White settlement in the Sahel?

there'd be little incentive to do so outside of setting up tiny urban communities that function as middlemen minorities.

Now I do think there is room for this in the Sahel countries. IOTL the late stages of the French Empire saw many Lebanese move to West Africa to serve as middlemen minorities and the "Nar Beruit" still have a presence as merchants in West Africa, but a few twists of history could see more Europeans doing this. Perhaps French Jews in an averted World War I scenario, for example.
 
Was this view prevalent during the Fulani jihads?

Yes.

Fulani "proper" (not Tuklur or the slave castes of Fulani society) were never considered black.

In the tarikh es soudan written in the 17th century they were spoken of as white. This link of course and augmentation, Europeans on traveling and colonizing West Africa also put on their own racial theories (linking them to Roma, Indians, Phonecians, etc...) But that is in part due to Fulani self perception surrounded by other groups of people.

This video talk about a contemporary notion of racial distinction but nean the end explores the culturally and (I believe) historical entrenched notions of Whiteness vs Blackness between Fulani and non-fulani.
 
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