WI: Fulani Empire unifying West Africa?

Doing some reserach, I strumbled over this and perceived how many Fula jihadist states came to being in the XVIII and XIX centuries. My question is if is possible for a Pan-Westafrican Fula Empire to emerge, going at least from Timbuktu down to Calabar. The POD is before the OTL Berlin Conference (1884). Would this state be able to make the Fulani the lingua fraca of West Africa? Would it be able to modernize or would it be consequently divided and conquered by the European powers?

Having 100% of the West is not mandatory - I can see an independet Liberia or some "free" coastal cities -, but keeping at least 60% of it is.

My opinion: I guess it wouldn't simply for the lack of infrastructure in the region due the geoclimatic conditions, and subsequent European imperialism. But I'm not a specialist in Africa and that's why I'm asking the fellow members of this community for their insight. Personally, I would find the possibility of a Westafrican Fula Empire - even if very small - amazing.
 
Addendum: It doesn't matter the political status of this Empire... Absolutist, Fundamentalist, a Federation of Fula States, etc. What matters is that this state have its origin in one or more Fula jihads.
 
Jonathan Edelstein's Malê Rising TL does something similar, although with some, well, interesting twists. And a language connected with Fula actually becomes lingua franca in a large part of West Africa.
However, I think that a straightforward WA unification under a single unified Fulani empire is highly unlikely if not impossible. The Sahel might be doable, but most of the Guinea area and more generally the forested areas are impassable for cavalry, which was the basis of Fulani power.
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=226788
 
First of all, this will tell you nearly everything you might want to know about the Fulani/Fulbe, including a couple of full-length books. And this book, by a noted scholar of Islamic African empires, is primarily about Umar Tall, but the second chapter gives a good overview of the rise of the Fulani jihadist states.

Anyway. Falecius is correct about the reason the Fulani empires never reached the coast, so in order to fulfill your conditions, they would have to lose at least some of their dependence on cavalry. I think the way to make that happen is for them to assimilate their subject peoples rather than setting themselves up as aristocratic overlords. It's certainly possible to do this over time - the Nigerian Hausa and Fulani have essentially merged into a single ethnic group - so if the empire establishes an assimilationist policy in the 17th century, it might have a good base of urban infantry by the late 18th or early 19th. It could then use this infantry to conquer the coastal kingdoms, and the urban upper classes could also supply clerks and administrators for the conquered territory.

One thing that might get in the way is that the coastal kingdoms would get gunpowder weapons first, but a sufficiently strong Fulani empire with a few coastal holdings of its own might be able to buy directly from the Europeans and overcome that advantage.

Another thing to consider is what effect a strong empire that rules most of West Africa would have on the slave trade, and how the Europeans and the coastal middleman kingdoms would react to that. On the one hand, the Fulani had no problem with capturing and selling slaves, but on the other hand, the very existence of a regional empire would suppress the low-level endemic warfare that fed the slave trade. The question is whether the Fulani empire would be willing or able to supply demand, and if not, whether it could resist the attempts of the Europeans (either directly or using the coastal states as proxies) to break them up.

There are many possibilities here, depending on who the empire-builder is, which of the Fulani kingdoms he comes from, what kind of state he sets up and what its relations are with the rest of the world. I'd be interested to see what you do with this idea.
 
Thank you both for your insight and, Jonathan Eldestein, for the suggested literature.. So, the key expression would be "cultural assimilation" then. One that would particularly be able to construct a good Infantry.
About slavery... Islam was against slavery, although not radically. Maybe a particular Fulani kingdom that takes a more hard stance on this, freeing the slaves and incorporing them in their Infantry, would be capable to consequently have at least 50% - Sael and coast - under its power?

I must confess that I wasn't planning to write a Fulani TL, but the idea of West Africa unified under them was simply too much amazing to let it pass. :)

Once again, thank you for your comments.
 
About slavery... Islam was against slavery, although not radically.

That would be overstatement.
Islam accepted slavery in most cases, although in principle at least, Islamic law regulated it into a relatively tame form. Its being 'against slavery' mainly took the form of encouraging (or forcing, in some particular cases) manumission. "Islam didn't endorse slavery as a positive good" or "wasn't enthusiastic about it" would more accurate, insofar generalizations like this have any use.
Principled opposition to slavery as such on Islamic religious grounds was, to my knowledge, quite rare and not very likely to fly well in Early Modern West Africa.
In general, the problem is that the people supposed to uphold the slavery-discouraging views were mostly the ones with a stake in slavery or slave-trade.
After all, in many Islamic societies, and surely in Early Modern West Africa, slavery was quite embedded in the whole economic and social fabric. I doubt that any Fulani ruler could pull a Daenarys Targaryen and going around freeing everyone at once without facing very serious opposition. He would need support from a group whose power and interests rest in ending slavery or at least are not tied to it (and it needs to be a group which has some power).
Now, a somewhat anti-slavery religious ideology embedded in the Fulani jihad is probably possible. I am sure that similar views are easy to be framed into an Islamic mobilizing discourse. The trick is to imagine what social basis you can get for it and how you manage to have it successful.
 
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