See also Africa: Texts and Sources

TRADE

General

• Austen, Ralph, African Economic History, Internal Development and External Dependency, Currey/Heinemann, 1987
  • 16    . . . African economies were organized mainly to conserve existing sources of subsistence rather than to exploit opportunities for increased profit.

Asante

• Lovejoy, Paul, Caravans of Kola: Hausa Kola Trade 1700-1900, OUP  (Extracts and notes)

   

  • Asante
    
    Asante . . .  relied on relatively few exports to finance economic development. In the eighteenth century, the products were slaves, gold, and kola.
    
    Asante relied on its foreign trade for luxury items and slaves from the north, including war materials and other goods from the coast. The dual nature of Asante foreign trade was recognized as early as 1817.
    
    'The King of Assentai ... prohibits his inland neighbours from passing through his country.' (Sharif Imhammed, c. 1788)
    
    Sharif Imhammed was the commercial representative of the Sultan of Fezzan, in the northern Sahara, who travelled to Asante to deal in gold and kola in the 1780s. His report is the earliest evidence of Asante restrictions on northern commerce.
    
    Sharif Imhammed's high position as agent for a sultan suggests the importance of this trade to economic interests not only in Asante itself but far beyond the Central Sudan and the Hausa market. Imhammed's was not the only example of a commercial cum diplomatic mission between Asante and other countries, particularly those along the routes to the Central Sudan.
    
    Traders have imported kolanuts from the forests of Asante to Hausa markets for hundreds of years, and the trade had been subject to diplomatic concern even before Asante was founded in the seventeenth century. Kola had to be carried in large, expensively operated donkey caravans over a distance of many hundreds of kilometers from the middle Volta basin to the Hausa cities, and this limitation placed certain parameters on the trade. First, it gave an advantage to those who controlled transport, i.e. the donkey owners of the savanna. Second, the confinement of kola production to one locale made possible a producer's cartel to offset the transport disadvantage, but it appears that only when Asante consolidated the kola forests under its control in the early eighteenth century was this advantage exploited.
    
    At the time when Hausa settlers established communities in Dagbon, Gonja and other places, Asante expanded from a small confederation of matrilineal kin groups centred around Kumase, the Asante capital, to encompass much of the Akan region and its northern neighbours. The general northern thrust of the empire, which was completed by the middle of the eighteenth century, resulted in control of the kola producing areas. The immediate hinterland of Kumase was not devoted to large scale kola cultivation, but Asante settlers moved into Mampong, Nkoranza, and other provinces where its production became or already was a major economic concern.
    
    By the 1780s it abolished through trade between the north and the coast. Muslim traders could operate as far as Nkoranza in northern Asante but as Sharif Imhammed reported after his business trip, 'the king of Assentai . . .  prohibits his inland neighbours from passing through his country.' (Sharif Imhammed, c. 1788)
    
    Many Fantee traders, in return, go to Coomassie but they are not allowed to advance beyond it . . .
    
    A class of wealthy merchants and estate owners did emerge in Asante however, but its influence was constantly checked This class (asikafo) consisted of men who operated extensive trading ventures to the coast and the northern hinterland. Commercial development within the empire can therefore be divided into two periods and these coincided with the major shift in the export economy. The first lasted from the beginning of the eighteenth century to the first decade of the nineteenth and arose in relation to the overseas trade in slaves and gold, although the northern trade was also important. During this period a powerful aristocracy based on militarism, expansion and the accumulation of slaves for export gained a secure foothold.
    
    Continuity in domination of the state by an aristocracy founded on militarism cannot be denied.
    
    The state had rested on the production and export of slaves in the eighteenth century; the state depended upon production and export of kola and gold in the nineteenth.
    
    . . . administration after administration, whether or not it came to power on an anti-Muslim platform, ultimately had to come to terms with the Muslims and frequently ended up adopting a pro-Muslim position.
    
    The Muslim provinces of Dagbon, Gonja, and Banda, all in the north, remained on average more loyal to the central authority than Akan provinces within the heart of the empire. Government officials resided  at Salaga and Yendi.
    
    The preference of the Ashantees for the Dagwumba and Inta [Gonja] markets, for silk and cloth results not merely from their having been so long accustomed to them, but because they admit of a barter trade. The Boossef or Gooroo nut, salt, (which is easily procured, and affords an extravagant profit) and small quantities of the European commodities, rum, and iron - yield them     those articles of comfort and luxury, which they can only purchase with gold and ivory from the settlements on the coast. Gold they are all desirous of hoarding; even those less covetous than is generally their nature, that they may be prepared for the purchase of guns and powder to a large extent, on any sudden war.  
    
    Once trade (to the northern entrepots) was well established, Kumase could afford to limit access to the kola production areas, while military domination of the region and the effectiveness of the Volta river as a barrier against smuggling made possible the maintenance of the single market town. By confining the merchants to one market, Asante producers and traders received higher prices. The policy erased the natural advantage that savanna traders possessed through their monopoly of transport livestock and their knowledge of northern markets. The move permitted Asante to benefit at the expense of the Muslim merchants.
    
    In creating conditions favourable to its own economic development, the Asante government actively engaged in the kola trade. In transporting the produce to the Salaga market, state traders acted on behalf of the officials who were in charge of the household and personal affairs of the Asantehene or lesser omanhene (government administrators). The central organization in state trading ventures was the Batafekuo, which 'came increasingly to operate the commercial sector of the economy in the nineteenth century.  This executive department had evolved from established services, particularly those of the horn-blowers and drummers. Under Osei Bonsu in the 1810s the Bata assumed a larger commercial role, initially in relations with the overseas trade but probably with the northern trade as well. In some cases state traders were advanced capital which was repaid after a specific period, sometimes after two or three years. Subordinates purchased kola and then carried it to the northern market. Although slaves and pawns were frequently employed in these activities, freemen were hired as well. In the latter case remuneration consisted of the right to carry additional kola besides the load for which they were employed. Bata traders had first access to the Salaga market, which meant that the state profited from the higher prices which prevailed at the beginning of the buying season. Profits from these ventures either went into the government treasury or were used to buy slaves, who were settled on plantations, produced gold, staffed the army, were used in personal retinues, or employed to gather kola. Their acquisition was a deliberate policy of demographic management of the metropolitan region and demonstrates the extent to which government intervention in the economy followed a well integrated plan.

Gonja: Gbuipe, Kafaba, Salaga

• Lovejoy, Paul, Caravans of Kola: Hausa Kola Trade 1700-1900, OUP (Extracts and notes)
  • As early as the 1710s pilgrims from the Gonja area travelled to Mecca through the Hausa country, and probably traded in kola to help offset the expenses of their journey.
    
    The culmination of Asante restrictive policies was the development of frontier market towns to which foreign Muslim traders, including Hausa, were confined. The evolution of this policy occurred over at least a fifty year period. It required the appointment of officials to oversee existing tributary settlements in the newly incorporated provinces of the empire.
    
    With the expansion of the Hausa market, newer depots were established between Kumase and the Volta to the north and such towns as Gbuipe and Kafaba on the Volta also became major caravan stops. These were all replaced after 1810 by the emergence of Salaga as the paramount buying point for kola, although Yendi to the north also served some functions in the expanding trade to the Central Sudan.
    
    Increasingly after 1810 when Salaga became the centre for Muslim commercial operations in the Volta basin, those who had settled in metropolitan Asante were forced to emigrate to the north or refrain from exploiting their commercial undertakings to the fullest. By 1817 when Salaga was 'the grand emporium of Inta (Gonja),' Asante traders were responsible for transporting large amounts of kola to Salaga for sale. The 'departures of Ashantee caravans' from Kumase were frequent in 1817, and as Muslims were confined in their movements, Asante commercial operations became more important. The rise of Salaga may in part have related to the successful Gbuipe campaign of 1804, after which the government apparently moved the market from central Gonja to the easterly Gonja division, Kpembe, which was on the direct route to the Hausa cities.
    
    Towns had several quarters, each of which catered to the trade system of which it was a part. Salaga, for example, consisted of an Asante community which served the needs of the Kumase government and the kola producers, an indigenous Gonja section which provided landlord and brokerage services to all parties who traded there, a Mande Juula ward connected with Bonduku in the west, and a Yarse settlement for the interests of the Mossi states. The Hausa community, by far the largest of the foreign groups, was the agency through which traders coming from the Sokoto Caliphate and Bomo exchanged their goods for kola. Hausa settlers formed at least one-fifth of Salaga's population in 1888, and indicative of their commercial importance, Hausa was the most common language in the town. Juula and Ngbanya (Gonja) were also used, but 'when it comes to addressing an unknown person, [or] bargaining in the market, it is always in the beautiful Hausa tongue.'
    
    The Sakpare,  from whom the imam in Gonja was chosen, were the descendants of those Muslims who came from Bighu and who arrived with the founding Gonja dynasty in the sixteenth century. Unlike the Muslims associated with the foreign trade sector, the Sakpare were assimilated into the Gonja polity. Nevertheless, they represented the region's original connection with the Juula trade network to the west. Others who settled at Sabari, near Yendi in Dagbon trace their ancestry to Shaykh Sulayman Bagayugu of Timbuktu and arrived in Dagbon around 1680.
    
    Before 1874, the Asantehene stationed several officials at Salaga to collect taxes for transactions which took place in the market place. This amounted to two big nuts per hundred sold, and in a single day two or three hundred kola nuts could be collected at Salaga.
    
    At Salaga and other centres, residents established plantations which grew produce for the daily markets.
    
    The cooking and sale of food was another important source of income for the women of resident Muslims and indigenous inhabitants. From early morning in Kete, visitors could hear `the women shouting their monotonous “Kaffa-Kaffa,” offering peanut soup and rice and maize bread for sale.'
    
    On every street comer and in the markets sit women who offer ready cooked foods. There is a large variety. The main dish in the mornings is the thick red-brown millet soup, made from millet husks and water. It has a very pleasant slightly sour taste. . .  In addition to this there are cooked yams, raw and roasted ground nuts, honey beer, unpeppered rice and peppered oil-millet and bean cakes . . .
    
    Local inhabitants also sold firewood and at Salaga, slaves collected the wood as far as ten to twelve miles from the town.
    
    Water was also a problem at Salaga, and its sale was another source of income. Finally some indigenous inhabitants acted as landlords and brokers for the foreign traders. Since most business in the trade towns occurred in the dry season, these services supplemented the income from agricultural production. The peak trade months were from December to March and April, while in the rainy months, when the population was busy on its farms, the towns resembled deserted summer resorts.
    
    In spite of the advantages trade offered, it remained completely in foreign hands and was subject to little influence from local authorities outside Asante. If tolls and taxes were excessive, merchants altered their routes and the exploitive town or state suffered. If commercial prospects were greater elsewhere, traders and resident strangers abandoned their old trade patterns. Merchants were motivated by the profits they expected to realize, and they acted to protect their economic prospects. Itinerant trading along the routes to Asante was of secondary importance. Their main concern was to minimize travelling expenses so that as much kola as possible could be purchased in the markets. Their only interests then were in returning to their homes in Central Sudan as quickly as possible in order to capitalize on their investments. States along the trade routes profited from this through traffic, but their citizens did not participate as active traders nor did individual economies have many products which traders desired. State policy had to be laissez-faire; efforts were made to maximize revenue from the trade, but policy could not effect the commerce without undermining a state's ability to profit from it. In a few cases indigenous people entered the trade, but they had to learn the commercial language and adopt the culture and religion of the diaspora.
    
    Only when a person spoke Hausa, dressed and acted like a Muslim, and dealt with other Muslims in distant centres was he accepted into the society of the long-distance traders.
    
    The situation in central Gonja is less clear. By the 1780s, `the extensive kingdom of Caffaba' was known as far away as North Africa, and its fame rested on the town's position as the main trade centre in Gonja.  Some Hausa claim to have settled at Kafaba before the Ngbanya conquest in the late sixteenth century, but more probably a Hausa presence existed only since the period when the town was an important commercial depot. Kafaba was never a political capital, and therefore its appearance on European maps beginning in 1722 dates its rise as a trade town to the early decades of the eighteenth century and the period when Asante expanded northward. Gbuipe, the other major Gonja centre, may have preceded Kafaba as a commercial centre, but there is no solid evidence for the presence of Hausa immigrants before the eighteenth century.
    
    The mid-eighteenth century Tadhkira l'il-Mutak'akhirin, which dealt with the Muslim community and discussed divisional affairs in eastern Gonja, made no reference to the trade town. Nor was Salaga included on an itinerary in the 1780s which connected Kafaba with the Hausa states, although Kpembe may have been a rest stop en route. The first mention of Salaga in 1804 suggests the town was only a minor settlement at that time, but within the next decade, it became the 'grand emporium of Inta.
    
    Other Muslims from Kafaba and Gbuipe moved to Salaga when their markets declined.
    
    As early as 1740, at least six Gonja Muslims had been on pilgrimage, while Kafaba became known to North Africa through pilgrims at Mecca.
    
    Both Jack Goody (The Mande and the Akan Hinterland, in J. Vansina, et al., The Historian in Tropical Africa, [London, 1964, 203) and Levtzion (Muslims and Chiefs, 17) subscribe to the thesis that Hausa and Kanuri settlers were in the area at the time of the sixteenth century conquest. Levtzion relies on the Qissat Salagha, while Goody's argument is equally unconvincing. Goody remarks that the proof of the Hausa claim is in their greetings. Presumably this statement means that the residents used Hausa greetings, but this is hardly surprising since the Hausa trade has been so important.
    
    (For Gbuipe's and Kafaba's importance, see D. R Jones, 'Jakpa and the Foundation of Gonja,' Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana, VI 1962, 18, ?7-4; and Jack Goody, 'The Over-Kingdom of Gonja.'in Forde and Kaberry, West African Kingdoms, 190. )
    
    Imhammed's route from Katsina to Kafaba and Nkoranza was as follows: Kashna (Katsina), Youn (Yauri), Gangoo (?), Domboo (?), Nykee (Nikki), Zeggo (Zugu=Kilir-Wangara), Kottokolee (Kotokoli=Dedaure), Kombah (Kpembe), Kaffaba - see Rennell. 'Map of Africa.' Since Rennell's map underwent several revisions between 1790 and 1810, the 1810 edition of his work is unreliable except for information that is directly attributable to Imhammed in the text. There Imhammed does not mention his itinerary. Fortunately, however, a German translation of the 1790 edition of the Proceedings of the African Association was published in 1791 and confirms the above route.
    
    Initially it required the appointment of officials to oversee existing Muslim settlements in the newly incorporated provinces of the (Asante) empire. Many of these communities predated the foundation of Asante. The most important was at Bighu, north-west of Kumase but numerous others were located in or near the kola production area. With the expansion of the Hausa market, newer depots were established between Kumase and the Volta to the north-east, and such towns as Gbuipe and Kafaba on the Volta also became major caravan stops. These were all replaced after 1810 by the emergence of Salaga as the paramount buying point for kola, although Yendi to the north also served some functions in the expanding trade to the Central Sudan.
    
    By the l780s, kola was a common luxury among the aristocracies of the Hausa states and Borno and was even imported as far north as Fezzan In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, before Asante restricted foreign merchants to Salaga, Muslim traders, including Hausa merchants, were active in areas contiguous to the forest kola production region. This pattern only changed in the early nineteenth century as a result of Asante policy. Before then Muslims lived in Nsawkaw and Tekyiman, northwest of Kumase `in distinct societies under the jurisdiction of their own laws, but in subordination to the caboceers appointed by the King of Ashantee.' Nomassa, the capital of Nsawkaw, was 'said to contain a thousand Moslems.'
    
    The development of the kola trade to the north-east in the eighteenth century led to the formation of new trade centres between Kumase and the Volta river. As early as the 1780s Hausa traders travelled as far as the kola production area near Nkoranza. In the second decade of the nineteenth century, a number of Muslim settlements existed in this region. Little is known about their origins, but residents of Asante probably established the communities in response to commercial opportunities with the Central Sudan. The settlements did not last long, and today no traces of them remain.
    
    The distinguishing feature of the Muslim trade communities which permitted Hausa traders to develop such an extensive exchange in an area dominated by non-Hausa commercial centres was the international connections of Islam. When Hausa merchants began trading to Asante, they moved easily within the Juula and Wangara trade networks. Because of a common adherence to Islam, the earlier trade communities absorbed the Hausa settlers with little difficulty. Hausa immigrants stayed in the existing centres and shared the mosques and imam of other Muslims. With the establishment of Hausa communities at Salaga, Yendi, and other places after 1800, the nature of the commercial centres did not change. Hausa traders and settlers predominated, but each new settlement included non-Hausa Muslims.
    
    `The education of the young is looked after by Hausa priests in all their colonies. They learn to read and write in Arabic and their lessons are all based on the Koran. Even on journeys these exercises are continued.'
    
    The earliest Hausa malams known to have travelled as far west as the Volta were those credited with converting the Na of Mamprussi and Dagbon in the early eighteenth century.

Kola: cultivation and trade

• Lovejoy, Paul, Caravans of Kola: Hausa Kola Trade 1700-1900, OUP (Extracts and notes)
  
  • The immediate hinterland of Kumase was not devoted to large scale kola cultivation, but Asante settlers moved into Mampong, Nkoranza, and other provinces where its production became or already was a major economic concern.
    
    Kola had to be carried in large, expensively operated donkey caravans over a distance of many hundreds of kilometers from the middle Volta basin to the Hausa cities, and this limitation placed certain parameters on the trade. For a time when transport was confined to donkeys, mules, and headloading, the volume of the trade was considerable. The annual movement of merchants and their dependents reached many thousand people during the height of the overland trade in the nineteenth century, and comparable numbers of livestock also made the journey. This amounted to hundreds of tons of kola, an estimate which must be considered conservative. It does appear, however, that the volume increased considerably towards the end of the century.
    
    In spite of the importance of the southern trade, the export of kola to the north was essential to Asante foreign trade for most of its history. GoId, ivory, and war captives shipped to the coast may have financed Asante political expansion, but kola production was also important to its economy.
    
    The industry experienced continued government intervention to the point where according to Wilks, it was nationalised by the1840s.   
    
    Producers who did not want to or could not travel to the kola markets sold their kola to . . . middlemen, who used pawns, slaves and freemen as porters just as the Bata did.
    
    Official discouragement of the private sector affected both Muslims and non Muslims and included a ban on kola sales by those outside the government until official sales were completed, usually a period of twenty days. Only after that were roads opened to private merchants.
    
    Furthermore, while government trade was not taxed, independent businessmen paid tolls of twenty five nuts on each load.
    
    It was not necessary to plant additional trees, since the forests outside the immediate Kumase hinterland abounded with wild trees which had only to be cleared of underbrush in order to increase yields.
    
    The major constraint on increased production was labour, just as it was in gold mining and panning.
    
    In both cases, slaves who were once exported were redirected into production, but for this purpose a marked difference distinguished the gold and kola industries. In the former, the state continued to dominate production, as large numbers of slaves were organized to mine and pan gold under government supervision. In the case of kola however, this was not possible, for control of the trees rested in the lineages and could not be easily transferred to the government. Instead, lineages accumulated slaves to assist in harvesting and transport, and one of the main aims of lineages in this period was the acquisition of more slaves to increase kola output.
    
    The nature of collection and packaging readily fit into relatively small scale organization based on lineage segments. The gathering and processing of the nuts was done by the family, including slaves and pawns, on lineage land. Men cleared the underbrush away from the trees in order to facilitate the collection of kola pods. Women were the main collectors and many pods dropped from the trees when ripe. There were three main harvests beginning in December and ending in April. Men were involved in the second, because kola was most plentiful then. The pods were broken open, and the nuts fermented. The fermentation, which took place in large uncovered containers lined with plantain leaves, made the husks easier to remove. The nuts were stored in smaller containers for about one month or in pits for much longer periods, but had to be examined regularly to remove those with worms, insects, and other defects. Since a mature tree produced at least 40-50 pods, producers needed the harvest from only a few trees to obtain a load of 2,000 nuts. Individuals often accumulated as many as 10 loads. If the kola was not sold to a middleman, the head of the family, with assistance from his slaves, pawns, and sons, transported it to Salaga or other markets for sale.
    
    This pattern of slave ownership and kola production differed from the plantation system which developed around Kumase to provision the capital. Slaves had a much greater possibility of being assimilated in the kola areas away from Kumase. It is significant however, that the government decision to shift slaves away from the capital territory after 1810 in order to avoid the dangers of slave uprisings had the effect of promoting kola production, since trees were not found in the immediate vicinity of Kumase. Therefore, the state controlled marketing, but production remained in lineage hands.
    
    It was kola production, firmly rooted in lineage structures, which provided the opportunity for individuals to amass considerable wealth
    
    In exchange for kola, traders exported such products as textiles, livestock, leather goods, jewellery, slaves, gabu (dried onion leaves) and natron from the Sokoto Caliphate and Borno, and there is no reason to assume that a similar assortment was uncommon for the eighteenth century as well. Many other items were bought and sold en route to the middle Volta, and donkeys and other livestock from the Mossi states, some gold from Asante, and salt from Daboya in western Gorja also figured prominently in the trade, but kola was almost the only item exported to the Central Sudan.
    
    Manufactured goods which Asante could not produce, especially Hausa textiles and leather goods, were acquired with the foreign exchange earnings of kola as well. These luxuries supplied both the Asante aristocracy and the multilateral trade patterns which enabled Asante merchants to purchase slaves or other products they desired. The manufactures themselves were often re-exported northward towards the Mossi states or were sold in Gonja or Dagbon, although some silk which was vital to the Asante manufacture of kente cloth was secured in the north. Such spices as dried onion leaves (gabu), cooking oil made from shea butter, and livestock, were also crucial to the Asante economy, and none of these could be obtained from the coast.

• Arhin Kwame West African Traders in Ghana in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries    Longman  1979 (Extracts and notes)
  
  • map     Kumase-Kona-Agona-Jamasi-Mampon-Ejura-Amantin-Patura-Atebubu-Prang-Yeji-Salaga ---> Yendi?
    
    2    The openness of the vegetation facilitated the passage of the beasts of burden of the northern caravans along the beaten tracks that served as routes and permitted easy diversion of direction in districts hostile to travellers.  It was relatively free from tsetse flies. Trading was done in the dry period November to March.  The Volta and its tributaries were less swollen so that crossing by canoe was less hazardous.
    
    3    At close of 19c Freeman wrote of Bonduku and Salaga that their inhabitants were mostly immigrants from a foreign district and that their level of civilization and their general character differed widely from those which obtained in any of the contiguous towns.  Salaga was a town with a population of different races.  Hosts were pagans.  Strangers were traders, often Muslims. Traders included landlords or innkeepers, brokers, master and apprentice traders.  Also goldsmiths, leather makers, cloth weavers, dyers.  
    
    7    Asante had military and political control over the peoples commanding the trade routes to Salaga and by Asante official supervisory activities in the localities of the markets.  Asante traders had to travel in groups and stay with friends or landlords along the route.  So some Asante established residence.
    
    Dupuis' description of parties on the Elmina/Kumasi path . . . A large party of Ashantees armed in the fashion of their country with musquets and knives and conveying some bulky loads of ivory and a valuable kind of grease used by the natives for annointing.  The party included women and girls whose employment consisted of attending upon their husbands or masters.  Another party of three men, two of whom were slaves carrying a few elephants teeth to the coast.  Again . . . 12-14  slaves loaded with ivory. 6 Ashantees and two others in company with many women and slaves among whom was a girl of fourteen.    Slave women and girls would not have been distinguishable from wives and daughters unless they bore tribal marks which identified them as nnokofo.  
    
    9    There were some mmusua who had more than 20 slaves, who had children and made their master wealthy.  Kumasi kente weavers generally sent a trusty servant to the foreign markets to purchase the silk cloths from which the threads were taken for making kente cloths.  Chiefs could buy but not sell slaves.
    
    16     Trade languages in Salaga were Asante and Hausa.
    
    Three media of exchange: cowries (not accepted as a store of value by the Akan), gold dust (most traders carried their balances (nsania) and weights (abrammoo for measuring quantities of gold dust) and kola.
    
    26   Salaga and Yendi markets were under Asante supervision through a temporary and permanent agent.  The temporary agent was a collector of tribute.  He stayed November to March.  Permanent agent was head of the Asante community.

   

• Bonnat, M. J., Les Achantis, d'apres les relations de M. Bonnat edited J. Gros, L'explorateur (Paris 1876) vol. III pp. 1 - 3, translated from the French by M. Johnson, The Salaga Papers, acc. no. SAL/34/1
  • The trade of Salaga before 1874
    
    Thanks to this fruit (kola), the Ashantis make an immense trade with the interior. After gathering it and separating it from its coverings, it is packed into the travelling baskets; large leaves are provided to keep it fresh as long as possible. Then it is sent to Serime where it is bought by people who come in caravans from all parts of Africa to buy a fruit so valuable in their eyes. With this unique product which costs them nothing, not even the least cultivation, the Ashantis obtain all that they want from the different people who come to this market.  The main things they ask in exchange for the fruits are:
    
    • ordinary cloths woven and sewn brought by the people of Bontoucou;  
    • fine thread with which they weave themselves their rich cloths;
    • sandals, a well as pouches in tanned and coloured leather; these two articles which are admirably worked, are brought to the market by caravans coming from Hausa, from Kano, from Marawa, from Sokkatou and from different countries on the banks of the Niger and even on the shores of Lake Chad;
    • from the same merchants, they obtain iron implements which they need for cultivating their fields;  
    • from these caravans and from those coming from Timbuktu, they have brought shawls and girdles of silk of African manufacture also tobacco in plenty , in ball and plaited leaf;
    • from various other peoples, they get sheep and cattle in great quantity;
    • and, finally, all the time they receive slaves in great numbers.

    When the road to the coast is closed, it is possible to procure from this market powder and guns, but only at a very high price.
    
    M. Bonnat even saw, from the same place, perfumery and glass trinkets which definitely were not of European manufacture.

• Fynn J K Asante and Its Neighbours 1700-1807  Longman 1971
  • 5    . . . trade route ran to the north east through eastern Gonja and Dagomba, across the river Niger to Hausaland. This route made contact with the trans-Saharan caravan trade in commercial emporia in Hausaland.  Merchants from such Hausa cities as Kano and Katsina travelled along this route to Salaga in Eastern Gonja and there exchanged their cotton cloths, leather goods and slaves for gold, cowries, and other products . . . kola nuts and salt

• Lovejoy, Paul, Caravans of Kola: Hausa Kola Trade 1700-1900, OUP (Extracts and notes)
  
  • Like other commercial diasporas, the dispersed Hausa settlements eased cross-cultural exchange. Their inhabitants bridged the cultural and economic gap between local societies and the metropolitan Hausa states, and this culturally marginal position permitted the diaspora residents to fulfill the two main needs of the trade, brokerage and agency. Common language and religion unified the network, while kinship and other relationships served to strengthen commercial associations. Diasporas filled an ecological niche which straddled a series of ethnic boundaries.
    
    To be `Hausa' along the trade routes presupposed certain occupations, particularly merchant, professional, or craftsman. Hence commercial diasporas acted as one kind of `bridge' across the ethnic labyrinth of West Africa.
    
    The Hausa settlements afforded passing traders temporary lodging and allowed access to local markets. They bulked products entering long distance trade and distributed commodities imported from distant places. Hausa landlords (mai gida), resident in the trade towns, furnished accommodation to merchants, served as brokers in local exchange collected information on market conditions, supplied packing and storage facilities, offered translating services, extended short term credit, and provided other assistance to clients. Like the itinerant traders whom they served, the inhabitants of the Hausa communities were Muslim. They spoke Hausa as their first language, and most traced their ancestry to one of the Hausa cities or towns. Although many individuals were born in the dispersed settlements and lived there for long periods, they often considered themselves foreigners with few connections with local societies. They frequently identified more closely with their place of origin, with their clients and with other distant trade centres than with their adopted countries. Nevertheless, members of the dispersed Hausa communities were seldom directly related to the Hausa merchants from the Sokoto Caliphate. The people of the diaspora were far more heterogeneous in their origins than the Hausa traders were and endogamous marriage arrangements maintained this distinction.
    
    They had settled in the trade towns to take advantage of expanding commercial opportunities and had subsequently developed a sense of community which was based on Islam, the use of the Hausa language, inter-marriage within the community and with other diaspora settlements, and common residence. The resulting group identification, based foremost on similar commercial undertakings, was fundamental to the operation of Asante-Central Sudan trade.
    
    Hausa malams owed their influence in large part to their skill in making charms. Methods for supernatural protection were in strong demand in the Volta region, and Muslims of all nationalities helped supply the market. For example in 1807 Asante soldiers protected themselves in battle with the assistance of charms made from 'a little square cloth, enclosing some sentences of the Alcoran.' Most known correspondence between the Muslims of Kumase and the northern trade communities in the early nineteenth century concerned charms and other magical formulae.  Hausa malams who travelled to the Volta region with increasing frequency after the jihad became especially famous for their ability to manufacture charms. The only protective magic which was condoned was the use of charms comprised of holy words and names, attributes of Allah, and special prayers.
    
    The dispersed settlements catered for the long-distance trade, but they relied upon the unifying ideology of Islam to buttress economic links. Islam provided a status system which supplemented the emphasis on wealth within the communities, since education and religious piety were respected as much or more than commercial success. Thus religion and its status orientation furnished a rationalization for the hospitality which landlords extended to passing traders for economic reasons. Through their educational and religious instruction, the itinerant malams supported this dependence upon Islam. In return the trade communities offered shelter and alms to the travelling clerics, and the commercial network served as an avenue into non Muslim areas for those malams interested in propagating their religion.
    
    Non-Muslim rulers wanted their own imam to supplement their other religious advisors and to encourage long distance trade. Local governments knew that malams could become hosts and brokers for Muslims passing through the area and could form the nucleus of a small commercial centre. The settlement of malams thereby promoted the expansion of the long-distance trade network whilst the Muslims attempted to convert people to Islam.
    
    The development of the Hausa diaspora in the eighteenth century was closely related to the expansion of the Asante state and the curtailment of Muslim commerce within Asante. As Asante developed its policies towards state domination of the foreign trade sector, including the export trade in kola, slaves, and gold, Hausa merchants consolidated their position as the major kola dealers in the interior. First, the earliest Hausa communities date to the same time as the early eighteenth-century expansion of the Asante state. This suggests that Hausa immigrants were attracted to opportunities made possible by the disruption of commerce in the kola producing area during the Asante campaigns there.
    
    Tonawa was the Hausa word for the Asante.
    
    One group of traders associated with the trans-Saharan traffic who assumed an early role in the consolidation of direct links with the Volta basin were the Sharifai, who claimed a direct genealogical relationship with the Prophet Muhammad. The Central Sudan community formed only a small part of a larger West African group of merchants and Muslim scholars who claimed descent from the Prophet. The Sharifai were similar to the Agadesawa in that they used their origins to identify themselves within Hausa society. Their most important communities in the eighteenth century Central Sudan were at Katsina, Kano, and the Borno capital of Birni Ngazagarmo.
    
    Sharifai entered the Asante trade before the last decades of the eighteenth century. The availability of gold in the Volta markets attracted merchants associated with the trans-Saharan traffic, and in the eighteenth century some gold reached the Mediterranean via the Hausa states. Sharif Imhammad, from whom Europeans in North Africa first learned about the trade to Asante, travelled overland from Katsina to northern Asante in the 1780s in an apparent exploratory expedition to examine the possibility of a more permanent relationship with the Volta basin. During his sojourn Imhammad purchased kola as well as gold on behalf of his patron, the ruler of Fezzan. Other Sharifai who were resident in the savanna consolidated similar commercial contacts.
    
    The eighteenth century was a formative period in the development of the Hausa trade to Asante. The most important item of exchange. . . was natron (kanwa), an alkaloid substance (a mineral of hydrous sodium carbonate, Na2CO3.10H20) used extensively in West Africa as salt for livestock and humans, stomach medicine, thickener in cooking, additive to flavour chewing tobacco and snuff, and a fastening agent in dyes for cloth and leather. The natron came from Muniyo, Mangari, and the eastern shores of Lake Chad, which were directly or indirectly under Bomo political control for several centuries before 1900, and consequently its traders assumed an important role in its distribution. Through their export of Chadic natron, Bomo traders became involved in the trade to the Volta basin. Many were residents of the Hausa cities and identified themselves as Beriberi, the Hausa name for Bomo immigrants. The Beriberi maintained a commercial diaspora for natron distribution and extended the interests of the Bomo trading system westward to the Volta. Although the Beriberi retained their connection with Bomo, used Kanuri body and facial markings, and spoke Kanuri, most were assimilated to Hausa culture.
    
    Many families in the Volta region trace their ancestry to Katsina.
    
• Webster and Adu Boahene, Revolutionary Years West Africa since 1800
  • 61    1812 - trade routes Salaga-Kumasi (bullocks/asses) From Timbuctoo and Hausaland Kumasi-Twifu-Assin-Elmina/Cape Coast
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  • 15     Asante export of kola nuts to Sokoto and Tokolor
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  • 65    Goods from N. Africa: shawls, red caps, trousers, carpets, silks from Tripoli, spices, perfumes, cowries, books (Koranic), horses, calico from Enugu, cotton prints, silk, muslins, linen, writing papers from Venice, beads, sword blades, looking glasses, needles, files chisels, snuff boxes, razors, scissors, trinkets, dates ex Sahara, copper, salt.  
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  • Products of W. Sudan: ivory, gum, natron (sodium carbonate from Chad basin used for medicine, dyeing leather and cloth, making snuff, substitute for salt), ostrich feathers, slaves.  
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  • Products of forest and coast: gold, kola, ivory, slaves
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• Fynn J K, Asante and Its Neighbours 1700-1807  Longman 1971
  • 116    After 1770 Asante and Fante traders met freely for trade in markets on N frontier of Fante.  Far greater number of slaves were exported in 1774 than in any one year.  1776: peace in the Gold Coast and slaves are very plentiful.
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  • Slaves brought down by Asante were known as Duncoes, Donce, Dynkos.  Considered industrious and faithful.  Asante donko (pl. Nnonko or nnokofo) applied strictly to a man or woman, other than an Ashanti, who has been purchased with the express purpose of making him or her a slave.  Main physical attribute of an Odonko in the Asante mind: bearing tribal marks.  Bush or country people of the Dagomba have three light cuts on each cheekbone and three below with one horizontal under the eye.  Many of the slaves sold by Asante to the Europeans were from Dagomba.  
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  • Bowditch: "Most of the slaves in Kumasi were sent as part of the annual tribute of Inta, Dagwumba and their neighbours, to Asante, very many were kidnapped and for the few who were bought, I was assured by several respectable Ashantee 2000 cowries or one basket of kola nuts was the greatest price given - so full were the markets of the interior.
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  • Asante trade in gold, ivory kola nuts, slaves was very well organized.  Private individuals were not encouraged to indulge in large scale trading activities because for the risks involved.  The Asante trade, in general, was a state enterprise under the management of the Gyasewahene, who was overseer of the King's trade and was at liberty to send the trade where he pleased.  Asokwahene (or Batahene) was responsible for trading on behalf of the Asantehene.  At the request of the king or Gyasewahene, he would be sent to the coast to purchase salt, spirits, textiles, guns, powder, pewter, lead, etc.  Asokwahene was assisted by several fekuo (administrative departments) generally subjects of the Gyasewahene, including akyeremodefo (drummers) asokuafo (hornblowers) asoafo (hammock carriers) agwarefo (bathroom attendants)
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  • Asante officials - akwansrafo - road wardens - were established at many points on all main highways.  Ejura, Atebubu (control of traffic on NE road to Salaga).  They detained all traders until enquiries had been made about them, when they were allowed to pass on payment of 3 to 4 shillings worth of gold dust. Their main concern was to prevent guns and powder from being sold beyond metropolitan Asante. The purpose of this embargo was to ensure continued Asante superiority in muskets over the bow and arrow wielding peoples of N. Ghana.
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• Lovejoy, Paul, Caravans of Kola: Hausa Kola Trade 1700-1900, OUP (Extracts and notes)
  • In the eighteenth century slaves were the principal commodity exported (from Asante) to the coast They were acquired primarily in imperial wars and through tribute from subject territories, although some criminals were probably exported as well after the liberalising reforms of the late eighteenth century. War captives were sometimes difficult to incorporate into Asante society since they had often been engaged in fighting wars of resistance or independence. These exports overseas served mainly as foreign exchange for the purchase of firearms and gunpowder, upon which the Asante military depended.
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  • Gold and to a lesser extent ivory, were also sold to the Europeans in return for war materials, especially after the end of the Atlantic slave trade. Imported luxuries were, to an unknown extent, re-exported north.
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  • Slaves purchased from kola profits were assimilated into the lineages of central Asante. These slaves of northern origin nnonkofo were seldom shipped to the coast. Their main function was to augment war losses, and they helped stabilize population in the central provinces.
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  • Royal slaves worked many of the gold fields, and nuggets discovered in many provinces legally belonged to the state.
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OTHER REFERENCES

Adamu, Mahdi The Hausa Factor in West African History ABUP OUP
Boahene, A Adu, Kola Trade, Ghana Notes and Queries
Daaku, K.Y., Trade and Trading patterns of the Akan in the 17th and 18th Centuries (in Claude Meillassoux (ed).The Development of Trade and Markets in West Africa, Int Afr Inst)
Meillassoux,Claude (ed), The Development of Trade and Markets in West Africa, Int Afr Inst + OUP, 1971
Wilks, Ivor, Asante policy towards the Hausa trade in the nineteenth century (in Claude Meillassoux, (ed) The Development of Trade and Markets in West Africa, Int Afr Inst + OUP 1971)

Trans-Saharan trade

Boahen A Adu, Britain, the Sahara, and the western Sudan, 1988
Boahene, A Adu, The Caravan Trade in the 19c. Jour Af Hist 112 1962 349-359
Bovill, E. W., Caravans of the Old Sahara,1968
Bovill, E. W., The Golden Trade of the Moors, London, 1958
Lovejoy, Paul, Caravans of Kola, Hausa Kola Trade 1700-1900, OUP