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A complex historical interaction
Eurafricans in Western Africa: commerce, social status, gender and religious observance from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century
George E. Brooks
2003
James Currey, Oxford and Ohio University Press, Athens, USA
355 pages
Reviewed by Philip J. Havik
For most scholars concerned with West Africa the author of this book needs no introduction. Even so, a note is in order here for readers less familiar with publications on the region. After forty years of research dedicated to the area that Walter Rodney termed the Upper Guinea Coast, George Brooks is one of the doyens of the historiography of its Afro-Atlantic dimension. Belonging to a group of twentieth century historians that begins in the 1930s with John Blake, soon followed by Avelino Teixeira da Mota, António Carreira, Jean Boulègue and Walter Rodney, to name but a few, he dedicated himself to the study of Luso-African communities and the trade networks they developed in the pre-colonial period. Given that contact was first established in West Africa by Portuguese traders in the mid 1400s in coastal reconnaissance missions, it is only natural that Lusophone actors were to become a prime focus of historical research. Over the last decades the pioneering work by the above mentioned authors has been taken up by a new generation of researchers of whom René Pélissier and Peter Mark are probably the best known1. On a global scale, the parallel movement set in motion by historians such as Boxer and Russell-Wood, reinforced and broadened interest in early Portuguese expansion and empire building.
Brooks’ new book takes a new look at the formative period of Afro-Atlantic trade networks in a region that stretches from the Senegal to the Sherbro river, the latter located in Sierra Leone. Data are not lacking, nor are silences. Acutely aware of the need for comparative research, the author has produced an impressive collage of information gleaned from Portuguese, French and English sources. Given fierce competition from the late 1500s between these nations, an analysis of Eurafrican agency is at the same time an exercise in European history. But rather than simply a European ‘Quest for God and Gold’ as Blake would have it, the centuries of intensive exploration and exploitation of human and material resources had a deep impact upon coastal societies. Brooks’ work takes closer look at key vectors of social and cultural change that other writers such as Curtin and Barry have identified for the Senegambia2. Clearly then, the trans-Atlantic slave trade stands at the centre of this study, triggering the emergence of brokers who were to long dominate the extraction of hundreds of thousands of Africans from West Africa.
"The trans-Atlantic slave trade triggered the emergence of brokers who were to long dominate the extraction of Africans from West Africa"
As the author demonstrates in ten chapters, the relations that determined the effectiveness and resilience of these go-betweens were essentially based upon webs of kin and clientship between incoming stranger-traders and their landlords. The paradigm first launched by Simmel and applied to West Africa (i.e. Sierra Leone) by Vernon Dorjahn and Christopher Fyfe in the early 1960s, has been an important thread in Brooks’ publications3. It has been given a leading role in this book as well. So has the stratification of these relations and the changes to which they were subject over time receives considerable attention. In this respect, the differences between stratified and non-stratified or acephalous societies are regarded as crucial for regional variations. But an element that was already, albeit modestly, present in his earlier work in the 1980s, i.e. the relations of concubinage between African women and Atlantic outsiders, has now taken on much greater prominence. As the reader gets immersed in the chronological succession of events the realisation that this context is by no means accidental gains substance and credibility, and a rhythm of its own.
After first discussing the regions’ ecology and geography that lays the foundations for the correlation between climatic and commercial cycles (Ch.1), the book embarks on a description of trade networks that linked different zones and peoples (Ch.2). Maps provide the necessary background to a complex spatial system of commodity flows that rapidly expanded as a result of European inputs which reoriented exchanges towards coastal and riverine locations. It is along these settlements that dotted the West African landscape that Brooks’ account takes us, starting with those that first appeared in the Guinea Bissau region (roughly between the Casamance and the Pongo rivers) in the 1500s (Ch.3). Entrepôts such as Cacheu, Guínala and Bissau were soon followed by settlements such as Rufisque, Joal and Portudal on the Petite Cõte between Cape Verde, where the city of Dakar now lies, and the Gambia River. They were initially populated by a mixture of slaves, free Africans and European private traders, many of whom fled the Iberian Peninsula as a result of religious persecution. Other locations further south in the Sierra Leone area where trade routes converged also accommodated private trader-settlers and attract European factors in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Cape Verdean archipelago where Portuguese trading strata first establish themselves in the 1460s served as a depot for slaves in transit as well as developing a latifundio economy based upon slave labour. A breeding ground for creole communities, the islands (regularly hit by droughts and famines), came to function as a pivot that bound a growing ‘Luso-African’ trading diaspora along the West African littoral.
European commercial ventures, privateering and raiding, but also drought, famine and wars between African communities and states, all contributed to a rapid expansion of the slave trade in the 1600s (Ch.4). The growing demand for labour from plantations in the Americas provided the external momentum for the traffic that drove large caravans from the interior to coastal markets. West African topography intersected by (long) rivers cutting deep into the coastline requiring navigational expertise and intimate knowledge of the different ‘landlords’ along their banks, created optimum conditions for the emergence of commercial intermediaries. Trader settlers with access to European commodities aided by a host of pilots, clerks and interpreters conducted and controlled an extensive relay trade with hosts-suppliers. Apart from slaves, gold, ivory, hides, beeswax, pepper and dyes circulated in exchange for iron bars, cotton cloth, rum/brandy, arms, gunpowder and trinkets. These circuits attracted a large number of operators who relentlessly competed for the spoils of a trade that thrived on large profit margins and on promises of instant wealth.
Having drawn the outlines of ‘Luso-African’ ascendance over these networks, Brooks fills us in on the role of women traders operating from settlements, i.e. the nhara, a Creole term derived from the Portuguese senhora or lady (Ch.5). The fact that the presence of ‘Luso-African’ traders was circumscribed to coastal/riverine settlements which fell under the jurisdiction of African ‘landlords’ who controlled supplies of water, food and fuel, meant that mediation was crucial to commercial success as well as subsistence. Portuguese, French, Dutch, and English traders sought their favour in order to guarantee access to regional exchange networks. Patterns of cohabitation consisted of female slaves on the one hand, and free women from trade settlements, the nhara, on the other, providing distinct forms of mediation and acculturation for male outsiders. There were however notable regional differences, i.e. between stratified societies (such as the Wolof and Mandinga) which limited women’s room for manoeuvre and acephalous groups south of the Gambia river that gave considerable leeway for female entrepreneurship. Their partnership and company was also highly valued for domestic reasons, for their knowledge of local languages and Crioulo, the coastal lingua franca, and a lifestyle that combined familiar European with exotic African elements. High mortality rates resulting from tropical diseases were a potent reminder of the risks West African adventures entailed.
Examples are given from travel accounts of ‘Luso-Africans’ inhabiting the Upper Guinea coast from ‘French’ entrepôts such as St. Louis, founded during the first half of the 17th century, to Bunce island in the Sierra Leone estuary where an English factory was established in the 1670s (Ch.6). The consolidation of European and ‘Eurafrican’ spheres of coastal influence is then related to the rise of new political formations in the African hinterland, such as the Kaabú confederation and the Mani/Sumba polities. The attempt to capture trade by forming monopoly companies, however, failed to put a break on the emergence of Franco and Anglo-African diasporas that formed as employees sought more immediate means of enrichment directly on their own account with African suppliers (Ch.7). The expansion of the slave trade and concomitant networks southwards increased the pressure upon landlord-stranger relations during the 18th century while the terms of barter shifted in favour of Africans (Ch.8). At the same time, female traders such as the signares, senioras and senoras profited from their position as intermediaries to gain control over a growing share of trade revenue in the Senegambia, the Guinea Bissau regions and Sierra Leone. In the former and latter areas, increasing competition from rival Francophone and Anglophone groups and the impact of progressive islamisation following Fulbe expansion, circumscribed ‘Luso-Africans’ strata to the Guinea-Bissau region (Ch.9). The resistance of African societies in that region, such as the Pepel in whose territory the towns of Cacheu and Bissau lay, to Portuguese and ‘Luso-African’ encroachment, led to the ‘encapsulation’ of their communities which accelerated their acculturation.
But European attempts to establish footholds in the said region also failed as a result of African intransigence (Ch.10). Strategically positioned between the Geba estuary and the Rio Grande inlet, the island of Bolama became a prime target of colonisation. The disastrous experience of a ‘philantropic’ British expedition to set up a colony there in the 1790s decimated by disease and attacks by hostile Bijagó landlords illustrated the consequences of ignoring local customs and conditions. Almost simultaneously another British initiative to resettle ‘Black Poor’ from Britain in the ‘Province of Freedom’ met a similar fate when their settlement was destroyed by Temne groups in 1789. Eventually subsequent expeditions succeeded in negotiating territorial concessions and provide former slaves from North America and the Caribbean with a new home in what was to become Freetown. The abolition of the slave trade by Britain and France in the first decades of the 1800s posed new challenges for Eurafrican trading strata which were now forced to seek alternatives. The transition from exporting slaves to producing crops for export was about to begin and with it the renegotiation of landlord-stranger relations.
Brooks’ narrative which provides an ongoing stream of facts and figures is dense and informative. Without digging deep into West African history, it provides a bird’s eye view of the changing roles of coastal brokers in a highly varied and variable spatial and social setting. To its credit the book registers the many nuances of complex networks that linked dispersed communities and reshaped cross-cultural relations over a period of three centuries. Dividing the Upper Guinea coast into the Senegambia, the Guinea Bissau and the Sierra Leone region, the author identifies the specific characteristics of the different Eurafrican trade diasporas that formed in them and the roots which attached them to European and African interests. Having accustomed readers to the existence of ‘Luso-Africans’, he then goes on to present Franco and Anglo-Africans as a logical, but not necessarily intentional, consequence of the interaction between divergent ‘national’ domains. Towards the end of the book they form part of the African landscape, appearing as traffickers as well as landlords. The webs of kinship relations that were spun between guests and hosts in an environment clearly provided a great measure of spatial and social mobility. The success of go-betweens was very much dependent on their incurring the favour of their host-kin-supplier whose position in turn was bolstered by access to European exchange goods. The imperatives of the relay trade in this part of West Africa are well illustrated by the description of the numerous obstacles European firms found on their way when trying to deal directly with African ruling lineages. At the same time there was no shortage of candidates to swell the ranks of Eurafrican strata given the failure of nation states and ‘monopoly’ companies to control their employees who were inexorably drawn into ‘illicit’ trading and ‘setting up shop’ with African women.
Closely bound up with the trans-Atlantic slave trade, this history of coastal exchange also reads as a tale of woe. The less palatable aspects of slave raids, piracy, intrigue and murder says much of about the dubious quality of those involved in these circuits. The greed and gore emanates from these pages that well depict the sordid side of commerce and the moral corruption that followed from it. The latter affected the behaviour of European and Eurafrican newcomers who, seeking rapid enrichment, were prepared to cheat at every turn. Elucidative in this respect is the remark by an unnamed African client who, reproached by a European trader, stated ‘What! Do you think I am a white man?’ (p. 249). At the same time it also led predatory elites to ‘corrupt’ judicial processes and start wars on flimsy pretexts to suit their own interests. Treachery and malfeasance at all levels formed part and parcel of this unsavoury business, casting their shadow over the ‘habitus’ of the main characters of this book. But the limitations to which Eurafricans were subject also emerge from the story. The problems associated with capital accumulation owing to the common practice whereby African landlords inherited the riches resident traders earned on African soil is a recurrent theme. The fact that ruling lineages refused to cede land to strangers for any purpose other than trade and settlement lay at the heart of the latter’s lack of self-sufficiency. The fees and tribute demanded by the former left no doubt as to the hegemony these dignitaries exercised.
This book recapitulates many of the writer’s ideas on Eurafricans formulated over three decades in a large number of publications, while at the same time broadening the geographical range and the sources/references employed. At a conceptual level some aspects may however require some explanation or adjustment. The use of the ‘landlord-stranger’ paradigm presents a problem, in so far as Eurafricans born and bred on the coast were anything but strangers to their neighbours and relatives. A more detailed description of the villages and towns Eurafricans lived in would have given more couleur locale to the narrative. The definition of ‘Luso-Africans’ as being the ‘children of Portuguese traders and African women’ (p.xxi) is also problematic. What about intermarriage and concubinage (both of which were common) between Eurafricans born in entrepôts (whether Creoles from the Cape Verdean archipelago or mulattos from coastal towns) and their rural counterparts? Brooks’ analysis centred upon relations between Europeans and Africans, tends to overshadow those between (Eur)Africans that came into contact with each other in coastal trade settlements. This interaction was crucial for the formation and reproduction of the communities he describes, as Amanda Sackur has shown in the case of the signares4. As a result the contours and composition of this group which is so important to the narrative remain somewhat vague.
"Readers should be reminded that the term 'Eurafricans' was first used by Portuguese historians in the 19th century"
Readers should be reminded that the term ‘Eurafricans’ was first used by Portuguese historians in the 19th century to underline the ‘Lusitanian’ claim to African colonies, and therefore contains an intrinsic bias. Given that sources do project European tropes of ambiguity upon (Eur)Africans, it would have been advisable to insert a chapter dealing with the issue of (shifting) representations. Some chapters could be shortened though, such as chapter 5 on the evolution of nharaship in Senegambia which contains a subchapter (pp. 135-146) that does not deal with women traders. In view of the lack of familiarity of most readers with Lusophone idiom, the inclusion of a glossary, especially of Portuguese and Creole terms, would have been useful. Indeed, a number of Portuguese words quoted in the text would have benefited from a spell-check. As far as the sources are concerned one wonders why the book contains so few references to archival documents, and relies primarily on travel accounts and secondary literature. The fourteen well composed maps that are included in the book, are all presented in the first three chapters; it would have facilitated reading if they had been spread more evenly throughout the text. And finally, the book ends rather abruptly without conclusions; notwithstanding the announcement of a sequel in the introduction, one may have wished for a more polished rounding off of the three hundred page text
In sum, George Brooks provides Africanists and those interested in Africa’s history with a most informative book. It contains an enormous number of useful references for researchers, and effortlessly crosses and connects regional boundaries as well as chronological sequences. Appearing to be very much at ease with data culled from a large number of Portuguese, Dutch, English and French sources, the author succeeds in sustaining the main threads of his analysis throughout the book. Covering the period of the slave trade, it draws and further elaborates upon the work of Jean Boulègue, Boubacar Barry, Donald Wright, Philip Curtin, Walter Rodney, Christopher Fyfe, and many others. As such it is a timely review of a turbulent episode in West African history while focusing on lesser known groups of intermediaries that played an important, albeit generally underestimated, role in Afro-Atlantic relations.
1. See Pelissier, Réne´Naissance de la Guiné: Portugais et Africains en Sénégambie (1841-1936), Orgeval, 1989; Mark, Peter Portuguese Style and Luso-African Identity: pre-colonial Senegambia, sixteenth-nineteenth centuries, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2002.
2. Curtin, Philip Economic Change in Pre-Colonial Africa: Senegambia in the era of the slave trade, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1975; Barry, Boubacar Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998.
3. See for example his Landlords and Strangers: ecology, society and trade in Western Africa, 1000-1630, Indiana University Press, Westview Press, Boulder, 1993.
4. See: The Development of Creole Society and Culture in Saint-Louis and Gorée, 1719-1817 (unpublished PhD dissertation), London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1999. The dissertation is not quoted in Eurafricans.
Philip J. Havik is a researcher at the Institute of Tropical Research in Lisbon, Portugal.
