. Here the lands around the Niger are much like Egypt and the Nile; lush with life where the annual floods renew the soil, still as death in the interior.
Throughout the journey, I was able to get by with the Fulfulde I had learned during my visits to Sokoto; although the dialects were different, the rulers of many cities and nations were still Fulani. I was struck by the degree to which a mixture of Fulfulde and gutter Portuguese, adopted by the Malê merchants, had become a traders’ tongue and lingua franca through the region.
I came at last to Timbuktu, which is a city of mud and a city of mosques. Everything here is built of mud, some in bricks and some not, bleached and dried by the remorseless sun. The mosques too are constructed of mud – pyramids, domes, castles and ziggurats of mud, with bundles of palm projecting at intervals for support and decoration.
The population of the city is largely a mix of Moors and Negroes, although there are also many Tuareg nomads. Here the turbans of the Sokoto women were exchanged for veils, except among the Tuaregs, where the women were bare-faced and it was the men who were veiled. The Tuareg men always carry swords, which they hone to razor keenness, and have curious dances…
… I had thought to travel on up the Niger to Umar Tall’s seat in Dinguiraye, but on my first night in Timbuktu, I was fortunate to learn that he was present in the city. He had lately persuaded the rulers of the city to league with him against the noxious ideas (for so he accounted them) coming from Sokoto, and had traveled here to seal the pact. The kingdoms of the Bambara, who were pagan, lay between these lands and the other portions of Umar Tall’s kingdom, but he had forced them to give passage to his troops and give up raiding for slaves. [1]
The ruler himself – with whom I was able to secure an audience on my fourth day in Timbuktu – was a religious teacher and scholar much as Abacar was, and as the sheik Usman dan Fodio had been. He was younger than Abacar (although still of a considerable age) and taller; his form was tall and gaunt where Abacar’s was stocky and powerful. But I felt the same commanding presence from him that I had in the company of the other man.
He seemed not at all affected by the fact that a white man had come to see him, treating me like any other emissary and asking me to state my business.
“I will hear no messages from Abacar,” he replied when I had done this. “He is an apostate and a heretic, a worshiper of false French doctrine, and with him there will be no peace. Is that what he wants?”
“No, not that,” I said. “He knows that you will not treat with him. His message is that you have done well to suppress the slave trade but that you have not yet freed the slaves within your own domain, and he begs you to do so, and to honor them with freedom as God requires.”
Umar Tall gave me no answer, then or during the other audiences I had with him. But a year later, I learned that he had in fact decreed the abolition of slavery…
[1] At this time in OTL, Umar Tall was just beginning his jihad – his first conquests, of the Malinké occurred in 1848. In the ATL, he has been impelled to quicker action by the appearance of Abacarist theology, which he regards as heretical. Also, in contrast to OTL where his first step was to conquer and Islamize the surrounding non-Muslim ethnic groups, his chief aim in the ATL is to unite the western Muslim nations in opposition to Malê radicalism. Thus, instead of invading Masina in 1862 and being stopped at Timbuktu the following year, he has won these kingdoms to his side through diplomacy and persuasion, and has used a combination of these means and military force to unite the Muslim kingdoms of the upper Niger. Other local jihadists, such as Maba Diakhou Bâ, will be his vassals in the ATL, at least for a while, rather than acting independently.
At the time of then-Major Alexander’s visit, Tall’s empire consists of Futa Toro, Futa Jallon and parts of Rip on one side, and Masina on the other – still several hundred miles from Sokoto, but in a position to interdict traffic up the Niger. The two wings are separated by the non-Muslim Bambara kingdoms, but Tall has bullied these states into granting autonomy to their Muslim communities and giving free passage to his troops. His empire is actually larger than OTL, but looser (because much of it joined him voluntarily and hasn’t been forced to give up its autonomy) and more inherently unstable (both for that reason and because its two wings are separated by the Bamana). Tall will soon attempt to change both these factors.
And he did preach against the slave trade in OTL, although it wasn't a focus of his jihad; in the ATL, with the unspoken (and unacknowledged, at least by him) influence of the Malê, it will be more of one.
Chapter Twelve: Sokoto Yet Again and Timbuktu, 1847-48
… My fourth return to Sokoto was a study in what had changed and, at the same time, what had not. The road north from Lagos – a British port now, with a naval station and a resident in charge – was well traveled, and in the territories with more enterprising rulers, it had been improved. At the border near Ilorin were several travellers’ hostels, and in the city itself were a growing number of weaving-mills, not what there would be in Yorkshire but still appearing strangely out of place in the setting. From there onward, I traveled on military roads which seemed to be used by many more travellers and merchants than soldiers, past the beginnings of navigation canals.
The dress of the people had not changed, but the way that I looked at it had. The Abacar affair two years back had made Africa all the rage at home, as Egypt had been when I was a child and India would be a few years later, and on my last visit, our own dear ladies had affected headdresses identical to what the women of Sokoto wore. The ladies of Britain, of course, had their turbans made of silk, but their colors and patterns might as well have been Fula, and whenever I spied a well-formed woman, I couldn’t help wondering how her turban might be judged in Hyde Park or Lord’s. Fortunately, fashions hadn’t travelled the other way, and the ladies of Sokoto proved too sensible to wear corsets or dozens of petticoats – an affectation that, in the event, would doubtless have caused them to melt in the heat of the day.
Throughout my progress through the Republic, I had been hearing much intelligence in the travellers’ hostels regarding other kingdoms. One name that was spoken in almost every conversation was that of El Hadj Umar Tall, a king of the Tukulor – a far-western Fula tribe which lived by its farms rather than its herds – who had united several of the nations on the upper Niger. He was married to a granddaughter of the old Sultan of Sokoto and accounted Abacar both a personal and a religious enemy, deeming him a usurper of the sultanate and a heretic in his theology. For all that, he opposed the slave trade as Abacar did and suppressed that traffic within his domains, even quoting Abacar’s teachings on that if on no other matter.
I had made up my mind to travel up the Niger and see what I could learn of this man, and when I told Abacar of this design, he asked me to carry a message. This I could not refuse, so I found a place in a caravan northwestward.
From Sokoto to Timbuktu is some six hundred miles, much of it passable only by land. To the north, the climate becomes steadily drier and the land turns to scrub and then to desert; above Ansongo, where the river becomes navigable again, there are places where the dunes extend all the way to the water’s edge. Here the lands around the Niger are much like Egypt and the Nile; lush with life where the annual floods renew the soil, still as death in the interior.
Throughout the journey, I was able to get by with the Fulfulde I had learned during my visits to Sokoto; although the dialects were different, the rulers of many cities and nations were still Fulani. I was struck by the degree to which a mixture of Fulfulde and gutter Portuguese, adopted by the Malê merchants, had become a traders’ tongue and lingua franca through the region.
I came at last to Timbuktu, which is a city of mud and a city of mosques. Everything here is built of mud, some in bricks and some not, bleached and dried by the remorseless sun. The mosques too are constructed of mud – pyramids, domes, castles and ziggurats of mud, with bundles of palm projecting at intervals for support and decoration.
The population of the city is largely a mix of Moors and Negroes, although there are also many Tuareg nomads. Here the turbans of the Sokoto women were exchanged for veils, except among the Tuaregs, where the women were bare-faced and it was the men who were veiled. The Tuareg men always carry swords, which they hone to razor keenness, and have curious dances…
… I had thought to travel on up the Niger to Umar Tall’s seat in Dinguiraye, but on my first night in Timbuktu, I was fortunate to learn that he was present in the city. He had lately persuaded the rulers of the city to league with him against the noxious ideas (for so he accounted them) coming from Sokoto, and had traveled here to seal the pact. The kingdoms of the Bambara, who were pagan, lay between these lands and the other portions of Umar Tall’s kingdom, but he had forced them to give passage to his troops and give up raiding for slaves. [1]
The ruler himself – with whom I was able to secure an audience on my fourth day in Timbuktu – was a religious teacher and scholar much as Abacar was, and as the sheik Usman dan Fodio had been. He was younger than Abacar (although still of a considerable age) and taller; his form was tall and gaunt where Abacar’s was stocky and powerful. But I felt the same commanding presence from him that I had in the company of the other man.
He seemed not at all affected by the fact that a white man had come to see him, treating me like any other emissary and asking me to state my business.
“I will hear no messages from Abacar,” he replied when I had done this. “He is an apostate and a heretic, a worshiper of false French doctrine, and with him there will be no peace. Is that what he wants?”
“No, not that,” I said. “He knows that you will not treat with him. His message is that you have done well to suppress the slave trade but that you have not yet freed the slaves within your own domain, and he begs you to do so, and to honor them with freedom as God requires.”
Umar Tall gave me no answer, then or during the other audiences I had with him. But a year later, I learned that he had in fact decreed the abolition of slavery…
*******
[1] At this time in OTL, Umar Tall was just beginning his jihad – his first conquests, of the Malinké occurred in 1848. In the ATL, he has been impelled to quicker action by the appearance of Abacarist theology, which he regards as heretical. Also, in contrast to OTL where his first step was to conquer and Islamize the surrounding non-Muslim ethnic groups, his chief aim in the ATL is to unite the western Muslim nations in opposition to Malê radicalism. Thus, instead of invading Masina in 1862 and being stopped at Timbuktu the following year, he has won these kingdoms to his side through diplomacy and persuasion, and has used a combination of these means and military force to unite the Muslim kingdoms of the upper Niger. Other local jihadists, such as Maba Diakhou Bâ, will be his vassals in the ATL, at least for a while, rather than acting independently.
At the time of then-Major Alexander’s visit, Tall’s empire consists of Futa Toro, Futa Jallon and parts of Rip on one side, and Masina on the other – still several hundred miles from Sokoto, but in a position to interdict traffic up the Niger. The two wings are separated by the non-Muslim Bambara kingdoms, but Tall has bullied these states into granting autonomy to their Muslim communities and giving free passage to his troops. His empire is actually larger than OTL, but looser (because much of it joined him voluntarily and hasn’t been forced to give up its autonomy) and more inherently unstable (both for that reason and because its two wings are separated by the Bamana). Tall will soon attempt to change both these factors.
And he did preach against the slave trade in OTL, although it wasn't a focus of his jihad; in the ATL, with the unspoken (and unacknowledged, at least by him) influence of the Malê, it will be more of one.
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HIS 412 - Modernization in West Africa: An Economic, Social and Political Study
Lecture by Prof. Aminatou Salazar, University of Sokoto (October Term 2011)
“… I’m sure you’ve all heard in primary about the ‘industrialization’ of the First Sokoto Republic. I’m telling you right now, I don’t ever want to hear that word used here, about that period. It’s crap. Utter, nationalistic crap.
“The First Republic did have industries, yes, and it had new ones. But it would be a gross misnomer to call what happened at that time ‘industrialization.’ The industries were small – above cottage scale, but not Manchester by a long stretch – and their development was confined largely to three cities. Can anyone tell me which ones?”
“The cities or the industries?”
“Industries first.”
“Iron, textiles and… pottery?”
“Right about the first two, wrong about the third. Pottery and glass came later. I’ll give you a hint – what do you need to run a foundry?”
“Iron… was it mining?”
“Mining, of course! Iron, and later coke, although the coke came from down in Igbo land. And the cities? Sokoto, because it was the capital and the site of the military industries, Ilorin, because of the weavers’ guild and the road transport to Lagos, and… anyone?”
“Jebba.”
“Yes, Jebba, and why?”
“Because it was on the Niger?”
“That’s right, and it happened to be in the right place on the Niger – boats from the delta ports could reach it seven months a year, while the stretch above it was only navigable during the floods. A village in 1840, a city in 1852. But now let’s get to what they didn’t teach you in primary. Why didn’t we have full industrialization? Why didn’t Ilorin become another Manchester? Let’s see who’s done the reading.”
“Tooling…”
“Yes, tooling. We didn’t have any machine-tool factories in those days, so there were limits to precision and the machines had to be made one at a time. There were some machine tools made in the latter days of the Republic, but in a purely artisanal fashion – we had lathes by 1850, but not many of them. Another factor? Do you remember your Marx?”
“Capital?”
“Capital! The First Republic had no banks – it would be a decade yet before the first Islamic bank opened in Ilorin. Most of the country was still on an in-kind economy. There was no foreign investment to speak of, other than the subsidy the British gave us for suppressing the slave trade, and while some of that went to the foundries, most went to the army and civil service. All of which put definite limits on the speed of growth.”
“An industrial evolution rather than an industrial revolution?”
“Ah, well, good job you did the reading, but I think that particular assessment is a bit too facile. In the event, different capital sources also meant that some industries had different growth and ownership patterns than others. Can anyone tell me why the textile industry and the iron industry ended up with such different ownership structures?”
“The iron industry was started by the government for the military, while the textile industry began with a cooperative of weavers and blacksmiths pooling their capital.”
“Absolutely. Iron was top-down, textiles were bottom-up. But should that have really mattered? After all, the government gave away foundry shares like candy in the early years – veterans’ grants, civil-service pay, sometimes purchases were made in them. Anyone? Well, let me put a question to you. If someone handed you a share of a business you knew nothing about, what would you do with it?”
“Sell it, I guess.”
“Right. And that’s what most people who got the shares did. They saw the shares as found money rather than participatory ownership, and cashed them in rather than holding them as investment, with the result that by the end of the 1840s, a few barons held majority shares in the iron-works. The textile industry, on the other hand, was founded by people who knew the business and wanted to keep their stake in it, so they held onto their shares. The cooperative model is the one that most of the subsequent industries followed – fortunately so, in my opinion, but again a model that puts limits on the speed of growth. That isn’t bad in some respects – it prevents too many workers from being displaced all at once, for instance – but it means we’re not as rich as we might be.
“Let’s go on. We’ve talked about tooling and capital – were there other things that prevented Jebba from becoming Oldham on the Niger?”
“Transport.”
“Transport! We had good roads by the end of the First Republic, but no railroads – Paulo Abacar wanted to build one, but it was never more than a dream. And for most of that time, the Niger was still not navigable above Jebba – the first canal didn’t open until very late in the Republic’s history. So there was riverboat traffic from Jebba to the sea, yes, but much of the long-distance trade was still carried by a combination of boat and caravan, with all the expense that entails…”
“But what about the peddlers?”
“Indeed, what about them?”
“The displaced workers – some of them went into sales, bringing the cloth and the iron pots to the villages. My mum said that back in her grandmother’s day, every village had two things, a jaji and a peddler…”
“The salesmen did become a cultural icon, yes, and their role in knitting together the village and urban cultures – both in the Republic and in Adamawa – is something we’ll explore later in the term. But they were small-scale entrepreneurs who served small markets, and they weren’t a full solution to the transport problem. And the fourth reason the Republic’s industries stayed small? Anyone? Remember the importance of thinking about social as well as physical factors…
“Very well, if no one wants to take a stab at it – the answer is law. We didn’t yet have a patent-office, and there wasn’t any uniform commercial code – the 1846 code went part of the way, especially with contracts, but it didn’t cover everything and the qadis in each city would supplement it with their own interpretations of sharia law. Again, this had its virtues – it meant that Islamic just-wage concepts entered our common law, for instance, and the qadis would often resolve industrial disputes in the workers’ favor – but it could make things hard if you wanted to do business in more than one city.
“At any rate, let’s conclude with the positive. We’ve gone through the reasons why the Republic didn’t become an overnight industrial powerhouse, but what did happen? What did industry do for us during that period?”
“Raised living standards?”
“Certainly. Growth was modest, but it did happen. Sokoto in 1840 was overwhelmingly a subsistence economy. A decade later, it was at about twice that level. Anything else?”
“Bigger cities?” “More trade?”
“Right on both counts – and more trade also meant faster flow of culture and ideas. Remember to think about social factors. And speaking of which, what more?”
“People wanted to be industrial?”
“Very good. Yes, by the end of the First Republic, we’d learned to want things we’d never dreamed of before. We wanted machine tools. We wanted some kind of banking and credit. We wanted railroads and canals. And wanting something is the first step toward directing one’s efforts toward getting it.
“What happened during the Republic wasn’t an industrial revolution or an industrial evolution, but an industrial foundation. And that would stand us and our neighbors in good stead during the late pre-colonial period and into colonialism, which is something we’ll talk about next time…”
Lecture by Prof. Aminatou Salazar, University of Sokoto (October Term 2011)
“… I’m sure you’ve all heard in primary about the ‘industrialization’ of the First Sokoto Republic. I’m telling you right now, I don’t ever want to hear that word used here, about that period. It’s crap. Utter, nationalistic crap.
“The First Republic did have industries, yes, and it had new ones. But it would be a gross misnomer to call what happened at that time ‘industrialization.’ The industries were small – above cottage scale, but not Manchester by a long stretch – and their development was confined largely to three cities. Can anyone tell me which ones?”
“The cities or the industries?”
“Industries first.”
“Iron, textiles and… pottery?”
“Right about the first two, wrong about the third. Pottery and glass came later. I’ll give you a hint – what do you need to run a foundry?”
“Iron… was it mining?”
“Mining, of course! Iron, and later coke, although the coke came from down in Igbo land. And the cities? Sokoto, because it was the capital and the site of the military industries, Ilorin, because of the weavers’ guild and the road transport to Lagos, and… anyone?”
“Jebba.”
“Yes, Jebba, and why?”
“Because it was on the Niger?”
“That’s right, and it happened to be in the right place on the Niger – boats from the delta ports could reach it seven months a year, while the stretch above it was only navigable during the floods. A village in 1840, a city in 1852. But now let’s get to what they didn’t teach you in primary. Why didn’t we have full industrialization? Why didn’t Ilorin become another Manchester? Let’s see who’s done the reading.”
“Tooling…”
“Yes, tooling. We didn’t have any machine-tool factories in those days, so there were limits to precision and the machines had to be made one at a time. There were some machine tools made in the latter days of the Republic, but in a purely artisanal fashion – we had lathes by 1850, but not many of them. Another factor? Do you remember your Marx?”
“Capital?”
“Capital! The First Republic had no banks – it would be a decade yet before the first Islamic bank opened in Ilorin. Most of the country was still on an in-kind economy. There was no foreign investment to speak of, other than the subsidy the British gave us for suppressing the slave trade, and while some of that went to the foundries, most went to the army and civil service. All of which put definite limits on the speed of growth.”
“An industrial evolution rather than an industrial revolution?”
“Ah, well, good job you did the reading, but I think that particular assessment is a bit too facile. In the event, different capital sources also meant that some industries had different growth and ownership patterns than others. Can anyone tell me why the textile industry and the iron industry ended up with such different ownership structures?”
“The iron industry was started by the government for the military, while the textile industry began with a cooperative of weavers and blacksmiths pooling their capital.”
“Absolutely. Iron was top-down, textiles were bottom-up. But should that have really mattered? After all, the government gave away foundry shares like candy in the early years – veterans’ grants, civil-service pay, sometimes purchases were made in them. Anyone? Well, let me put a question to you. If someone handed you a share of a business you knew nothing about, what would you do with it?”
“Sell it, I guess.”
“Right. And that’s what most people who got the shares did. They saw the shares as found money rather than participatory ownership, and cashed them in rather than holding them as investment, with the result that by the end of the 1840s, a few barons held majority shares in the iron-works. The textile industry, on the other hand, was founded by people who knew the business and wanted to keep their stake in it, so they held onto their shares. The cooperative model is the one that most of the subsequent industries followed – fortunately so, in my opinion, but again a model that puts limits on the speed of growth. That isn’t bad in some respects – it prevents too many workers from being displaced all at once, for instance – but it means we’re not as rich as we might be.
“Let’s go on. We’ve talked about tooling and capital – were there other things that prevented Jebba from becoming Oldham on the Niger?”
“Transport.”
“Transport! We had good roads by the end of the First Republic, but no railroads – Paulo Abacar wanted to build one, but it was never more than a dream. And for most of that time, the Niger was still not navigable above Jebba – the first canal didn’t open until very late in the Republic’s history. So there was riverboat traffic from Jebba to the sea, yes, but much of the long-distance trade was still carried by a combination of boat and caravan, with all the expense that entails…”
“But what about the peddlers?”
“Indeed, what about them?”
“The displaced workers – some of them went into sales, bringing the cloth and the iron pots to the villages. My mum said that back in her grandmother’s day, every village had two things, a jaji and a peddler…”
“The salesmen did become a cultural icon, yes, and their role in knitting together the village and urban cultures – both in the Republic and in Adamawa – is something we’ll explore later in the term. But they were small-scale entrepreneurs who served small markets, and they weren’t a full solution to the transport problem. And the fourth reason the Republic’s industries stayed small? Anyone? Remember the importance of thinking about social as well as physical factors…
“Very well, if no one wants to take a stab at it – the answer is law. We didn’t yet have a patent-office, and there wasn’t any uniform commercial code – the 1846 code went part of the way, especially with contracts, but it didn’t cover everything and the qadis in each city would supplement it with their own interpretations of sharia law. Again, this had its virtues – it meant that Islamic just-wage concepts entered our common law, for instance, and the qadis would often resolve industrial disputes in the workers’ favor – but it could make things hard if you wanted to do business in more than one city.
“At any rate, let’s conclude with the positive. We’ve gone through the reasons why the Republic didn’t become an overnight industrial powerhouse, but what did happen? What did industry do for us during that period?”
“Raised living standards?”
“Certainly. Growth was modest, but it did happen. Sokoto in 1840 was overwhelmingly a subsistence economy. A decade later, it was at about twice that level. Anything else?”
“Bigger cities?” “More trade?”
“Right on both counts – and more trade also meant faster flow of culture and ideas. Remember to think about social factors. And speaking of which, what more?”
“People wanted to be industrial?”
“Very good. Yes, by the end of the First Republic, we’d learned to want things we’d never dreamed of before. We wanted machine tools. We wanted some kind of banking and credit. We wanted railroads and canals. And wanting something is the first step toward directing one’s efforts toward getting it.
“What happened during the Republic wasn’t an industrial revolution or an industrial evolution, but an industrial foundation. And that would stand us and our neighbors in good stead during the late pre-colonial period and into colonialism, which is something we’ll talk about next time…”
I wish that too... this would have been a great way for African nations especially resource rich area's to have industrialize without giving up their national sovereignty.
Great update by the way!
Also this is a great start towards women's rights in africa!
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It isn't going to be all happy and shiny. Happier and shinier than OTL, but in the region we're talking about, that isn't exactly a high bar.
The Sokoto industrial model is one that, of necessity, starts small and grows slowly. It'll snowball eventually, especially once machine tools become common, but that will take time. The doubling of living standards during the First Republic still leaves it quite poor.
Also, because equipment is still produced semi-artisanally and economies of scale are less available, production costs per unit will be higher than in a fully industrialized economy. Sokoto's labor costs will be lower, but not enough to offset the disadvantage. They'll be able to compete locally, especially in geographically isolated markets where shipping costs would form a major part of the price of imported goods, but not to break into foreign markets until a much later stage in their development.
Another thing Madam Professor Salazar didn't say is that, while most of the economic growth was locally driven, part of it resulted from the cash infusion of the British subsidy, only about 20 percent of which was reinvested (although somewhat more of it went to infrastructure). The subsidy will stop when the Republic does, and for that matter, the collapse of the Republic as a unitary state (with attendant effects not only on tariff barriers but on things like infrastructure maintenance) won't be good for business.
Colonial tariffs, imperial trade monopolies and the dumping of cheap metropolitan products won't help either. The local industries will have had another generation to position themselves by that time, but some won't survive and others will find themselves largely European-owned, especially in the areas that come under direct rule. India's long-term de-industrialization under British rule is an example of how this can happen.
On the other hand, the Sokoto successor states will enter the colonial period at a higher stage of development than India did, and they won't be under imperial rule as long. Many of the industries will have enough traction to survive, particularly in the areas that become protectorates or unequal allies, and the most-industrialized regions are precisely the ones most likely to achieve this status. As was recently stated in another thread (I don't recall which), the most developed areas will have wealth rather than simply having resources, and will thus be worth keeping as captive trading partners rather than simply conquering. Their relative wealth will also enable them to build armies that are strong enough to (a) be worth recruiting, and (b) give the colonial powers a rough time if they try to push things too far. And as the Professor said, they'll have learned to want industrial development, and they'll fight to keep control of it.
The result will be that the semi-industrialized parts of West Africa, of which Sokoto will be one and Ilorin another, will be able to keep colonial-era "de-development" to a minimum, some further development will continue to occur, and they'll be in a much better starting position once they recover their independence. My best guess as to their level of development today would be somewhere between the better-off parts of India and the worse-off parts of Malaysia, but that may change as the timeline progresses. The survival of the cooperative model will also mean that there will be less economic inequality and that the fruits of development will be more widely shared. Again, not all happy and shiny, and not all parts of Africa will do this well, but Professor Salazar's students should at least be better off than their OTL counterparts.
Interesting. You hit the nail on the head when you talked about colonial de-development. It's a tragedy what the British did to India. In this case, you seem to be giving Sokoto some hope. With the spread of the Abcarist philosophy, and its undoubted influence, you could see a double blessing across much of West Africa of economic development and political liberalization.
How will Sokoto colonization proceed? The French may try to take over under one of the Empires (the Second is probably upcoming shortly). However, I don't see the French having much success. The Sokoto Republic would probably fight especially hard against a French regime which has crushed French liberalism. Not only that, but Sokoto has a powerful ally in Great Britain.
I could see Sokoto coming under British colonization, however. If the Republic is under serious threat from hostile neighbors (specifically, Umar Tall, but it doesn't have to be him), then the Sokotans could invite British troops in to help them fight off the threat. At that point, all it takes is a British policy change, or if the British begin to profit economically enough that they'll look the other way. It would be a slow shift from economic dominance to outright colonization.
You might have something completely different in mind. I love what you've done with this timeline; it's one of the best out there right now. Keep up the great work!
Cheers,
Ganesha
P.S. And don't think I missed the "we" in the Professor's dialogue. She's speaking from some sort of Sokoto!
Well, the retrospective perspectives rule out one possibility I could theoretically project from the 1840s stuff--that Sokoto and region come under British colonialism and find ways to like it. A minimum condition of that would be that they'd gradually come to be accorded the same sort of respect the "white" colonies of Canada, Australia, New Zealand got and became dominions then Commonwealth members.
In some other timeline, from these beginnings, I wouldn't rule it out as a fun alternative, but it would require that the British outgrow racism, the colonialist version that is. I'd like to hope that could happen, and if it could then Britain might well wind up retaining the whole Empire--provided they accepted it would be an Empire mostly ruled by non-Britons!
Clearly that didn't happen here, we've repeatedly been told West Africa winds up rather analogous to India; I can imagine better off in some respects, maybe then a bit worse off in others to balance things.
I was just mentally sticking on imagining what they'd do with the technology of the early 20th century, cars and airplanes and so forth, if they are getting machine-minded this early in the game.
Also if the region is under a state as big as OTL Nigeria or bigger, they've got their own oil; if they also have domestic automobiles and planes and so forth, or at least are major and influential markets for same, they could easily surpass India in per capita levels of machinery and so on.
There could be some interesting interactions with the American diaspora too; OTL I know that from time to time there are movements among African-Americans to steer as much market patronage as they can toward African-American owned businesses. What if that sort of thing oscillates back and forth across the Atlantic, with African-Americans including the West African industries in the circle of markets to support, and vice versa the West Africans patronizing African-American industries in the USA when they do buy stuff from overseas--the latter could be much more distinct and viable in the USA with a defined market share overseas, and the West African businesses too could be transformed by having a guaranteed American market.
In some other timeline, from these beginnings, I wouldn't rule it out as a fun alternative, but it would require that the British outgrow racism, the colonialist version that is. I'd like to hope that could happen, and if it could then Britain might well wind up retaining the whole Empire--provided they accepted it would be an Empire mostly ruled by non-Britons!
Clearly that didn't happen here, we've repeatedly been told West Africa winds up rather analogous to India; I can imagine better off in some respects, maybe then a bit worse off in others to balance things.
I was just mentally sticking on imagining what they'd do with the technology of the early 20th century, cars and airplanes and so forth, if they are getting machine-minded this early in the game.
Also if the region is under a state as big as OTL Nigeria or bigger, they've got their own oil; if they also have domestic automobiles and planes and so forth, or at least are major and influential markets for same, they could easily surpass India in per capita levels of machinery and so on.
There could be some interesting interactions with the American diaspora too; OTL I know that from time to time there are movements among African-Americans to steer as much market patronage as they can toward African-American owned businesses. What if that sort of thing oscillates back and forth across the Atlantic, with African-Americans including the West African industries in the circle of markets to support, and vice versa the West Africans patronizing African-American industries in the USA when they do buy stuff from overseas--the latter could be much more distinct and viable in the USA with a defined market share overseas, and the West African businesses too could be transformed by having a guaranteed American market.
Have I mentioned that this TL is superb? I really wish I could give more input beyond that, but my knowledge of West Africa at this time is somewhat lacking...
Oh, another thing. If the Malê-influenced parts of West Africa wind up largely under British rule for a long period overlapping the early 20th century, decolonizing say just after WWII along with India, there is the prospect of strong interactions between them and Indian Muslims (and Arabs and others under British rule as well). There could be strong mutual influences on the character of their respective anti-colonial movements and post-colonial societies, brought together as they are as fellow Muslims under the British flag.
I wonder if one effect might be to somehow keep Pakistan from splitting off India, resulting in a united India stretching from Iran to Burma.
As things are there are still a whole lot of Muslims in India, I believe perhaps more than in Pakistan and Bangladesh put together. If South Asian Muslims can remain more or less happily integrated into a greater India, that might avoid a whole lot of OTL miseries.
Since the Sokoto legacy includes a kind of Islamic republicanism that Indian anti-colonialists can build on, it seems plausible to me it might lead to Muslims in India getting on more shrewdly in the hurly-burly of Indian politics thus forestalling or weakening separatism, hence this hope.
I wonder if one effect might be to somehow keep Pakistan from splitting off India, resulting in a united India stretching from Iran to Burma.
As things are there are still a whole lot of Muslims in India, I believe perhaps more than in Pakistan and Bangladesh put together. If South Asian Muslims can remain more or less happily integrated into a greater India, that might avoid a whole lot of OTL miseries.
Since the Sokoto legacy includes a kind of Islamic republicanism that Indian anti-colonialists can build on, it seems plausible to me it might lead to Muslims in India getting on more shrewdly in the hurly-burly of Indian politics thus forestalling or weakening separatism, hence this hope.
Would kinda be the Indian Empire. I can see Britain seceding from Delhi at some point...
Bruce
I don't want to give away too much at this time, but I'll say that the colonizing power will be Britain, and that different parts of the British African empire will experience different kinds of colonialism - the luckier areas will be treated roughly like Indian princely states, with nominal sovereignty and considerable local autonomy. Did you catch the name of the Lake Chad packet boat in the first paragraph of the Karl May story?
Colonial rule over West Africa - or at least the Malê homeland - will also end somewhat earlier than OTL.
Indeed she is, although it isn't made clear whether the Sokoto of 2011 is a nation, a member of a federation, or a city or province in some larger state.
Well, depends on what value you place on "like." There's quite a bit of Anglophilia among elite Indians and, for that matter, elite Nigerians in OTL. In my experience, though, most of that Anglophilia is the result of cultural borrowing and having family members who've lived or gone to school in the UK rather than nostalgia for colonial times, and there are few if any people who want the Queen back as head of state.
I'm expecting that Sokoto will be somewhat similar - in 2012, there will be plenty of people who have a soft spot for Blighty (an Indian-derived term) and some of the older people will be proud of their British officers' commissions, but there won't be much nostalgia for actual colonial rule.
The British will be less racist toward West Africans in the ATL, but "less racist" is a relative term. They'll think of Malê or Fulani as the better class of native, somewhat like martial-caste Indians (or maybe, in some cases, upper-caste Indians) - in other words, entitled to some respect, and possibly even officer material, but still not our kind, dear. Anything more than that would be fun but, IMO, not very realistic with a POD in the 1830s when the Atlantic slave trade and the Indian conquest had entrenched racial attitudes. I think we'd need a much earlier POD to get a completely non-racist British empire in the 19th century.
Also, note that the greater respect accorded to Muslim West Africans won't necessarily be given to the peoples of other parts of Africa, although if the Buganda are incorporated into the British empire in the ATL, I'd expect that they at least will benefit.
There will be substantial differences between West Africa and India - the presence of an indigenous precolonial liberal ideology is a pretty big one by itself, and will have effects. The overall type of colonialism will be similar, though, and in some respects, so will the end result.
All this could happen. India industrialized from pretty much a standing start after the 1940s, and this West Africa will be in a better starting position. Also, British West Africa in the ATL won't have to wait until the 1960s to decolonize, meaning that they won't lose a decade in competing with the Asian economies. And they may very well have a "patriotic market" within the African diaspora - I've mentioned that Malê ideology plays a part in the American civil rights movement (it will also do so in Brazil), and your suggestion is a very plausible one.
My "better off than India, worse off than Malaysia" estimate takes much of this into account - your idea might push things more toward the Malaysia end, and if so, things like a local auto industry (or even a leapfrog into high-tech, if the educational base is good enough) are very possible.
Stop reading my mind, dammit. This is going to happen, with the vectors being the British army (where many of both nationalities will serve) and British universities (which many elites in both countries will attend). I'd expect that the influence on India will be more than in the Arab countries, with the possible exception of Egypt, although even there, Belloism will be more widespread than Abacarism.
Could be, could be, although I won't commit to anything specific now.
Faeelin
Banned
The notion that Sokoto "wants" to be industrialized is very interesting. This implies that there's a good deal more openness to the outside world, if there are people in Sokoto even thinking about railroads and wanting to build them.
When did the printing press get established in the area, anyway?
When did the printing press get established in the area, anyway?
That's a product of Sokoto being taken over by several thousand ex-slaves who've had contact with Europeans. Two factors accentuated this. First, in both OTL and the ATL, the Malê revolt included freedmen - who were more plugged into Brazilian society - as well as slaves. Second, it was an urban slave revolt, and thus involved exactly those slaves who would have seen and heard the most about the outside world. It's been mentioned that one of them (the one who got the idea of setting up power looms) worked on the docks of Salvador and picked up some English by talking to sailors; he's not unique in that regard, and Abacar isn't the only one who's actually been to Europe.
The increasing adoption of the Roman alphabet in Sokoto, primarily as "women's writing" but also in business, also helped foster openness. And of course, once the foundries and the first small textile mills started putting money in people's pockets, they'd be curious about how they might earn more.
In OTL, the first printing press in Nigeria was set up by missionaries in 1846. That was in the Calabar, though; northern Nigeria had to wait much longer, into the early twentieth century.
In the ATL, setting up a press was one of the first things Abacar did - he had a radical theological message, and needed to get it out to as much of the literate class as possible within a short time. The press was up and running as early as 1841, and it's been mentioned that Sokoto's first newspaper appeared in 1847.
Now that you mention it - where does the title come from? In India, Victoria was styled "Empress" as successor to the Mogul Emperors, but I don't see a similar African tradition she could step into in West Africa. Or is this just an ingenious idea by someone in the colonial office - the situation in West Africa resembles India, so they create the title of Empress there as well?
Being born as I was after the British Empire was coming pretty thoroughly unraveled (1965) I grew up thinking the "Empire" was how Britons thought of the whole shebang--including their own United Kingdom as its kingpin. Am I wrong in thinking that by the middle of the 20th century anyway that is what "the Empire" meant--all of it, the West Indies and Hong Kong and places like Belize, quite as much as India?
I can see that Victoria simply couldn't just wake up one morning in the middle of the 19th century and casually announce that she rather fancied being styled "Empress Victoria." In the European context a king couldn't just promote himself to Emperor status; you had to have a lot of conquests of diverse nations to do that, and overseas, non-European nations generally didn't count, so in her generation it would be necessary I guess to justify the title as applying specifically to some dominion that had long been accustomed to having an Emperor, and show how Victoria succeeded to that title there.
The May story presented here was originally supposed to be set in the 1890s until a reader pointed out they were actually set OTL some decades before. Would the 1890s be late enough for the British to get used to the idea that their vast holdings did comprise in general an Empire? (Was it OTL, or that late were they still being scrupulous about restricting Victoria's title to Empress of India specifically?) Anyway the 1870s would be still pretty soon to be making that generalization I guess.
But give it a generation, with people growing up used from childhood to hearing the British monarch being referred to as "Empress" or "Emperor" and I think it would be quite natural to assume the title referred to reigning over the whole vast sweep, not just derived from running India in particular.
The "Empress of India" title was also, partly, a matter of precedence - British India included several kingdoms, and it was necessary to make damn sure Queen Victoria outranked their rulers. In the ATL, British Africa will also include several client kingdoms with recognized nobility, and with the precedent already set in India, it would make sense (at least to me) for her to be given this title for the African domains as well. Given the pace of ATL colonization, which will be faster in some ways but slower in most, I'd expect this to happen sometime in the 1880s, so the name of the packet boat is one of the things that would have to change if the story setting were moved back to the 1870s (although there's always the possibility that some patriotic English captain might have given her the title avant la lettre).
A father and his son
Sokoto
November 1848
“I went riding today!” Usman caroled.
“Then ride with me,” Paulo answered. He leaned down from the saddle and swung Usman up in front of him, still able to do so in one sweeping movement despite his son’s seven years and his own advancing age. He saluted the Fulani cavalry officer who’d given Usman the day’s riding lesson, and urged his horse toward the city. It was a fine November day with no harmattan blowing, and the air was free of the stifling heat and oppressive closeness of the rains.
“What else did you learn today?”
“That there were rebellions in the north, and that France doesn’t have a king anymore.”
“Did they tell you what happened to the king?”
“The people threw him down.”
“Yes they did.” It was a bit more complicated than that, from what Paulo had heard, but good enough for a seven-year-old. “And did they tell you why?”
“No. But they asked me why I thought it happened.”
“And what did you say?”
“That my father rose up against the slave-masters, and that this king must have treated his people the same way.”
Paulo ruffled his son’s hair and, for a moment, saw himself in other places: the desperate street fighting in Salvador, the long months in the mountains, the passage to Africa, the march north. “There are other reasons why people rebel - sometimes for faith, sometimes for gain. But yes, that king was oppressing their people, disobeying God, so he met the people’s justice.”
“The people’s justice?” Usman asked. “Isn’t the king supposed to give justice?”
Paulo was silent for a moment, inhaling the acrid smell of molten iron as they rode through the city gates and into the foundry district. How could he explain this to a seven-year-old child?
“Do you remember what Ibn Bakr said about kings who disobey God?”
“Yes, that the people must not obey them.”
“And they’ve taught you about ijma?” he said. “That it’s one of the ways we derive the law?”
“Yes,” Usman answered. “If the scholars agree, then they must be rightly guided.”
“It isn’t only scholars. There can be ijma of the whole people as well, and when they agree that the ruler is unjust, then they are the ones rightly guided, and they have the right to pronounce justice against him. Ijma of the people is a higher law than a king’s decree - this is why rulers are enjoined to practice shura and consult with their people, and why we have our council and our assembly-fields.”
“But hasn’t God made the laws?”
“There is divine law, yes, and that we can’t change. But God wants us to be free, so He didn’t make laws about everything. The council couldn’t make a law to change the way we pray, or to forbid zakat, but matters like what form of government we should have and how high the taxes should be - those are for the scholars and judges, and for ijma.”
“Or whether to go to war?”
“That, yes.”
“Then that’s why, if the people shout down a law on the assembly-field, it won’t pass even if most of the council votes for it?”
“Sometimes,” Paulo said, smiling. “I’ll tell you a secret about the assembly-field. If you can get your supporters there first, and if you can put enough of them there to shout down the other side, then you can make it look like the people support you, even if they don’t. When that happens, we can’t say that the judgment of the assembly-field is rightly guided.”
Usman seemed lost in thought as they trotted past a small market and into the district where the old palace and law-courts were. The thought of such trickery have never occurred to him, and it made the world suddenly a scary place: how was one to know whether he was rightly guided or not? “So ijma can be false?”
“If it’s false, it isn’t ijma, and it isn’t law.”
“But what if the people feel so strongly about a law that they come to debate it, no matter how hard you try to fill the field with your followers?”
“Excellent question! Then their judgment is true ijma, and it must be obeyed, even if that judgment is to throw down the ruler.”
“Like the king of France?”
“Yes, like him.”
“And even you?”
“Yes, even me. Even Ibn Bakr said this to his people, and he was a far greater man than I am. I’m no king and no caliph - I’m not even a shehu, like the man you were named after.”
“Some people say you’re like a king. Some of the boys called me a prince, but I told them I wasn’t.”
“You’d better,” Paulo said, and then let his voice soften. “This country doesn’t need a king. No country does. Kings have a way of becoming oppressors, and if the people call me one, then there must be some fault in me. And you shouldn’t do anything that would make people think of you as princely.”
“I don’t…”
“I believe you, but if the boys said that, then you have to try twice as hard.” He ruffled the boy’s hair again to take the sting out of the admonition. “Let’s go see the soldiers.”
Usman, suddenly excited, agreed, and they rode past the house where the family lived and out the opposite gate. Once outside the wall, the horse broke into a canter and carried them past houses and pastures to the field where an infantry regiment was drilling.
“I was hoping the horsemen would be there,” the child said. “I want to be a horseman someday!”
“You’re already a better one than me,” answered Paulo, and it was true; he was an infantryman, and not born to the saddle. “You must get it from your mother. She’s Fulani, and a Fula’s horse is almost part of himself.”
“You’re Fula too, aren’t you?”
“I am, but I’m also Malê - a bit of everything is in me, and nothing is all of me. That’s a Malê regiment - do you see how their faces have a bit of all nations in them?”
They watched the soldiers practice for a while. “Tell me,” Paulo said, “how many are there?”
The boy’s eyes scanned the regiment carefully. “About nine hundred?”
“Close enough. You’re learning. Tell me something else. Let’s say another regiment came onto the field and formed four ranks, each with eighty soldiers. How many would there be?”
“Three… three hundred twenty.”
“Good, and if they formed into five ranks instead of four, how many in each rank?”
That one took longer. “Sixty-four?”
“Very good. Much better than I’d have done at your age - of course, I was a slave. You have knowledge, my son - how will you use it?”
“Now?”
“All your life. No one expects you to know everything you’ll become, but learning isn’t only an exercise for the classroom - it’s something you must always be looking for chances to use. Knowledge without action is arrogance. Do you know who said that?”
Usman pondered. “Imam Shafi’i?”
“That’s right. He isn’t the founder of our school, who was…”
“Imam Malik!”
“… But what he said is still true. It’s not enough to know - you always need to think about what to do with what you know, and how to take your part in the ijma.” Paulo looked west to the gathering twilight. “I think it’s time we went to eat.”
“I’m not hungry yet.”
“Me neither. But there’s ijma in the family too. If you and I think it isn’t time to eat yet, but your mother, your sister-mothers, and Laila, Mohammed and the other children all do, then we’d better yield, hadn’t we?”
Usman laughed. “I guess so. What are we eating tonight?”
“Your mother promised groundnut-mash and lamb, and honey-cakes after.”
“We’d better gallop then, shouldn’t we?”
“Yes we should,” Paulo said, looking down at Usman to show that he shared his son’s excitement. “That’s against your sister-mothers’ ijma too, but they don’t have to know.” He urged the horse into a gallop and, shouting, they rode back toward the city.
Sokoto
November 1848
“I went riding today!” Usman caroled.
“Then ride with me,” Paulo answered. He leaned down from the saddle and swung Usman up in front of him, still able to do so in one sweeping movement despite his son’s seven years and his own advancing age. He saluted the Fulani cavalry officer who’d given Usman the day’s riding lesson, and urged his horse toward the city. It was a fine November day with no harmattan blowing, and the air was free of the stifling heat and oppressive closeness of the rains.
“What else did you learn today?”
“That there were rebellions in the north, and that France doesn’t have a king anymore.”
“Did they tell you what happened to the king?”
“The people threw him down.”
“Yes they did.” It was a bit more complicated than that, from what Paulo had heard, but good enough for a seven-year-old. “And did they tell you why?”
“No. But they asked me why I thought it happened.”
“And what did you say?”
“That my father rose up against the slave-masters, and that this king must have treated his people the same way.”
Paulo ruffled his son’s hair and, for a moment, saw himself in other places: the desperate street fighting in Salvador, the long months in the mountains, the passage to Africa, the march north. “There are other reasons why people rebel - sometimes for faith, sometimes for gain. But yes, that king was oppressing their people, disobeying God, so he met the people’s justice.”
“The people’s justice?” Usman asked. “Isn’t the king supposed to give justice?”
Paulo was silent for a moment, inhaling the acrid smell of molten iron as they rode through the city gates and into the foundry district. How could he explain this to a seven-year-old child?
“Do you remember what Ibn Bakr said about kings who disobey God?”
“Yes, that the people must not obey them.”
“And they’ve taught you about ijma?” he said. “That it’s one of the ways we derive the law?”
“Yes,” Usman answered. “If the scholars agree, then they must be rightly guided.”
“It isn’t only scholars. There can be ijma of the whole people as well, and when they agree that the ruler is unjust, then they are the ones rightly guided, and they have the right to pronounce justice against him. Ijma of the people is a higher law than a king’s decree - this is why rulers are enjoined to practice shura and consult with their people, and why we have our council and our assembly-fields.”
“But hasn’t God made the laws?”
“There is divine law, yes, and that we can’t change. But God wants us to be free, so He didn’t make laws about everything. The council couldn’t make a law to change the way we pray, or to forbid zakat, but matters like what form of government we should have and how high the taxes should be - those are for the scholars and judges, and for ijma.”
“Or whether to go to war?”
“That, yes.”
“Then that’s why, if the people shout down a law on the assembly-field, it won’t pass even if most of the council votes for it?”
“Sometimes,” Paulo said, smiling. “I’ll tell you a secret about the assembly-field. If you can get your supporters there first, and if you can put enough of them there to shout down the other side, then you can make it look like the people support you, even if they don’t. When that happens, we can’t say that the judgment of the assembly-field is rightly guided.”
Usman seemed lost in thought as they trotted past a small market and into the district where the old palace and law-courts were. The thought of such trickery have never occurred to him, and it made the world suddenly a scary place: how was one to know whether he was rightly guided or not? “So ijma can be false?”
“If it’s false, it isn’t ijma, and it isn’t law.”
“But what if the people feel so strongly about a law that they come to debate it, no matter how hard you try to fill the field with your followers?”
“Excellent question! Then their judgment is true ijma, and it must be obeyed, even if that judgment is to throw down the ruler.”
“Like the king of France?”
“Yes, like him.”
“And even you?”
“Yes, even me. Even Ibn Bakr said this to his people, and he was a far greater man than I am. I’m no king and no caliph - I’m not even a shehu, like the man you were named after.”
“Some people say you’re like a king. Some of the boys called me a prince, but I told them I wasn’t.”
“You’d better,” Paulo said, and then let his voice soften. “This country doesn’t need a king. No country does. Kings have a way of becoming oppressors, and if the people call me one, then there must be some fault in me. And you shouldn’t do anything that would make people think of you as princely.”
“I don’t…”
“I believe you, but if the boys said that, then you have to try twice as hard.” He ruffled the boy’s hair again to take the sting out of the admonition. “Let’s go see the soldiers.”
Usman, suddenly excited, agreed, and they rode past the house where the family lived and out the opposite gate. Once outside the wall, the horse broke into a canter and carried them past houses and pastures to the field where an infantry regiment was drilling.
“I was hoping the horsemen would be there,” the child said. “I want to be a horseman someday!”
“You’re already a better one than me,” answered Paulo, and it was true; he was an infantryman, and not born to the saddle. “You must get it from your mother. She’s Fulani, and a Fula’s horse is almost part of himself.”
“You’re Fula too, aren’t you?”
“I am, but I’m also Malê - a bit of everything is in me, and nothing is all of me. That’s a Malê regiment - do you see how their faces have a bit of all nations in them?”
They watched the soldiers practice for a while. “Tell me,” Paulo said, “how many are there?”
The boy’s eyes scanned the regiment carefully. “About nine hundred?”
“Close enough. You’re learning. Tell me something else. Let’s say another regiment came onto the field and formed four ranks, each with eighty soldiers. How many would there be?”
“Three… three hundred twenty.”
“Good, and if they formed into five ranks instead of four, how many in each rank?”
That one took longer. “Sixty-four?”
“Very good. Much better than I’d have done at your age - of course, I was a slave. You have knowledge, my son - how will you use it?”
“Now?”
“All your life. No one expects you to know everything you’ll become, but learning isn’t only an exercise for the classroom - it’s something you must always be looking for chances to use. Knowledge without action is arrogance. Do you know who said that?”
Usman pondered. “Imam Shafi’i?”
“That’s right. He isn’t the founder of our school, who was…”
“Imam Malik!”
“… But what he said is still true. It’s not enough to know - you always need to think about what to do with what you know, and how to take your part in the ijma.” Paulo looked west to the gathering twilight. “I think it’s time we went to eat.”
“I’m not hungry yet.”
“Me neither. But there’s ijma in the family too. If you and I think it isn’t time to eat yet, but your mother, your sister-mothers, and Laila, Mohammed and the other children all do, then we’d better yield, hadn’t we?”
Usman laughed. “I guess so. What are we eating tonight?”
“Your mother promised groundnut-mash and lamb, and honey-cakes after.”
“We’d better gallop then, shouldn’t we?”
“Yes we should,” Paulo said, looking down at Usman to show that he shared his son’s excitement. “That’s against your sister-mothers’ ijma too, but they don’t have to know.” He urged the horse into a gallop and, shouting, they rode back toward the city.
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Ahmadu Odubugun, Faith and Ferment: Sahel and Sudan in the Nineteenth Century (Ibadan Univ. Press, 2005)
… Paulo Abacar’s second and last major treatise, Thawra (Revolution), was published in March 1849. Its publication came, appropriately enough, close on the heels of Europe’s “year of revolution,” and Abacar was obviously inspired by the 1848 uprisings, which he regarded as a revival of French revolutionary ideals. The text of Thawra is replete with references to these uprisings; as in his previous work, Abacar drew on Western as well as Islamic history for inspiration, and had added the previous year’s upheaval to his canon along with the French and Haitian revolutions and the New World slave revolts.
It would go too far, however, to say that the 1848 revolutions were the genesis of Thawra. They were the catalyst, and helped to crystallize Abacar’s thinking, but he had been moving for some time toward the radical theology that Thawra represented. Then again, if Thawra hadn’t been published when it was, it would likely never have been published at all, so it may be that the men on the Paris barricades unknowingly ensured that it would be released to the world.
As with Abacar’s prior work Hurriya (Freedom), the radicalism of Thawra was more in the interpretation of doctrine than in the doctrine itself. The foundation of the treatise - that no obedience was owed to an apostate ruler - was an injunction given by Mohammed himself, and one that Usman dan Fodio had used to justify his jihad a scant forty years earlier. Likewise, the idea of ijma, or consensus, as a source of Islamic law dated to the earliest days of the faith.
Both doctrines, however, had traditionally been given a narrow interpretation. Although some early Islamic scholars, such as the Mu’tazilis, had supported a broad right of revolution against unjust monarchs, the majority took the position that considerable injustice was tolerable in the interest of public order and prevention of anarchy. One hadith attributed to the Prophet by Anas ibn Malik entreated the people to obey their ruler even if he were an “ugly Abyssinian slave with a chopped-off nose,” and most scholars held that the right of disobedience applied only to those rulers who interfered with the performance of religious obligations.
Ijma, similarly, is a concept for which at least twelve different interpretations have been advocated, with the broadest being a consensus of all Muslims through all time and the narrowest being the agreement of the four rashidun, or rightly-guided caliphs. It would be a gross oversimplification to say that any one of these interpretations held sway - appeals would often be made to different forms of ijma, and a rough hierarchy existed among these forms - but the broadest ones were but rarely invoked in matters of civil government, and the term was most commonly applied to the historical or contemporary consensus of jurists.
What Abacar did was to embrace the most radical form of each doctrine, and apply them to the realm of civil politics. He rejected the “rule of necessity” under which disorder was held to be a greater harm than official injustice, and argued that the consensus of the entire people, or whatever subgroup of it was affected by a particular question, was the supreme source of secular law. Moreover, Abacar’s conception of the “apostate ruler” to whom no obedience was owed ran far beyond one who interfered with religious practice or who openly transgressed Islam. Instead, following from his earlier work in which he had described political freedom and individual rights as Islamic concepts, he argued that any tyrannical and undemocratic government was by definition an apostasy. The ultimate premise of Thawra was that the people as a whole had the right, and indeed the religious duty, to oppose such a government.
The book’s one concession was that such opposition should take peaceful form where possible, and that political means should be used where available; in fact, it was the duty of a just state to provide a forum in which peaceful opposition could be expressed. Where a political process was not available, however, violent revolution was permissible, and - again reaching back to hadith - those who died in such a revolt were to be regarded as martyrs.
Thawra proved even more controversial than Hurriya, even among those who had hitherto supported Abacar’s reforms. Conservative theologians predictably branded it as heresy and called for Abacar to be deposed - a stance which, ironically, was consistent with many of the arguments made in the treatise. But more damaging to his position was the defection of even members of the progressive imamate and the business community.
By 1849, the Sokoto Republic had achieved a measure of political stability, and many influential imams as well as the rising middle class were reluctant to sacrifice that hard-won stability on the altar of social justice. The elites of the Republic had also become comfortable with the elected legislature and were pleased with the declining role of the assembly-field, and didn’t want to return to the days when laws were made or broken by whichever faction could mobilize the capital’s streets. Some, indeed, viewed the assembly-field as a proxy through which Abacar could exercise his autocratic will in opposition to the legislature, although the practice of packing the field with supporters had been used far more often by his opponents than by his followers.
By the autumn of 1849, a number of high-ranking figures in the legislature and government, including Malê as well as Hausa and Fulani, had begun to discuss curtailing Abacar’s powers and instituting an executive with legally defined authority rather than an untitled leader whose power was defined by his moral authority. These discussions included even some of the legislators from the “Abacarist” faction; they did yet not command a majority, and the loyalty of the army was still largely unquestioned, but it was clear that the pressure was building. It seemed that Abacar would soon be faced with a constitutional crisis which would force him to choose between accepting limits on his authority - thus acquiescing to a government which might not agree with his reformist mission - and rejecting those limits, which would require him to transgress his own principles of democracy.
In the event, however, intervening occurrences delayed the crisis coming to a head…
… Paulo Abacar’s second and last major treatise, Thawra (Revolution), was published in March 1849. Its publication came, appropriately enough, close on the heels of Europe’s “year of revolution,” and Abacar was obviously inspired by the 1848 uprisings, which he regarded as a revival of French revolutionary ideals. The text of Thawra is replete with references to these uprisings; as in his previous work, Abacar drew on Western as well as Islamic history for inspiration, and had added the previous year’s upheaval to his canon along with the French and Haitian revolutions and the New World slave revolts.
It would go too far, however, to say that the 1848 revolutions were the genesis of Thawra. They were the catalyst, and helped to crystallize Abacar’s thinking, but he had been moving for some time toward the radical theology that Thawra represented. Then again, if Thawra hadn’t been published when it was, it would likely never have been published at all, so it may be that the men on the Paris barricades unknowingly ensured that it would be released to the world.
As with Abacar’s prior work Hurriya (Freedom), the radicalism of Thawra was more in the interpretation of doctrine than in the doctrine itself. The foundation of the treatise - that no obedience was owed to an apostate ruler - was an injunction given by Mohammed himself, and one that Usman dan Fodio had used to justify his jihad a scant forty years earlier. Likewise, the idea of ijma, or consensus, as a source of Islamic law dated to the earliest days of the faith.
Both doctrines, however, had traditionally been given a narrow interpretation. Although some early Islamic scholars, such as the Mu’tazilis, had supported a broad right of revolution against unjust monarchs, the majority took the position that considerable injustice was tolerable in the interest of public order and prevention of anarchy. One hadith attributed to the Prophet by Anas ibn Malik entreated the people to obey their ruler even if he were an “ugly Abyssinian slave with a chopped-off nose,” and most scholars held that the right of disobedience applied only to those rulers who interfered with the performance of religious obligations.
Ijma, similarly, is a concept for which at least twelve different interpretations have been advocated, with the broadest being a consensus of all Muslims through all time and the narrowest being the agreement of the four rashidun, or rightly-guided caliphs. It would be a gross oversimplification to say that any one of these interpretations held sway - appeals would often be made to different forms of ijma, and a rough hierarchy existed among these forms - but the broadest ones were but rarely invoked in matters of civil government, and the term was most commonly applied to the historical or contemporary consensus of jurists.
What Abacar did was to embrace the most radical form of each doctrine, and apply them to the realm of civil politics. He rejected the “rule of necessity” under which disorder was held to be a greater harm than official injustice, and argued that the consensus of the entire people, or whatever subgroup of it was affected by a particular question, was the supreme source of secular law. Moreover, Abacar’s conception of the “apostate ruler” to whom no obedience was owed ran far beyond one who interfered with religious practice or who openly transgressed Islam. Instead, following from his earlier work in which he had described political freedom and individual rights as Islamic concepts, he argued that any tyrannical and undemocratic government was by definition an apostasy. The ultimate premise of Thawra was that the people as a whole had the right, and indeed the religious duty, to oppose such a government.
The book’s one concession was that such opposition should take peaceful form where possible, and that political means should be used where available; in fact, it was the duty of a just state to provide a forum in which peaceful opposition could be expressed. Where a political process was not available, however, violent revolution was permissible, and - again reaching back to hadith - those who died in such a revolt were to be regarded as martyrs.
Thawra proved even more controversial than Hurriya, even among those who had hitherto supported Abacar’s reforms. Conservative theologians predictably branded it as heresy and called for Abacar to be deposed - a stance which, ironically, was consistent with many of the arguments made in the treatise. But more damaging to his position was the defection of even members of the progressive imamate and the business community.
By 1849, the Sokoto Republic had achieved a measure of political stability, and many influential imams as well as the rising middle class were reluctant to sacrifice that hard-won stability on the altar of social justice. The elites of the Republic had also become comfortable with the elected legislature and were pleased with the declining role of the assembly-field, and didn’t want to return to the days when laws were made or broken by whichever faction could mobilize the capital’s streets. Some, indeed, viewed the assembly-field as a proxy through which Abacar could exercise his autocratic will in opposition to the legislature, although the practice of packing the field with supporters had been used far more often by his opponents than by his followers.
By the autumn of 1849, a number of high-ranking figures in the legislature and government, including Malê as well as Hausa and Fulani, had begun to discuss curtailing Abacar’s powers and instituting an executive with legally defined authority rather than an untitled leader whose power was defined by his moral authority. These discussions included even some of the legislators from the “Abacarist” faction; they did yet not command a majority, and the loyalty of the army was still largely unquestioned, but it was clear that the pressure was building. It seemed that Abacar would soon be faced with a constitutional crisis which would force him to choose between accepting limits on his authority - thus acquiescing to a government which might not agree with his reformist mission - and rejecting those limits, which would require him to transgress his own principles of democracy.
In the event, however, intervening occurrences delayed the crisis coming to a head…
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Hnau
Banned
Hey Jonathan, just want you to know I've started reading this thread and its awesome so far! I've subscribed. It is a very interesting and unique premise. I just wish there were more Brazilian influences on the Sokoto Republic. How has Portuguese influenced the country linguistically? Does capoeira and feijoada become somewhat popular?