MIGRATION,

DIASPORAS AND CITIZENSHIP

Indian Cotton Textiles

in West Africa
African Agency, Consumer
Demand and the Making of the
Global Economy, 1750–1850
Kazuo Kobayashi
Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial
Studies Series

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Richard Drayton
Department of History
King’s College London
London, UK

Saul Dubow
Magdalene College
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, UK
The Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies series is a collection
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 Kazuo Kobayashi

Indian Cotton Textiles

in West Africa
African Agency, Consumer Demand
and the Making of the Global
Economy, 1750–1850
Kazuo Kobayashi
Faculty of Political Science
and Economics
Waseda University
Tokyo, Japan

Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series

ISBN 978-3-030-18674-6 ISBN 978-3-030-18675-3  (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18675-3

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 Acknowledgements

This book evolved from my Ph.D. thesis submitted to the London

School of Economics and Political Science. Parts of the original thesis
have been substantially revised and new discussion added to the narrative
text. First and foremost, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to
my supervisors, Tirthankar Roy and Leigh Gardner. Their learned guid-
ance and encouragement have enabled me to fulfil my aim of completing
this project. Janet Hunter and Alejandra Irigoin also made useful com-
ments on my Ph.D. project at the early stages. I am enormously grateful
to my thesis examiners, Gareth Austin and Toby Green, for their valuable
input and suggestion in enhancing the quality of my research work.
In the context of south-south economic history, I mainly focus on
early modern economic connections between South Asian textiles on
the one hand and consumers in Africa south of the Sahara on the other
hand. The idea originated while I was studying in Japan, where the ini-
tial development took place. For this, I am deeply indebted to Ichiro
Maekawa of Soka University, and Shigeru Akita and Takao Fujikawa of
Osaka University. Richard Drayton provided me with rich insights into
the study of history when I was a visiting doctoral student at King’s
College London between 2010 and 2011.
Early versions of this were presented at seminars, workshops and
conferences held in Frankfurt (Oder), Heidelberg, Kolkata, Kyoto,
London, Montreal, Nottingham, Osaka, Pittsburgh, Seoul, Tokyo and
Warwick. I wish to thank all the organiser hosts and participants for giv-
ing me opportunities to present my papers. Suggestions from renowned

v
vi    Acknowledgements

scholars during and after these events helped enrich my work further.
I am also grateful to all those who met to discuss my research project or
responded to my enquiries via emails. They include the late Christopher
Bayly, Jody Benjamin, Maxine Berg, Gwyn Campbell, Mariana Candido,
Felicia Gottmann, Masashi Haneda, Karolina Hutková, Adam Jones,
Hilary Jones, Makoto Kishida, Colleen Kriger, Gerold Krozewski,
Akinobu Kuroda, Debin Ma, Pedro Machado, Pat Manning, Peter
Marshall, Tsukasa Mizushima, Prasannan Parthasarathi, Richard Roberts,
Radhika Seshan, Masato Shizume, Anka Steffen, Sarah Stockwell,
Heather Streets-Salter, Silke Strickrodt, John Stuart, John Styles,
Lakshmi Subramanian, Kaoru Sugihara, Miki Sugiura, Hideaki Suzuki,
Hidenao Takahashi, Masayuki Tanimoto, John Thornton, Jim Webb,
Klaus Weber, Jutta Wimmler and Koji Yamamoto. Particular mention
may be made of Michael Aldous, Marisa Candotti, Kate Frederick, Tony
Hopkins, Atsushi Kobayashi, Jeremy Prestholdt, Alka Raman, Giorgio
Riello, Gerardo Serra, Kohei Wakimura and Mengxing Yu who kindly
read draft manuscripts of this book and offered useful comments. Any
errors and omissions are all mine.
I also would like to express my thanks to the librarians and the direc-
tors of the libraries and archives that I visited and whose valuable col-
lections I consulted: in particular, the National Archives (United
Kingdom), British Library, the LSE library, Foyle Special Collections
Library, Maughan Library, SOAS Library, Institute of Historical
Research, Liverpool Record Office, Sydney Jones Library, Tamil Nadu
State Archives, Archives Nationales du Senegal, Institut fondamental
d’Afrique noire, Musée national des douanes, Archives départemen-
tales de la Gironde, Archives Nationales d’Outre Mer (ANOM), and
Oral Archives—Research and Documentation at the National Centre for
Arts and Culture (The Gambia). R. K. Raghavan, R. Maria Saleth and
Derek Elliot helped me gain access to the Tamil Nadu State Archives in
October 2012. Hiroyuki Suzui, Nobuyuki Suzui and Vincent Hiribarren
helped me during my trip to Senegal in 2014 and provided access to
the Archives Nationales du Senegal. Robyn Orr helped me find material
that I wanted to consult, at the Sydney Jones Library, in 2017. Hassoum
Ceesay and Lamin Yarbo offered their full support during the entire
period of my visit to The Gambia in 2018. The Foyle Special Collections
Library, the National Archives (UK) and the ANOM very kindly gave me
permission to reproduce their archival material.
 Acknowledgements    vii

This project was supported by generous funds from LSE (Economic

History Research Studentship, Postgraduate Travel Funds and Radwan
Travel and Discovery Fund), the Economic History Society, the Socio-
Economic History Society, the Government of Japan, the Japan Society
for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) (KAKENHI Grant Numbers
16J00121 and 18H05710), and the Konosuke Matsushita Memorial
Foundation. The JSPS postdoctoral fellowships helped to continue my
research at the University of Tokyo from 2016 to 2018, where I enjoyed
strong support from Ryuto Shimada. My special thanks go to Giorgio
Riello and Anne Gerritsen for having me as a visiting scholar at the
Global History and Culture Centre, University of Warwick, in 2018.
My friends and colleagues have broadened my perspectives in
many ways. Special mention should be made to Michael Aldous, Yasin
Arslantaş, Mattia Bertazzini, Sam Betteridge, Marisa Candotti, Mina
Ishizu, Steven Ivings, Enrique Jorge-Sotelo, Shinichi Kobayashi,
Leonard Kukić, Cecilia Lanata Briones, Takaaki Masaki, Sohail Nazir,
Sumiyo Nishizaki, Yoshitaka Okamoto, Andrea Papadia, Teerapa
Pirohakul, Beatriz Rodriguez-Satizabal, Ryoji Sakai, Greta Christine
Seibel, Gerardo Serra, Ayako Suzuki, Kayoko Yukimura and Sono Yuan
Werhahn. They have enriched my life immensely and stimulated my
thinking.
I immensely appreciate Haimanti Dey for improving the readability
and for making the manuscript fit for its intended purpose.
Finally, my parents, Shigezo and Yaeko, and my grandparents, the late
Jukichi (1910–2011), the late Tazuko (1914–2014), Teruaki and Hisae,
always and firmly believed in me. I dedicate this book to them with
heartfelt respect and gratitude.

Spring 2019 Kazuo Kobayashi

 Contents

1 Introduction 1
Rethinking African Agency in Global History 3
Indian Cotton Textiles in the Pre-industrial World 7
South-South Economic History 12
Sources 13
Organisation of the Book 15
Conclusion 17

2 West African Seaborne Trade, 1750–1850: The

Transition from the Transatlantic Slave Trade
to ‘Legitimate’ Commerce 29
The Transatlantic Slave Trade and Jihad in West Africa,
1750–1850 31
Exports from West Africa in the Early Nineteenth Century 38
Imports into West Africa 53
Conclusion 68

3 Guinées in the Lower Senegal River: A Consumer-Led

Trade in the Early Nineteenth Century 81
What Is a Piece of Guinée? 82
Why Did West African Consumers Prefer Indian Guinées? 83
Commercial Networks in the Lower Senegal River 87
Guinées as a Currency 95
Conclusion 111

ix
x    Contents

4 Procurement of Indian Textiles for West Africa,

1750–1850 127
Rethinking the Procurement of Indian Textiles 128
English Investment in Textile Production in South India 129
French Investment in Textile Production in Pondicherry 144
Conclusion 153

5 Western European Merchants and West Africa,

1750–1850: Continuity and Change 165
British Merchants and West Africa 166
French Merchants and West Africa 174
Conclusion 186

6 Conclusion 195
Economic Development in Nineteenth-Century West Africa 196
Africa, Empire and Global History 199
Multiple Globalisation in the Emergence of the Modern
Global Economy 201

Bibliography 211

Index 241
 List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Textiles imported from Britain to West Africa, 1699–1808

(pounds sterling) (Source Marion Johnson, Anglo-African
Trade in the Eighteenth Century: English Statistics on
African Trade 1699–1808 [Leiden: Centre for the History
of European Expansion, 1990], pp. 54–5) 10
Fig. 2.1 Slave trade by flag, 1751–1850 (Source Voyages:
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (TSTD),
http://www.slavevoyages.org [accessed 23 March 2015]) 32
Fig. 2.2 Slaves embarked by region, 1751–1850 (Source TSTD) 33
Fig. 2.3 Exports of palm oil from West Africa to Britain, 1801–
1850 (cwt) (Sources 1801–1844: British Parliamentary
Papers [BPP], 1845, XLVI [187]: palm oil. An account of
the quantity of palm oil annually imported into the United
Kingdom from the western coast of Africa, since the year
1790, to the 31st day of December 1844. 1845–1850:
BPP 1854, LXV [296]: Tallow, & c. Return of the quan-
tities of tallow, palm oil, train oil, spermaceti, hemp, flax
seed, hides and skins, and sheep’s wool, imported into the
United Kingdom during the years 1844–1853 inclusive,
specifying the quantities imported from each country. Note
Records for 1813 destroyed by fire) 40
Fig. 2.4 Exports of gum arabic from Senegal to France,
1827–1850 (tonnes) (Sources France: Direction générale
des douanes, Tableau décennal de commerce de la France

xi
xii    List of Figures

avec ses colonies et les puissances étrangèrs, 1827 à 1836

[Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1838]; France. Direction
générale des douanes, Tableau général du commerce de la
France avec ses colonies et les puissances étrangères [Paris:
Imprimerie Royale, 1839–1851]) 47
Fig. 2.5 Imports of English cotton goods from Britain to West
Africa, 1827–1850 (yards) (Source The National Archives
[NAUK, Kew, the United Kingdom], CUST 8/25-72) 54
Fig. 2.6 Imports of Indian cotton textiles from Britain to West
Africa, 1827–1850 (pieces) (Source NAUK,
CUST 10/18-41) 60
Fig. 2.7 West African imports of Indian dyed cotton textiles
from Britain and France, 1827–1850 (pieces) (Sources
France: Fig. 2.4. For the 1832 data, J.-P. Duchon-Doris,
Commerce des toiles bleues dites guinées [Paris, 1842],
appendis. Britain: Fig. 2.6. Note The French official trade
statistics somehow lack the data for Senegal in 1832) 62
Fig. 2.8 West African imports of cowrie shells from Britain,
1751–1850 (tonnes) (Source Jan Hogendorn and Marion
Johnson, The Shell Money of the Slave Trade [Cambridge
University Press, 1986], pp. 58–60, 67. Note Records for
1813 destroyed by fire) 66
Fig. 3.1 Shipping of guinées from India via France into Saint Louis
(Source Author’s original) 89
Fig. 3.2 The river trade of guinées and gum arabic in the lower
Senegal River (Credit: Rapp Halour/Alamy Stock Photo) 91
Fig. 3.3 Commercial networks around the lower Senegal River
region in the early nineteenth century (Source Kazuo
Kobayashi, ‘Indian Textiles and Gum Arabic in the Lower
Senegal River: Global Significance of Local Trade and
Consumers in the Early Nineteenth Century’, African
Economic History 45/2 (2017): 40) 94
Fig. 5.1 British shipping of Indian textiles to West Africa and the
British slave trade, 1772–1849 (Sources Indian cotton
textiles: NAUK, CUST 10/3–41; CUST 17/1–29.
Slaves: Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
[TSTD]. www.slavevoyages.org. Accessed 23 March 2015) 167
Fig. 5.2 Proportions of Bordeaux and Marseille in the re-exports
of guinées from France, 1832–1850 (Sources Direction
générale des douanes, Tableau décennal de commerce
de la France avec ses colonies et les puissances étrangères,
 List of Figures    xiii

1827 à 1836 [Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1838]; Direction

générale des douanes, Tableau général du commerce
de la France avec ses colonies et les puissances étrangères
[Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1839–1851]. See also Kazuo
Kobayashi, ‘Indian Textiles and Gum Arabic in the Lower
Senegal River: Global Significance of Local Trade and
Consumers in the Early Nineteenth Century’, African
Economic History 45/2 [2017]: 33) 178
Fig. 5.3 Guinée trades from French India to France and from
France to Senegal, 1827–1850 (pieces) (Source Kobayashi,
‘Indian Textiles’, 36) 181

Image 1.1 Imitations of Indian cotton textiles for West African

trade (Source The National Archives [Kew, the United
Kingdom], T 70/1517: Letter from W. Norris to William
Hollier, Chorley, 7 May 1751. Note A niccanee [above] is
of the blue strips with some white and two red cross strips
[19 threads per cm]. A superfine chellow [below] is of
blue and white checks [20 threads per cm]) 11
Image  3.1 Sample guinées (Source Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer
[Aix-en-Provence, France], Inde 494, Dossier 871:
L’Arrêté signé par Gouverneur Du Camper, 23 August
1844, Pondicherry. Note The guinées are stamped with the
following words in red: ‘ORDONNANCES ROYALES
DES 18 MAI ET SEPTEMBRE 1843’ around the outer
border of the mark, whose diameter is 56 millimetres,
‘PONDICHERY’ at the upper centre, ‘GUINÉE’ on the
left of centre, and ‘Poids 2k 30, Longr 16m 50, Largr 1[m]
00’ in the centre) 83
Image 3.2 A princess of Trarza (Source L’A. P.–David Boilat,
Esquisses Sénégalaises [Paris, 1853], Planche XII, General
Research Division, The New York Public Library.
‘Princesse Mauresse, Trarzas.’ New York Public Library
Digital Collections. Accessed 11 August 2017. http://
digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47df-79ef-a3d9-
e040-e00a18064a99) 85
Image 3.3 Gum harvesting in Senegal (Source J. P. L. Durant, Atlas
pour servir au voyage du Sénégal [Paris, 1802], Planche 29.
Note I gained permission to reproduce this image from
King’s College London, Foyle Special Collections Library) 95
xiv    List of Figures

Image 4.1 The cotton spinning and weaving mill of Poulain and

Duboy in 1831 (Source Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer
[ANOM, Aix-en-Provence, France], Inde 494, Dossier
865: Inde Française, Manufactures de Pondichéry) 149
Image 4.2 Cardboard attached to the guinées in Pondicherry
(Source ANOM, Inde 494, Dossier 871: L’Arrêté signé par
Gouverneur Du Camper, 18 December 1843, Pondicherry) 153
 List of Tables

Table 2.1 Types of palm oil, the fermentation process and labour

required 38
Table 2.2 White calicoes imported from Britain to West Africa,
1827–1850 56
Table 2.3 Printed calicoes imported from Britain to West Africa,
1827–1850 57
Table 2.4 Indian dyed cotton textiles imported from Britain
to West Africa, 1827–1850 61
Table 2.5 Prices of guinées in France and Senegal, 1817–1849
(French francs) 64

xv
 Sahara Desert 1... Saint Louis
2…Dakar
3… Bathurst
Mauritania 4… Free town
5… Cape Coast Castle
6… Bonny
1 Senegal
7… Old Calabar
Cape River
2 8… Kano
Verde Gambia Lake Chad
3 River
Fuuta 8
Portuguese
Jalon
Guinea
4 Sierra
Leone
5
Bight 6 7
The Gold Coast of Benin Cameroon
Bight
of Biafra

Atlantic Ocean

Source Author’s original.

Map 1  West Africa

I…Trarza emirate
Sahara Desert II…Brakna emirate
III… Waalo
IV… Fuuta Toro
Atlantic V… Kajoor
Ocean VI… Gajaaga

1… Saint Louis
2… Darmancour (escale)
3… Desert (escale)
4… Coq (escale)
5… Dagana
6… Bakel
7… Portendick
8… Arguin

Source
Author’s original.

Map 2  Senegal
 Punjab

Indus River Ganges River

Bengal
Gujarat
Calcutta ●

Arabian Sea ● Bombay

Bay of Bengal
Deccan
Plateau

● Madras

Ceylon
Indian
Ocean

Source Author’s original.

Map 3  South Asia

 «*DQMDP
«9L]DJDSDWQDP
«3DOYDQFKD
*RGDYDUL5LYHU  «+\GHUDEDG
1RUWKHUQ «*ROODSXGL
&LUFDUV «1DJXOYDQFKD

 «0DVXOLSDWQDP

«1HOORUH
.ULVKQD5LYHU  «0DGUDV
 «3RQGLFKHUU\
 «&XGGDORUH
«1DJRUH
«6DOHP
«&RLPEDWRUH
%D\RI%HQJDO
  «7ULFKLQRSRO\
«7DQMRUH
 «0DGXUDL
«7LQQHUYHOO\
.DYHUL 5LYHU  «&RFKLQ
«*RD
 

  




Source ,QGLDQ2FHDQ &H\ORQ
Author’s original.

Map 4  South India

 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The world witnessed a series of political and economic transformations

from 1750 to 1850. Historians often describe this dynamic period as the
age of revolutions that brought about the modern world.1 Among them
is the Industrial Revolution which, for economic historians, is a matter of
utmost importance, as they assume that it was industrialisation that led
the British economy to capital-intensive development and thereby trig-
gered the divergence with other regions of the world. With the growing
discipline of global history, economic historians have explored industri-
alisation in a wider context; namely, why this happened first in Britain,
not China or India, in the mid-eighteenth century. They examine a vari-
ety of factors, including the use of a new energy source, namely coal,
useful knowledge, the mechanisation of the cotton industry and the role
of global trade.2 In the following century, industrialisation diffused into
continental Europe and North America. It is often argued that these
industrialising ‘core’ regions exported manufactured goods into and
imported primary products from the ‘periphery’ in the global economy,
such as Africa, Asia and Latin America. In this view, the core–periphery
relationship structured the modern global economy.3
In the meantime, from the eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century,
similar to other regions of the world, West Africa underwent a series of
political movements in the interior savannah. On the coast, there was
the transition from the Atlantic slave trade to ‘legitimate’ commerce,
and thus the growth of cash-crop production that stimulated the West

© The Author(s) 2019 1

K. Kobayashi, Indian Cotton Textiles in West Africa,
Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18675-3_1
2  K. KOBAYASHI

African economy. This transition overlapped with the increasing colo-

nisation of West Africa. For historians of Africa, West Africa’s contribu-
tion to the origin and development of Britain’s Industrial Revolution has
long been the focus of intense debate since Eric Williams’s seminal work,
Capitalism and Slavery, appeared in 1944.4 In his work, Joseph Inikori
highlights that the diaspora from the African continent such as the
Atlantic slave trade played a crucial role in the plantation production of
commodities in the Americas and in the formation of the Atlantic econ-
omy, which, he argues, provided large export markets for British manu-
factured goods, such as cotton textiles produced in Lancashire. He also
argues that West African consumer tastes stimulated the development of
modern manufacturing in Britain.5 So far, historians of Africa have made
great efforts to reveal African agency and to unpack the complexity and
diversity of the history of the continent, but these valuable findings have
yet to be fully incorporated into global history.6
This book addresses the significant role of West African consumers
in the development of the global economy during this revolutionary
period. In particular, it throws fresh light on the fact that their demand
for Indian textiles not only determined a part of global trade but also
influenced economic development in Western Europe and South Asia
from the eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. It is also a challenge
to the prevailing account of the core–periphery model by offering a view
on how consumers in a region often regarded as ‘periphery’ shaped the
trajectory of economic globalisation, or the process of integrating differ-
ent areas into a larger regional or global economy.
The key perspective is a south-south economic history, namely the
economic linkage that connected West Africa (south of the Sahara)
with South Asia. Yet, it should be noted that, in the period concerned,
European merchants mediated this connection through European impe-
rial and commercial expansion. As will be shown in this book, not only
does the south-south perspective explore African agency in global his-
tory, but it also shows that the performance of Indian weavers played
as large a role as the African consumers in the development of a global
economy. By doing so, we will illustrate that the south-south economic
history played an essential part in some of the key phases in global his-
tory, namely the development of the slave-based Atlantic economy, the
British Industrial Revolution and the emergence of the modern global
economy. This history shows the dimension of entanglement with the
early modern European commercial and imperial expansion.7
 1 INTRODUCTION  3

Rethinking African Agency in Global History

This section provides a historiography of (West) African agency to reveal
several issues within the literature that are central to this book. Economic
historians of Africa have long engaged in exploring the African past
since Kenneth Onwuka Dike’s 1956 book marked the beginning of the
modern research of African economic history.8 Ayodeji Olukoju points
out that the field of research has developed mainly with two different
approaches: the mainstream orthodox and the radical political economy.
The former, represented by A. G. Hopkins, originated from historical
scholarship in Western Europe, and the latter, for example, the Zaria
School in Nigeria, was rooted in the dependency and radical Marxist
approaches influenced by Walter Rodney and Frantz Fanon.9
When postcolonial African countries joined the international com-
munity from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, economic historians
of Africa stressed the agency of African actors of the past. During this
period these historians, A. G. Hopkins and Philip Curtin, in particular,
posed challenges to the prevailing paradigm of dualism that had domi-
nated modes of thought in the colonial period.10 Economic history was
expected to respond to the agenda of writing national, decolonised his-
tories and scholarly interests mainly focused on African enterprise, trade
and politics.11 One of the pioneering achievements was that of J. Forbes
Munro who published a textbook of modern Africa and the international
economy.12
In the meanwhile, radical national and Black Power movements in
the late 1960s, the burst of post-independence euphoria and an increas-
ing influence of neo-colonialism led radical scholars to gain the upper
hand in the field.13 Thus, the 1970s to mid-1990s saw a growing influ-
ence of dependency theorists such as Andre Gunder Frank, Walter
Rodney and Samir Amin.14 For example, Boubacar Barry’s monograph
of Senegambia in the era of the Atlantic slave trade was first published
in French in 1988 and later translated into English to appear as a series
in African Studies by Cambridge University Press.15 Also, Immanuel
Wallerstein, a historical sociologist whose original research interest
focused on Africa as well as India, developed world-system theory as a
variation of dependency theory. Although he did pay attention to the
Atlantic slave-based economy in the early modern period, world-system
theory primarily focused on European agency in the rise and develop-
ment of the capitalist world-economy. Hence, it obscured African agency
4  K. KOBAYASHI

as well as the contribution of Indian cotton textiles in the emergence of

the Atlantic economy.16 As John Thornton critically noted, despite their
sympathetic attitude towards Africa and other Third World countries,
there was irony in the fact that dependency theory reinforced the view
that Africa was a victim of Atlantic and wider history.17 This kind of pes-
simism in the literature partly reflected the harsh world of reality, such
as failure of economic growth, poverty, and political and social prob-
lems that undermined much of Africa in the 1980s and early 1990s, that
marked a sharp contrast with the rapid growth of the East and Southeast
Asian economy.18
Around the turn of the century, however, there were changes in the
field. One of the stimuli was brought by new institutionalists in the
2000s. In the ‘reversal of fortune’ thesis formulated by Daron Acemoglu
and his coauthors, they argued that settler mortality encouraged
Europeans to introduce different types of institutions that exercised a
lasting impact on economic growth, and as a consequence, sub-Saharan
Africa, which was relatively rich as of 1500, had become relatively poor
by 1995.19 Similarly, Nathan Nunn elaborated this argument with refer-
ence to the Atlantic slave trade.20 Their research provoked reactions from
A. G. Hopkins and Gareth Austin. In particular, Austin argues that these
authors deny African agency under colonial rule and alerts to their meth-
odological problem of what he calls ‘compression of history’.21
Another impulse is related to the recent economic growth in many
countries in Africa from the late 1990s that changed The Economist’s
view on Africa from ‘the hopeless continent’ (11 May 2000) to ‘a hope-
ful continent’ (2 March 2013). Exploration of the origin of the cur-
rent economic growth in Africa attracted economic historians of Africa.
It is also important to note that the surge in African economic history
research, which is also referred to as the renaissance of African economic
history, is underpinned by the ‘Data Revolution’.22
The third impetus that rejuvenated African economic history was the
rise of global (economic) history. In the past two decades, global history
has developed as an approach to the past which comprises two key styles:
comparisons and connections. Although both of these modes are not
necessarily new, the reality of our time, partly represented by economic,
cultural and intellectual globalisation, gave them a prominent place in
the study of history, the reason being that: these styles would enrich our
understanding about similarity, difference and diversity in the past; dif-
ferent scales of the local, national, regional and global were entangled
 1 INTRODUCTION  5

with each other; the processes towards interdependence and integration

were on a global scale from past to present. Also, these modes should
prevent us from falling into ethnocentric appreciations of what was
achieved.23
Global approaches to the past came out of at least two contexts. First
was a reaction against the increasing fragmentation of the study of his-
tory that was the byproduct of specialisation24; second was a reaction
against Eurocentrism. The economic growth of China and the four Asian
tigers in the late twentieth century encouraged economic historians to
challenge the prevailing Eurocentric account of modern history.25 As
Gareth Austin emphasises, Eurocentrism is split into that of agency and
of concept. The former is the assumption that it was mainly Europeans
(or Westerners), rather than other people in the world, who had changed
the world since the fifteenth century. The latter is the dominance of con-
cepts in historical and social science research derived from perceptions
of European or Western experience.26 For Africanists, in order to tackle
conceptual Eurocentrism, it would be important to follow the princi-
ple of ‘reciprocal comparison’ undertaken by Kenneth Pomeranz. In
this principle, we avoid seeing one side of the comparison as the norm,
and instead see deviations on both sides of the comparison.27 While
reciprocal comparisons might offer one solution to the problem of
Eurocentrism, in order to tackle the Eurocentrism of agency, it is essen-
tial to position the African role in the formation of linkages and networks
that connected Africa with the world. In particular, as Frederick Cooper
stresses, historians should discuss the structures and limits of the con-
necting mechanisms, namely how Africa and other regions were linked
and bounded.28 However, as Toby Green alerts, existing works of global
history tended to focus on ‘links created to or from Africa rather than by
Africans’. This was particularly the case with the study of the transatlan-
tic slave trade and colonialism.29 Thus, this book pays attention to con-
sumer agency in West Africa that contributed to creating trans-oceanic
links that extended from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean in the eight-
eenth and nineteenth century, and shows that locally shaped consumer
taste influenced patterns of global trade and production outside Africa
during the age of revolutions.
Marina Bianchi proposed the term ‘active consumer’ to direct atten-
tion to the fact that consumer choice affects the production of commod-
ities.30 Historical research of consumption shows much about dynamic
relationships between consumers in one region and their external
6  K. KOBAYASHI

economies. Global trade transformed material culture, whereas consumer

demand for particular commodities influenced trade and production
elsewhere, and the demand was often rooted in social need and cultural
value.31 As C. A. Bayly argued, ‘Trade, like artisan production, was also a
“moment in culture”’. Trade goods partly reflect a specific cultural value
and use value among consumers.32 In the literature of precolonial Africa
since the pioneering work by David Richardson, historians have illumi-
nated the fact that regional differences in consumption patterns in West
and West-Central Africa influenced Europe’s economic activities in the
continent in the era of the transatlantic slave trade.33 In other words,
the expansion of the trade to meet the American demand for labourers
in the production of tobacco, rice, indigo and cotton in North America,
and of sugar and coffee in the Caribbean and Brazil for European con-
sumers, hinged on the demand for imported goods in Atlantic Africa. It
has been shown that African entrepreneurs and consumers had a strong
preference for Indian cotton textiles among the imports from Europe
into the continent, and that British manufacturers had to gain a com-
petitive edge for Lancashire cotton goods over rivals, namely production
by South Asian weavers. It is important to note that such consumer-led
connections with South Asian production was predicated on early mod-
ern European imperial and commercial expansion.34 This fact encourages
us to investigate how African consumer demand for Indian goods influ-
enced European trade and procurement of the fabric in Asia.
The chapters that follow will explore what became of the aforemen-
tioned linkages in the post-abolition period, especially after 1807, when
Britain, the country which conducted the largest slave trade in the north-
ern Atlantic, withdrew from the trade. Because the existing works have
focused mainly on the era of the transatlantic slave trade, they paid less
attention to the West African contribution to economies outside the
region after the decline of the Atlantic slave trade. This book seeks to fill
this lacuna in the literature by reconstructing the consumer demand for
Indian textiles and, to some extent, the new competitors from Lancashire
during the first half of the nineteenth century.
It should be remembered that Africans imported and consumed not
only textiles but also alcohol, tobacco, beads, furniture and many other
goods through the slave trade and legitimate trade. As Mariana Candido
underlines in her recent study of Benguela in West-Central Africa, ‘the
engagement in the slave trade and, later, in legitimate commerce allowed
Africans to become global consumers.’35 In this book, it is shown that
 1 INTRODUCTION  7

West African consumers were also fully integrated into the global econ-
omy in the eighteenth and nineteenth century and helped to shape busi-
ness and production in other parts of the world through highly selective
demand preferences.

Indian Cotton Textiles in the Pre-industrial World

Before we proceed into further detail, it is useful to note that Indian cot-
ton textiles were in great demand in a number of world regions—includ-
ing West Africa—before the British Industrial Revolution. By describing
the journey of Indian textiles to West Africa as well as other regions of
the world before 1800, this section highlights the fact that West African
trade and consumption of Indian textiles in the early nineteenth century
is an endless frontier of research.
South Asia, similar to West Africa and Meso-America, had a long-es-
tablished history of cotton textile production. Cotton textiles manufac-
tured in India had long been sought after in the Indian Ocean world well
before Europeans entered the Asian seas to participate in maritime trade.
In the Indian subcontinent, there were four core production regions of
cotton textiles for foreign and overseas markets: Punjab, Gujarat, the
Coromandel Coast and Bengal. Skilled weavers efficiently responded to
changing consumer tastes in various local markets throughout the Indian
and Atlantic Ocean worlds.36 Indeed, as Giorgio Riello notes, their fin-
ishing processes such as printings, paintings and pencilling placed South
Asia at the fore of production of cotton textiles in the pre-industrial
world.37
Indian cotton textiles played a crucial role in connecting differ-
ent regions in the early modern world, shaped patterns of global trade,
transformed material culture and influenced textile production out-
side South Asia.38 Textiles produced in the Punjab were transported by
land to Afghanistan, Persia and Central Asia, or by river to the ports of
Sind.39 Armenian merchants played a large role in the overland trade that
transported manufactured items from Northern India, via Persia, to the
Ottoman market. With their colours and designs, Indian cotton textiles
initially attracted wealthy consumers in the Ottoman Empire and became
a model for imitation among manufacturers.40
The Indian Ocean was a major theatre of maritime textile trade dur-
ing the early modern period.41 According to Kirti Chaudhuri, up to
the eighteenth century, the Indian Ocean had been divided into three
8  K. KOBAYASHI

sub-regions: the Chinese Seas, the eastern Indian Ocean and the west-
ern Indian Ocean.42 In the intra-Asian trade that connected the eastern
Indian Ocean with the Chinese Seas, cotton textiles were exported from
India into Southeast Asia, especially the Malay Archipelago, in exchange
for pepper, spices, birds of paradise, aromatic woods and resins, tin
and gold; some of these goods were also carried to China and Japan.
Before the sixteenth century, the textiles and spice trade between India
and Southeast Asia had been mainly in the hands of Arabs who sailed
from the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. However, after the Portuguese
explorer Vasco da Gama arrived in India at the end of the fifteenth cen-
tury, the Europeans replaced the Arabs as the major traders in the east-
ern Indian Ocean. With American silver, they purchased cotton and silk
textiles in Asia. The interactions with Europe through the East India
Companies caused a shift of the main markets for Bengal textiles from
Upper India to Europe.43 On the other hand, in the western Indian
Ocean, Gujarati merchants played a leading role in the monsoon-based
regional trade through their extensive commercial networks that con-
nected western India with the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and East Africa.
They exported cotton textiles produced in Gujarat to East Africa, from
where they obtained ivory and gold. Their predominance in the dhow
trade across the western Indian Ocean persisted throughout the early
modern period.44
As for the early modern Europe-Asian trade, it was mainly the
European East India Companies who imported a large number of Indian
cotton textiles as well as spice, pepper, tea, coffee, silk, porcelain and
cowries (as ballast) into their home countries.45 North-western Europe
offered a huge market for these luxury goods from Asia, which provided
European consumers with new tastes and transformed material cultures
from the elite to plebeians. The long-distance trade expanded the range of
marketed items that created commercial incentives to drive households to
reallocate their productive resources (such as the time of family members)
to market-oriented activities. This choice was made in order to expand
household earnings, subsequently used to purchase marketed goods.46
Maxine Berg has elaborated how the desire for, and ability to consume,
luxuries among British consumers was stimulated by a global trade in
Asian products such as textiles and porcelain. This propelled the invention
of a ‘new luxury’ and economic growth in early modern Britain.47
In the Atlantic world, North America also imported increasing
number of textiles made both in Asia and in Europe since the colonial
 1 INTRODUCTION  9

period.48 In terms of value, woollen textiles accounted for the highest

proportion in the import from Britain until the American Revolution,
while in terms of volume the pre-independence period witnessed the
growth of the import of linens and fustians made in England, Scotland
and Ireland. Moreover, North America offered an important market
for re-exported Indian calicoes and muslins banned from the European
mother countries such as England and France.49 The newly independ-
ent United States established direct trade with Bengal, and thereaf-
ter American merchants dominated the trade in Indian textiles into the
North American country. The trade continued to flourish until the late
1810s when the US Congress imposed a tariff to protect the domestic
industry.50
The early modern period, the eighteenth century in particular, wit-
nessed rapid development of the Atlantic economy. It was characterised
by slave-based plantations in the Americas and the Caribbean Islands that
produced commodities such as sugar and tobacco for European consum-
ers. A constant supply of labour from the African continent, mostly from
West and West-Central Africa, was thus key to maintaining production.
In order to purchase African captives as well as tropical products along
the Atlantic coast, the goods offered by Europeans had to reflect African
preferences, because African merchants were known to reject goods
that did not appeal to their local customers. Throughout the eighteenth
century, textiles were predominant in the commodities carried by the
European ships into Atlantic Africa.51
West and West-Central Africa, similar to North America, imported a
variety of textiles from overseas. Figure 1.1 shows that among all the tex-
tiles Indian fabrics were the single largest textile among the imports from
Britain from the second quarter of the century. Similar patterns can be
found in the imports from France and the Netherlands during the eight-
eenth century.52 The list made by Stanley Alpern names more than three
dozen different types of Indian textiles imported into Atlantic Africa,
including bafts (blue or white cotton textiles), calicoes, chellow (striped
or checked textiles woven with coloured threads rather than dyed after
weaving), chintz (cotton textiles block-printed with floral and other
motifs, often in one colour), long cloth (cotton textiles distinguished
by its length, around 37 yards, see Chapter 4) and nicanees (blue and
white striped cotton textiles woven with dyed thread).53 Indian textiles
and cowries were shipped from Europe into these coastal regions and,
as discussed in Chapter 3, these goods from the Indian Ocean served as
10  K. KOBAYASHI

3,500,000

3,000,000

2,500,000
British cottons
2,000,000
Indian cottons
1,500,000
Linens
1,000,000
Woolens
500,000

Fig. 1.1  Textiles imported from Britain to West Africa, 1699–1808 (pounds

sterling) (Source Marion Johnson, Anglo-African Trade in the Eighteenth
Century: English Statistics on African Trade 1699–1808 [Leiden: Centre for the
History of European Expansion, 1990], pp. 54–5)

currencies in market exchanges in West Africa.54 Such south-south eco-

nomic linkages were initially established by the Portuguese in the six-
teenth century and intensified by merchants from North-western Europe
in the following two centuries. The demand for Indian cotton textiles in
West Africa was so large that European manufacturers sought to produce
and sell imitations there in the eighteenth century. Figure 1.1 also sug-
gests that the second half of the century witnessed a rapid increase in the
import of British ‘cotton’ goods to West Africa. These were British-made
imitations of Indian piece goods as illustrated in Image 1.1.55
While the existing studies, notably ones by Inikori, highlight the
increasing amount of Lancashire goods imported into West Africa,
evidence suggests that Senegal demanded more Indian textiles than
European products at least until the mid-nineteenth century.56 Philip
Curtin, Roger Pasquier, James Webb and Richard Roberts have shown
that, during the first half of the nineteenth century, Senegal remained
a major market for Indian dark-blue cotton textiles, called guinées in
French, rather than European copies and counterfeits, and that guinées
served as an important exchange medium in the trade in gum arabic
 1 INTRODUCTION  11

Image 1.1  Imitations of Indian cotton textiles for West African trade (Source
The National Archives [Kew, the United Kingdom], T 70/1517: Letter from W.
Norris to William Hollier, Chorley, 7 May 1751. Note A niccanee [above] is of
the blue strips with some white and two red cross strips [19 threads per cm]. A
superfine chellow [below] is of blue and white checks [20 threads per cm])

along the Senegal River.57 Despite these contributions, we have yet to

understand exactly why the consumer demand for Indian textiles turned
out to be so resilient in Senegal well into the nineteenth century. If we
can throw new light on this problem, we should then be able to start
unveiling hitherto neglected global interactions that persisted from the
eighteenth to the nineteenth century.
Thus, Indian cotton textiles spread to different corners of the pre-in-
dustrial world, lubricated local and global trade, and shaped material
culture in societies. Recent studies have highlighted cultural and social
meanings of consumption, rather than price, as a key determinant of con-
sumer demand. Jeremy Prestholdt underscored the significance of social
or cultural logics in forming consumer desire and demand.58 Beverly
Lemire argued that ‘Indian cottons were imbued with different meanings
by different societies and peoples … desire rooted in cultural contexts of
those societies where the requirements of self-definition, hierarchical dis-
play, and ritual gift giving shaped the flow of cottons. In whatever con-
text, whether to sustain customary cultural forms or to feed powerful new
consumer forces, culture shaped markets’.59 As for the French trade in
Indian calicoes, the eighteenth-century French historian Jacob Nicolas
12  K. KOBAYASHI

Moreau noted that ‘It is not their low prices … it is fashion, and it is a
certain vanity that makes the women of the lower classes so curious about
calicoes. Dresses in light or printed cottons, they think themselves no
longer at the same level of women of their social station … they think
themselves superior to their social condition because ladies of quality too
wear calicoes’.60 As these quotes suggest, it is worth examining social and
cultural contexts of textile imports into West Africa as well. This point of
view helps us explore what factors shaped West African demand for South
Asian fabrics in the eighteenth to nineteenth century.

South-South Economic History

The fabric of the Indian Ocean, especially its connection with the
Atlantic world, indicates a significant continuity in early globalisation
throughout the eighteenth century.61 Thanks to the dataset of the eight-
eenth-century Anglo-African trade compiled by Marion Johnson, histo-
rians have recognised the quantitative significance of the trans-oceanic
connection woven by Indian textiles.62 However, the nineteenth-cen-
tury link between these two oceanic regions has been relatively under-re-
searched.63 In this regard, this book demonstrates that even after British
manufacturers started to spread their machine-made cotton goods to
replace their Indian counterparts in the global market, there was still
continued strong demand for Indian textiles in parts of West Africa
at least up to 1850. This West African demand for South Asian goods
played a key role in important phases from the eighteenth to nineteenth
century, including the transatlantic slave trade and the British Industrial
Revolution. In this book, I refer to such a perspective of economic con-
nection between Africa south of the Sahara (mainly West Africa in this
book) and South Asia as a south-south economic history. This connec-
tion offered a channel through which economic interests in these two
regions interacted with each other, and such economic interests sprang
from the mixture of various local factors. It must be noted that it was
mainly Europeans who created such a trans-oceanic linkage. In other
words, the south-south economic history unravelled in this book had
mutually constitutive relationships with the early modern European com-
mercial enterprise and colonisation in the extra-European world. This
point also indicates multiple origins of the modern global economy.
The south-south economic connection discussed in this book had spa-
tial and chronological dimensions. This linkage resulted from the early
 1 INTRODUCTION  13

modern Portuguese maritime enterprise in Africa and Asia. As early as

the sixteenth century they established an original, but weak, connection
between West Africa and South Asia by bringing Indian textiles and cow-
rie shells into the Atlantic coast of Africa. The tie became stronger in the
era of the Atlantic slave trade, especially in the eighteenth century, when
the slave trade reached its peak (see Chapter 2). Indian cotton textiles
played a crucial role in the purchase of African captives in Atlantic Africa
in this century (Fig. 1.1), as textiles and cowries functioned as currencies
in precolonial West Africa. As such, this south-south economic linkage
provided the global foundation for the early modern Atlantic slave-based
economy. What is more, in relation to the chronological dimension, as
highlighted in the chapters that follow, in the early nineteenth century,
the south-south connection remained a key axis in the procurement of a
raw material available around the Senegal River valley, namely gum ara-
bic, which was indispensable in dyeing textiles in industrialising Western
Europe. Therefore, attention to this trans-oceanic connection shows us
critical aspects of the early modern Atlantic economy, the industrialisa-
tion in Western Europe and the emergence of modern global economy.
It should be noted that the demand for Indian textiles in West Africa
in the period concerned arose from the complexities of various factors
such as consumer taste for quality goods, local textile production, the
natural environment, and social and cultural value. On the other hand,
the procurement of cotton textiles by Europeans for West Africa also
hinged on a variety of local conditions in South Asia, including perfor-
mance of weavers and price of raw materials. In short, the south-south
economic linkage concerned here was entangled with such changeable,
local conditions in these respective regions which had global influences.

Sources
This book uses both quantitative and qualitative sources collected from
Britain, France, India, Senegal and The Gambia. The main quantitative
sources are the British and French official trade statistics that recorded
annual imports and (re-)exports at the customs offices in both countries
over the period of this study. Economic historians are familiar with these
sources. Ralph Davis and Elizabeth Schumpeter produced the pioneer-
ing works on eighteenth-century British overseas trade using the statis-
tical sources. However, in their work, the Anglo-African trade statistics
were simply incorporated into the categories of ‘America and Africa’ or
14  K. KOBAYASHI

‘Africa and East Indies’. Therefore, it is impossible to accurately calcu-

late the trade in Indian cotton textiles imported from Britain into West
Africa from their works.64 Davis also published another work using nine-
teenth-century British trade statistics. Although he presented some data
of the Anglo-African trade during the era of the Industrial Revolution
(1784–1856), there is, again, no detailed information about the trade in
Indian cotton textiles.65 This information for the case of the eighteenth
century became accessible through the publication of the dataset com-
piled by Marion Johnson in 1990.66 Joseph Inikori also provided data for
the second quarter of the nineteenth century.67
British trade statistics show only a part of the quantitative evidence
of the maritime trade of Indian cotton textiles that were shipped into
West Africa, for the region imported the goods from France as well.
Therefore, unless the combined data from the British and French trade
statistics are provided, it is more likely to underestimate the volume of
trade in Indian cotton textiles into West Africa in this period. Chapter 2
utilises a new set of quantitative data obtained from both British and
French trade statistics to reveal the peculiar trend of the imports of
Indian cotton textiles into Senegal in comparison with other regions of
West Africa. The French trade statistics show not only the trade between
France and other regions and countries, but also which port cities in
France engaged in the trade. Chapter 5 uses the quantitative data to
illustrate and analyse the predominance of Bordeaux in the guinée trade
among the French ports in the early nineteenth century.
Patrick Manning said that ‘imports can be used as a window on
demand’.68 The quantitative evidence used in this book suggests that
Indian cotton textiles continued to be in demand in West Africa, and
Senegal in particular, even after British machine-made cotton goods were
increasingly imported into West Africa from the late eighteenth century.
However, in order to explain why West African consumers preferred
Indian cotton textiles, it is necessary to rely on qualitative sources such
as archival documents and contemporary publications. Chapters 2 and 3
draw on British House of Commons Parliamentary Papers and contem-
porary publications written by European travellers and merchants to
explore why local consumers in Senegal continued to choose Indian cot-
ton textiles over European goods; these records highlight that they pre-
ferred the quality of cotton textiles made in India.
In addition, qualitative sources offer information about particu-
lar areas of the textile production in India for West Africa. Chapter 4
 1 INTRODUCTION  15

uses documents of the English East India Company held at the Tamil
Nadu Archives (Chennai, India) and the British Library illustrating that
Cuddalore, Salem and Nagore in South India produced indigo-blue cot-
ton textiles for West Africa. These documents also describe the organ-
isation of textile procurement, based on business networks between
inland weaving villages and port towns in India. Documents at the
French colonial archives in Aix-en-Provence show the reconstruction of
Pondicherry where the French government and private entrepreneurs
set up a workshop. This became a major producer of guinées for Senegal
from the 1830s. The documents at the French colonial archives and the
National Archives of Senegal include correspondence between France
and Senegal. These are used in Chapters 2 and 3 to explain why gum
arabic from Senegal mattered in Europe, despite the invention of dex-
trin, a cheaper substitute than the Senegalese product. They also account
for the use of the guinées as an exchange medium and unit of account in
the gum trade in the Senegal River region.
Material objects are of great help for us to have a vivid image of tex-
tiles circulated from India and Europe into West Africa. The British
National Archives holds samples of cotton textiles that Lancashire man-
ufacturers imitated from Indian textiles for the African market around
1750 (Image 1.1). Samples of guinées (probably produced in 1843 or
1844) presented in Chapter 3 still remain in the collection at the colo-
nial archives in France. Likewise, contemporary publications provide us
with valuable visual materials. For example, David Boilat, a nineteenth-
century Senegalese priest, drew some pictures of inhabitants around the
Senegal River region, which show how they consumed Indian guinées.
Finally, in order to complement the discussion of this book, I have
used oral histories. I interviewed professional weavers and dyers in The
Gambia in March 2018, and my resource persons offered valuable infor-
mation on materials used in textile production in Senegambia. The tran-
script of oral interviews held in the National Centre for Arts and Culture
(Fajara, The Gambia) also gives us information about the history of the
local handicraft industry.

Organisation of the Book

This book consists of six chapters. Chapter 2 employs a quantitative
approach to analyse ‘legitimate’ commerce, or the trade in commercial
agriculture, in early nineteenth-century West Africa. The chapter refers
16  K. KOBAYASHI

to major commodities exported from or imported into West Africa at

that time: palm oil, gum arabic, groundnuts, British and Indian cot-
ton textiles, and cowries. In doing so, it explores the extent to which
patterns of West African overseas trade changed from the previous
century. I argue that, despite the staggering increase of the imports of
British textiles into West Africa during this period, Senegal had a pecu-
liar upward trend of the import of Indian cotton textiles, more precisely
guinées, which accounted for the largest proportion of the imports into
the region. I also indicate that cowries from the Indian Ocean showed
another continuity in south-south economic history from the eighteenth
to the mid-nineteenth century.
Chapter 3 focuses on the consumer side of the south-south economic
history in question, and examines why Senegal continued to import
Indian textiles in the first half of the nineteenth century. The maps of
commercial networks around the lower Senegal River show how the cir-
cuit along which guinées travelled from the coast to consumers in the
interior formed part of the complex regional trade networks. In order
to identify how consumer tastes for Indian guinées had been histori-
cally shaped, I investigate various factors that underpinned the regional
demand for Indian textiles during the nineteenth century, and ultimately
influenced the south-south economic connection woven by South Asian
handicrafts.
Chapter 4 turns to the production side of this south-south linkage.
It examines how European merchants procured cotton textiles in India
for West African markets from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth
century. Using correspondence of the English East India Company and
French colonial records, I aim to explore which areas of India produced
cotton goods for West Africa. I study the production side and seek to
understand how these regions responded to demand in West Africa for
Indian cotton textiles. The comparative case studies of the British posses-
sions of South India and the French in Pondicherry showed an incentive
problem in European enterprises in pre-colonial and colonial India.
Chapter 5 complements the discussions in the preceding chapters by
looking at the shipping of Indian cotton textiles from India by way of
Western Europe into West Africa. It focuses on European business net-
works that connected production and consumption areas of cotton tex-
tiles produced in South Asia. I also discuss the commercial environment
before and after the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, the French
Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.
 1 INTRODUCTION  17

Chapter 6 reviews the findings presented in this book and locates the
contributions in three areas within the larger historiographical literature:
the economic development of the tropics, Africa and imperial history,
and the history of globalisations.

Conclusion
This chapter has set out the context of this book. Following the rich his-
toriographical discussion on African and global economic history, it has
shown the part that consumer demand for Indian textiles in West Africa
played in the pre-industrial world, including the Atlantic slave-based
economy. While the transatlantic slave trade might have decreased pro-
ductivity and human capital within West Africa, the significant role of
West African consumers enables them to be seen as actors who shaped
the trajectory of early modern economic globalisation. This motivates us
to examine the aspects of consumption, trade and production in more
detail in the chapters that follow.
This chapter has offered an overview of the dynamic role of Indian
textiles in connecting South Asia with different parts of the world, espe-
cially with West Africa, before 1800. I have also argued that such eco-
nomic linkage between South Asia and West Africa emerged owing to
the early modern European commercial enterprise and colonisation in
the extra-European world. The rest of the book discusses continuity and
change in this south-south economic history during the first half of the
nineteenth century, and seeks an implication for understanding the emer-
gence of modern global economy.

Notes
1. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution: Europe, 1789–1848 (London:
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1962); David Armitage and Sanjay
Subrahmanyam, eds., The Age of Revolutions in Global Context,
c. 1760–1840 (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010);
John Darwin, After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire (London:
Penguin Books, 2007).
2. Notably, Robert C. Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global
Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2009); Kenneth Pomeranz, The
Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World
Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000); Prasannan
18  K. KOBAYASHI

Parthasarathi, Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global Economic
Divergence, 1600–1850 (Cambridge University Press, 2011); Giorgio
Riello, Cotton: The Fabric That Made the Modern World (Cambridge
University Press, 2013).
3. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System III: The Second Era of
Great Expansion of the Capitalist World-Economy, 1730–1840s (New York:
Academic Press, 1989); Jeffrey Williamson, Trade and Poverty: When the
Third World Fell Behind (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011).
4. Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, NC: University of
North Carolina Press, 1944).
5. Joseph E. Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A
Study in International Trade and Economic Development (Cambridge
University Press, 2002).
6. Megan Vaughan, ‘Africa and Global History’, in Maxine Berg, ed.
Writing the History of the Global: Challenges for the 21st Century (Oxford
University Press, 2013), pp. 200–1.
7. In this book, I use the terminology ‘early modern’ in a wider sense to
address the period from the seventeenth to early nineteenth century.
8. Kenneth Onwuka Dike, Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta 1830–1885:
An Introduction to the Economic and Political History of Nigeria (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1956).
9. Ayodeji Olukoju, ‘Beyond a Footnote: Indigenous Scholars and the
Writings of West African Economic History’, in Francesco Boldizzoni
and Pat Hudson, eds., Routledge Handbook of Global Economic History
(New York, NY: Routledge, 2016), p. 378.
10. A. G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (London: Longman,
1973); Philip D. Curtin, Economic Change in Precolonial Africa:
Senegambia in the Era of the Slave Trade, 2 Vols. (Madison, WI:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1975).
11. Gareth Austin, ‘African Economic History in Africa’, Economic History of
Developing Regions 30/1 (2015): 87.
12. J. Forbes Munro, Africa and the International Economy, 1800–1960
(Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1976).
13. Patrick Manning, ‘African Encounters with Global Narratives’, in
Boldizzoni and Hudson, eds., Global Economic History, pp. 413–5.
14. Andre Gunder Frank, ‘The Development of Underdevelopment’,
Monthly Review 18/4 (1966): 17–31; Walter Rodney, How Europe
Underdeveloped Africa (London and Dar-es-Salaam: Bogle-L’Ouverture
Publications and Tanzanian Publishing House, 1973); Samir Amin,
Unequal Development: an Essay on the Social Formations of Peripheral
Capitalism, trans. Brian Pearce (Hassocks: The Harvester Press, 1976).
 1 INTRODUCTION  19

15. Boubacar Barry, La Sénégambie du XVe au XIXe siècle. Traite négrière,

islam et conquête coloniale (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1988); Boubacar Barry,
Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade, trans. Ayi Kwei Armah
(Cambridge University Press, 1998).
16. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture
and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century
(New York: Academic Press, 1974); Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern
World-System II: Capitalism and the Consolidation of the European World-
Economy, 1600–1750 (New York: Academic Press, 1980); Immanuel
Wallerstein, The Modern World-System III; Immanuel Wallerstein, The
Modern World-System IV: Capitalist Liberalism Triumphant, 1789–1914
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011).
17. John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World,
1400–1800 (Second Edition, Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp.
1–9.
18. Gwyn Campbell, ‘Africa, the Indian Ocean World, and the “Early
Modern”: Historiographical Conventions and Problems’, in Toyin Falola
and Emily Brownell, eds., Africa, Empire and Globalization: Essays in
Honor of A. G. Hopkins (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2011),
pp. 82–5. Although some important works of African economic his-
tory from a long-term perspective by Ralph Austen, Paul Zeleza and
John Iliffe were published in the last decades of the twentieth century,
the decline of economic history in general and the rise of postmodern-
ism led to diminishing interest in African economic history. Ralph A.
Austen, African Economic History: Internal Development and External
Dependency (London: James Currey, 1987); Paul T. Zeleza, A Modern
Economic History of Africa, Vol. 1: The Nineteenth Century (Dakar:
CODESRIA, 1993); John Iliffe, Africans: The History of a Continent
(Third Edition, Cambridge University Press, 2017. The original edi-
tion was out in 1995); A. G. Hopkins, ‘The New Economic History of
Africa’, Journal of African History 50/2 (2009): 156–7.
19. Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson, ‘Reversal of
Fortune: Geography and Institutions in the Making of the Modern World
Income Distribution’, Quarterly Journal of Economics 117/4 (2002):
1231–94.
20. Nathan Nunn, ‘The Long-Term Effects of Africa’s Slave Trades’,
Quarterly Journal of Economics 123/1 (2008): 139–76.
21. Hopkins, ‘New Economic History’; Gareth Austin, ‘The “Reversal of
Fortune” Thesis and the Compression of History: Perspectives from
African and Comparative Economic History’, Journal of International
Development 20 (2008): 996–1027.
20  K. KOBAYASHI

22. Gareth Austin and Stephen Broadberry, ‘Introduction: The Renaissance of

African Economic History’, Economic History Review 67/4 (2014): 893–
906; Johan Fourie, ‘The Data Revolution in African Economic History’,
Journal of Interdisciplinary History 47/2 (2016): 193–212; Ewout
Frankema and Marlous van Waijenburg, ‘Africa Rising? A Historical
Perspective’, African Affairs 117/469 (2018): 543–68; Felix Meier
zu Selhausen, ‘Africa Rising in Economic History’, African Economic
History Network Blog, 19 November 2018. Accessed 1 December 2018.
https://www.aehnetwork.org/blog/africa-rising-in-economic-history/.
23. Patrick O’Brien, ‘Historiographical Traditions and Modern Imperatives
for the Restoration of Global History’, Journal of Global History 1/1
(2006): 3–39; A. G. Hopkins, ed., Globalization in World History
(London: Pimlico, 2002); A. G. Hopkins, ed., Global History:
Interactions Between the Universal and the Local (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2006); Richard Drayton and David Motadel, ‘Discussion:
The Futures of Global History’, Journal of Global History 13/1 (2018):
1–21. The pioneering works of global history that employed these two
modes of research include C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World
1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Oxford: Blackwell,
2004); C. A. Bayly, Remaking the Modern World 1900–2015: Global
Connections and Comparisons (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2018).
24. Gareth Austin, ‘Global History in (Northwestern) Europe: Explorations
and Debates’, in Sven Beckert and Dominic Sachsenmaier, eds., Global
History, Globally: Research and Practice Around the World (London:
Bloomsbury, 2018), pp. 25–6.
25. For example, Kaoru Sugihara, ‘The European Miracle and the East Asian
Miracle: Towards a New Global Economic History’, Sangyo to Keizai
[Industry and Economy] 11/2 (1996): 27–47; Andre Gunder Frank,
ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1998).
26. Austin, ‘Global History’, pp. 25–6. Austin mainly focuses on historiog-
raphy in north-western Europe, but these reactions can be found else-
where in the world. On Japan, see Masashi Haneda, Toward Creation of
a New World History, trans. Makito Noda (Tokyo: Japan Library, 2018).
However, it should be noted that educational programmes in world his-
tory in secondary, higher and postgraduate education play a larger role in
the growth of global history in North America than other regions of the
world. Patrick Manning, Navigating World History: Historians Create a
Global Past (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Jerry H. Bently, ‘The
World History Project: Global History in the North American Context’,
in Beckert and Sachsenmaier, eds., Global History, pp. 127–41.
 1 INTRODUCTION  21

27. Gareth Austin, ‘Reciprocal Comparison and African History: Tackling

Conceptual Eurocentrism in the Study of Africa’s Economic Past’,
African Studies Review 50/3 (2007): 1–28; Pomeranz, The Great
Divergence.
28. Frederick Cooper, ‘Africa and the World Economy’, African Studies
Review 24/2–3 (1981): 1–86; Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in
Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2005), pp. 91–112; Frederick Cooper, ‘Africa in World History’,
in J. R. McNeill and Kenneth Pomeranz, eds., The Cambridge World
History, Vol. VII: Production, Destruction, and Connection, 1750–Present,
Part I: Structures, Spaces, and Boundary Making (Cambridge University
Press, 2015), pp. 556–84; Inikori, Africans; Joseph E. Inikori, ‘Africa
and the Globalization Process: Western Africa, 1450–1850’, Journal of
Global History 2/1 (2007): 63–86.
29. Toby Green, ‘Beyond an Imperial Atlantic: Trajectories of Africans from
Upper Guinea and West-Central Africa in the Early Atlantic World’, Past
and Present 230 (2016): 94.
30. Marina Bianchi, ed., The Active Consumer: Novelty and Surprise in
Consumer Choice (London: Routledge, 1998).
31. Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural
Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 1986); Jeremy Prestholdt,
Domesticating the World: African Consumerism and the Genealogies of
Globalization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008); Frank
Trentmann, ed., The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption
(Oxford University Press, 2012); Beverly Lemire, Global Trade and the
Transformation of Consumer Cultures: The Material World Remade, c.
1500–1820 (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
32. C. A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the
Age of British Expansion, 1770–1870 (Third Edition, Oxford University
Press, 2012), p. 74.
33. David Richardson, ‘West African Consumption Patterns and Their
Influence on the Eighteenth-Century English Slave Trade’, in Henry A.
Gemery and Jan S. Hogendorn, eds., The Uncommon Market: Essays in
the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade (New York: Academic
Press, 1979), pp. 303–30; David Richardson, ‘Consuming Goods,
Consuming People: Reflections on the Transatlantic Slave Trade’, in
Philip Misevich and Kristin Mann, eds., The Rise and Demise of Slavery
and the Atlantic Slave Trade (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester
Press, 2016), pp. 31–63; Joseph C. Miller, ‘Imports at Luanda, Angola
1785–1823’, in G. Liesegang, H. Pasch and A. Jones, eds., Figuring
African Trade: Proceedings of the Symposium on the Quantification and
22  K. KOBAYASHI

Structure of the Import and Export and Long Distance Trade in Africa
1800–1913 (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1986), pp. 163–246;
Joseph C. Miller, Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan
Slave Trade, 1730–1830 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press,
1988); Marion Johnson, Anglo-African Trade in the Eighteenth Century:
English Statistics on African Trade 1699–1808 (Leiden: Centre for the
History of European Expansion, 1990); Robin Law, The Slave Coast of
West Africa, 1550–1750: The Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on an
African Society (Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 201–2; Thornton,
Africa and Africans; Stanley B. Alpern, ‘What Africans Got for Their
Slaves: A Master List of European Trade Goods’, History in Africa 22
(1995): 5–43; Inikori, Africans; Joseph E. Inikori, ‘English Versus Indian
Cotton Textiles: The Impact of Imports on Cotton Textile Production
in West Africa’, in Giorgio Riello and Tirthankar Roy, eds., How India
Clothed the World: The World of South Asian Textiles, 1500–1850 (Leiden:
Brill, 2009), pp. 85–114; Roquinaldo Amaral Ferreira, ‘Transforming
Atlantic Slaving Trade, Warfare and Territorial Control in Angola, 1650–
1800’ (PhD Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 2003),
pp. 48–68; Mariana P. Candido, ‘Merchants and the Business of the Slave
Trade at Benguela, 1750–1850’, African Economic History 35 (2007):
5–6, 13–7; Mariana P. Candido, ‘Women’s Material World in Nineteenth-
Century Benguela’, in Mariana P. Candido and Adam Jones, eds.,
African Women in the Atlantic World: Property, Vulnerability & Mobility,
1660–1880 (Oxford: James Currey, 2019), pp. 70–85; Colleen E. Kriger,
Cloth in West African History (Lanham, MD: Altamira Press, 2006);
Colleen E. Kriger, ‘“Guinea Cloth”: Production and Consumption
of Cotton Textiles in West Africa Before and During the Atlantic Slave
Trade’, in Giorgio Riello and Prasannan Parthasarathi, eds., The Spinning
World: A Global History of Cotton Textiles, 1200–1850 (Oxford University
Press, 2009), pp. 105–26; Daniel B. Domingues da Silva, The Atlantic
Slave Trade from West Central Africa, 1780–1867 (Cambridge University
Press, 2017); Bronwen Everill, ‘“All the Baubles That They Needed”:
“Industriousness” and Slavery in Saint-Louis and Gorée’, Early American
Studies 15/4 (2017): 714–39; Chris Evans and Göran Rydén, ‘“Voyage
Iron”: An Atlantic Slave Trade Currency, Its European Origins, and West
African Impact’, Past and Present 239 (2018): 41–70.
34. Kazuo Kobayashi, ‘The British Atlantic Slave Trade and Indian Cotton
Textiles: The Case of Thomas Lumley & Co.’, in Tomoko Shiroyama,
ed., Modern Global Trade and Asian Regional Economy (Singapore:
Springer, 2018), pp. 59–85.
35. Candido, ‘Women’s Material World’, p. 71.
 1 INTRODUCTION  23

36.  Sir Joseph Hutchinson, ‘The History of Relationships of the World’s

Cottons’, Endeavour 21 (1962): 5–15; K. N. Chaudhuri, ‘The Structure
of Indian Textile Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’,
in Tirthankar Roy, ed., Cloth and Commerce: Textiles in Colonial India
(New Delhi: Sage, 1996), pp. 36–48.
37. Riello, Cotton, pp. 37–83.
38. Roy, Cloth and Commerce; Riello and Parthasarathi, The Spinning
World; Riello and Roy, How India Clothed the World; Riello, Cotton;
Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York: Knopf
Publishing Group, 2014).
39. S. P. Sangar, ‘Export of Indian Textiles to Middle East and Africa in the
Seventeenth Century’, Journal of Historical Research 17/1 (1974): 1–5.
40. Suraiya Faroqhi, ‘Ottoman Cotton Textiles: The Story of a Success
That Did Not Last, 1500–1800’, in Riello and Parthasarathi, eds., The
Spinning World, pp. 97–8.
41. Riello and Roy, How India Clothed the World; Pedro Machado, Sarah Fee
and Gwyn Campbell, eds., Textile Trades, Consumer Cultures and the
Material Worlds of the Indian Ocean: An Ocean of Cloth (Cham: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2018).
42. K. N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An
Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge University
Press, 1985). See also Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony:
The World System A.D. 1250–1350 (New York, NY and Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1989), Part III; Philippe Beaujard, ‘The Indian Ocean
in Eurasian and African World—Systems Before the Sixteenth Century’,
Journal of World History 16/4 (2005): 411–65.
43. Chaudhuri, ‘The Structure’, pp. 40–3; John Irwin and P. R. Schwartz,
Studies in Indo-European Textile History (Ahmedabad: Calico Museum
of Textiles, 1966), p. 28; Kenneth R. Hall, ‘The Textiles Industry in
Southeast Asia, 1400–1800’, Journal of the Social and Economic History
of the Orient 39/2 (1996): 87–135; Anthony Reid, ‘Southeast Asian
Consumption of Indian and British Cotton Cloth, 1600–1850’, in Riello
and Roy, eds., How India Clothed the World, pp. 31–51; Ryuto Shimada,
The Intra-Asian Trade in Japanese Copper by the Dutch East India
Company During the Eighteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Kayoko
Fujita, ‘Japan Indianized: The Material Culture of Imported Textiles
in Japan, 1550–1850’, in Riello and Parthasarathi, eds., The Spinning
World, pp. 181–203.
44. Edward A. Alpers, ‘Gujarat and the Trade of East Africa, c. 1500–1800’,
International Journal of African Historical Studies 9/1 (1976): 22–44;
Pedro Machado, ‘Awash in a Sea of Cloth: Gujarat, Africa, and the
Western Indian Ocean, 1300–1800’, in Riello and Parthasarathi, eds.,
24  K. KOBAYASHI

The Spinning World, pp. 161–179; Pedro Machado, ‘Cloths of a New

Fashion: Indian Ocean Networks of Exchange and Cloth Zones of
Contact in Africa and India in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’,
in Riello and Roy, eds., How India Clothed the World, pp. 53–84; Pedro
Machado, Ocean of Trade: South Asian Merchants, Africa and the Indian
Ocean, c. 1750–1850 (Cambridge University Press, 2014); Hideaki
Suzuki, Slave Trade Profiteers in the Western Indian Ocean: Suppression
and Resistance in the Nineteenth Century (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan,
2017).
45. K. N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India
Company, 1660–1760 (Cambridge University Press, 1978); Philippe
Haudrère, La campagne française des Indes au XVIIIe siècle (1719–1795),
4 Vols. (Paris: Librairie de l’Inde éditeur, 1989); Om Prakash, European
Commercial Enterprise in Pre-colonial India (Cambridge University
Press, 1998); Maxine Berg, ‘In Pursuit of Luxury: Global History and
British Consumer Goods in the Eighteenth Century’, Past and Present
182 (2004): 85–124; Maxine Berg, Felicia Gottmann, Hanna Hodacs,
and Chris Nierstrasz, eds., Goods from the East, 1600–1800: Trading
Eurasia (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Chris
Nierstrasz, Rivalry for Trade in Tea and Textiles: The English and Dutch
East India Companies (1700–1800) (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2015); Felicia Gottmann, Global Trade, Smuggling, and the Making of
Economic Liberalism: Asian Textiles in France 1680–1760 (Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
46. Jan de Vries, ‘The Industrial Revolution and the Industrious Revolution’,
Journal of Economic History 54/2 (1994): 249–70; Jan de Vries, The
Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy,
1650 to the Present (Cambridge University Press, 2008). It is important
to note that such consumption-driven revolution, or what Jan de Vries
terms the ‘industrious revolution’, cannot be applied to artisans at Silesia
in Central Europe, where feudalism and low-wages prevented them from
increasing their economic freedom of choice. Anka Steffen and Klaus
Weber, ‘Spinning and Weaving for the Slave Trade: Proto-Industry in
Eighteenth-Century Silesia’, in Felix Brahm and Eve Rosenhaft, eds.,
Slavery Hinterland: Transatlantic Slavery and Continental Europe, 1680–
1850 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2016), pp. 87–107.
47. Berg, ‘In Pursuit of Luxury’; Maxine Berg, Luxury & Pleasure in
Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford University Press, 2005). See also
Beverly Lemire, ‘Revising the Historical Narrative: India, Europe, and
the Cotton Trade, c. 1300–1800’, in Riello and Parthasarathi, eds., The
Spinning World, pp. 205–26.
 1 INTRODUCTION  25

48. Robert DuPlessis, The Material Atlantic: Clothing, Commerce, and

Colonization in the Atlantic World, 1650–1800 (Cambridge University
Press, 2015). In an older literature, the majority of colonial households
was seen as self-sufficient units that relied on home-spun cloth. However,
Simon D. Smith shows that they were highly integrated into market
exchange because there was a relative shortage of textile-making equip-
ment and fibre supplies. Simon D. Smith, ‘The Market for Manufactures
in the Thirteen Continental Colonies, 1698–1776’, Economic History
Review 51/4 (1998): 676–708.
49.  Maureen F. Mazzaoui, ‘Introduction’, in Maureen F. Mazzaoui, ed.,
Textiles: Production, Trade and Demand (Aldershot and Brookfield:
Ashgate, 1998), pp. xx–xxi; Robert DuPlessis, ‘Cottons Consumption in
the Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century North Atlantic’, in Riello and
Parthasarathi, eds., The Spinning World, pp. 227–46.
50. Susan S. Bean, ‘The American Market for Indian Textiles, 1750–1820:
In the Twilight of Traditional Cloth Manufacture’, in Textiles in Trade:
Proceedings of the Textile Society of America Biennial Symposium, 14–16
September 1990, Washington, DC (1990), pp. 43–52; Susan S. Bean,
‘Bengal Goods for America in the Nineteenth Century’, in Rosemary
Crill, ed., Textiles from India: The Global Trade (Calcutta, Oxford, and
New York, NY: Seagull Books, 2006), pp. 217–32.
51. Kobayashi, ‘The British Atlantic Slave Trade’. The European focus on
Africans was based on three factors: their relative immunity to disease, the
low transport cost (because of their relative proximity to the Americas),
and their low purchase price resulting from low productivity of agri-
culture in most of sub-Saharan Africa. Patrick Manning, Slavery and
African Life: Occidental, Oriental, and African Slave Trades (Cambridge
University Press, 1990), p. 21.
52. Jean Tarrade, Le commerce colonial de la France à la fin de l’Ancien
Régime: L’évolution du régime de « l’Exclusif » de 1763 à 1789, Vol. 1
(Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1972), pp. 125–6; Johannes
Menne Postma, The Dutch in the Atlantic Slave Trade 1600–1815
(Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 103–5; Herbert S. Klein,
‘Economic Aspects of the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Slave Trade’,
in James D. Tracy, ed., The Rise of Merchant Empires: Long Distance
Trade in the Early Modern World 1350–1750 (Cambridge University
Press, 1990), pp. 290–3; Andrea Reikat, Handelsstoffe: Gründzüge des
europäisch-westafrikanischen Handels vor der Industriellen Revolution am
Beispiel der Textilien (Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe, 1997).
53. Alpern, ‘Master List’, 6–8.
54. Hopkins, Economic History, pp. 67–70; Curtin, Economic Change, Vol. 1,
pp. 233–70; Jan Hogendorn and Marion Johnson, The Shell Money of the
26  K. KOBAYASHI

Slave Trade (Cambridge University Press, 1986); Linda Newson, ‘The

Slave-Trading Accounts of Manoel Batista Peres, 1613–1619: Double-
Entry Bookkeeping in Cloth Money’, Accounting History 18/3 (2013):
343–65; Colleen Kriger, Making Money: Life, Death, and Early Modern
Trade on Africa’s Guinea Coast (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press,
2017); Toby Green, A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the
Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution (London: Penguin Books, 2019).
55. It should be noted that, while Indian cotton textiles imported into West
Africa by way of Europe were all cotton goods, British ‘cotton’ textiles
were mostly linen-cotton mixes at least until the 1770s, because British
manufacturers at that time faced technological challenges that led to
using cotton yarn for the weft of fabrics and linen yarn for the warp.
For example, a nicanee shown in Image 1.1 was a fabric of half-linen
and half-cotton. A. P. Wadsworth and J. De Lacy Mann, The Cotton
Trade and Industrial Lancashire 1600–1780 (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1931); John Styles, ‘Fashion, Textiles and the Origins
of the Industrial Revolution’, East Asian Journal of British History 5
(2016): 161–89. Linen was mainly imported from Germany, Ireland and
Scotland. Alex Johnston Warden, The Linen Trade Ancient and Modern
(Second Edition, London, 1867), p. 373. I would like to thank John
Styles for the detailed information about yarns used in the fabrics in
Image 1.1.
56. Inikori, Africans, pp. 444–7.
57. Curtin, Economic Change, Vol. 1, pp. 261–3, 268–70; Roger Pasquier,
‘Les comptoirs du Sénégal au milieu du XIXe siècle’, in Catherine
Coquery-Vidrovitch, ed., Actes du colloque entreprises et entrepreneurs
en Afrique (XIXe et XXe siècle) (Paris: Harmattan, 1983), pp. 141–63;
James L. A. Webb, Jr., ‘The Trade in Gum Arabic: Prelude to French
Conquest in Senegal’, Journal of African History 26/2 (1985): 149–68;
Richard Roberts, ‘West Africa and the Pondicherry Textile Industry’, in
Roy, ed., Cloth and Commerce, pp. 142–74.
58. Prestholdt, Domesticating the World.
59. Lemire, ‘Revising the Historical Narrative’, p. 208.
60. Cited in Giorgio Riello, ‘The Globalization of Cotton Textiles: Indian
Cottons, Europe, and the Atlantic World, 1600–1850’, in Riello and
Parthasarathi, eds., The Spinning World, pp. 266–7.
61. Prasannan Parthasarathi and Giorgio Riello, ‘The Indian Ocean in the
Long Eighteenth Century’, Eighteenth-Century Studies 48/1 (2014):
1–19.
62. Johnson, Anglo-African Trade; Inikori, Africans; Riello, Cotton;
Kobayashi, ‘The British Atlantic Slave Trade’.
 1 INTRODUCTION  27

63. One notable exception is the work by Pedro Machado, who made use
of archival sources in Goa, Mumbai, Lisbon, London and Mapudo
(Mozambique), revealing interactions of the southern Atlantic with the
Indian Ocean in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Machado, Ocean
of Trade.
64. Ralph Davis, ‘English Foreign Trade, 1700–1774’, Economic History
Review 15/2 (1962): 285–303; Elizabeth Boody Schumpeter, English
Overseas Trade Statistics, 1697–1808 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960).
65. Ralph Davis, The Industrial Revolution and British Overseas Trade
(Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1979).
66. Johnson, Anglo-African Trade.
67. Inikori, Africans, p. 444. It is important to note that the value data shown
in the British trade statistics are constant official values set in 1696, not
market value (or current prices) in each year, and that there was a dis-
crepancy between these values after the French Revolution and the
Napoleonic Wars. Yet, it is still possible to view the data of official value
as an indicator of quantitative changes in the volume of the trade. Phyllis
Deane and W. A. Cole, British Economic Growth, 1688–1959: Trends
and Structure (Second Edition, Cambridge University Press, 1967),
pp. 319–22.
68. Patrick Manning, Slavery, Colonialism and Economic Growth in Dahomey,
1640–1960 (Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 115.
 CHAPTER 2

West African Seaborne Trade, 1750–1850:

The Transition from the Transatlantic Slave
Trade to ‘Legitimate’ Commerce

Indian textiles, as well as cowries, imported by the East India Companies

into Europe, made a decisive contribution to the making of the south-
south connections that were crucial in the development of the Atlantic
economy in the eighteenth century. However, these connections have
often been missing from the literature of nineteenth-century globali-
sation, while the development of Lancashire’s cotton industry and the
rapid growth of exports of their products into the global market have
grabbed scholarly attention. This chapter addresses the question: how
did West African seaborne trade affect the south-south economic link-
age during the early nineteenth century? By using a range of sources,
I explore what became of the trade connections between South Asia and
Africa south of the Sahara as a consequence of the development of the
English cotton industry. The major contribution of this chapter is to
unravel the continued demand for Indian textiles in Senegal, compared
with other areas of West Africa, during this period.
In West Africa, the century up to 1850 is known as the transitional
phase from the transatlantic slave trade to ‘legitimate’ commerce in agri-
cultural goods on the coast and jihad (Muslim holy war) in the interior
savannah region. The major export items in the coastal trade gradually
shifted from slave labour for the Americas to raw materials for indus-
trialising Europe.1 Palm oil, and later groundnuts alike, were used as a
lubricant for machinery and railways and were also made into soaps and
candles in Europe.2 Gum arabic was a key material in dyeing textiles as

© The Author(s) 2019 29

K. Kobayashi, Indian Cotton Textiles in West Africa,
Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18675-3_2
30  K. KOBAYASHI

a stiffener, manufacturing printed cottons and was also used for medi-
cal and confectionary preparations and papermaking in Europe.3 At the
same time, West Africa continued to import from Western Europe a large
number of textiles, especially British and Indian, and cowrie shells along
with other goods such as iron, weapons, alcohol and tobacco.4
By studying the numbers of these major commodities that were
traded from and into West Africa, this chapter will set the broad con-
text to address how the transition of West African coastal trade affected
the south-south connections up until 1850. As the subject involves a
lot of statistical work the major sources used here are trade statistics
recorded at the customs offices—in both Britain and France. A time
series for the exports of palm oil from West Africa for the early nineteenth
century is available from the British Parliamentary Papers. A. J. H.
Latham and Martin Lynn used these sources to narrate the accounts of
the palm oil trade between West Africa and Britain.5 James Webb pro-
vides price data for guinées in France and Senegal.6 Jan Hogendorn and
Marion Johnson’s study provides trade volumes of cowrie shells imported
from Britain into West Africa.7 Joseph Inikori also draws on the British
trade statistics to argue that West Africa witnessed a massive inflow of
British machine-made cotton textiles that replaced the leading position
of Indian textiles.8 However, his analysis missed the imports of textiles
from France. This chapter uses both the British and French trade statis-
tics to present a more balanced picture of textile imports into West Africa
and shows that Senegal exhibited a particular demand for Indian cotton
textiles rather than European textiles during this period. Furthermore,
the discussion of British trade statistics reveals various types of British
and Indian cotton textiles imported into West Africa and also the emer-
gence of regional differences in their demand. In addition, a study of the
records maintained by the colonialists, also known as the Blue Books,
helps in bringing forth statistics of groundnut exports from the Gambia
River and the goods exchanged for textiles imported to Sierra Leone
from Britain. Some correspondences between France and Senegal help to
provide price information of gum arabic in Senegal and the proportion
that guinées made up of the imports from France into Senegal.
The next section examines an overview of the transatlantic slave trade
from 1751 to 1850, taking into account that this period covers part
of the age of jihad in West Africa. This will help the reader to under-
stand under what political and economic circumstances West Africa,
Senegal in particular, engaged with a global trade during this period.
 2  WEST AFRICAN SEABORNE TRADE, 1750–1850 …  31

Following this, the discussion will focus on major exports from West
Africa in the early nineteenth century—palm oil, followed by gum arabic
and groundnuts—before moving on to major imports into West Africa
during the same period. While the imports of English cotton textiles into
most of the West African coasts expanded, Senegal continued to import
Indian cotton textiles rather than European goods. This chapter will
underscore that, apart from Indian cotton textiles, West Africa continued
to import cowrie shells from the Maldives via Europe during the first half
of the nineteenth century.

The Transatlantic Slave Trade and Jihad

in West Africa, 1750–1850

West Africa’s external slave trade, both in the Sahara and on the Atlantic,
has attracted an enormous amount of attention from historians. As dis-
cussed briefly in the previous chapter, the demand for labour in the plan-
tations in the Americas, along with the relative immunity of the African
against tropical diseases, low transportation costs and low purchase price,
propelled the growth of this trade. But it is also essential to understand
the internal mechanisms of the slave trade that responded to external
demands. In the context of West Africa, A. G. Hopkins explained that
‘the external slave trade existed only because the return on exports was
greater than on employing labour in the domestic economy.’9 Low pro-
ductivity of labour in West Africa has been confirmed by later studies.
Patrick Manning pointed out that low productivity of agriculture lim-
ited the value of labour, leading to the low price of slaves.10 The endow-
ment analysis by Gareth Austin showed that, in precolonial sub-Saharan
Africa, there was generally land-abundance in combination with fragile
soil fertility, and thereby such conditions hindered economies of scale in
production.11 More recently, Klas Rönnbäck and Dimitrios Theodoridis
supported this view with some evidence from Senegambia on the low
level of agricultural productivity. These studies concluded that low pro-
ductivity in West Africa provided an economic rationale for the transat-
lantic slave trade.12
The transatlantic slave trade database (TSTD) compiled by David
Eltis and others estimates that as many as 12.5 million slaves were for-
cibly taken from Africa to the Americas from the sixteenth to the nine-
teenth century.13 Figure 2.1 shows the pattern of the slave trade by each
32  K. KOBAYASHI

400,000

350,000

300,000

250,000

200,000

150,000

100,000

50,000

Spain/Uruguay Portugal/Brazil Great Britain Netherlands

U.S.A. France Denmark/Baltic

Fig. 2.1  Slave trade by flag, 1751–1850 (Source Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic

Slave Trade Database (TSTD), http://www.slavevoyages.org [accessed 23
March 2015])

participant from Europe and the Americas from 1751 to 1850; the data
are based on five-year periods. It is clear that Portugal/Brazil, Britain
and France were the major three participants in the transatlantic slave
trade during the eighteenth century, while, after the British and French
withdrawals from the trade, Portugal/Brazil came to be the leading
player, followed by Spain/Uruguay. The TSTD also suggests that 1787
was the peak of the trade, which began to decline thereafter.14
Figure 2.2 shows the volume of slaves that embarked from West and
West-Central Africa between 1751 and 1850. Except for West-Central
Africa, the largest region—especially for the Portuguese/Brazilian slave
shipping—which was West Africa in general, underwent a decline in slave
exports for Atlantic markets from the 1780s. The Bight of Biafra was
the largest source of slaves among the West African coasts, particularly
for Britain, while Senegambia, Sierra Leone and the Windward Coast
exported fewer slaves than other coasts of West Africa.15 Speaking of
Senegambia, the focus of the next chapter, slave exports reached their
peak in 1774. Subsequently, the trade declined and hit a trough in 1797,
 2  WEST AFRICAN SEABORNE TRADE, 1750–1850 …  33

300,000

250,000

200,000

150,000

100,000

50,000

Senegambia Sierra Leone

Windward Coast Gold Coast
Bight of Benin Bight of Biafra
West Central Africa and St. Helena

Fig. 2.2  Slaves embarked by region, 1751–1850 (Source TSTD)

followed by a temporary revival at the beginning of the nineteenth

century and a further decline towards 1850.16 Paul Lovejoy underscores
the significance of the jihad movement that spread across West Africa
from the late seventeenth through the nineteenth century for this une-
qual distribution. He argues that ‘the jihad movement was an inhibiting
factor that reduced the involvement of Muslim regions in the transatlan-
tic trade and forced European buyers to go elsewhere to buy slaves.’17
During this period West African jihads were carried out by Muslim
scholars (marabouts) and military leaders to undertake reforms and build
theocratic Muslim states.18 The earliest movement started in the Senegal
River valley in the late seventeenth century as a response to the transat-
lantic slave trade. The growth of slave exports for the Americas made it
difficult for nomads on the northern bank of the river to get access to
slave labour which would have been used for both production and trade
with North Africa. Escalation of the Atlantic trade also redirected the
cereal supplies of the river valley from the northern bank towards Saint
Louis. The redirected supplies were used to feed slaves who were held
34  K. KOBAYASHI

until embarkation. Political and social antagonism worsened around the

valley and led to the disintegration of Berber society in the region. To
weather the crisis, Nasir al-Din, a marabout, waged his jihad by attacking
Fuuta Toro, the granary in the middle valley, where rice and millet were
produced. This attack not only defeated the kingdoms of Waalo, Fuuta
Toro, Kajoor and Jolof, where the ruling aristocracies sold their own
subjects to purchase European commodities, but it also dealt a heavy
blow to the French slave trade at Saint Louis. As soon as Nasir al-Din
died in Mauritania in 1674, the French intervened to offer direct mili-
tary and financial support to aristocracies in Waalo, Fuuta Toro, Kajoor
and Jolof, thus allowing them to regain power.19
As the followers of Nasir al-Din passed on their visions of state-build-
ing to the future generations south of the Senegal River, Senegambia
experienced a series of jihad from the end of the seventeenth century
to the eighteenth century. In this process, the warrior groups, called
hassani, gained political control in the region of south-west Sahara, and
eventually founded the nomadic emirates of Trarza, Brakna and others.
At the same time, Hassaniya supplanted the local Berber language and
become the lingua franca from Mali to Senegal in the south and at the
northern desert edge, such as at Wad Nun and Tinduf. In the 1690s,
some refugees from Nasir al-Din’s jihad settled in the upper Senegal
River valley, and reportedly Malik Si led them to found the Islamic State
of Fuuta Bundu which straddled the upper Senegal and Gambia Rivers.
Bundu benefited from its strategically important location compared to
the Sahel in the north, the Atlantic in the west and the gold fields of
Bure in the east. Following the death of Malik Si, the Muslim clerical
class of Torodbe, who identified with the Fulbe pastoralists, led the jihad
movement in the region. In the mid-1720s, the jihad spread into the
highlands of Fuuta Jalon under the leadership of Karamkho Alfa, who
earned the political title almami.20
However, his death around 1751 marked the beginning of a new
phase in the jihad in Fuuta Jalon that affected coastal trade: military
leaders now replaced marabouts as pivotal players in the jihad move-
ment. Karamkho Alfa’s successor Ibrahima Sori became almami and
adopted an aggressive policy against neighbouring countries through an
alliance with the Jalonke kingdom of Solimana, which is a part of mod-
ern Sierra Leone. His military campaign intended to procure slaves and
booty, and slaves not only served as the domestic labour of the ruling
aristocracy but also met the growing demand for the Atlantic trade.
 2  WEST AFRICAN SEABORNE TRADE, 1750–1850 …  35

In other words, while Ibramina Sori consolidated the Fuuta Jalon dom-
ination of Solimana in the 1770s, Fuuta Jalon continued with their
engagement with the Atlantic slave trade insisting that the enslaved were
not Muslims.21 Slaves were often sold to Europeans at the ports of what
is now Guinea-Bissau, Guinea-Conakry and Sierra Leone.22 Boubacar
Barry made an argument on this point:

As in the case of the kingdom of Dahomey or that of the Asante

Confederation, the historical development of Futa Jallon [sic] makes sense
only when placed in the global context of the slave trade. At the time, slave
trading was the dominant commercial activity on the African coast. These
kingdoms were originally founded to combat the deleterious effects of
slave raids. Once consolidated, however, they too made slave trading their
exclusive business. Sometimes the reason was the need for self defense
against neighboring states. But there were instances where the initiatives
came from the new states themselves, eager as they were to share in profits
from the slave trade. In such cases, Islam was simply another opportune
ideology that served to maintain and consolidate the power of the incum-
bent aristocracy.23

Thus, the transatlantic slave trade shaped the trajectory of newly

emerged Muslim states in Senegambia in the eighteenth century.
At the same time, because of aridification, the mid-eighteenth
century was a period of drought and famine in West Africa that gave rise
to political disturbances in the middle Senegal River valley from which
the jihad emerged in Fuuta Toro.24 Fuuta Toro was situated in a rich
floodplain that produced millet and rice which were exported to Saint
Louis along with cotton and indigo. Thus, it attracted herders, traders
and settlers. However, the ruling warrior regime of Denyanke was fac-
ing both internal strife and external threat from the nomadic emirate of
Brakna, north of the Senegal River. The political instability prompted
the Torodbe to carry out jihad under the leadership of Sulayman Baal.
This reform movement also challenged the practice of selling Muslims
as slaves to Europeans on the Atlantic coast. Sulayman Baal was killed in
the battle of 1776, and then Abdul Kader Kan, as his successor, became
the first almami of a new regime. Thus, the reform movement entered
an expansionist phase until 1796. Abdul Kader gained support from the
royal court of Fuuta Bundu and his rule established in Kajoor. Also, he
negotiated a settlement with the Denyanke dynasty in which the former
ruling elite was allowed to retain autonomy, though their territory was
36  K. KOBAYASHI

confined to the eastern periphery of the floodplain. Thereafter, he redis-

tributed land to his supporters of the movement, built 30–40 mosques,
and appointed judges and teachers in the villages. In 1785, he made a
treaty with the French that imposed on them the ‘customs’ for the right
to passage up the Senegal River to purchase gum and slaves. However,
the treaty banned the purchase of slaves in the land of Fuuta Toro. In
the following year, there were skirmishes between Abdul Kader and the
Trarza emirate, and from 1789 to 1791 the former set up garrison vil-
lages at the fords of the Senegal River in order to prevent the Trarza
attacks. By then, the jihad state of Fuuta Toro held hegemony over the
Senegal River valley from the Atlantic coast to Fuuta Bundu.25
However, their hegemony was short-lived. From 1796, Fuuta Toro
faced a series of challenges from Kajoor, Waalo and Fuuta Jalon. In 1807
Abdul Kader died during a battle against Fuuta Bundu. Thus, the jihad
in Senegambia declined and the French extended their influence along
the Senegal River further into the interior. They built fortified posts
at Dagana in 1821, subsequently followed by Merinaghen, Lampbar,
Senoudebou and Podor. In 1850, these posts were lumped together
under the name of Sénégal et Dépendance. The French expansion pol-
icy into the Upper Senegal River continued through the late nineteenth
century.26
It is worth noting that the spread of the jihad movement across West
Africa was fully tied with the Fulbe. They were also known as Fulani
in today’s Northern Nigeria and Peul by the French. Indeed, the pre-
fix ‘Fuuta’, which is found in the names Fuuta Bundu, Fuuta Jalon and
Fuuta Toro, indicates the ethnic association with the Fulbe. According
to Paul Lovejoy, the majority of them had been considered Muslims at
least since the sixteenth century. Their scholarly and religious elites were
wealthy enough to own cattle. Their transhumance migration patterns
and their shared language, Fulfulbe, spread the idea of the reform move-
ment from Senegambia to Lake Chad from the late seventeenth into the
eighteenth century.27
Indeed, by the second half of the eighteenth century, the jihad
movement reached a Fulbe community in the north-western part of
Hausaland, located in modern northern Nigeria. The two key lead-
ing figures in the reform movement were Uthman dan Fodio and
his son, Muhammad Bello. Uthman dan Fodio’s ancestors migrated
from the west—David Robinson presumed that they came from Fuuta
Toro—some centuries before his jihad. In the late eighteenth century,
 2  WEST AFRICAN SEABORNE TRADE, 1750–1850 …  37

as mentioned above, West Africa underwent times of warfare and

ecological crises. Against this backdrop, Uthman dan Fodio refined
his idea of reform and gained a large following: the majority were the
Fulbe of Hausaland but some were also Hausa and Tuareg. In 1804,
he declared jihad against the Hausa state of Gobir. In this military cam-
paign, the Sultan of Gobir was captured in 1808, and Sokoto, as a new
capital, was constructed on the Rima River in 1809. When Uthman died
in 1817, Muhammad Bello succeeded his father and became the first
caliph. His succession marked the beginning of a new phase of jihad in
the Central Soudan that lasted until his death in 1837. By then, they had
established 28 emirates and the twin capitals at Gwandu and Sokoto.28
As a consequence of this jihad, the Sokoto Caliphate was founded
in the Central Soudan. This powerful caliphate integrated many Hausa
states, large parts of the Oyo Empire, Western Borno and others into its
territory. It was, therefore, the largest state in Africa since the collapse of
the Songhay Empire in the early 1590s. The Sokoto Caliphate removed
the political and economic barriers and conducted major demographic
changes, leading to economic development thereafter. In addition, the
Caliphate promoted agricultural expansion, increased market demand
for foodstuffs, manufactures and raw materials, and developed favour-
able conditions for foreign investment and merchants. Agricultural and
artisanal production grew with the help of an expanding supply of slaves
from the smaller societies to the south, where slaves were in greater
demand in the production of palm oil, as discussed below.29 In particu-
lar, Kano was renowned for cloth weaving and dyeing using locally pro-
duced cotton and indigo. The scale of textile production was remarkable
enough to receive attention from Heinrich Barth when he visited Kano
in 1851.30 The Niger River continued to serve as an important trade
route through which cowrie shells flowed into the interior from the
southern coasts of West Africa.31
The jihad movement and the British withdrawal from the slave trade
in 1807 and its subsequent naval campaign to eradicate the trade along
the West African coast had two implications. One was the shift of the
major points of slave embarkation from West Africa to West-Central
Africa, and Mozambique.32 The other was that the Sokoto Caliphate
played a large role in supplying slave labour for palm oil plantations on
coastal West Africa. As will be discussed in detail below, the demand for
labour on the coast was increasing as ‘legitimate’ commerce expanded
from the early nineteenth century.
38  K. KOBAYASHI

Exports from West Africa in the Early

Nineteenth Century

Palm Oil
In the era of ‘legitimate’ commerce, palm oil emerged as one of the lead-
ing commodities exported from West Africa. Oil palm (elaeis guineen-
sis), which is of African origin, grew wild widely from the Gambia to
Angola, while palm production was concentrated in particular in the hin-
terland of the Bight of Biafra, or central and southern Igboland.33 The
increasing demand for West African palm oil in the nineteenth century
was closely linked to the growing population in industrialising Britain.34
From the 1820s to the 1850s, West Africa was the de facto sole source
of palm oil in Britain, accounting for 97–100 per cent of British imports,
as there were no competitors in the production of palm oil in the global
market.35
The palm oil was divided into two types: ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ in terms
of its free fatty acid (FFA), and in turn this difference affected its use
and the price in Britain (Table 2.1).36 Soft oil was used in the produc-
tion of soap, lubricants for machines, especially for the railways and
tinplate processing, while hard oil was used in the production of can-
dles and certain kinds of soap.37 The hardness or softness of palm oil
depended on the duration of fermentation that released the enzymes to
create the FFA. For harder oil, the fermentation could take as long as
three months, while the fermentation for softer oil was shorter. In the
meanwhile, the duration of fermentation affected the labour and fuel
input in the production process. Longer fermentation required less boil-
ing in water, pounding and labour, while less fermentation needed more
labour and fuel. Warri (in the Bight of Benin), Nembe, the Niger River,

Table 2.1  Types of palm oil, the fermentation process and labour required

Soft Hard

Free fatty acid (FFA) Low High

Duration of fermentation Shorter Longer
Labour More needed Less needed
Market price in Britain High Low
Use-value Soap, lubricants, tinplate candle, certain kinds of soap
processing
 2  WEST AFRICAN SEABORNE TRADE, 1750–1850 …  39

Elem Kalabari (in the Bight of Biafra), the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone
and the Congo were known as sources of hard oil, which was sold at
a lower price in British markets. Old Calabar, Bonny, Opobo and the
Cameroons (in the Bight of Biafra) were vital sources of soft oil, which
fetched a higher price in Britain. In particular, a certain type of oil, called
‘fine Lagos’, was known as the softest oil amongst the British buyers and
gained a premium of as much as 20 per cent.38
The determinant factors for which type of oil to produce were several:
types of trees, climate conditions, factor endowments (especially land and
labour) and the market price. There were differences in the yield of the
fruit between wild and cultivated palms. One estimate shows that the
cultivated palm produced five times more than the wild palm. Thus, the
amount of labour required depended on the volume and yield and, sub-
sequently, the method of production. Also, climate conditions, in par-
ticular rainfall and sunshine, mattered in the yield. Neither excessive nor
scanty rainfall led to a good harvest; lack of sunshine reduced output;
and drought could decrease next year’s yield. Depending on rainfall pat-
terns, there was a cycle of four to six years in the output of the fruit. This
cycle also corresponded with the export of palm oil from West Africa to
Western Europe.39
Why did West African producers choose different methods to produce
soft and hard oil? The answer lies in factor endowments such as avail-
ability of labour and natural resources and the price differential in the
market. The production of soft oil required much more labour and other
inputs such as water or fuel than that of hard oil. As for time required
for the production of a tonne of oil, Martin Lynn estimated that it took
420 working days in the case of soft oil. This was more than three times
longer than the case of hard oil (132 working days). He stressed that the
critical factor was labour—to collect natural resources and transport palm
oil, whether by head loading across land or by canoes.40
Figure 2.3 shows the export of palm oil from West Africa to Britain
in the early nineteenth century. The chief destination among the British
ports was Liverpool.41 Figure 2.3 features a cyclical rise throughout the
period, which, according to Lynn, can be divided into three phases of
expansion. The first phase was in the 1810s.42 Until the British abolition
of the slave trade in 1807, the export of palm oil had usually been less
than 10,000 hundredweights (cwt). Thereafter, trade began to expand
with four-year cycles and more than doubled in ten years, between 1808
40  K. KOBAYASHI

600,000

500,000

400,000

300,000

200,000

100,000

-
1801
1803
1805
1807
1809
1811
1814
1816
1818
1820
1822
1824
1826
1828
1830
1832
1834
1836
1838
1840
1842
1844
1846
1848
1850
Fig. 2.3  Exports of palm oil from West Africa to Britain, 1801–1850 (cwt)
(Sources 1801–1844: British Parliamentary Papers [BPP], 1845, XLVI [187]:
palm oil. An account of the quantity of palm oil annually imported into the
United Kingdom from the western coast of Africa, since the year 1790, to the
31st day of December 1844. 1845–1850: BPP 1854, LXV [296]: Tallow, & c.
Return of the quantities of tallow, palm oil, train oil, spermaceti, hemp, flax seed,
hides and skins, and sheep’s wool, imported into the United Kingdom during
the years 1844–1853 inclusive, specifying the quantities imported from each
country. Note Records for 1813 destroyed by fire)

and 1818. The Bight of Biafra, especially Old Calabar and Bonny, was
home to the export of palm oil to Britain during this period.43
The second expansion phase lasted from the late 1820s to the early
1830s. The volume of palm oil almost tripled from 94,000 cwt in
1827 to 270,000 cwt in 1834. In the decade until 1834, the price of
palm oil in Britain was relatively stagnant between £24–£26 per tonne
except during 1830–1832, when the price was as high as £31–£34
per tonne.44 The Bight of Biafra remained dominant in the export
trade of oil to Britain, but this decade saw the growth of exports from
other regions of West Africa such as the Bight of Benin and the Gold
Coast.45
 2  WEST AFRICAN SEABORNE TRADE, 1750–1850 …  41

The third expansion phase took place during the late 1830s to the
early 1840s. The peak year of this period was 1845 with 501,000 cwt.
This was accompanied by the decrease of palm oil prices in the British
markets from £40 per tonne in 1838 to £27 in 1844. The Bight of Biafra
maintained the leading position of exports to Britain. A growing contri-
bution of the Bight of Benin was also remarkable, while the Gold Coast
accounted for around 10 per cent of the total imports of palm oil into
Britain.46
In this manner West African exports of palm oil into Britain increased
throughout the early nineteenth century. The volume increased by more
than a hundred-fold—from 3900 cwt in 1801. A large number of new
trading firms arrived in the Bight of Biafra as well as other regions of
West Africa for trade. However, former slave traders, such as John Tobin
from Liverpool, turned to the palm oil trade around 1807 and continued
to play a major role in the trade.47
Continuity from the days of the Atlantic slave trade characterised not
only the trade routes between West Africa and Britain but also those
within West Africa in the early nineteenth century. As for the trade
between West Africa and Britain, Liverpool was dominant in the imports
of palm oil, and the rest of the imports was divided between London and
Bristol. As for the trade routes within West Africa, brokerage networks of
trade were key in nineteenth-century palm oil. African traders brokered
between the interior producing areas and the coast. Such traders mostly
emerged as slave suppliers for the Atlantic market in the course of the
eighteenth century. In the case of Old Calabar in the Bight of Biafra,
Efik groups, as the intermediary, purchased palm oil from the Ibibio and
Igbo producers in the interior markets along the Cross River, and trans-
ported the goods on canoes to Old Calabar.48
Figure 2.3 clearly suggests that the rapid growth of the palm oil
trade following the British abolition of the slave trade reflected the
unprecedented level of demand for palm oil in Britain. But how did
West African producers respond to such an increasing external demand
within that period? It is important to explain labour utilisation in West
Africa since intensive labour was needed for cultivating, harvesting,
carrying loads such as water and fuels, and transporting the finished
product to markets. Economists and historians have long debated this
issue. One famous explanation is based on modification of the ‘vent-for-
surplus’ theory. This theory originated in Adam Smith’s The Wealth of
Nations and later was revisited by the Burmese economist, Hla Myint,
42  K. KOBAYASHI

who applied this theory of nineteenth-century international trade in

regions like West Africa and Southeast Asia. The vent-for-surplus the-
ory has three assumptions for the development of international trade in
underdeveloped regions: the population is static; there is no technolog-
ical innovation; the expansion of international trade does not sacrifice
production for the domestic market. These assumptions formed the crux
of the theory that the increase in the production of exports in the under-
developed regions, when exposed to international trade, was made pos-
sible by the utilisation of factors of production such as land and labour
that had been under-utilised before. Therefore, the under-utilised factors
of production provided a vent. Myint also assumed that the process of
reallocation of the factor of production in such regions was ­economically
‘costless’.49 By the 1980s, the theory profoundly influenced both
neo-classical and Marxian writers, so that it became ‘an unexamined bed-
rock of Western thought on Third World problems’.50
The vent-for-surplus theory of export growth has long been subject
to debate in African economic history since Hopkins’s seminal work, An
Economic History of West Africa.51 The debate has so far concentrated
on the ‘cash-crop revolution’ that occurred in forest zones of tropical
Africa like the southern region of Asante of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. Susan Martin’s research showed that the theory
explains the origins and expansion of palm production for export in the
Ngwa region in eastern Nigeria.52 On the other hand, John Tosh high-
lighted the limitation of this model: it does not fit well with savannah.
For example, the cases of Senegambia and Kano demonstrate that expan-
sion of cash-crop production like groundnuts for overseas markets cur-
tailed food production for domestic markets.53 Yet, the application of the
theory to forest zones of West Africa also needs qualification. As for the
reallocation of labour to export agriculture, Gareth Austin recently criti-
cised the assumption of the vent-for-surplus theory that ‘the labour force
on the eve of the “cash-crop revolution” consisted entirely of farmers
and free family members’ and their neglect of ‘the fact that slavery had
ever existed within African societies’.54 Austin paid attention to the role
of slavery in the mobilisation of labour for cash agriculture in the preco-
lonial Gold Coast. The British official withdrawal from the Atlantic slave
trade brought about the over-supply of slaves within internal markets
of West Africa, which in turn caused a decline in slave price for a short
while. This facilitated the growth in the use of slaves in Asante societies
for commodity production both for overseas and domestic markets.55
 2  WEST AFRICAN SEABORNE TRADE, 1750–1850 …  43

This criticism of the theory is relevant to the palm oil production in

wider areas of West Africa during the period of ‘legitimate’ commerce.
During the decade or so after the British abolition of the slave trade,
according to Paul Lovejoy and David Richardson, slave prices along the
West African coasts dropped. This slump in slave prices enabled large-
scale production of agricultural commodities by slaves within West Africa
and the transport of the goods from production areas to the coast.
The increasing demand for slave labour in the production of commod-
ities and foodstuff for local consumption and external trade triggered
the recovery of slave prices in the 1820s.56 Since palm oil production
was labour intensive, the increased demand for it from Europe would
increase demand for slave labour within West Africa, especially where
population density was low. For example, palm oil producers in Yoruba
and Igbo societies around the Bight of Biafra imported slaves from
the Sokoto Caliphate, and the Bamenda plain in present north-west-
ern Cameroon was also a source of slaves for the Igbo and Cross River
regions during this period. Slaves were paid for with cowrie shells and
textiles in the regions.57 Therefore, the shift to ‘legitimate’ commerce
and the take-off of the palm production and trade in West Africa in the
early nineteenth century were closely associated both with the intensive
use of slaves and also with increasing imports of cowrie shells and tex-
tiles. As Lovejoy argued, ‘there is no reason to believe that the general
level of enslavement declined significantly [due to the end of the Atlantic
slave trade]. The only difference [between the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries] was that slaves were not sent to the Americas but instead were
used domestically’.58
The development of ‘legitimate’ commerce also shed light on the
role of female labour in productive activities and marketing within West
Africa. As Martin stressed, there was a division of labour by gender in
the palm production and trade. While men climbed palm trees to harvest
and claimed the right to the saleable goods, women carried the harvested
fruits to the compound to process, separated them from the spiky bunch,
boiled and pounded it, extracted oil from it, transported the oil and, as
petty independent traders, sold the product.59 Furthermore, fetching
water was a predominant domain of female labour in some areas like
Abomey in the Dahomey kingdom, where water was scarce and brought
from distant areas.60 Development of trade in palm products, in particu-
lar that of palm kernels that increased in the second half of the century,
benefited West African women who sold the product.61
44  K. KOBAYASHI

The roles of slaves and women in the period of ‘legitimate’ commerce

are also linked to the debate about the relative importance of large-
scale and small-scale enterprise. A. G. Hopkins argued that slave trade
had been in the hands of a small number of large entrepreneurs, such
as political elites, whereas the trade in agricultural products was open
to a mass of small producers, including women, free Africans and even
slaves.62 Their participation in the ‘legitimate’ commerce had political
repercussions because they could use cash-crop profits to purchase not
only imported and domestic textiles but also weapons that would later
become a serious challenge to the traditional rulers in West Africa.63

Gum Arabic
Gum arabic was also one of the leading trade items from West Africa, in
particular the most important commodity from Senegambia, in the early
nineteenth century. As S. M. X. Golberry observed, it is a solidified veg-
etable juice which ‘oozes from clefts in the bark of’ acacia trees, such as
acacia verek or acacia Senegal, ‘either naturally or by incision, and which
afterwards coagulates’.64 In West Africa, gum arabic was likely to have
fed slaves or provided nourishment during famines.65 The name ‘arabic’
originated from the fact that this product came from North Africa to
Europe. However, gum arabic from Mauritania and Senegal was more
mucilaginous and adhesive than any other gum such as the one brought
from Arabia to Marseille via Egypt. In the course of the eighteenth cen-
tury, gum arabic replaced all other types of gums in European markets.66
It was the Dutch merchants who introduced gum arabic to Europe
from the coastal areas of southern Mauritania and Saint Louis in the
early seventeenth century. Arguin and Portendick had been major trad-
ing posts in Mauritania where European merchants competed for gum
arabic, along with slaves and other goods, supplied by desert merchants.
It was the Portuguese who were the first settlers in the rocky island of
Arguin in 1445, and in the seventeenth century this became a disputed
territory between the Dutch, English, French and Prussian—all fighting
over its jurisdictions. After the French attacked the Dutch establishment
at Arguin in 1678, desert merchants turned to Portendick—situated 48
leagues to the south of Arguin—and Saint Louis at the mouth of the
Senegal River as the new principal destinations to sell gum arabic.67
In the eighteenth century, aridification made Arguin unsustaina-
ble, and Portendick followed the same fate as Arguin by the middle
 2  WEST AFRICAN SEABORNE TRADE, 1750–1850 …  45

of the nineteenth century. Instead of these Mauritanian ports, Saint

Louis at the mouth of the Senegal River, which runs between south-
ern Mauritania and northern Senegal, became the single source of gum
arabic during this period (Map 2).68 James Searing described the gum
trade as ‘the lifeblood of Saint Louis’ in the early nineteenth century,69
and Georges Hardy also mentioned that ‘gum became “the palladium
of Senegalese industry and commerce”; it demanded “an exclusive cult”
and any other conception of how Senegal could become a rich country
was regarded as “heresy”’.70
Saint Louis was one of the earliest European outposts in West Africa
and the first French colonial settlement in Senegal. In 1659, a permanent
fort was founded on the island, and it enabled the French to control the
trade along the Senegal River.71 The island of Saint Louis, or ‘N’Dar’
in Wolof, is located where the Senegal River joins the Atlantic Ocean.
There is a long sandbar, called Langue de Barbarie (whose meaning is
tongue of Barbary), that stretches from Mauritania and separates the
island from the Atlantic Ocean (see also Chapter 3). There are shallows
between the sandbar and the continent that prevents large ships from
sailing up the river and thus they had to anchor at sea while smaller boats
brought in their cargo to land. Thus, the Europeans were dependent on
local fishermen to negotiate this natural obstacle.72
As gum arabic was used as a vital raw material in European calico
printing and papermaking, there was stiff competition to monopolise the
gum trade among three European countries: France, the Dutch Republic
and Britain. France attempted to control the trade from Mauritania to
Senegal by declaring the doctrine of the exclusive rights called ‘pacte
colonial’ from 1713 to 1763. This campaign aimed to keep the Dutch
and British interlopers out of the Mauritanian coast; however, it ended
in failure. Following this, the competition over gum arabic trade heated
up and turned into what André Delcourt called ‘the gum wars’ that
lasted from 1717 to the Seven Years’ War. The gum wars involved not
only these countries but also Waalo and Trarza around the Senegal River
because these local rulers supplied the gum to areas not controlled by
the French.73
During the Seven Years’ War, Britain and France fought each other in
Senegambia over not only gum arabic but also slaves. Their sporadic war
persisted up to the end of the Napoleonic Wars. The French did busi-
ness exclusively in the Senegal River until Saint Louis and Gorée were
captured by the British in 1758.74 As the only French outposts in West
46  K. KOBAYASHI

Africa, it was strategically crucial for the British to attack and occupy
these places and thereby damage the French slave trade to the Caribbean
Islands.75
With the treaty of Paris in 1763, Saint Louis was officially conceded
to Britain and the French were forced to transfer their headquarters to
the island of Gorée.76 In 1764 Senegambia was put under the com-
mittee of the British Company of Merchants Trading to Africa, a new
company founded in 1751 to replace the Royal African Company and
to engage in fortification. In 1765, an Order in Council of 1 November
placed the Province of Senegambia under the direct control of the
British government as a crown colony subject to the Navigation Acts,
while Saint Louis became the capital of the territory. Thus, the province
formed a part of the British Atlantic common market, within which all
British subjects were allowed to trade freely, but from which all oth-
ers were excluded during the British occupation that ended in 1783.77
As far as Saint Louis was concerned, France recaptured the island in
1778 and transferred their headquarters there once again from Gorée
Island. With the treaty of Paris in 1783, the Gambia was conceded
to Britain, but France obtained an agreement about the right to con-
trol both Saint Louis and Gorée Island. Yet, during the Napoleonic
Wars, Britain once again seized Gorée Island in 1800 and Saint Louis
in 1809 and held them until British Colonel Thomas Brereton
received official instructions to turn them over in 1817. After the ship-
wreck of the Méduse, the new Governor of Senegal, Colonel Julien
Schmaltz, arrived in Saint Louis in July 1816 with instructions to end
the slave trade; however, the French did not really withdraw from it
until 1831.78
The second quarter of the nineteenth century witnessed the growth
of the gum trade to Western Europe from Senegambia, mainly from
Saint Louis. In particular, there was the ‘gum fever’ around 1830, when
a French agricultural project in Waalo, which started in 1819 to make
Senegal into another Caribbean with the hope of maintaining France’s
commercial dominance, resulted in failure.79 Senegambia exported to
France 200–400 tonnes of gum arabic annually from the late seventeenth
to the late eighteenth century. This increased to more than 1000 tonnes
in the mid-1820s, while the annual average during the 1830s was even
higher at 3143 tonnes. Gum arabic exports from Senegambia accounted
for 70–90 per cent of the total export value in the early nineteenth
century.80
 2  WEST AFRICAN SEABORNE TRADE, 1750–1850 …  47

It is important to note that this period saw the invention of dextrin in

France, which was intended to serve as a cheaper alternative to gum ara-
bic. However, a letter from the Minister of Agriculture and Commerce
noted that dextrin deteriorated easily and that it did not suit some of the
purposes that gum arabic served.81 Thus, the gum trade from Senegal to
France (and other European countries) continued even after dextrin was
invented in Europe. The volume of trade increased more than the previ-
ous century, and even in 1834, the trough year of the trade, more than
500 tonnes of gum was exported from Saint Louis (Fig. 2.4).
Figure 2.4 shows the export of gum arabic from Senegal to France in
the second quarter of the nineteenth century, whose data are based on
the French official trade statistics. During this period the French mer-
cantile policy called exclusif or pacte colonial allowed only French vessels
to do trade in its colonies.82 This commercial regulation was modified
in 1832 so that French vessels were allowed to ship gum arabic directly

4,000

3,500

3,000

2,500

2,000

1,500

1,000

500

Fig. 2.4  Exports of gum arabic from Senegal to France, 1827–1850 (tonnes)

(Sources France: Direction générale des douanes, Tableau décennal de com-
merce de la France avec ses colonies et les puissances étrangèrs, 1827 à 1836 [Paris:
Imprimerie Royale, 1838]; France. Direction générale des douanes, Tableau
général du commerce de la France avec ses colonies et les puissances étrangères
[Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1839–1851])
48  K. KOBAYASHI

from Senegal to foreign countries including Britain, which offered a

large market for the commodity.83 For example, one source on the
exports of gum arabic from Saint Louis from 1837 to 1843 records that
4738 tonnes of gum arabic was shipped from Saint Louis in 1837. It
also indicates that that number declined by 77 per cent to 1068 tonnes
in 1843.84 At the same time, most of the gum arabic transported into
France was further brought to other countries in Europe. In 1832, for
example, only 18 per cent of gum arabic imported from Saint Louis of
Senegal to France was consumed within the latter.85
There were fluctuations in the gum trade during this period, reflect-
ing both unpredictable productivity of the gum tree at the desert’s
edge and warfare around the Senegal River valley. The production
of gum arabic is determined by two ecological conditions. One fac-
tor is the harmattan, the hot and dry north-easterly trade wind from
the Sahara Desert that splits the acacia bark. The harmattan, blowing
across the Sahara from the beginning of November to March–April,
was crucial in determining the output of gum harvesting, and thereby
determining the gum trade season in the Senegal River. The best sea-
son for harvesting was from March to May. The harmattan weakened
as it approached the savannah partly due to blockages such as trees and
shrubs at the desert edge. The decrease in intensity created different
productivity zones between the north and south banks of the Senegal
River. In the early nineteenth century, the northern zones (the domains
of Muslim emirates) were major producing regions of good quality
gum arabic.86
The other factor in determining the amount of gum exuded is rainfall.
Excess rainfall increases the moisture inside gum trees, so it can prevent
the bark from cracking, leaving the quality of gum friable. The best qual-
ity gum arabic was produced in the areas where rainfall was 400 milli-
metres per annum. On the other hand, severe droughts that occurred
serially for four or five years might have also seriously affected the exu-
dation of the gum trees.87 James Webb notes that ‘the most productive
years are when intense wind and little rainfall follow years of plentiful
rainfall’.88 As James Searing noted, the ecological conditions were highly
unfavourable at the desert edge during the period between 1827 and
1835, a period of severe drought in West Africa.89 That would probably
have affected the gum harvest along the Senegal River valley.
Warfare between the French and African states and changing rela-
tions between the French and the nomadic emirates around the lower
 2  WEST AFRICAN SEABORNE TRADE, 1750–1850 …  49

Senegal River affected the gum trade in the early nineteenth century.
Searing describes it as follows:

By 1820 the colony of Senegal [Saint Louis] was at war with the Trarza
and with Fuuta Toro, leading to a boycott of the gum trade and the col-
lapse of commerce. Warfare continued in 1821, when the Trarza threat-
ened French commerce by boycotting river markets and selling their gum
to the British at Portendick, located to the north of the Senegal River on
the Mauritanian coast.90

Political instability of the early nineteenth century compelled the French

to continue to depend on the habitants, Afro-European métis in Saint
Louis so that these agents established the terms of trade from 1824 to
1827.91 In 1833 the Governor of Senegal, Germain Quernel, waged a
war against the Trarza and the Waalo-Waalo (inhabitants of Waalo), to
separate the latter from the former, who de facto had conquered Waalo
which was indispensable to the expansion of French trade. The war—
that ended in 1835—posed a serious threat to the French position in
the Senegal River, and thus the gum trade recovered from a temporal
decline.92
The repercussions of the expanding gum trade in the early ­nineteenth
century were found in the population growth of Saint Louis and slav-
ery in Senegal. During the greater part of the eighteenth century, the
island’s population had been around 3000, but grew rapidly in the last
two decades of the century, when the gum trade became more impor-
tant than ever and came to rival the slave trade. The population contin-
ued to grow to approximately 9000 in 1819 and reached 13,500 in the
1840s.93 This growth was made possible in part by food imports from
neighbouring African states such as Kajoor, Fuuta Toro and Gajaaga.
Because Saint Louis accepted such a large migration of free trad-
ers from these African states and Waalo during this period, habitants
faced new competition for profits from the gum trade in the Senegal
River valley. Meanwhile, the growing demand for gum arabic from
Europe would probably fuel demand for labour in the desert along the
lower Senegal River, Saint Louis and its surrounding grain-producing
region. There was a continuous demand in labour—from the era of
the Atlantic slave trade until the 1840s, when trade in groundnuts
expanded.94
50  K. KOBAYASHI

Groundnuts
While gum arabic dominated exports from Senegal in the early nine-
teenth century, groundnuts emerged as a new staple product exported
from the Upper Guinea Coast,95 especially from the Gambia. This agri-
cultural crop was brought by the Portuguese from Brazil to Africa as
early as the sixteenth century, but we do not know an exact date, and to
which area of the Upper Guinea Coast, the plant was first introduced.96
In his observation in the early 1820s, Thomas Edward Bowdich noted
that groundnuts were a principal food for Gambian horses, which were
stronger and lived longer than those in other coasts of West Africa.97
Before the 1840s, like Fuuta Toro, Sine-Saloum, Kajoor and Bawol,
the Gambia River basin was also a major grain producing region.
Gambian farmers cultivated millet, maize, findo, basso and rice, according
to ethnic preferences.98 Until the 1830s the principal articles of export
from the Gambia had been beeswax, which accounted for 90 per cent
of the total export value in the region in 1817, followed by hides, gold,
gum and ivory.99 According to the Blue Books of Gambia, 1829 marked
the first year of the export of groundnuts from the region: it was only
four bushels of groundnuts, valued at £1, exported from the Gambia to
the Caribbean Islands. The following two years also witnessed exports of
small amounts of groundnuts from the Gambia to the Caribbean Islands,
but they disappeared in the statistical records for 1832 and 1833. In
1834, 213 baskets of groundnuts, valued at £23, were exported from
the Gambia: while Britain accounted for only one-tenth of the trade,
the majority of Gambian groundnuts went to ‘foreign destinations’.100
It seems likely that the groundnut exports from the Gambia for these
few years had been carried out for experimental purposes. In 1834 Foster
and Smith of London, one of the leading British companies engaged in
West African trade in the early to mid-nineteenth century, brought sam-
ples of Gambian nuts worth £2 back to London to explore the home
market. In the following year, a mill was constructed in London to crush
the groundnuts.101
From the mid-1830s to the 1840s, groundnut exports from the
Gambia took off, rising to 129 tonnes, worth £1558 in 1836, and reach-
ing 1210 tonnes, worth £15,209, in 1840. Thereafter, the export of the
item continued to increase and reached 6009 tonnes, worth £72,237, in
1850. Among the destinations for the exports, the United States offered
the largest market from 1837 to 1840.102 Both the repeal of the British
 2  WEST AFRICAN SEABORNE TRADE, 1750–1850 …  51

Navigation Acts in West Africa and the equalisation of import duties

on articles from Britain and foreign countries, which applied to Sierra
Leone in 1834 and the Gambia in 1835, encouraged New England and
New York merchants to actively participate in West African trade. In con-
trast to Britain and France, where groundnuts were in demand basically
for industrial purposes, in the United States groundnuts were regarded
as a foodstuff. However, the American trade with the Gambia was dis-
rupted by the 1842 tariff in the United States, which was aimed to pro-
tect American growers in the South. Thereafter, the major markets for
Gambian groundnuts shifted from the United States to France.103
As previously discussed, the growing demand for groundnuts was
due to the industrialisation in Western Europe. Like palm oil, ground-
nuts were also used to produce soap, which had been made from ani-
mal fats before. Although palm oil could be made into soft yellow soap
that was not popular among French consumers, French soap makers
mixed groundnut oil with olive oil to produce a soap that would attract
them. Meanwhile, groundnuts attracted French manufacturers, because
the product was one variety of nut, which was not taxed or only lightly
taxed, while the French government imposed high duties on most types
of oil nuts.104 Among the French ports, Marseille played a leading role
in the groundnut business: the Mediterranean port absorbed more than
95 per cent of all groundnuts exported from West Africa to France in the
late 1840s.105
John Gray pointed out a uniqueness in the Gambian groundnut pro-
duction and export among the histories of staple crops in British tropical
Africa. When the British founded Bathurst in 1816, the groundnut was
already being cultivated, but not for export. Neither did the British gov-
ernment promote groundnut production through official assistance, nor
did they support it in its early production phase. It was the Africans, not
the British, who cultivated the crop and that too without the knowledge
of the British administration during the period under review.106 In other
words, the growth of cash-crop production was due to the initiative of
Africans. Cultivation of groundnuts rather than grains was the result of
the new income opportunity that they saw.107
Kenneth Swindell and Alieu Jeng also have highlighted a significant
contribution by migrant labourers, such as the Mandinka or the Soninke
from interior regions, in the growth of groundnut production for
export. These migrant labourers known as ‘strange farmers’ frequently
stayed in the lower Gambia River basin for two or three years by hiring
52  K. KOBAYASHI

land from local chiefs in order to cultivate groundnuts for exchange

with cloth or other goods, with which they returned home.108 In 1852,
Governor Richard Graves MacDonnell recorded that at least one-third
of the groundnuts exported from the Gambia was produced by these
strange farmers thereby contributing to the growth of production that
was beyond local farmers.109
In addition to strange farmers, it is noteworthy that, as was the case
with palm oil production in the wet areas along the Gulf of Guinea,
groundnut production also stimulated the slave trade on the Upper
Guinea Coast. Bouët-Willaumez, Édouard, Governor of Senegal, offered
the case of the lower Melakori River basin in Sierra Leone that, during
the era of the legitimate commerce that replaced the Atlantic slave trade,
local people continued to purchase slaves brought from the interior for
groundnut cultivation in large quantities.110 Lieutenant Forbes also noted
in the late 1840s that thriving groundnut trade in Sierra Leone required
the Mandinka to secure domestic slaves to transport loads to the market,
and that for that purpose they assisted the Sherbro people to engage ‘in
their wars for a half-share of the prisoners, whom they make domestic
slaves’ or went to ‘as far as the foreign factories at Gallinas to purchase
domestic slaves for carrying on of this trade’.111 Thus, strange farmers,
as well as intensive use of slaves, enabled the take-off of the groundnut
production for export in the Upper Guinea Coast from the 1830s. These
cases also lend support to the criticism of the vent-for-surplus theory that
we have seen in the discussion on palm production for export along the
coasts bordering the Gulf of Guinea.
As a consequence of employing strange farmers, there was a change in
the medium of exchange in the Gambia River: the transition from assort-
ment bargaining to the French five-franc coin. The silver coin came to be
known locally as the dollar and had been legal tender in the Gambia from
1843.112 It should be noted that this change occurred even before the
beginning of colonial rule in the Gambia. Silver dollars helped increase
market transactions, since they were acceptable for virtually all goods and
services. Under such circumstances, as Hopkins argued, ‘African produc-
ers and traders had more freedom of choice: they were no longer tied to
the firm which bought their produce, and they enjoyed greater independ-
ence from rulers who previously had exercised a degree of central control
over export sales and over the distribution of foreign trade earnings’.113
In sum, groundnuts became one of the three major commodi-
ties exported from West Africa, following palm oil and gum arabic, in
 2  WEST AFRICAN SEABORNE TRADE, 1750–1850 …  53

response to demand in the industrialising West. Similar to the production

of palm, in contemporary West Africa, the expansion of groundnut pro-
duction for industrial input was also the initiative of Africans and wit-
nessed the absorption of slaves into the plantations. Strange farmers who
sought profits to purchase imported goods also made a large contribu-
tion in expanding the limits of the local production of cash crops and
thereby increasing the volume of groundnut exports towards the late
nineteenth century.

Imports into West Africa

Cotton Textiles
During the first half of the nineteenth century, the expansion of ‘legiti-
mate’ commerce shifted the terms of trade in favour of West Africa. This
shift enabled Africans to purchase imported goods, among which textiles
continued to be the largest share in imports into Atlantic Africa.114 This
section focuses on two groups of fabrics imported into West Africa in
the first half of the nineteenth century: English and Indian cotton tex-
tiles. Existing works have stressed the rapid expansion of the inflow of
English cotton textiles into West Africa owing to the industrialisation
in Lancashire.115 They have argued that the competitiveness of English
goods came to be superior to its rivals manufactured by Indian weavers
during the period under review. Notably, drawing on the British trade
statistics classified as ‘CUST 8’ and ‘CUST 10’ at the National Archives
in Kew, Joseph Inikori argued that ‘the trend from 1806 … is clear;
British cottons were decisively taking over the Western African market
… Thus, British cottons won a decisive victory over East India cottons in
Western Africa very early in the nineteenth century’.116
Inikori is right in that the British trade statistics show the rapid expan-
sion of English cotton goods into West African markets and a relative
stagnation of Indian cotton goods in the West African imports from
Britain in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. However, it is
important to note that the first quarter of the century was still the exper-
imental period for English manufactured cotton goods. Some types of
Indian goods such as chintz and romals were successfully imitated in
Lancashire, while other types such as blue bafts were not.117 More
importantly, as we will see later in this section, it is noteworthy that West
Africa also imported textiles from France in the early nineteenth century,
54  K. KOBAYASHI

which is completely missing from Inikori’s analysis. This section will

show that his argument needs firm qualification at least when it came to
Senegal.
Furthermore, CUST 10 presents more detailed information than
Inikori presented. First, the data of English cottons imported from
Britain into West Africa have sub-categories such as ‘white and plain
calicoes’, ‘printed and checked calicoes’, ‘plain muslins’, ‘printed and
checked muslins’ and ‘fustians’. The trade data of English cottons under
such sub-categories were available for the years from 1827 to 1850.
CUST 10 also reveals which regions of West Africa imported what types
of cotton textiles during that period.
Figure 2.5 presents the details of English cotton goods imported
from Britain to West Africa. As for constructing ‘West Africa’ as a region,
I take the data from the sub-units of the Cape Verde islands, Senegal,
the Gambia and Sierra Leone, the Windward Coast, the Cape Coast
Castle (or the Gold Coast) and the Volta River to the Cape of Good
Hope (or Western coast of Africa). The category of ‘Rio Volta to the
Cape of Good Hope’ does not include the Cape of Good Hope, and
thereby it means the coastal regions from the Bight of Benin to Angola.





































&DOLFRZKLWH &DOLFRSULQWHG 0XVOLQZKLWH

0XVOLQSULQWHG )XVWLDQ

Fig. 2.5  Imports of English cotton goods from Britain to West Africa,

1827–1850 (yards) (Source The National Archives [NAUK, Kew, the United
Kingdom], CUST 8/25-72)
 2  WEST AFRICAN SEABORNE TRADE, 1750–1850 …  55

Considering the increasing importance of palm oil trade from the Bights
of Benin and Biafra in the early nineteenth-century Anglo-West African
trade, it is fair to say that this category signifies mainly the Bights of
Benin and Biafra.
Calicoes, both plain and non-plain, accounted for more than 90 per
cent of total English cotton goods imported into West Africa, and almost
100 per cent after 1836. The dominance of these calicoes during this
period could be found in other regions of the world.118 In addition,
West Africa imported certain amounts of muslins, both plain and non-
plain, and fustians from Britain, although their amounts were negligible
and smaller than total amounts of Indian cotton textiles imported from
Britain to West Africa. Indeed, the British trade statistics even suggest
that the volume of these English goods did not increase in the second
quarter of the nineteenth century. Hence, English calicoes, in particu-
lar printed or painted ones, gained competitiveness in West Africa in the
same period, though this was not the case with other types of English
cotton goods.119
Furthermore, as mentioned above, the British trade statistics offer
information of regional differences of trade. Table 2.2 shows how much
each region accounted for in the imports of white calicoes from Britain
into Atlantic Africa. Coastal regions from the Volta River to the Cape of
Good Hope, mainly corresponding to the Bights of Benin and Biafra and
West-Central Africa, made up the largest proportion. Its contribution
to the imports of plain calicoes into West Africa increased from 40 per
cent in the late 1820s (except 1829) to 75 per cent in the six years until
1843. The Gambia and Sierra Leone ranked second in the second quar-
ter of the nineteenth century, on average at 34 per cent, and the Cape
Coast Castle followed at 11 per cent during this period. These three
coastal regions exported a large amount of palm oil and other products,
so white and plain calicoes would be exchanged for these commodities
on African coasts.
Table 2.3 shows the imports of printed and checked calicoes from
Britain into Atlantic Africa from 1827 to 1850. Similar to Table 2.2, the
Bights of Benin and Biafra and West-Central Africa made up the largest
proportion in the imports of these English products into Atlantic Africa
during this period, at an average of 47 per cent. The quantity rapidly
increased from 564,000 yards in 1830 to more than 11.5 million yards
in 1850. This increase was probably related to the fact that the Bight of
Biafra was the most important source of palm oil from West Africa, as we
Table 2.2  White calicoes imported from Britain to West Africa, 1827–1850

Cape Verde Senegal Gambia and Sierra Windward Coast Cape Coast Castle Western coast of West Africa (Total)
Islands Leone Africa

Yards Percent Yards Percent Yards Percent Yards Percent Yards Percent Yards Percent Yards Percent

1827 0 0 5100 5.6 34,509 37.9 680 0.7 22,337 24.5 28,400 31.2 91,026 100
56  K. KOBAYASHI

1828 60,930 31.5 0 0.0 21,471 11.1 0 0 18,220 9.4 93,064 48.0 193,685 100
1829 0 0 0 0.0 94,585 46.2 0 0 107,533 52.5 2688 1.3 204,806 100
1830 20,216 3.5 0 0.0 288,996 50.4 0 0 60,844 10.6 203,464 35.5 573,560 100
1831 0 0 0 0.0 190,919 31.8 0 0 90,577 15.1 319,032 53.1 600,528 100
1832 0 0 15,000 1.8 196,515 23.9 0 0 252,866 30.7 358,720 43.6 823,101 100
1833 0 0 14,000 1.6 189,242 22.2 0 0 22,524 2.6 625,996 74.5 851,762 100
1834 0 0 0 0.0 148,419 42.9 0 0 45,901 13.3 152,004 43.9 346,324 100
1835 0 0 0 0.0 190,302 48.0 0 0 36,943 9.3 169,430 42.7 396,675 100
1836 0 0 37,080 2.6 268,816 19.1 0 0 76,261 5.4 1,027,979 72.9 1,410,136 100
1837 0 0 1204 0.2 336,281 60.8 0 0 48,873 8.8 166,645 30.1 553,003 100
1838 0 0 0 0.3 648,197 37.3 0 0 85,499 4.9 1,005,984 57.8 1,739,680 100
1839 0 0 0 0.0 281,752 20.6 0 0 151,342 11.0 937,470 68.4 1,370,564 100
1840 52,924 4.4 0 0.0 216,209 18.0 0 0 58,853 4.9 875,400 72.7 1,203,386 100
1841 0 0 0 0.0 275,559 23.1 0 0 60,454 5.1 858,460 71.9 1,194,473 100
1842 0 0 0 0.0 392,549 9.4 0 0 18,847 0.4 3,747,540 90.1 4,158,936 100
1843 24,320 0.4 35,140 0.1 668,164 9.8 25,540 0 74,100 1.1 5,983,808 87.9 6,811,342 100
1844 27,922 1.5 0 0.0 552,915 28.8 0 0 1,018,062 53.1 318,750 16.6 1,917,649 100
1845 41,371 4.4 8100 0.9 582,586 62.4 0 0 205,230 22.0 96,002 10.3 933,289 100
1846 103,752 4.2 42,390 1.7 1,012,393 41.0 0 0 61,300 2.5 1,250,214 50.6 2,470,049 100
1847 112,096 5.0 239,080 10.8 1,210,425 54.5 0 0 123,516 5.6 536,020 24.1 2,221,137 100
1848 127,663 3.8 165,910 5.0 608,884 18.3 0 0 207,948 6.3 2,214,286 66.6 3,324,691 100
1849 66,220 2.6 255,547 10.0 676,749 26.6 0 0 291,187 11.4 1,258,332 49.4 2,548,035 100
1850 0 0 96 0.0 1,061,583 58.2 0 0 138,070 7.6 624,281 34.2 1,824,030 100

Source NAUK, CUST 8/25-72

Table 2.3  Printed calicoes imported from Britain to West Africa, 1827–1850

Cape Verde Senegal Gambia and Sierra Windward Coast Cape Coast Castle Western coast of West Africa (Total)
Islands Leone Africa

Yards Percent Yards Percent Yards Percent Yards Percent Yards Percent Yards Percent Yards Percent

1827 0 0 9613 1.1 345,675 40.8 118,981 14.0 224,645 26.5 148,151 17.5 847,065 100
1828 9518 0.7 0 0 228,592 17.3 202,721 15.4 507,646 38.5 369,225 28.0 1,317,702 100
1829 0 0 0 0 402,434 24.5 119,484 7.3 444,327 27.0 678,673 41.3 1,644,918 100
1830 0 0 0 0 533,211 28.4 103,482 5.5 679,235 36.1 564,389 30.0 1,880,317 100
1831 0 0 0 0 456,338 28.1 0 0 653,089 40.3 511,411 31.6 1,620,838 100
1832 0 0 0 0 871,388 30.6 132,000 4.6 614,515 21.6 1,230,024 43.2 2,847,927 100
1833 0 0 0 0 486,310 12.6 4320 0.1 1,374,631 35.6 1,990,955 51.6 3,856,216 100
1834 0 0 0 0 668,835 16.1 40,000 1.0 2,044,911 49.1 1,408,526 33.8 4,162,272 100
1835 0 0 0 0 734,990 35.2 0 0 148,943 7.1 1,202,678 57.6 2,086,611 100
1836 0 0 112,400 1.8 1,258,928 20.3 0 0 2,366,531 38.2 2,450,527 39.6 6,188,386 100
1837 0 0 0 0 1,308,701 30.0 0 0 1,679,422 38.5 1,327,198 30.4 4,360,321 100
1838 0 0 15,050 0.3 1,631,431 29.5 0 0 1,895,398 34.3 1,986,085 35.9 5,527,964 100
1839 0 0 0 0 1,489,556 19.2 0 0 2,616,247 33.7 3,668,878 47.2 7,774,681 100
1840 102,637 1.1 0 0 1,282,702 13.6 0 0 2,873,485 30.5 5,175,676 54.9 9,434,500 100
1841 92,849 1.3 0 0 1,293,358 17.8 0 0 2,935,086 40.4 2,939,415 40.5 7,260,708 100
1842 76,942 1.0 7003 0.1 1,740,889 22.0 39,105 0.5 1,724,092 21.8 4,329,415 54.7 7,917,234 100
1843 23,113 0.2 0 0 1,105,147 11.3 167,876 1.7 3,770,865 38.6 4,701,399 48.1 9,768,400 100
1844 17,570 0.2 7003 0.1 1,289,678 15.9 91,425 1.1 3,184,331 39.3 3,514,779 43.4 8,104,786 100
1845 15,051 0.1 14,230 0.2 2,170,266 20.7 66,635 0.6 3,146,786 30.0 5,071,249 48.4 10,474,217 100
1846 27,226 0.4 10,800 0.1 1,903,890 26.8 0 0 1,058,184 14.9 4,113,594 57.8 7,113,694 100
1847 64,224 0.6 8820 0.1 1,888,152 18.1 0 0 2,079,483 20.0 6,376,959 61.2 10,417,638 100
1848 58,360 0.5 90,060 0.8 1,194,082 10.4 0 0 2,028,150 17.7 8,112,228 70.6 11,482,880 100
1849 13,540 0.1 84,436 0.6 1,114,617 7.5 0 0 3,734,125 25.3 9,840,518 66.5 14,787,263 100
1850 0 0 0 0 1,259,371 8.4 0 0 2,232,809 14.8 11,564,397 76.8 15,056,577 100
2  WEST AFRICAN SEABORNE TRADE, 1750–1850 … 

Source NAUK, CUST 8/25-72

57
58  K. KOBAYASHI

have seen before. The Cape Coast Castle ranked second in the imports
of these types of English calicoes into Atlantic Africa. Its quantity more
than trebled in the two decades through 1850. The Gambia and Sierra
Leone also imported an increasing amount of these manufactured goods
from Britain from 533,000 yards in 1830 to 1.26 million yards in 1850.
From the above it is clear that West Africa imported a massive amount
of English cotton calicoes in the early nineteenth century. However, it
would be wrong to assume that Lancashire had produced cotton textiles
that were perceived to be of good quality right from the beginning of
the century. One report on the Gold Coast in 1842 indicated that the
cheapness of Lancashire goods reached the lowest among the African
community. It is noteworthy that the report itself did not mention
their quality.120 Indeed, as P. H. Lamb, Director of Northern Nigeria’s
Department of Agriculture, said in 1913, that consumers in northern
Nigeria preferred locally hand-woven textiles to ‘the cheaper but less
durable Lancashire cloth’,121 it would be fair to claim that Lancashire
goods became competitive in terms of cheapness, not in terms of quality,
throughout the period under study. The link between Lancashire goods
and non-affluent consumers suggests that the growth of ‘legitimate’
commerce allowed small-scale producers of palm oil and groundnuts to
purchase cheap English cotton goods.
In the 1810s the committee of the Company of Merchants Trading to
Africa investigated the state of the settlements and forts on the coast of
Africa, and the reports from the Governors at the Company’s forts bore
evidence to the fact that there were problems with the quality of English
cotton goods in West African markets. George Richardson, the Governor
at the Annamaboe fort on the Gold Coast, answered the following ques-
tions by the British commissioners on 29 May 1810 as follows:

Q. 44. What proportion of the goods chiefly demand among the natives, is
of English production or manufacture, and what foreign?
A. 44. Cloth of India manufacture is chiefly in demand; the Manchester
goods, and English iron and lead, find a market. I cannot say as to the
proportion of each, but the India goods have a preference, and are sold in
much greater quantities.
Q. 45. Is it probable that new English articles of trade could be advan-
tageously introduced; could they be made to supplant foreign articles, or
are the natives so much attached [to] old customs, as to render this change
hopeless?
 2  WEST AFRICAN SEABORNE TRADE, 1750–1850 …  59

A. 45. This change is hopeless, unless they were deprived of India

goods altogether.122

The Governor at Succondee, William Mollan, gave more detailed infor-

mation about the problem of English cotton goods. To the question on
the prospect of English cotton textiles mentioned above, his answer (on
20 August 1810) was:

Unless there were an entire prohibition to the importation of India

goods, the manufactures of Great Britain could not be introduced to sup-
plant foreign articles. Many attempts have been made at Manchester to
imitate the India fabric, but they appear to be chiefly defective in the col-
ours (some not being fixed) and in the strength of the cloth.123

As Mollan’s statement indicates, it was the quality of textiles that made

Indian cottons competitive against English manufacturers and continue
to find a market in West Africa after the British withdrawal from the slave
trade.124 The first decades of the nineteenth century would probably be
an experimental phase for English cotton textiles in West Africa. As we
have seen in Tables 2.2 and 2.3, increase in imports of these manufac-
tured items in the second quarter of the century could be in large part
explained by the development of ‘legitimate’ commerce, which enabled
even small-scale African traders to acquire these textiles and other goods
using cash-crop profits.
CUST 10 contains sub-categories of Indian cotton textiles imported
from Britain to West Africa. Piece goods of Indian cotton are largely clas-
sified into two: ‘white or plain’ and ‘dyed in India but not printed’.125
Figure 2.6 shows the imports of Indian cotton textiles from Britain to
West Africa between 1827 and 1850. As a whole, the imports of Indian
cotton goods into West Africa by way of Britain slightly decreased in this
period. This might be in part because English cotton goods gradually
replaced Indian textiles in West African markets. However, it is clear
from the statements of Richardson and Mollan that the persistence of
demand in West Africa for Indian cotton textiles was probably attributed
to the quality of Indian textiles that met with consumer tastes.
Figure 2.6 also suggests that, among the Indian cotton textiles, dyed
cloths were dominant in the West African import of such textiles from
Britain. The quantity fluctuated between 30,000 pieces and 88,000
pieces from 1827 to 1850. At the same time, West Africa seldom
60  K. KOBAYASHI

100,000
90,000
80,000
70,000
60,000
50,000
40,000
30,000
20,000
10,000
0

White or plain Dyed Total

Fig. 2.6  Imports of Indian cotton textiles from Britain to West Africa, 1827–
1850 (pieces) (Source NAUK, CUST 10/18-41)

imported more than 10,000 pieces of white cotton textiles manufactured

in India—from Britain—in a single year.
CUST 10 shows regional differences of the imports of Indian tex-
tiles from Britain into West Africa. While Tables 2.2 and 2.3 show that
Sierra Leone, the Cape Coast Castle and the coastal regions from the
Volta River to the Cape of Good Hope were three major West African
markets for English cotton goods from 1827 to 1850, Table 2.4 shows
that Sierra Leone offered the single largest West African market for
Indian dyed cotton goods. Their proportion increased from 50–60
per cent in the early 1830s to 80–99 per cent from the mid-1830s
onwards. Moreover, the import of Indian dyed cotton goods from
Britain into Sierra Leone relatively increased towards the middle of the
nineteenth century. Considering that Upper Guinea was a part of the
cloth-currency zone, these dyed textiles would probably be exchanged
for regional products such as timber, camwood, palm oil, groundnuts
and ginger.126
In order to measure the scale of the nineteenth-century imports of
Indian cotton textiles into West Africa in detail, it is absolutely neces-
sary to analyse French trade statistics as well as English sources. Indeed,
French statistics offer a different view of textile trade into West Africa
Table 2.4  Indian dyed cotton textiles imported from Britain to West Africa, 1827–1850

Senegambia Sierra Leone Windward Coast Cape Coast Castle Coastal regions from West Africa (Total)
the Volta River to the
Cape of Good Hope

Unit Pieces Percent Pieces Percent Pieces Percent Unit Percent Unit Percent Unit Percent

1827 0 0 27,490 44.6 1250 2.0 17,259 28.0 15,620 25.3 61,619 100
1828 3225 5 35,725 51.2 0 0 16,175 23.2 14,615 21.0 69,740 100
1829 0 0 50,790 57.8 0 0 14,822 16.9 22,306 25.4 87,918 100
1830 0 0 20,478 41.0 0 0 18,783 37.6 10,690 21.4 49,951 100
1831 0 0 25,558 61.6 0 0 5070 12.3 10,690 25.9 41,318 100
1832 0 0 24,263 66.5 0 0 3432 9.4 8798 24.1 36,493 100
1833 0 0 30,783 54.5 711 1.2 4534 8.0 20,475 36.2 56,503 100
1834 0 0 46,337 82.1 420 0.7 2527 4.5 7153 12.7 56,437 100
1835 240 0.8 27,162 91.1 0 0 1015 3.4 1401 4.7 29,818 100
1836 223 0.8 22,317 84.8 0 0 594 2.2 3172 12.1 26,306 100
1837 0 0 47,324 98.7 0 0 0 0 601 1.3 47,925 100
1838 0 0 40,820 93.1 180 0.4 0 0 2841 6.5 43,841 100
1839 0 0 42,575 90.8 120 0.3 10 0 4195 8.9 46,900 100
1840 0 0 43,542 92.2 0 0 510 1.1 3177 6.7 47,229 100
1841 0 0 39,646 81.1 0 0 1067 2.2 8162 16.7 48,875 100
1842 0 0 35,171 94.7 120 0.3 60 0.1 1783 4.8 37,134 100
1843 360 0.6 55,889 93.0 2809 4.7 0 0 1017 1.7 60,075 100
1844 0 0 48,521 99.6 180 0.4 0 0 0 0 48,701 100
1845 0 0 64,047 99.7 180 0.3 0 0 0 0 64,227 100
1846 19,602 23.0 46,478 54.5 0 0 240 0.3 18,893 22.2 85,213 100
1847 1200 2.3 48,247 94.1 0 0 60 0.1 1760 3.4 51,267 100
1848 1401 4.2 29,340 87.9 0 0 229 0.7 2400 7.2 33,370 100
1849 5261 13.0 34,516 85.1 0 0 20 0 780 1.9 40,577 100
1850 6977 0 30,843 98.3 0 0 120 0.4 420 1.3 38,360 100
2  WEST AFRICAN SEABORNE TRADE, 1750–1850 … 

Source NAUK, CUST 10/18-41

61
62  K. KOBAYASHI

than that which we have seen above. They show that Indian cotton tex-
tiles remained more competitive than European textiles in the imports
from France into Senegal during the first half of the nineteenth century
when other coastal regions of West Africa saw massive imports of English
cotton goods. In the total value of imports into Senegal, Indian cotton
textiles accounted for 50 per cent between 1820 and 1823 and 40 per
cent between 1824 and 1828.127 In the late 1830s and the late 1840s,
they accounted for 47 per cent and 37 per cent, respectively, while the
proportion of European textiles was 28 and 24 per cent.128 Therefore,
the aforementioned argument by Inikori that English cotton goods were
superior to Indian textiles in West Arica in the early nineteenth century
needs revision when it comes to Senegal.
Figure 2.7 reveals some divergence between the West African imports
of the Indian textiles from Britain and France from the late-1820s
to 1850. Indian dyed cotton textiles imported via France continually

350,000

300,000

250,000

200,000

150,000

100,000

50,000

-
1835

1844
1827
1828
1829
1830
1831
1832
1833
1834

1836
1837
1838
1839
1840
1841
1842
1843

1845
1846
1847
1848
1849
1850

France to West Africa France to Senegal Britain to West Africa

Fig. 2.7  West African imports of Indian dyed cotton textiles from Britain
and France, 1827–1850 (pieces) (Sources France: Fig. 2.4. For the 1832 data,
J.-P. Duchon-Doris, Commerce des toiles bleues dites guinées [Paris, 1842], appen-
dis. Britain: Fig. 2.6. Note The French official trade statistics somehow lack the
data for Senegal in 1832)
 2  WEST AFRICAN SEABORNE TRADE, 1750–1850 …  63

increased towards the mid-nineteenth century, from 56,000 pieces in

1828 to 216,000 pieces in 1848, while those imported via Britain stag-
nated (Fig. 2.6). It is remarkable that almost all of the Indian dyed
cotton textiles imported from France into West Africa were shipped
into Senegal. Additionally, the quantity of Indian dyed cotton tex-
tiles imported from France to Senegal was more than those brought
from Britain into West Africa for the most part since 1827. As will be
discussed in Chapter 3, the trade of Indian dyed cotton textiles, called
guinées, from France into Senegal was closely linked with the gum trade
in the Senegal River valley.
Table 2.5 shows the price of guinées per piece in France and Senegal
from 1817 to 1849. The price data for France are based on the 1842
pamphlet by J.-P. Duchon-Doris Jr., an entrepreneur from Bordeaux,
while those for Senegal (f.o.b.) are based on Webb’s 1985 article.
Neither source covers every year during the period, but indicates down-
ward trends in prices in both places. The price of guinées in France and
Senegal fluctuated from year to year and from place to place.129 The
drop in the price in France in the late 1830s is attributed to the 1838
prohibition in the Dutch colony of the Sunda Islands in Southeast
Asia from importing guinées from both British and French India. This
caused an over-supply of guinées into the Bourbon Islands, France and
Senegal.130
The guinée price varied in large part by market conditions of the gum
trade in Senegal. According to James Webb, because desert harvesters
did not understand gum tree growth properly, and because it took one
to two years for an order for guinées to arrive in Saint Louis, over-supply
of guinées would occur. In such cases French merchants turned to dump-
ing guinées in Senegal.131 After the good harvesting years of the mid-
1830s, guinées reached saturation in the markets along the Senegal River
valley for some years after 1838, leading to a relative increase of the gum
price in Senegal. Correspondence between the Minister of the Navy and
the Colonies in Paris and the Governor in Saint Louis recorded that
the exchange rate between a piece of guinée and gum arabic around the
lower Senegal River fell from 40 livres (15–20 kilograms) of gum arabic
per piece of guinée in June 1839 to 27 livres in May 1840.132 Such a
commercial scenario had a significant implication for French merchants
and Senegalese middlemen and brought institutional changes to the gum
trade in the 1840s, as we will see in Chapter 5.
64  K. KOBAYASHI

Table 2.5  Prices of
Year France Senegal (f.o.b.)
guinées in France and
Senegal, 1817–1849 1817 40–45 N/A
(French francs) 1818 30–35
1819
1820
1821 51
1822 N/A
1823 25–28
1824
1825 35
1826 N/A
1827 15–18
1828
1829
1830 21–25
1831 12–15 20
1832 15–18 17.5
1833
1834
1835 N/A
1836
1837
1838 16–17
1839 8–11 N/A
1840 12
1841 N/A
1842
1843 N/A 13–14
1844 13
1849 13.5

Sources France: Duchon-Doris, Commerce, pp. 16–17. Senegal:

James L. A. Webb, Jr., ‘The Trade in Gum Arabic: Prelude to French
Conquest in Senegal’, Journal of African History 26/2 (1985): 162
f.o.b. Freight On Board

Cowries
Apart from Indian cotton textiles, cowrie shells from the Maldives—
islands in the Indian Ocean—also show continuity in the south-south
trade connections from the eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century.
Cowrie shells functioned as a currency in many areas of West Africa until
the early colonial period. Those from the Maldives, called cypraera mon-
eta, which means cowrie money, were used as small change for transac-
tions in West Africa, in particular the Central Soudan, in the east, the
 2  WEST AFRICAN SEABORNE TRADE, 1750–1850 …  65

southern Sahara Desert or present-day northern Niger in the north,

Songhay on the Niger River in the west, and the confluence of the Niger
and Benue Rivers in the south.133
Although the origin of shell money in the Central Soudan is not yet
clear, the region had already absorbed cowries overland via the Sahara
Desert from North Africa as early as the eleventh century. These shells
served as a currency in the earlier empires of Ghana, Mali and Songhay,
whose economic development was closely tied with the control of the
trans-Saharan caravan trade with North Africa.134 According to Paul
Lovejoy, the collapse of Songhay in the late sixteenth century brought
to the area much slower economic development or even depression.
However, the circulating volume of cowrie shells reached an unprec-
edented level in the eighteenth century in the Central Soudan when it
experienced heightened commercial activity. The major development in
this century was that, along with the Atlantic slave trade, the southern
coasts of West Africa became a major source of cowries for many parts of
West Africa, except for the Upper Niger basin which was supplied from
Senegambia.135
It was the Portuguese who first established the triangular trade of
cowries from the Maldives via Europe into West Africa in the early six-
teenth century. Through this shipping network which was later followed
by the Dutch and English in the seventeenth century, cowries were car-
ried as ballast into Atlantic Africa, whence they were circulated inland
as a currency.136 Both the Guinea Coast and the Niger River continued
to be important channels for cowries to enter into interior areas of West
Africa during the transition from the Atlantic slave trade to ‘legitimate’
commerce in the early nineteenth century. In the meantime, the expan-
sion of palm oil trade in the Bights of Biafra and Benin turned Europe’s
attention towards East Africa as an alternative source of cowries from the
mid-1840s.137
Lovejoy argued that cowrie shells were ‘an ideal currency’ for cer-
tain characteristics, a chief reason being that they were not easily avail-
able in the region and also that they could not be counterfeited.138
Indeed, cowries were used mainly as a medium of exchange for small
market transactions; in some regions they were also used as bride-
money and funeral offerings and for ritual or magical purposes.139
Yet, cowries had some problems as a currency. Frederick Lugard, in
his Political Memoranda dated 1905, commented on their problems,
namely ‘(a) the bulk and weight and the great time taken in counting;
66  K. KOBAYASHI

700

600

500

400

300

200

100

0
1751
1754
1757
1760
1763
1766
1769
1772
1775
1778
1781
1784
1787
1790
1793
1796
1799
1802
1805
1808
1811
1814
1817
1820
1823
1826
1829
1832
1835
1838
1841
1844
1847
1850
Fig. 2.8  West African imports of cowrie shells from Britain, 1751–1850
(tonnes) (Source Jan Hogendorn and Marion Johnson, The Shell Money of the
Slave Trade [Cambridge University Press, 1986], pp. 58–60, 67. Note Records
for 1813 destroyed by fire)

(b) the wastage involved by breakage, leakage of bags, etc.; and (c) its
fluctuating value’.140 Marion Johnson also noted that shells were ‘always
cumbersome to carry, and increasingly so as their value declined in the
nineteenth century’ and argued that the most important use of cowries
may have been as market currencies that facilitated exchange within the
market rather than transport from one market to another. Furthermore,
there were instances where cowries were used as a unit of account.
Literate merchants kept detailed accounts in terms of cowries without
handling actual cowries in the market transaction.141
Figure 2.8 shows the time series of cowrie imports from Britain into
West Africa from 1751 to 1850. The data, based on British trade sta-
tistics, are found in the 1986 book by Jan Hogendorn and Marion
Johnson. Though they discussed cowrie transactions during the eight-
eenth-century Atlantic slave trade and that of the nineteenth-century
palm oil trade separately, Fig. 2.8 combines both data to give a clear
picture of the impact the British abolition had on the British shipping
of cowries into West Africa from 1808 to 1818. The annual average of
the imports from 1800 to 1807 reached 75 tonnes, which was more
than double for the years from 1791 to 1798. The first decade after
 2  WEST AFRICAN SEABORNE TRADE, 1750–1850 …  67

the British withdrawal from the slave trade saw a depression in cowrie
imports from Britain to West Africa. The annual average of amounts was
only 4.7 tonnes, which was almost 16 per cent of the amounts for the
years from 1800 to 1807.142
However, Fig. 2.8 shows a revival of cowrie imports from Britain
from around 1820, followed by rapid growth in the 1830s and 1840s.
These expansions were linked to the fact that West Africa became the
main source of palm oil for industrialising Britain. More importantly, it is
remarkable that the scale of cowrie imports from the mid-1830s onwards
was larger than that before 1807. In other words, Fig. 2.8 indicates the
significant scale of the palm oil trade carried out by the British during
this period, and that development of palm oil trade, stimulated by the
British Industrial Revolution, reinforced the south-south trade connec-
tion even after abolition. The import scale reached an unprecedented
level of 367 tonnes per annum from 1841 to 1850; 1845 was the peak
year of cowrie imports from Britain in the first half of the century, at 628
tonnes.143
Brodie Cruickshank, a British member of the legislative council on the
Cape Coast Castle, noted the linkage between the cowrie trade and the
palm oil trade:

The introduction of the cowrie-shell and its application to this purpose

[utility as exchange medium] supplied the desideratum necessary for the
prosecution of the trade in palm-oil, the supply of which is found to fluc-
tuate according to the supply of the cowries. If these have been exhausted
in the stores of the merchants, no oil is brought to the market unless in
such small quantities as may be required for immediate consumption; and
although the manufacture of oil may go on in the meantime, in the expec-
tation of new importations of cowries, yet if these be long delayed, the
activity of the labourer slackens and finally ceases; the object of his labour
being to obtain what to him is tantamount to ready cash, which he can
apply in any manner he think fit.144

A link of this kind was also found in the participation of small-scale pro-
ducers including women and slaves in the palm oil trade. As we have
seen earlier in this chapter, unlike the slave trade, palm production did
not require much capital and hence palm oil could be sold even in small
quantities in exchange for cowries. Robin Law pointed out that cow-
rie shells were ‘usually paid out in bulk (by weight or measure)’ in the
slave trade, though they were ‘commonly counted out’ in the oil trade.
68  K. KOBAYASHI

Law also cited an account by Archibald Ridgway on Whydah to show

‘a number of women who were occupied in counting out a cask of
cowries’. The British naval officer Frederick Forbes also recorded that
‘dozens of his own slaves were counting out cowries to pay for the
produce’.145
In sum, the West African cowrie trade oscillated according to the
decline of the transatlantic slave trade and the expansion of ‘legitimate’
commerce from 1750 to 1850. The shells from the Indian Ocean played
a money role both in the slave trade and in the palm oil trade, and its
function as small change played a significant role in the latter trade,
as small-scale producers were able to participate in the market with
small amounts of palm oil to be exchanged for cowries as well as other
imports. The palm oil–cowrie exchange contributed to the revival of a
south-south economic linkage during the early nineteenth century.

Conclusion
The century up to 1850 was a period of transformation in West Africa,
both on the coast and in the interior. A jihad movement began in the
Senegal River Valley, partly in response to the Atlantic slave trade, and
spread towards the Central Soudan in the course of the eighteenth
century. With the abolition of the slave trade and industrialisation
in the West, palm oil, gum arabic and groundnuts became new leading
exports from West Africa during the first half of the nineteenth century.
In spite of the commercial transition, European merchants contin-
ued to bring what African consumers coveted. Among the imports into
West Africa, this half-century witnessed a massive inflow of Lancashire
calicoes, except for Senegal, where Indian dyed cotton textiles remained
among the most important articles to be exchanged for gum arabic in
local transactions (Fig. 2.7). This is a case of the continued significance
of the south-south trade connection that contributed to the develop-
ment of West African overseas trade tied with industrialisation in Western
Europe during this period. Why local consumers in Senegal continued to
prefer South Asian textiles, not European textiles, will be the main focus
of discussion in Chapter 3.
This chapter has also highlighted the importance of the south-south
trade connection through the cowrie trade. The growing demand for
palm oil in industrialising Britain triggered the boom of the cowrie
trade in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, and the cowrie
 2  WEST AFRICAN SEABORNE TRADE, 1750–1850 …  69

trade during this period was by far larger than when the British carried
out the Atlantic slave trade. Thus, the transition from the slave trade to
‘legitimate’ commerce did not cut out the south-south trade connec-
tion. Rather, the development of the palm oil trade, stimulated by the
Industrial Revolution, revived and even reinforced the south-south trade
connection of cowries (Fig. 2.8) or at least until the inflation of cowries
occurred in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Notes
1. Robin Law, ‘The Historiography of the Commercial Transition in
Nineteenth-Century West Africa’, in Toyin Falola, ed., African
Historiography: Essays in Honour of Jacob Ade Ajayi (Harlow: Longman,
1993), pp. 91–115; Robin Law, ‘Introduction’, in Robin Law, ed.,
From Slave Trade to ‘Legitimate’ Commerce: The Commercial Transition
in Nineteenth-Century West Africa (Cambridge University Press, 1995),
pp. 1, 26; David Northrup, ‘The Compatibility of the Slave and Palm
Oil Trades in the Bight of Biafra’, Journal of African History 17/3
(1976): 353–64; Elisée Soumonni, ‘The Compatibility of the Slave and
Palm Oil Trades in Dahomey, 1818–1858’, in Law, ed., ‘Legitimate’
Commerce, pp. 78–92; Christopher Leslie Brown, ‘The Origins of
“Legitimate Commerce”’, in Robin Law, Suzanne Schwarz, and Silke
Strickrodt, eds., Commercial Agriculture, the Slave Trade & Slavery in
Atlantic Africa (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2013), pp. 145–6,
151; J. E. Inikori, ‘The Economic Impact of the 1807 British Abolition
of the Transatlantic Slave Trade’, in Robin Law, Toyin Falola, and Matt
D. Childs, eds., The Changing Worlds of Atlantic Africa: Essays in Honor
of Robin Law (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2009), pp.
163–82.
2. Allan McPhee, The Economic Revolution in British West Africa (Second
Edition, London: Frank Cass, 1971), pp. 30–1.
3. S. M. X. Golberry, Travels in Africa, Vol. 1, trans. W. Mudford
(London, 1803), p. 138; Geneviève Désiré-Vuillemin, ‘Un commerce
qui meurt: la traite de la gomme dans les escales du Sénégal’, Cahiers
d’outre-mer 17 (1952): 90.
4. C. W. Newbury, ‘Credit in Early Nineteenth Century West African
Trade’, Journal of African History 13/1 (1972): 83–4.
5. A. J. H. Latham, Old Calabar, 1600–1891: The Impact of the
International Economy upon a Traditional Society (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1973); Martin Lynn, Commerce and Economic Change in
West Africa: Palm Oil Trade in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge
University Press, 1997).
70  K. KOBAYASHI

6. James L. A. Webb, Jr., ‘The Trade in Gum Arabic: Prelude to French

Conquest in Senegal’, Journal of African History 26/2 (1985): 162.
7. Jan Hogendorn and Marion Johnson, The Shell Money of the Slave Trade
(Cambridge University Press, 1986).
8. Joseph E. Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A
Study in International Trade and Development (Cambridge University
Press, 2002), p. 444.
9. A. G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (London: Longman,
1973), p. 105.
10. Patrick Manning, Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental, and
African Slave Trades (Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 21.
11.  Gareth Austin, ‘Resources, Techniques, and Strategies South of the
Sahara: Revising the Factor Endowments Perspective on African
Economic Development, 1500–2000’, Economic History Review 61/3
(2008): 587–624.
12.  Klas Rönnbäck and Dimitrios Theodoridis, ‘African Agricultural
Productivity and the Transatlantic Slave Trade: Evidence from
Senegambia in the Nineteenth Century’, Economic History Review
72/1 (2019): 209–32.
13.  Voyages Database. 2009. ‘Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
Database (TSTD)’. http://www.slavevoyages.org. Accessed 23 March
2015.
14. TSTD. See also Gareth Austin, ‘Commercial Agriculture and the Ending
of Slave-Trading and Slavery in West Africa, 1780s–1920s’, in Law,
Schwarz, and Strickrodt, eds., Commercial Agriculture, pp. 243–65.
15. On the importance of the Bight of Biafra in the British slave trade, see
Paul E. Lovejoy and David Richardson, ‘Trust, Pawnship, and Atlantic
History: The Institutional Foundations of the Old Calabar Slave
Trade’, American Historical Review 104/2 (1999): 333–55; Paul E.
Lovejoy and David Richardson, ‘“This Horrid Hole”: Royal Authority,
Commerce and Credit at Bonny, 1690–1840’, Journal of African
History 45/3 (2004): 363–92.
16. TSTD.
17. Paul E. Lovejoy, Jihad in West Africa During the Age of Revolutions
(Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2016), p. 133.
18.  David Robinson, ‘Revolutions in the Western Sudan’, in Nahemia
Levtzion and Randall L. Pouwels, eds., The History of Islam in Africa
(Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2000), p. 131.
19. Boubacar Barry, Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade, trans. Ayi
Kwei Armah (Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 50–4; David
Robinson, ‘The Islamic Revolution of Futa Toro’, International
Journal of African Historical Studies 8/2 (1975): 185. It is true that
 2  WEST AFRICAN SEABORNE TRADE, 1750–1850 …  71

the Almoravid movement in the eleventh century was an earlier case of

jihad in the history of West Africa, but as David Robinson noted, ‘it did
not have a lasting impact in most areas and among most societies’. By
contrast, as discussed in this chapter, Nasir al-Din’s jihad had a lasting
impact in the region. Robinson, ‘Revolutions’, p. 132.
20. Almami is a Pularised form of the Arabic imam. Barry, Senegambia,
pp. 94–102; Robinson, ‘Revolutions’, pp. 133–5; Philip D. Curtin,
‘Jihad in West Africa: Early Phases and Inter-relations in Mauritania
and Senegal’, Journal of African History 12/1 (1971): 11–24; Michael
A. Gomez, Pragmatism in the Age of Jihad: The Precolonial State
of Bundu (Cambridge University Press, 1992); Lovejoy, Jihad, pp.
40–1; Ghislaine Lydon, On Trans-Saharan Trails: Islamic Law, Trade
Networks, and Cross-Cultural Exchange in Nineteenth-Century Western
Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 10, 93–4.
21. Barry, Senegambia; Robinson, ‘Revolutions’, pp. 133–5; Lovejoy, Jihad,
pp. 41–2, 145.
22. Toby Green, ‘Dimensions of Historical Ethnicity in the Guinea-Bissau
Region’, in Patrick Chabal and Toby Green, eds., Guinea-Bissau: Micro-
State to ‘Narco-State’ (London, C. Hurst & Co., 2016), p. 29.
23. Barry, Senegambia, p. 98.
24. Philip D. Curtin, Economic Change in Precolonial Africa: Senegambia in
the Era of the Slave Trade, Vol. 2 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1975), pp. 4–5; James L. A. Webb, Jr., Desert Frontier: Ecological
and Economic Change Along the Western Sahel, 1600–1850 (Madison,
WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995).
25. E. Bouët-Willaumes, Commerce et traite des noirs aux cotês occiden-
tales d’Afrique (Paris, 1848), p. 34; Barry, Senegambia, pp. 102–6;
Robinson, ‘Revolutions’, pp. 135–7; Robinson, ‘Futa Toro’; Oumar
Kane, La première hégémonie peule: le Fuuta Tooro de Koli Tengella à
Almaami Abdul (Paris and Dakar: Karthala—Presses Universitaires de
Dakar, 2004), pp. 457–95; Lovejoy, Jihad, p. 44.
26. Gomez, Pragmatism, p. 110; Lovejoy, Jihad, p. 45.
27. Lovejoy, Jihad, pp. 45–7; Ousmane Oumar Kane, Beyond Timbuktu: An
Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2016), pp. 71–2.
28. Robinson, ‘Revolutions’, pp. 137–9; Lovejoy, Jihad, pp. 68–101.
29. Paul E. Lovejoy, ‘Interregional Monetary Flows in the Precolonial Trade
of Nigeria’, Journal of African History 15/4 (1974): 571–5; Robinson,
‘Revolutions’, p. 138.
30. Heinrich Barth, Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa:
Including Accounts of Tripoli, the Sahara, the Remarkable Kingdom of
Bornu, and the Countries Around Lake Chad (London: Ward, Lock
 72  K. KOBAYASHI

& Co., 1890, originally published in 1857–1858), pp. 300–2; Phillip

Shea, ‘The Development of an Export Oriented Dyed Cloth Industry in
Kano Emirate in the Nineteenth Century’ (PhD Dissertation, University
of Wisconsin, 1975); Marisa Candotti, ‘The Hausa Textile Industry:
Origins and Development in the Precolonial Period’, in Anne Haour
and Benedetta Rossi, eds., Being and Becoming Hausa: Interdisciplinary
Perspectives (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 187–211.
31. Lovejoy, ‘Interregional Monetary Flows’, p. 573.
32. Lovejoy, Jihad, p. 31. On the slave trade from West-Central Africa,
see Daniel B. Domingues da Silva, The Atlantic Slave Trade from West
Central Africa 1780–1867 (Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp.
16–37.
33. Lynn, Commerce, pp. 1–2, 34–5.
34. McPhee, Economic Revolution, pp. 30–1.
35. Lynn, Commerce, pp. 16–7.
36. Whether palm oil was soft or hard depended on its FFA. The former was
low in FFA, while the latter was high. Lynn, Commerce, pp. 46–7.
37. Braithwaite Poole, The Commerce of Liverpool (London and Liverpool,
1854), p. 114; McPhee, Economic Revolution, pp. 30–1.
38. Lynn, Commerce, pp. 46–8.
39. Lynn, Commerce, pp. 48–9.
40. Lynn, Commerce, p. 49.
41. Poole, The Commerce of Liverpool, p. 114.
42. Lynn, Commerce, pp. 15–6.
43. Lynn, Commerce, p. 21.
44. Lynn, Commerce, p. 29.
45. Lynn, Commerce, pp. 21–3. On the Gold Coast, see James Sanders,
‘Palm Oil Production on the Gold Coast in the Aftermath of the Slave
Trade: A Case Study of the Fante’, International Journal of African
Historical Studies 15/1 (1982): 49–63.
46. Lynn, Commerce, p. 26. On the palm oil trade around the Bight of
Benin, see Patrick Manning, Slavery, Colonialism and Economic Growth
in Dahomey, 1640–1960 (Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 12–9;
Robin Law, Ouidah: The Social History of a West African Slaving ‘Port’
1727–1892 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2004), Chapter 6;
Silke Strickrodt, Afro-European Trade in the Atlantic World: the Western
Slave Coast, c. 1550–c. 1885 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2015),
Chapter 6.
47. Latham, Old Calabar, pp. 57–8. On John Tobin and his family, see
Chapter 5.
48. Lynn, Commerce, p. 61; David A. Northrup, Trade Without Rulers:
Pre-colonial Economic Development in South-Eastern Nigeria (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1978), pp. 190–1.
 2  WEST AFRICAN SEABORNE TRADE, 1750–1850 …  73

49. As Myint noted, it was John Stuart Mill who labelled Smith’s the-
ory ‘vent-for-surplus’ theory. Hla Myint, ‘The “Classical Theory” of
International Trade and the Underdeveloped Countries’, Economic
Journal 68/270 (1958): 317–37.
50. Cited from Susan Martin, Palm Oil and Protest: An Economic History
of the Ngwa Region, South-Eastern Nigeria, 1800–1980 (Cambridge
University Press, 1988), p. 6.
51. Hopkins, Economic History, pp. 231–6; Jan S. Hogendorn, ‘The Vent
for Surplus Model and African Cash Agriculture to 1914’, Savanna,
5/1 (1976): 15–28; W. M. Freund and R. W. Shenton, ‘“Vent-for
Surplus” Theory and the Economic History of West Africa’, Savanna
6/2 (1977): 191–6; Jan S. Hogendorn, ‘Vent-for-Surplus Theory:
A Reply’, Savanna 6/2 (1977): 196–9; Martin, Palm Oil,
pp. 2–11. For the most recent survey of the debate about the ‘vent-for-
surplus’ model in Africa, see Gareth Austin, ‘Explaining and Evaluating
the Cash Crop Revolution in the “Peasant” Colonies of Tropical
Africa, ca. 1890–ca. 1930: Beyond “Vent for Surplus”’, in Emmanuel
Akyeampong, Robert H. Bates, Nathan Nunn, and James Robinson,
eds., Africa’s Development in Historical Perspective (Cambridge
University Press, 2014), pp. 295–320.
52. Martin, Palm Oil, pp. 33–4, 138.
53. John Tosh, ‘The Cash-Crop Revolution in Tropical Africa: An
Agricultural Reappraisal’, African Affairs 79/314 (1980): 91–4;
Kenneth Swindell and Alieu Jeng, Migrants, Credit, and Climate: The
Gambian Groundnut Trade, 1834–1934 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 16–8.
54. Gareth Austin, ‘Vent for Surplus or Productivity Breakthrough? The
Ghanaian Cocoa Take-Off, c. 1890–1936’, Economic History Review
67/4 (2014): 1055–6; Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A
History of Slavery in Africa (Third Edition, Cambridge University Press,
2012), pp. 163–71.
55. This point raises a question about the assumption of what Robert
Szereszewski called ‘a large reserve of leisure’ as well. Austin, ‘Vent
for Surplus’, pp. 1055–6; Robert Szereszewski, Structural Changes in
the Economy of Ghana, 1891–1911 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson,
1965), p. 21.
56. The trend of slave prices in Angola was different from West Africa during
the period observed by Lovejoy and Richardson. Therefore, the discus-
sion here is the case of West Africa. Paul Lovejoy and David Richardson,
‘British Abolition and its Impact on Slave Prices along the Atlantic coast
of Africa, 1783–1850’, Journal of Economic History 55/1 (1995): 108,
113; Martin A. Klein, Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa
(Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 41.
 74  K. KOBAYASHI

57. Lovejoy, ‘Interregional Monetary Flows’, pp. 574–5.

58. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery, p. 144.
59. Susan Martin, ‘Slaves, Igbo Women and Palm Oil in the Nineteenth
Century’, in Law, ed., ‘Legitimate’ Commerce, pp. 181–3.
60. Robin Law, ‘“Legitimate” Trade and Gender Relations in Yorubaland
and Dahomey’, in Law, ed., ‘Legitimate’ Commerce, p. 202.
61. Martin, Palm Oil, pp. 47–8.
62. Hopkins, Economic History, pp. 125–6.
63. Hopkins, Economic History, pp. 144–5; Martin A. Klein, Islam and
Imperialism in Senegal: Sine-Saloum, 1847–1914 (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1968), pp. 36–8; Martin A. Klein, ‘Social and
Economic Factors in the Muslim Revolution in Senegambia’, Journal of
African History 13/3 (1972): 424.
64. Golberry, Travels in Africa, Vol. 1, p. 138.
65. Jutta Wimmler, ‘Material Exchange as Cultural Exchange: The
Example of West African Products in Late 17th and Early 18th-
Century France’, in Veronika Hyden-Hanscho, Renate Pieper, and
Werner Stangl, eds., Cultural Exchange and Consumption Patterns
in the Age of Enlightenment: Europe and the Atlantic World (Bochum:
Winkler, 2013), p. 142.
66. Golberry, Travels in Africa, Vol. 1, pp. 138–9; P. Bellouard, ‘La Gomme
Arabique en A.O.F.’, Bois et Foréts des Tropiques 9 (1947): 4; Curtin,
Economic Change, Vol. 1, pp. 215–6; Jutta Wimmler, The Sun King’s
Atlantic: Drugs, Demons and Dyestuffs in the Atlantic World, 1640–1730
(Leiden: Brill, 2017), pp. 47–9.
67. Golberry, Travels in Africa, Vol. 1, pp. 96, 138–9; Wimmler, The Sun
King’s Atlantic, p. 49; António de Almeida Mendes, ‘Slavery, Society,
and the First Steps towards an Atlantic Revolution in Western Africa
(Fifteenth–Sixteenth Centuries)’, trans. Toby Green, in Toby Green,
ed., Brokers of Change: Atlantic Commerce and Cultures in Pre-colonial
Western Africa (Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 239–57; Filipa
Ribeiro da Silva, ‘African Islands and the Formation of the Dutch
Atlantic Economy: Arguin, Gorée, Cape Verde and São Tomé, 1590–
1670’, International Journal of Maritime History 26/3 (2014): 554–7.
68. Webb, ‘The Trade in Gum Arabic’, p. 153.
69. James F. Searing, West African Slavery and Atlantic Commerce
(Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 166.
70. Georges Hardy, La mise en valeur du Sénégal de 1817 à 1854 (Paris:
Émile Larose, 1921), p. 255. My translation.
71. Curtin, Economic Change, Vol. 1, pp. 102, 104; Barry, Senegambia, p. 47.
72. Ibrahima Thioub, ‘L’esclavage à Saint-Louis du Sénégal au xviiie–xixe
siècle’, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin: Jahrbuch 2008/2009 (2010): 337.
 2  WEST AFRICAN SEABORNE TRADE, 1750–1850 …  75

73. André Delcourt, La France et les établissements français au Sénégal entre

1713 et 1763 (Dakar: IFAN, 1952); Barry, Senegambia, pp. 69–71;
Wimmler, The Sun King’s Atlantic, pp. 49–50; Maxine Berg, ‘In
Pursuit of Luxury: Global History and British Consumer Goods in the
Eighteenth Century’, Past and Present 182 (2004): 137.
74. Curtin, Economic Change, Vol. 1, pp. 105, 109.
75. James F. Searing, ‘The Seven Years’ War in West Africa: The End
of Company Rule and the Emergence of the Habitants’, in Mark H.
Danley and Patrick J. Speelman, eds., The Seven Years’ War: Global Views
(Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 263–6.
76. Andrew F. Clarke and Lucie Colvin Philips, Historical Dictionary of
Senegal (Second Edition, London and Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press,
1994), pp. 231–3.
77. Curtin, Economic Change, Vol. 1, pp. 110–2; J. E. Inikori, ‘Gentlemanly
Capitalism and Imperialism in West Africa: Great Britain and
Senegambia in the Eighteenth Century’, in Toyin Falola and Emily
Brownell, eds., Africa, Empire and Globalization: Essays in Honor of A.
G. Hopkins (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2011), p. 214.
78. Clarke and Philips, Historical Dictionary, pp. 231–3; Martin A. Klein,
‘Slaves, Gum, and Peanuts: Adaptation to the End of the Slave Trade
in Senegal, 1817–48’, William and Mary Quarterly 66/4 (2009):
895–914.
79. Hardy, La mise, pp. 253–5. The proximate causes of the agricultural pro-
ject were the loss of Saint Domingue and the suppression of the slave
trade. As for the causes for failure of the project, the French faced ‘the
pressure from neighboring peoples, the difficulties involved in the trans-
fer of plantations, the difficulties in hiring a labor force, and the resistance
of former slave traders from the post of Saint-Louis’. Boubacar Barry,
The Kingdom of Waalo: Senegal before the Conquest (New York: Diasporic
Africa Press, 2012), pp. 136, 151–61, 219, citation from p. 151.
80. Curtin, Economic Change, Vol. 2, pp. 96–7. Curtin noted that the infor-
mation on the quantity of gum arabic from the Senegal River region
does not necessarily reflect actual exports. Some numbers are based on
expectations by the authors of the records he used. Also, his data seem
to suggest that the years 1718 and 1750 were exceptional, as each year
exported 2200 tonnes and 1028 tonnes of gum, respectively. At least,
as he admitted, the former was based on expectation; not actual scale.
Therefore, I ignore these numbers.
81. Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer (ANOM, Aix-en-Provence, France),
Sénégal XIII, Dossier 33a: Correspondance du Ministère de l’Agricul-
ture et du Commerce à l’Amiral, Paris, 3 December 1839.
 76  K. KOBAYASHI

82. Bernard Schnapper, ‘La fin du régime de l’exclusif: le commerce étranger

dans les possessions françaises d’Afrique tropicale (1817–1870)’,
Annales Africaines (1959): 149–199. At least during the years from
1831 and 1850, the French trade statistics show that there was no for-
eign vessel entering and leaving Senegal. France. Direction générale des
douanes, Tableau général du commerce de la France avec ses colonies et les
puissances étrangères (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1831–1851).
83. J.-P. Duchon-Doris, Commerce des toiles bleues dites guinées (Paris, 1842),
p. 17.
84. ANOM, Sénégal XIII, Dossier 27a: ‘Notes annexées à l’Etat de com-
merce de Saint Louis (Sénégal) pour l’année 1843’.
85. Webb, ‘The Trade in Gum Arabic’, p. 150.
86. Webb, ‘The Trade in Gum Arabic’, p. 153–4.
87. Anne Raffenel, Nouveau voyage dans le pays des nègres, Vol. 1 (Paris,
1856), p. 79; Curtin, Economic Change, Vol. 1, p. 216.
88. Webb, ‘The Trade in Gum Arabic’, p. 153.
89. Searing, West African Slavery, p. 171.
90. Searing, West African Slavery, p. 169.
91. Searing, West African Slavery, p. 171. On habitants, see Chapter 3.
92. J. M. Gray, A History of the Gambia (New Edition, London: Frank Cass,
1966), p. 408; Barry, The Kingdom of Waalo, pp. 187–8.
93. Michael D. Marcson, ‘European-African Interaction in the Precolonial
Period: Saint Louis, Senegal, 1758–1854’ (PhD Dissertation, Princeton
University, 1976), pp. 162–8. However, Searing noted that these num-
bers underestimate the real population because free African migrants are
not counted. Searing, West African Slavery, p. 165.
94. Searing, West African Slavery, pp. 165–7.
95. Upper Guinea is the region that stretches from the Senegal River in the
north to Sierra Leone in the south.
96. The Portuguese introduced to the Gambia orange, lime and papaw
as well. Gray, Gambia, p. 15; George E. Brooks, ‘Peanuts and
Colonialism: Consequences of the Commercialization of Peanuts in
West Africa, 1830–70’, Journal of African History 16/1 (1975): 31.
97. Thomas Edward Bowdich and Sarah Bowdich Lee, Excursions in
Madeira and Porto Santo, during the Autumn of 1823, While on His
Third Voyage to Africa (London, 1825), p. 256.
98. Findo is a grass-like grain and basso is guinea corn. Assan Sarr, ‘Gender,
Spirituality, and Economic Change in Rural Gambia: Agricultural
Production in the Lower Gambia Region, c. 1830s–1940s’, African
Economic History 45/2 (2017): 4–7.
99. Gray, Gambia, p. 379.
 2  WEST AFRICAN SEABORNE TRADE, 1750–1850 …  77

100. 
‘Foreign destinations’ means the regions outside Britain, the British
colonies and the United States. The National Archives (NAUK, Kew,
United Kingdom), C 90/3-8: Gambia Blue Books.
101. Gray, Gambia, p. 381; Brooks, ‘Peanuts and Colonialism’, pp. 32–5.
102. As for 1840, the figures are based on the combined data from both
shelled and unshelled items. The latter was 1127 tonnes, valued at
£13,531. NAUK, CO 90/9-24: Gambia Blue Books. By the mid-
1840s, Portuguese Guinea also had begun producing groundnuts for
export, but its take-off took place after the abolition of the Brazilian
slave trade in 1850 and subsequent attention to the potential of
groundnuts in the land. Joye L. Bowman, ‘“Legitimate Commerce”
and Peanut Production in Portuguese Guinea, 1840s–1880s’, Journal of
African History 28/1 (1987): 93–6.
103. Brooks, ‘Peanuts and Colonialism’, pp. 34–42.
104. Gray, Gambia, p. 380; Klein, ‘Slaves, Gum, and Peanuts’, p. 912.
105.  Xavier Daumalin, ‘Commercial Presence, Colonial Penetration:
Marseille Traders in West Africa in the Nineteenth Century’, in Olivier
Pétré-Grenouilleau, ed., From Slave Trade to Empire: Europe and the
Colonization of Black Africa 1780s–1880s (New York: Routledge, 2004),
p. 213.
106. Gray, Gambia, p. 380.
107. As Assan Sarr has revealed, this shift of production brought about eco-
nomic, religious and gender transformations. Sarr, ‘Gender’.
108. Swindell and Jeng, Migrants, Credit, and Climate, pp. 46–7.
109.  NAUK, CO 87/53: A dispatch from Governor Richard Graves
MacDonnel to the Right Hon. Sir John S. Pakington, Bart.,
Government house, Bathurst, 12 July 1852. The significant role of
migrant workers in groundnut production could also be found in
Portuguese Guinea. The Manjaco from the Costa de Baixo and the
islands of Jeta and Pecixe were important migrant labourers at planta-
tion-like establishments, called feitorias, in Forria along the Rio Grande.
The proprietors of feitorias were Luso-African, other Euro-African and
European merchants. They dispatched hired agents to the Manjaco
homeland to recruit the migrant workers needed in Forria. Bowman,
‘Legitimate Commerce’, pp. 87–98.
110. Bouët-Willaumez, Commerce, pp. 75–7.
111. F. E. Forbes, Six Months’ Service in the African Blockade from April to
October, 1848, in Command of H. M. S. Bonetta (London, 1849), p. 16.
112. Gray, Gambia, p. 384. The 1843 order-in-council established the
3s 10½d rate in the Gambia, which was fixed until demonetisation
in 1922. Leigh Gardner, ‘The Curious Incident of the Franc in the
Gambia: Exchange Rate Instability and Imperial Monetary Systems
 78  K. KOBAYASHI

in the 1920s’, Financial History Review 22/3 (2015): 291–314. On

assortment bargaining, see Curtin, Economic Change, Vol. 1, pp. 247–
53. See also discussion in Chapter 3.
113. Hopkins, Economic History, p. 149. On cloth currency, see Chapter 3.
114. Hopkins, Economic History, p. 132; David Eltis and Laurence C.
Jennings, ‘Trade Between Western Africa and the Atlantic World in
the Pre-Colonial Era’, American Historical Review 93/4 (1988): 948,
Table 2. On the latest estimate on West Africa’s terms of trade in the
nineteenth century, see Ewout Frankema, Jefferey Williamson and
Pieter Woltjer, ‘An Economic Rational for the West African Scramble?
The Commercial Transition and the Commodity Price Boom of 1835–
1885’, Journal of Economic History 78/1 (2018): 231–67.
115. On the relative shares of the main markets of the world in the exports
of the British cotton industry during the nineteenth century, see D. A.
Farnie, The English Cotton Industry and the World Market 1815–1896
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 91–2.
116. Inikori, Africans, p. 447. The official names of CUST 8 and CUST 10
are the ledgers of exports of British merchandise under countries and
the ledgers of exports of foreign and colonial merchandise under coun-
tries, respectively.
117. J. Adams, Remarks on the Country Extending from Cape Palmas to the
River Congo (London, 1823), pp. 253–8; Edward Bold, The Merchant’s
and Mariner’s African Guide (London, 1822), p. 58. See also,
Sydney Jones Library, the University of Liverpool, LUL MS 107/3:
Memoranda of African Trade.
118. Manuel Llorca-Jana, The British Textile Trade in South America in the
Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 39–41.
119. High demand for dyed and printed cotton textiles continued to be
found in early colonial Dahomey (1890–1914). They constituted the
majority of the imports of textiles into the region. Manning, Dahomey,
pp. 124–6, 373–4.
120. British Parliamentary Papers (BPP), 1842, XI & XII (551). Report from
the select committee on the west coast of Africa, Appendix no. 4, p. 134.
121. Cited in Jan S. Hogendorn, Nigerian Groundnut Exports: Origins and
Early Development (Zaria: Ahmadu Bello University Press, 1978), p. 110.
122. BPP, 1816, VII Pt. B (506): Report from the Select Committee on the
Papers Relating to the African Ports, pp. 163–4.
123. BPP, 1816, VII Pt. B (506): Report, p. 178.
124. This was not a problem specific to West Africa. English cotton goods
faced a similar problem in Southeast Asian markets in the 1830s as well.
One report on regional commerce noted, ‘[in recent] years it is said that
Indian cloths have met with better sales, in consequence of the natives
 2  WEST AFRICAN SEABORNE TRADE, 1750–1850 …  79

beginning to find out that they are far more durable than the English’.
T. J. Newbold, Political and Statistical Account of the British Settlements
in the Straits of Malacca, viz. Pinang, Malacca, and Singapore, Vol. 1
(London: John Murray, 1839), p. 353, cited in Atsushi Kobayashi,
‘The Growth of Intra-Southeast Asian Trade in the First Half of the
Nineteenth Century: The Role of Middlemen in Singapore’, in Tomoko
Shiroyama, ed., Modern Global Trade and the Asian Regional Economy
(Singapore: Springer, 2018), p. 50.
125. This data of Nankeen, textiles produced in China, is also available from
CUST 10, but the amounts of the imports of the fabric from Britain
to West Africa during the concerned period are negligible. Therefore, I
omitted the goods for the sake of convenience.
126. NAUK, CO 272/1-27: Sierra Leone Blue Books.
127. ANOM, Sénégal XIII, Dossier 1: Notes sur système exclusif qui régit à
l’importation et à l’exportation le Sénégal et ses dépendances by Bruno
Devès, 1 February 1829, Bordeaux.
128. Curtin, Economic Change, Vol. 2, p. 88.
129. As we will see in Chapter 3, there were diverse types of guinées with dif-
ferent names according to the quality of cloth. This implies that each
type of guinée would probably be sold at different prices.
130. Duchon-Doris, Commerce, p. 13.
131. Webb, ‘The Trade in Gum Arabic’, p. 163. There might have been an
issue such as a problem of coordination (or lack of it) among individu-
ally small producers.
132. Archives Nationales du Sénégal (ANS, Dakar, Senegal), 1B29:
Correspondance du Ministère de la Marine et des Colonies à Ed Devès,
11 June 1839, Paris, F 181; 2B18: Correspondance du Gouverner à
Ministère de la Marine et des Colonies, No. 156, 20 May 1840, Saint
Louis, F 30. Webb noted that the gum price changed throughout the
year, especially between the peak season and the rest of the year. Webb,
‘The Trade in Gum Arabic’, p. 159.
133. Lovejoy, ‘Interregional Monetary Flows’, pp. 564–75; Hogendorn and
Johnson, Shell Money, p. 5; Peter Boomgaard, ‘Early Globalization:
Cowries as Currency, 600 BCE–1900’, in Peter Boomgaard, Dick
Kooiman, and Henk Schulte Nordholt, eds., Linking Destinies: Trade,
Towns and Kin in Asian History (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2008), p. 13.
134. In this early period, Maghribi Jews and Genoese merchants played a
large role in shipping cowries from the Indian Ocean to North Africa.
Lydon, On Trans-Saharan Trade, pp. 74–6; Nehemia Levtzion and
John F. P. Hopkins, eds., Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African
History, trans. John F. P. Hopkins (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener
Publishers, 2000), pp. 269, 281.
80  K. KOBAYASHI

135. Lovejoy, ‘Interregional Monetary Flows’, pp. 564–8.

136. Hogendorn and Johnson, Shell Money, pp. 28–46. The eighteenth-cen-
tury expansion of the Atlantic slave trade appeared to have had a global
implication of cowries. Towards the end of the century, the growing
demand for cowries in Atlantic Africa increased prices in Indian and
other Asian markets. Bin Yang suggested that the soaring prices of
cowries in these markets might cause the shell money to disappear in
Yunnan and decline in Siam. Bin Yang, Cowrie Shells and Cowrie Money:
A Global History (Oxford: Routledge, 2018), Chapter 7.
137. Lovejoy, ‘Interregional Monetary Flows’, pp. 572–3.
138. Lovejoy, ‘Interregional Monetary Flows’, p. 564.
139. Marion Johnson, ‘The Cowrie Currencies of West Africa. Part I’, Journal
of African History 11/1 (1970): 18, 36, 47–9; Lovejoy, ‘Interregional
Monetary Flows’, 564.
140. Cited in Hogendorn and Johnson, Shell Money, p. 149.
141. Johnson, ‘The Cowrie Currencies. Part I’, pp. 46–7.
142. Hogendorn and Johnson, Shell Money, p. 64.
143. Hogendorn and Johnson, Shell Money, pp. 65–9.
144. Brodie Cruickshank, Eighteenth Years on the Gold Coast of Africa, Vol. 2
(London, 1853), pp. 43–4. See also, Law, ‘Gender Relations’, p. 199.
145. Law, ‘Gender Relations’, pp. 199–200; Strickrodt, Afro-European Trade,
p. 216.
 CHAPTER 3

Guinées in the Lower Senegal River:

A Consumer-Led Trade in the Early
Nineteenth Century

In Chapter 2 we saw that, as a result of the development of Lancashire’s

cotton industry, British cotton textiles were increasingly imported
into West Africa in the early nineteenth century. On the other hand,
imports of Indian cotton textiles from Britain to West African coasts
seemed to have declined somewhat during this period. However,
the imports of Indian cotton textiles into Senegal kept increasing
towards the middle of the nineteenth century. These findings give
rise to the question: why did Indian cotton textiles remain in demand
in Senegal in the early nineteenth century, while the other regions
of West Africa witnessed a decrease in the imports of Indian cotton
goods? To provide answers to this, in this chapter we will study the
consumption of Indian cotton textiles around the lower Senegal River
region.
The literature on the economic history of precolonial Senegal has
emphasised the role played by Indian cotton textiles, called guinées,
as an important medium of exchange in the trade in gum arabic. The
suppliers of gum arabic were traders in the nomadic emirates of the
Senegal River region, who preferred to receive Indian guinées rather
than European copies and counterfeits.1 However, given that West Africa
had a long-established position in the production, trade and consump-
tion of textiles, there is still room to consider why this type of cotton
textile continued to function as a currency in, and beyond, Senegal.
Indeed, we are yet to understand exactly why the consumer demand

© The Author(s) 2019 81

K. Kobayashi, Indian Cotton Textiles in West Africa,
Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18675-3_3
82  K. KOBAYASHI

for Indian guinées turned out to be so resilient in the lower Senegal River
region well into the early nineteenth century. If we can shed new light
on this problem, we should then be able to start unveiling the hitherto
neglected global interactions between a part of West Africa and other
regions of the world.
The quality of Indian cotton textiles, unlike the European tex-
tiles, suited life in the savannah, Sahel and desert. In addition, the
demand for guinées can be placed in the context of commercial net-
works in the lower Senegal River region that also brings forth the vari-
eties of people and linguistic complexities involved. The networks
indicate that there were extensive monetary ‘circuits’ that shaped
the demand for a cloth currency in the region. This chapter will also
focus on the social and ecological factors that underpinned the con-
tinued demand for guinées among consumers in Senegal. The con-
tinued demand for them will be situated within West Africa’s longue
durée, in which high-quality textiles were produced, traded and con-
sumed. In so doing, in this chapter I will argue that consumer behav-
iour in Senegal mattered not only for the gum trade but also constituted
a part of global trade networks that extended from South Asia through
Western Europe and which reached West Africa in the early nineteenth
century.

What Is a Piece of Guinée?

Before discussing the organisation of trade and consumption patterns of
guinées around the lower Senegal River region, it is useful to see a guinée
itself in some detail. A piece of guinée, or pièce de guinée in French, was
one variety of Indian cotton textiles imported into West Africa from the
era of the Atlantic slave trade onwards.2 This Gallic appellation of the
cloth is derived from a coastal area of West Africa, namely Guinea. In
the nineteenth century, guinée was the term given to dark-blue, fine cot-
ton cloth produced along the Coromandel Coast in South India, in par-
ticular Pondicherry and Salem, mainly for European trade with Senegal
(Image 3.1).3 Guinées were also known as ‘filature’, ‘opéapaléons’,
‘conjons’, ‘salem’ and others, according to the quality of finished
products.4
 3  GUINÉES IN THE LOWER SENEGAL RIVER: A CONSUMER-LED TRADE …  83

Image 3.1  Sample guinées (Source Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer [Aix-

en-Provence, France], Inde 494, Dossier 871: L’Arrêté signé par Gouverneur
Du Camper, 23 August 1844, Pondicherry. Note The guinées are stamped with
the following words in red: ‘ORDONNANCES ROYALES DES 18 MAI ET
SEPTEMBRE 1843’ around the outer border of the mark, whose diameter is 56
millimetres, ‘PONDICHERY’ at the upper centre, ‘GUINÉE’ on the left of cen-
tre, and ‘Poids 2k 30, Longr 16m 50, Largr 1[m] 00’ in the centre)

Why Did West African Consumers Prefer Indian Guinées?

In the early nineteenth century, major consumers of guinées imported
into Senegal were both nomadic inhabitants on the right bank of
the Senegal River as well as black Africans who settled in areas on the
84  K. KOBAYASHI

opposite side of the river such as Waalo, Fuuta Toro and Kajoor.
Nomadic inhabitants were of mixed origins of Arab, Berber and Africans.
They referred to themselves as Bidan (white men) and were com-
monly known as Moor/Moors in English or Maure/Maures in French.
In particular, those in the nomadic emirates of Trarza and Brakna along
the lower Senegal River enjoyed an advantage as they had direct access to
guinées imported from South Asia via Western Europe.5
As shown in the picture by David Boilat of a Trarza princess
(Image 3.2), they wrapped themselves with guinées loosely. Ghislaine
Lydon has accounted for the loose clothing of desert nomads that
‘provided windshield, sunscreen, and ventilation, while functioning as
a resting sheet’. Also, the indigo blue dye used for textiles ‘stained the
skin, acting as a protective coating against sun rays’.6 This consumption
pattern of guinées was linked to the climate in the lower Senegal River
region. In other words, these indigo-blue textiles had use-value as cloth-
ing that suited the life in the areas of consumption. This is one major
reason for the demand for Indian guinées in these regions.
We have seen the evidence of consumer preferences for Indian cot-
ton textiles on the Gold Coast in Chapter 2, but consumers along the
lower Senegal River valley also showed a strong preference for the qual-
ity of guinées. More importantly, astute desert merchants such as those
in the Trarza emirate were known to reject undesired imitation goods.7
S. M. X. Golberry, a French traveller, in his travelogue, recorded how
these merchants in Senegal determined the difference between authentic
Indian guinées and European copies and counterfeits:

The Moors are paid for their gum in pieces of calico-dyed blue, which is
manufactured in India, and is called in the commerce of western Africa, by
the name of pieces of guinea. These pieces are seven or eight ells long, and
half an ell in width. During my residence in Africa, they were considered
as an essential and principal part in all the bargains which were contracted,
and in fact the Moors would not take any other kind of merchandise in
exchange.
It has been attempted in France, to imitate these pieces of guinea, but
they were doubtless imperfect, for the Moors were never deceived by
them; they possess indeed so quick a sense in this respect, that they can
tell immediately if a piece of guinea be fabricated in France or in India, and
this discovery is not made either by the feel or the colour; they immedi-
ately put the piece to their nose, and ascertain its true quality by the smell.
 3  GUINÉES IN THE LOWER SENEGAL RIVER: A CONSUMER-LED TRADE …  85

Image 3.2  A princess of Trarza (Source L’A. P.–David Boilat, Esquisses

Sénégalaises [Paris, 1853], Planche XII, General Research Division, The New
York Public Library. ‘Princesse Mauresse, Trarzas.’ New York Public Library
Digital Collections. Accessed 11 August 2017. http://digitalcollections.nypl.
org/items/510d47df-79ef-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99)

These Indian calicoes, as well as the indigos used by the Indians in dyeing
them, have doubtless a particular smell, which it is impossible to imitate.
During the time which I passed in Africa, real Indian pieces of guinea
were in high estimation, a preference which nothing could be found to
equal, much less to supersede.8
86  K. KOBAYASHI

Golberry spoke about the important role of guinées as an ‘essential and

principal’ exchange medium in the gum trade in Senegal—the role that
is examined in some detail later in this chapter, as well as the fact that the
smell of guinées formed an integral part of a ‘real Indian piece of guinea’
that differentiated themselves from European fabrications. He attributed
‘a particular smell’ of guinées to indigo used in India for the textiles for
West African markets. It seems likely that such guinées would remain
unwashed until they arrived in West Africa because the smell of indigo
was easily lost when the cloth was washed.9 The importance of smell is
also corroborated by a letter from the English East India Company to the
Governor in Council at the Fort St. George in Madras that showed that
Nagore in South India manufactured indigo-blue textiles whose odour
was highly appreciated among consumers in West Africa.10
While Golberry’s account was based on his visit to Senegal in the mid-
1780s, local consumers’ preference for guinées from India persisted up
to the early nineteenth century. Mireille Lobligeois argued that by the
end of the 1820s manufacturers in Europe could imitate the colour of
guinées, although it was impossible for them to imitate the smell of the
Indian product.11 In a similar vein, the special report for the commission
of the trading posts and the trade of African coasts submitted in June
1851 admitted that the fabrics produced in Rouen could not find the
way to imitate Indian guinées, thereby did not meet the demand from
the consumers in the Senegal River region yet.12
Apart from the quality of textiles, the French paid attention also to
the weight and size of the South Asian goods shipped to Senegal in the
early nineteenth century. In the early 1840s, the French merchants, the
principal actors in shipping guinées from India into Senegal by way of
France at that time, needed to send guinées to Senegal that were of uni-
form size. J.-P. Duchon-Doris Jr., who invested in Pondicherry’s guinée
production, noted that each piece of guinée had to weigh 2–3 kilograms,
17 metres in length, and more than 1 metre in width.13 The French
Royal Orders (Ordonnances du Roi) issued on 18 May and 1 September
1843 also defined the proper weight and size for each piece of guinée,
as discussed in detail in Chapter 4. The Royal Order issued on 18 May
1843, which was to be enforced on 1 October of that year, defined that
a piece of guinée must weigh more than 2.3 kilograms and be more than
16.5 metres in length and 1 metre in width.14 The Royal Order issued
on 1 September 1843, in the second article, stipulated that guinées
 3  GUINÉES IN THE LOWER SENEGAL RIVER: A CONSUMER-LED TRADE …  87

produced in Pondicherry for Senegal had to be marked or stamped by

the local administration in Pondicherry. The mark or stamp guaranteed
that the textiles met such official criteria defined in the formal order
(Image 3.1).15 The aim of this measure was to prevent fraud by differen-
tiating real Indian textiles from imitated textiles produced in Europe.16
However, African merchants would not receive even stamped guinées if
they were found to be of inferior quality.17
As seen above, guinées were suitable to life in the savannah, Sahel and
the desert, where inhabitants were exposed to the strong and relentless
sun. But in the context of West Africa and the Sahara Desert, consum-
ing foreign textiles or dyed textiles had a social meaning. Wearing indi-
go-dyed cloth, some from India and others from the production areas
in the Western Soudan, had been a sign of luxury, which differentiated
the wearer from farmers who wore white cloth.18 In the second half of
the eighteenth century, there was a considerable increase in demand for
guinées because not only the nomads on the right bank of the Senegal
River but also the inhabitants in Waalo, Fuuta Toro and Kajoor emu-
lated the clothing of the marabouts.19 Such was the pattern of conspic-
uous consumption that was seen widely in precolonial West Africa.20
Anthropological research by David Ames also confirmed that dyed cloth
was more valuable than white cloth among the Wolof in the Gambia.21
Therefore, as long as the French merchants wanted to purchase
gum arabic in Senegal, they had to bring Indian guinées that served as
a principal currency in the gum trade in the Senegal River region since
European manufacturers could not completely imitate Indian cotton
textiles at least during the early nineteenth century. That is why guinées
survived as the most important trading goods in Franco-Senegal trade
throughout the period. The next section examines the major commer-
cial networks in the lower Senegal River through which guinées were
exchanged for gum arabic and received by consumers.

Commercial Networks in the Lower Senegal River

The lower Senegal River formed an essential port for French merchants
to purchase gum arabic of high quality that helped the development of
the textile industry in Western Europe. While the literature on the eco-
nomic history of precolonial Senegal relevant to the guinée trade tends
to narrow its focus on the gum trade in the Senegal River region,22
88  K. KOBAYASHI

I have argued that the river trade was linked to West African and Saharan
trade networks. In other words, the lower Senegal River functioned as a
gateway of the Atlantic Ocean to the Sahara Desert.
In the early nineteenth century the river trade witnessed the collabo-
ration between French merchants and Senegalese métis who were called
habitants. The upper river areas such as Bakel were used for the trading
of slaves and gold before the French withdrawal from this trade in 1831.
These regions also supplied gum arabic, but its quality was crumbly and
lacked in richness compared to that of the lower river region such as
Dagana.23 For example, in 1840, a piece of guinée could be exchanged
for 27 livres of gum arabic in the lower river region, although it could
fetch a price of 80 livres at Bakel in the upper river region.24 In addition,
one official document noted that 70 per cent of gum arabic exported
from Saint Louis of Senegal was supplied by the lower river region in
the late 1840s.25 Therefore, this section pays close attention to the com-
mercial network of the gum trade extending from Saint Louis through
the lower Senegal River to the gum harvesting area.26 The following dis-
cussion visualises the commercial networks in the lower Senegal River in
the early nineteenth century, in order to show who participated in the
river trade in guinées and gum arabic, who entered and left each point of
exchange, and what kind of commodities were traded.

Between France and Saint Louis

The seaborne trade between France and Saint Louis was the domain of
the French merchants (Fig. 3.1 and Map 2). Their commercial suprem-
acy was largely based on the regime of the French mercantilist policy
called exclusif, or the pacte colonial. This policy banned trading between
the French colonies, and allowed metropolitan merchants only to carry
out commerce between France and its colonies.27 In addition, the geog-
raphy around the island of Saint Louis, which was separated from the
Atlantic by the Langue de Barbarie, the long sandbar extending south-
wards from Mauritania, would shape the trajectory of the maritime trade
from Saint Louis, which maintained close connection with France during
the period.28 Therefore, due to the combination of the French mercan-
tilist policy and the geography around Saint Louis, guinées were always
imported into Senegal via France.29
The trade between Saint Louis and the fixed seasonal markets in the
lower river, called escales, was the domain of the habitants and their
 3  GUINÉES IN THE LOWER SENEGAL RIVER: A CONSUMER-LED TRADE …  89

Guinées Guinées, gun, etc.

FRENCH MERCHANTS HABITANTS

India France Saint Louis

Fig. 3.1  Shipping of guinées from India via France into Saint Louis (Source
Author’s original)

river traders, who mediated between French merchants at Saint Louis

and the nomadic emirates such as Brakna and Trarza at the escales. The
habitants were free Africans or descendants of métis, mixed offspring of
Europeans and Africans in Saint Louis and Gorée. By 1750 they had
formed the core population in Saint Louis. Ibrahima Thioub described
the habitants as the vertebral column of the social architecture of the
island of Saint Louis. In Saint Louis society, they, including female hab-
itants known as signares, were socially respectable and wealthy enough
to own their own houses, boats and domestic slaves. These assets
allowed them to enter into the trade in the Senegal River. Their abil-
ity to speak European languages enabled them to serve as translators for
Europeans, and they profited not only from the intermediary business
in the river trade, but also engaged in the overseas trade with France.30
French merchants needed their help for the river trade, partly because
they had no immunity against tropical diseases, such as malaria and yel-
low fever, and partly because there were sometimes rivalries between
the French and the Trarza emirate in the lower Senegal River.31 In
other words, the European business of the time had to rely on local
intermediaries to reduce potential risks associated with the trade in
West Africa.32
In Saint Louis, French merchants offered guinées and other goods
on credit to the habitants, who, as the intermediaries, were expected to
carry an adequate amount of gum arabic to these French merchants by
90  K. KOBAYASHI

the end of the trade season. The habitants pledged their own slaves as
collateral to secure their loans. In the case of non-fulfilment of the ini-
tial contract, the creditors would allow them time to conduct another
river trade, although the second agreement could carry heavy interest,
generally at 50 per cent per trade season. The failure to fulfil the sec-
ond agreement meant that slaves of the debtor could be seized by the
creditor.33

Between Saint Louis and Three Escales

As shown in Fig. 3.2, in Saint Louis, the habitants consigned guinées,
firearms and other goods to their river traders who conducted business
on their behalf. The river traders included the laptots, the gourmets and
the maître de langue. The laptots were skilled slave sailors; the gourmets
served as pilots, helmsmen and boatswains; and the maître de langue
were skilled Africans and métis who served as translators and interpreters
between the French and the nomadic merchants. As they were familiar
with the political and economic environments of both sides, their role
as diplomats and intermediaries was crucial in Saint Louis and in the
Senegal River region.34
The harmattan, the hot and dry north-easterly trade wind, blowing
across the Sahara from the beginning of November to March–April,
was crucial in determining the output of gum harvesting, and thereby
determining the gum trade season in the Senegal River. The best sea-
son for gum harvesting was from March to May when the harmattan was
strongest (see Chapter 2). Therefore, the major gum trade in the peak
season (from January or February to July) was called the grande traite in
French, while the minor one in the off-peak season from November to
the end of January was known as the petite traite.35
The river traders carried guinées and other goods by boat from
Saint Louis to the escales over several weeks. The latter included mil-
let, salt and dried fish from both Waalo and Kajoor. Kajoor was a
large kingdom stretching from north to central Senegal at that time;
its production of foodstuffs accounted for half of the total value of
the goods brought to the escales in 1852.36 A piece of guinée served
as an exchange medium in the regional trade at that time, and so did
millet.37 However, little is known about the accepted exchange rate
between millet and guinée/gum. In this regard, the Compromis for
the gum trade in the three escales in 1841 suggested that the price
 3  GUINÉES IN THE LOWER SENEGAL RIVER: A CONSUMER-LED TRADE …  91

HASSANI

Protection
Mudarat
Guinées, gun, millet, etc.
ZWAYA

(Habitants’)
HABITANTS RIVER
TRADERS

Gum arabic
AFRICAN TRADERS

Saint Louis Escales

Millet, etc.

Kajoor

Fig. 3.2  The river trade of guinées and gum arabic in the lower Senegal River
(Credit: Rapp Halour/Alamy Stock Photo)

of a piece of guinée was fixed at 54 livres (27 kilograms) of gum arabic,

and that the price of one barrel of millet was fixed at 2 pieces of guinées.
This means that one barrel of millet was equal to 108 livres of gum in
the escales.38
The exchanges between the imported goods shipped from Saint
Louis and gum arabic took place in the escales along the lower Senegal
92  K. KOBAYASHI

River. In the early nineteenth century there were three escales: escale
des Darmancours, escale du Coq and escale du Désert.39 By the middle
of the eighteenth century, the Idaw al-Hajj (or the Darmancours) had
established their escale at the nearest point from Saint Louis. The other
two escales were held under the jurisdiction of the warrior nomads of
the desert edge, called hassani or arab. Among the hassani groups, the
Brakna controlled the escale du Coq, which was ranked second in impor-
tance to the escale du Désert controlled by the Trarza, the most powerful
group in the lower river region. These hassani groups protected the cler-
ical lineages, known as zwaya, who in return paid taxes, called mudarat,
to the hassani, and designated the escales as the locations of transactions
between the zwaya groups and the river traders.40
The hassani also imposed taxes on the river traders of the escales.
These taxes fell into two categories. One tax was levied on the weight of
gum traded: the river trader paid in goods and foodstuffs to the rulers of
the escales, with the tax payment amounting to a piece of guinée per half
a tonne of gum traded. The other, higher tax was based on boat tonnage
and was independent of the size of the trade. This tax was an important
source of revenue for the rulers of the escales, but it became burdensome
for the river traders, especially during poor harvests. In such cases, the
traders faced risks not only of losing money in the river trade but also
of failure to repay the debt to the creditor in Saint Louis. Therefore, the
river traders requested the abolition of the tax on boat tonnage at vari-
ous points between the 1830s and the 1840s, and only the Darmancours
accepted their request in 1847, when gum was not a major commodity
traded at their escale.41
The river traders also gave gifts to the nomads and caravans at the
escales till the time the gum was delivered. It could be a few weeks, or
a few months. According to Geneviève Désiré-Vuillemin, the gifts
included guinées, tea, sugar and grain.42 It is true that a large amount
of sugar had been imported from France to Senegal between the 1830s
and the 1840s. However, it seems that tea had not been carried so reg-
ularly from France into Senegal, and thereby into the Senegal River
valley. Indeed, French trade statistics show that there was no tea trade
between France and Senegal during the first half of the 1830s, and that
1836 was the first year of the tea trade. That year saw the import of
192 kilograms of tea from France to Senegal, followed by no tea trade
in 1837.43
 3  GUINÉES IN THE LOWER SENEGAL RIVER: A CONSUMER-LED TRADE …  93

Thus, the river traders paid much more than the market price to pur-
chase gum arabic in the escales in the lower Senegal River. This means
that market prices of gum per piece of guinée quoted in the official sta-
tistics and used in the existing literature should be treated with caution,
especially if we try to estimate the profit from the exchange rate differ-
ence between Saint Louis and the escales. Since Michael Marcson did
not take into consideration other costs, such as transport cost and the
taxes mentioned above, his assumption regarding the exchange rate dif-
ferential is inaccurate. Take the example of the exchange rate differential
in 1841. Marcson estimated it at fewer than 21 livres (10.5 kilograms)
of gum per guinée by subtracting the price in the escales (fewer than 54
livres) from that in Saint Louis (fewer than 33 livres). However, accord-
ing to the correspondence dated 11 September 1841 that Marcson used,
the transport cost per piece of guinée was 45 per cent of the price of 16.5
kilograms in Saint Louis, or 7.5 kilograms of gum. Taking into account
the tax paid to the nomadic emirates, as well as the transport cost, the
margin that the habitants gained from the trade was much smaller than
Marcson thought.44

Gum Harvesting in the Senegal River Valley

The zwaya merchants dispatched groups of up to 50 slaves with a super-
visor to the harvesting area of gum, far away from their camps (Fig. 3.3).
Three principal forests, where gum was available in abundance, were
Sohel, Hel-Hiebar and Al-Fatack on the right bank of the Senegal
River.45 These slaves, who were engaged in farming or herding in other
seasons, included the slaves of the supervisor and those of his kinsmen
and allies. They built huts near a well around the gum forest, and ate and
slept there during the harvesting period.46
As discussed above, the harvesting period was linked to the har-
mattan season on the one hand, and to the slack season in agricul-
ture that began at the end of October or the beginning of November,
on the other. Under supervision, the slaves gathered gum in the for-
est (Image 3.3). In return for his services, the supervisor received
the amount of one day’s labour of gum harvest per week from slaves
who were not his. In an average year, 800 grams of gum were pro-
duced from a single acacia tree, but the output of gum harvesting var-
ied. In addition, the output of a slave was 1–3 kilograms per day, but
this also depended on his own strength and abilities, his diet and the
94  K. KOBAYASHI

HASSANI Saharan trade

Salt, etc. networks
India

Protection
Mudarat
Guinées Guinées, gun, etc. Guinées, gun, millet, etc. Guinées (akhal), millet, etc.

FRENCH MERCHANTS HABITANTS RIVER SUPERVISOR &

ZWAYA
TRADERS SLAVES

Gum arabic Gum arabic

European merchants

AFRICAN TRADERS Gum

Millet, etc.

Europe France Saint Louis Escales harvesting area

Kajor

Fig. 3.3  Commercial networks around the lower Senegal River region in the
early nineteenth century (Source Kazuo Kobayashi, ‘Indian Textiles and Gum
Arabic in the Lower Senegal River: Global Significance of Local Trade and
Consumers in the Early Nineteenth Century’, African Economic History 45/2
(2017): 40)

supervisor—whether his methods were abusive or not.47 The slaves put

the harvested gum arabic into bags of oxhide and brought them on the
backs of camels or cattle to the escales, where the gum was exchanged
for guinées, millet and other goods that the river traders shipped from
Saint Louis.48
Through such early nineteenth-century commercial networks,
guinées were carried from Europe via Saint Louis into the Senegal River
region, where they were also exchanged mainly for gum arabic that was
carried in the opposite direction. Some guinées were consumed within
the realm of the nomadic emirates, and others were further circulated
under the names of akhal or baysa into the Sahara Desert via caravan
trade networks as shown in Fig. 3.3. These networks brought a vari-
ety of goods from North Africa into the nomadic emirates, including
salt, which was essential to the people and animals in the desert and
savannah.49
 3  GUINÉES IN THE LOWER SENEGAL RIVER: A CONSUMER-LED TRADE …  95

Image 3.3  Gum harvesting in Senegal (Source J. P. L. Durant, Atlas pour ser-

vir au voyage du Sénégal [Paris, 1802], Planche 29. Note I gained permission to
reproduce this image from King’s College London, Foyle Special Collections
Library)

Guinées as a Currency

West Africa had a long-established tradition in the production, trade and
consumption of cotton textiles, dated well before Europeans who arrived
in the fifteenth century. In the regional trade within West Africa and
within the Sahara Desert region, textiles were widely traded as consumer
goods as well as an exchange medium. This tendency persisted well into
the nineteenth century. But why did guinées matter as an exchange
medium in the abovementioned regions and how did these imported
96  K. KOBAYASHI

textiles become a regional currency? In order to answer these questions,

this section explores the historical background of textile produc-
tion and consumption from the viewpoint of multiple currencies
in precolonial West Africa.

West African Early Textile Production, Trade and Consumption

Consumer preferences for foreign textiles had been shaped by local
textile production and trade in precolonial West Africa, which has
had a long history of textile production, consumption and trade that
dates back to the fifteenth century and which precedes contact with
Europeans. The region had been rich in raw materials required for tex-
tile production, and textiles had been made from various kinds of fibres
from animals or plants. In the northern savannah, Sahel and the Sahara
Desert, textiles were made from sheep, camels and horses, while, in the
forest zones of West Africa, the protein fibre from the silkworm was
used. Weavers also used vegetable fibres such as flax, cotton, raphia and
tree bark and leaves. In addition, West Africa offered plenty of other
resources that could be used as dyestuff, including insects, shellfish,
plants and minerals.50
Although the origins of cotton textiles in West Africa have been a
mystery, archaeological findings have so far identified the earliest cloths
produced in West Africa. One such cloth has been found in the mod-
ern Republic of Mali dating back to the eighth century,51 and another
to the ninth or tenth century in what is now southern Nigeria.52 Based
on linguistic evidence about the variants of the term ‘cotton’, Colleen
Kriger has demonstrated that there were two distinct centres of cotton
production in precolonial West Africa. One cluster covered the regions
that included the river Niger, the river Gambia and the Senegal River.
The other centres were the region surrounding Lake Chad. Also, archae-
ological findings suggest that the tenth century marked the beginning of
cotton textile production in these two centres.53 The earliest cotton skirt
was worn in the eleventh to twelfth centuries in what is now Mali.54
During the early stage of its spread into West Africa, Muslim mer-
chants and their networks had played a crucial role in spreading the tech-
nology of textile production and stimulated demand for cotton cloth for
wearing. Indeed, there were many workshops of weavers and tailors—
they were also Muslim aristocrats—in Islamic centres such as Timbuktu
and Jenne along the upper Niger River. The wearing of clothes was a
 3  GUINÉES IN THE LOWER SENEGAL RIVER: A CONSUMER-LED TRADE …  97

custom adopted by converts that marked their membership of the

ummah and distinguished them from followers of animism. Men who
converted to Islam wore long flowing robes and baggy pants. From the
seventeenth century onwards, during important Islamic ceremonies and
burials, the people in Hausaland wore white clothes due to their associa-
tion with Islam.55
In the sixteenth century, the Portuguese participated in the arbitrage
trade along the coast of West Africa which skilled African merchants such
as the Dyulas traders had established. As a consequence, they contrib-
uted to the spread of textile production and cloth currency along the
Atlantic coast and from Senegambia to the Cape Verde Islands. The
islands became a place where slaves taken from Senegambia wove textiles
by using local cotton, and there were assimilations in both textile pro-
duction and monetary systems between Senegambia and the Cape Verde
Islands.56 In the precolonial period, the Portuguese and other European
merchants sometimes exchanged imported textiles for locally woven
textiles in Senegambia.57
In many areas of precolonial West Africa, textile production basically
drew on the household division of labour. Spinning was usually the prin-
cipal occupation for women during the dry agricultural off-peak sea-
son, and weaving was for men.58 The technology of textile production
used in precolonial West Africa was simple. Male weavers were familiar
with textile production on narrow horizontal looms with pulleys and
foot treadles.59 The West African narrow looms were similar to those of
other regions of the world and might have come from Eastern Soudan
or further east, such as Arabia, but what distinguished the West African
loom from others was in using a heavy dragstone to maintain the tension
on the threads.60 In Senegambia, the treadle loom on which the weav-
ers wove textiles was the horizontal one only, while vertical looms were
found in the forest and south-savannah areas of West Africa.61 In con-
trast to the horizontal narrow loom used by men, the vertical loom was
used by women to produce textiles which were wider than the narrow
loom, but textiles produced on the vertical loom were narrower than
most of those imported from overseas. Separate cloth units produced on
the vertical loom were sewn together to make a wrapper or mantle.62
Using the horizontal narrow loom was a major feature in the textile
industry in precolonial West Africa. The narrow loom was not costly, and
it was easy to assemble and dismantle. Therefore, the weaver could take
the loom indoors in case of rain.63 From the endowment point of view,
98  K. KOBAYASHI

A. G. Hopkins and more recently Gareth Austin have both explained

that labour was scarce in terms of the size of the savannah region and the
cultivable land. However, during the dry season, farming was not possi-
ble, labour was temporally abundant and the opportunity cost of labour
was low. Under such conditions, Austin advanced an argument that it
would be economically viable to use the narrow loom that required a
labour-intensive method in order to produce textiles of good quality.64
Marion Johnson also stated that ‘for very many, weaving is practiced
seasonally, in the non-farming season’. In addition to these part-time
weavers, there were full-time weavers in West Africa, whose status was
hereditary and founded in Senegambia and in the Sokoto Caliphate.65
Cotton was cultivated widely across the savannah during the period
under study. West African cotton was a short-staple variety and consisted
of the Old World family.66 The seed of cotton was often interspersed
within fields of grain for a short period. Austin argued that this short
duration for planting ‘imposed a trade-off between food security and
cotton growing which, in turn, seriously limited the supply elasticity of
the raw material to the most widespread handicraft industry on the con-
tinent, cotton weaving’.67 Cotton ripened later than grains like millet or
sorghum, and thereby labour for harvesting cotton would not affect the
grain harvest. Cotton was usually grown for domestic consumption but
some areas produced it on a large scale for regional trade and textile pro-
duction. It should also be noted that cotton cultivation demanded the
phosphorous and nitrogen in the soil.68
By the fifteenth century, extensive commercial networks within and
beyond West Africa were established. Locally woven textiles in the savan-
nah, Sahel and desert areas were carried mainly through the network of
Muslim merchants to consumer markets. In Senegambia, the Tukulor
were reportedly the first group who wove textiles and spread the loom in
the region. When he visited the town of Silli in Tukulor in the eleventh
century, the Arab historian Al-Bekri noted that the Tukulor produced
small cotton pagne, called chigguya, which was one of their major trade
goods.69 In the course of time, the Mandinka Dyulas traders brought
the concept of weaving into Senegambia. Here, weaving castes known
as raabu among the Wolof and mabo among the Fulbe and the Tukulor
came into being. Weaving was perceived to be an honourable occupa-
tion.70 Meanwhile, during the sixteenth century Kano became the man-
ufacturing and commercial centre in Hausaland. The artisans in the city
 3  GUINÉES IN THE LOWER SENEGAL RIVER: A CONSUMER-LED TRADE …  99

manufactured various cotton textiles, including indigo-dyed textiles, and

the Tuareg traders from North Africa, who played a major role in the
trans-Saharan trade, purchased cotton textiles in Kano in exchange for
salt, copper and also North African and luxury European textiles that
were imported from Tripoli.71
Once European merchants started to trade directly with African
merchants on the coast, they realised the importance of textiles in the
intra-African trade. For example, the Portuguese from Albreda brought
textiles, salt, tobacco, coral and beads in exchange for Bandi cloth, bees-
wax, hides, gold dust, ivory and slaves supplied mostly by the Dyulas
traders in the Senegambia.72 This kind of business would facilitate or
extend the frontiers of existing African trading networks along the coast
of West Africa.73
Thus, African weavers produced cotton textiles that spread through
trade across and beyond West Africa and contributed to shaping consum-
ers’ tastes in textiles for centuries in ways that influenced European com-
merce in the region. This was the major reason that African consumer
taste was changeable, and therefore the knowledge of the market was
crucial for European merchants to the success of a voyage.74
Since the early contacts with European merchants, European and
Indian textiles started to come in large quantities to the coasts of West
Africa by sea. European merchants brought textiles of various kinds
in order to purchase African slaves and tropical products. However, as
we know that West Africa had long been a source of sophisticated tex-
tiles, it is worth studying why West Africa imported a large amount of
non-African textiles, especially Indian cotton, from Europe despite
the fact that they themselves produced various textiles of high qual-
ity. This was partly due to conspicuous consumption trends among
local consumers in West Africa. In precolonial days, the consump-
tion of foreign cloth was a means of demonstrating wealth and pres-
tige for all levels of consumers in this region. John Thornton argued
that ‘acquiring luxury cloth, foreign cloth, and cloth with unusual
colors, designs, textures, and shapes could also play a role in conspicu-
ous consumption’.75 Foreignness would probably mean something dif-
ficult to get access to. This was the case with African textiles brought
by Mandinka merchants from the interior for consumers in what is now
coastal Ghana.76 The consumption of Indian and European textiles
could be seen in this context. Also, as Phyllis Martin noted, the display
100  K. KOBAYASHI

of valuable cloth whose production required a considerable investment

of labour indicated the ‘politics of costume’. In precolonial Loango,
the consumption of prestige cloth was regarded as an association with
power.77
The massive imports of textiles from Europe and Asia into West
Africa raised another debatable question: whether there was any impact
by imported textiles from Europe and Asia on African textile industry
in the precolonial period. There are some arguments from conflicting
viewpoints. As regards the scholars who stressed the negative impacts
on West African handicraft industry as a whole, Walter Rodney assumed
that from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century the European tex-
tile industry was able to copy fashionable Indian and African patterns,
and eventually to replace them. Partly by establishing a stranglehold
on the distribution of cloth around the shores of Africa, and partly by
swamping African products by importing cloth in bulk, European trad-
ers eventually succeeded in putting an end to the expansion of African
cloth manufactures.78 More recently, Joseph Inikori proposed a nuanced
hypothesis that considering the fact that textile imports had been tied
to the Atlantic slave trade, European and Indian textile imports inhib-
ited the development of cloth production in West Africa between
1650 and 1850.79
By contrast, A. G. Hopkins stated that there is ‘no general evidence’
to support the claim about the decline of West African manufacturers.
He has argued that the overseas trade led to the expansion of the market
‘in terms of the volume and range of goods’ rather than the replacement
of local industries by the products imported from overseas.80 Marion
Johnson also argued that there is no evidence that imported textiles from
overseas caused the decline of the textile industry in West Africa, and
presumed that most of the imported textiles entered the regions where
no textile industry existed.81 Meanwhile, Colleen Kriger challenged
Johnson’s presumption by stating that the regions which imported
European and Indian textiles had their own textile industry. She, using
archaeological findings, argued that foreign textiles could motivate local
producers to manufacture new types of textiles.82 Paul Lovejoy offered
a view that some imports would compete with local manufactures but,
as a whole, imported textiles, as well as beads, tobacco and alcohol, sup-
plemented African production. He has also argued that the West African
market for textiles had been insatiable.83
 3  GUINÉES IN THE LOWER SENEGAL RIVER: A CONSUMER-LED TRADE …  101

Some case studies on specific areas of West Africa presented different

outcomes of the effects of the Atlantic trade on the textile industry in
the precolonial period. For example, A. J. H. Latham argued that, in the
case of nineteenth-century Old Calabar in the Bight of Biafra, the goods
brought across by European merchants did not have a negative impact
on the local economy. As for textiles, they seemed to have little impact
on local industry, because the region produced raphia textiles from palm-
tree fronds only and these textiles were used for dresses meant for cere-
monial occasions of the Ibibio and Efik’s secret societies. Moreover, he
claimed that imported goods including textiles brought about a rather
beneficial effect because they increased options for local consumers.84
Little Popo in the Bight of Benin also provides an interesting case
of manufacturing in precolonial West Africa while dealing with Atlantic
trade. According to Captain Henry Steward, weavers produced textiles
from cotton cultivated locally. Their handicraft product was exchanged
for English trade goods and taken windward as far as Accra or Cape
Coast Castle, where it was sold for palm oil and gold dust. In Little
Popo, English cotton goods enabled local manufacturers to weave red-
coloured textiles because the material to dye scarlet was not available
there at that time. They unpicked coloured cloth imported from Europe
to produce their own textiles.85 A similar instance can be found in West-
Central Africa, where weavers used imported cotton to produce textiles
and hence the local industry remained largely independent of foreign
imports of a variety of textiles manufactured in Asia and Europe in the
nineteenth century.86
Another type of complementary relationship between imported cot-
ton goods and local handicraft industry is found in Asante, though it is
recorded in the colonial period. Gareth Austin, based on the reports by
the colonial administration, stated that the competition from European
textiles had different effects on spinners and weavers in Asante; the for-
mer did not survive, but the latter adopted imported machine-spun yarn
that enabled them to specialise in the production of various textiles of
higher quality on the narrow loom.87
Yet another case was found in the Sokoto Caliphate. The Caliphate,
established in the first decade of the nineteenth century after the jihad
led by Uthman dan Fodio, offered institutional infrastructure such as
a large domestic market and tax exemption for weavers in Kano, the
commercial and manufacturing centre in the Caliphate.88 Kano became
one of the largest cities in the Sokoto Caliphate, with an estimated
102  K. KOBAYASHI

population of 30,000–80,000 by the mid-nineteenth century. It formed

a part of what Lovejoy calls the textile belt, where cotton and indigo
were extensively cultivated for the local industry.89 As Phillip Shea
revealed, throughout the nineteenth century, there was no decline of
the local manufacturing industry, rather, there was technological innova-
tion in dyeing in Kano that enabled economies of scale.90 More recently,
Marisa Candotti argued that the trans-Saharan trade also contributed to
the development of the textile industry in the Sokoto Caliphate.91
Apart from the debate over the impact of textiles from Europe and
Asia on the local industry in precolonial West Africa, there is another
argument that is related to the value of textiles imported by European
merchants into West Africa. Presumably, there is little point in trying to
discuss whether foreign textiles imported there were in general cheaper
than African textiles, since the values of both local and foreign textiles
varied substantially. Therefore, unfocused comparisons and general state-
ments would be misleading. For example, Inikori assumed that European
and Indian textiles imported into West Africa during the Atlantic slave
trade were ‘cheap’.92 On the other hand, there was a proposition that
could be categorised as the ‘shoddy goods’ claim. However, given that
discerning African merchants actively pursued quality goods in the
Atlantic trade, such claims seem improbable, and rather could be sus-
ceptible to criticism from the more micro-level studies.93 For instance,
based on records of the Royal African Company, Kriger proposed that
non-African wrappers were at least three times more expensive than
locally made wrappers on the Upper Guinea Coast in the late seven-
teenth century. She concluded that English manufacturers could not
lower their production costs of textiles more than those of West African
textiles until the British Industrial Revolution.94 This case suggests that
textiles produced in Europe and Asia were not necessarily cheaper than
African textiles until the late eighteenth century. In other words, there
were other reasons, such as conspicuous consumption and quality of tex-
tiles, to explain the market for imported textiles from overseas.

Textiles as Money in Precolonial West Africa

In precolonial West Africa, cloth strips were sewn together to make a
piece of textile. Both cloth strips and a piece of textile were not simply
used as clothes but also as a currency along with cowries, copper, iron,
gold and silver coins in market exchange. Its monetary role lasted until
 3  GUINÉES IN THE LOWER SENEGAL RIVER: A CONSUMER-LED TRADE …  103

the introduction and diffusion of colonial currencies. Despite its wide

distribution, a large gap remains in our knowledge of cloth currency in
precolonial West Africa, compared to that of cowrie shells.95 Therefore,
it is crucial to fulfil the gap by discussing cloth currency in a broad
context of precolonial West African monetary history. This discussion
will also shed fresh light on the use of guinées as the major currency
in the gum trade along the lower Senegal River in the early nineteenth
century.
As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, existing litera-
ture on the economic history of precolonial Senegal treated guinées as
an exchange medium and unit of account in the gum trade along the
Senegal River. However, guinées were re-exported from the nomadic
emirates of Trarza and Brakna and others around the Senegal River
region further into the Sahara Desert to the north and the Western
Soudan to the east. In the Sahara Desert, a piece of guinée was called
baysa or akhal and served as an exchange medium in the trade of salt
carried from North Africa (Fig. 3.3). This implies that there were more
extensive trade zones for guinées in the Senegal River and the Sahara
Desert regions than the existing literature assumes. Although sources on
this are scarce, it would probably be the basis for the continued demand
for guinées from merchants who controlled the supply of gum arabic
along the Senegal River region, thereby maintaining continuity of the
guinée trade from India in the early nineteenth century.
In precolonial West Africa, commodities such as cloth strips, cow-
ries, iron bars, copper and gold served as money. Precolonial currencies
used to be one of the debated subjects in the studies of West African
history. One of the major issues in the debate was about whether pre-
colonial currencies in this region functioned as general-purpose money
or as special-purpose money. The substantivists of economic anthro-
pology such as Karl Polanyi supposed that precolonial currencies were
classified as special-purpose currencies. This interpretation was based on
the assumption of peripheral markets: the market principle was not nec-
essarily widespread. However, substantivism drew criticism from formal-
ists and historians from the 1960s and onwards, and the debate between
substantivists and formalists is now over.96
Recent studies of precolonial currencies have moved beyond the
paradigms of substantivists and formalists. Instead of using the dichot-
omy between ‘primitive’ and ‘modern’ monies, Jane Guyer has brought
our attention to what she terms ‘interface currencies’ that were ‘largely
104  K. KOBAYASHI

created from the outside, and whose capacities to permeate economic

relationships across the borderland were kept limited’. In the case of
commodity currencies imported from Europe and the Americas into
West Africa, they only became currencies when the Africans used them
for African trade.97 What is more important is, ‘for interface currencies,
some functions [of monies] were always more important than others’.98
Indeed, the concept of interface currencies is interesting and useful for
us; particularly because textiles, including guinées, in precolonial West
Africa apparently did not necessarily meet a trinity of monetary functions
presumed in the present day: a medium of exchange, a unit of account
and a store of value.
Before revisiting the monetary functions of textiles from the viewpoint
of interface currencies, it is necessary to take a look at the transaction
system. In this regard, Karl Polanyi referred to a standard unit of account
as a ‘Trade Ounce’ in his 1964 article, and shortly thereafter Marion
Johnson revised this concept to develop an eighteenth-century monetary
history of West Africa. A key point emerging through their works was
the transaction based on an assortment of goods, which was more com-
plicated than simple barter.99 Philip Curtin also confirmed that this pat-
tern of transaction was common in precolonial Senegambia.100 The detail
of this dealing in the age of the Atlantic slave trade, when the standard
unit of account in the region was the iron bar, is as follows:

Bargaining between men who are both buying and selling normally
involves two agreements, one on the price of the items being sold and
one on the price of those bought in return. A Senegambian dealing with
Europeans also involved two agreements. The first established the price
of the export goods in [iron] bars—so many bars per slave, per quintal
of ivory or wax, and so on. A second then established the assortment of
goods in which those bars were to be paid. The whole transaction shares
some aspects of a barter, but simple barter is the exchange of one com-
modity for another. These exchanges were rarely a single export against a
single import. Even when slaves were sold alone, for example, the return
goods always included an assortment of ten to fifty commodities.101

However, as the exports in gum arabic from and imports of guinées

into the Senegal River increased, two changes occurred in the regional
transactions from the late eighteenth century. One change was
that a piece of guinée replaced the iron bar as a new standard unit of
account in the region, since gum arabic was usually paid for in guinées.
 3  GUINÉES IN THE LOWER SENEGAL RIVER: A CONSUMER-LED TRADE …  105

The other change was that, even after assortment bargaining wound
down, this institution could still be found at some points in the early
nineteenth century. For example, Curtin noted a case in which guinées
functioned as a unit of account for assortments of goods for ransom paid
by the French official Duranton to the king of Kaarta in 1829.102
Whether it was an iron bar, cloth strip or gold, functioning as a unit of
account had another aspect: ‘ghost money’, which is also referred to as
‘imaginary money’. The prevailing view that the term ‘currency’ should
be applied only to money physically circulating does not classify money
without substance as currency. However, Akinobu Kuroda has recently
shed fresh light on this riddle from the viewpoint of complementarity
among monies. He states that ‘the majority of human beings through
most of history dealt with concurrent currencies. … the coexistence of
monies was not incidental but functional, since they worked in a comple-
mentary relationship. That is, one money could do what another money
could not, and vice versa’.103 As for the complementarity between tex-
tiles and other currencies in precolonial West Africa, Marion Johnson has
already stated that cloth strip rarely circulated alone, and that ‘there were
frequently currencies of comparable value circulating alongside cloth
strip. These might be other local products, such as iron hoes, or imports,
including silver coin and cowries’.104 This kind of division of roles
among monies was found in the trade in the lower Senegal River region
during the early nineteenth century. Indeed, imported guinées and local
grain formed a complementary relationship: a piece of guinée was suita-
ble to pay for larger units such as gum arabic, while grain could serve as
small change that was paid for services.105 That is probably why the com-
promis in 1841 cited above recorded the conversion ratios between gum
arabic and millet, guinées and millet, at the escales.106
According to Kuroda, ghost money could be interpreted as ‘a part of
the complementary monetary system, as far as it interfaced with assort-
ments of currencies’. That means that ghost money could work as long
as it was associated with other coexisting currencies. In this context,
Kuroda unveils the importance of a ‘circuit’ along which a currency
moved in a unilateral way, and, in fact, it is ‘a particular merchant cir-
cuit’ that enabled ghost money to exist.107 Hence, ghost money could
exist only when it circulated along a particular circuit and alongside
other coexisting currencies that likewise had circuits through which to
move. Lars Sundström and Marion Johnson have also pointed out that
some currencies in precolonial Africa tended to become ghost money,
106  K. KOBAYASHI

although they never accounted for what made it possible to function as a

unit of account without substance.108 In that sense, Kuroda’s innovative
approach to monetary history is helpful for us to consider precolonial
West African currencies.
Circuits along which currencies moved indicate another important
element of the movement of money. As mentioned above, the monetary
movement along a particular circuit was one-way. Kuroda demonstrates
this point with reference to the Maria Theresa dollar that circulated in
East Africa in the early twentieth century and the Japanese silver dollar
in southern China during the same period.109 This pattern of circula-
tion has also been confirmed by Johnson with the case of cloth currency
in precolonial West Africa. In sub-Saharan Africa, cloth strip produced
usually in the savannah circulated as money on the east–west axis,
while other goods exchanged for cloth strip travelled in the opposite
direction.110
What is common between the cases discussed by Kuroda and by
Johnson is that a currency rarely returned to a starting point of circu-
lation. The Maria Theresa dollar, which was minted outside the circuits
in East Africa, landed in Aden, and then moved to Gore (in Ethiopia),
where the route of the currency was divided into two streams. Some cir-
culated via Gambela, Khartoum and Port Sudan by the Red Sea, while
others via Addis Ababa and Djibouti. After the journeys along these
routes, some of it finally returned to Aden.111 Also, it was unlikely that
cloth currency in precolonial West Africa returned to the starting points
of their origins, as Johnson identified the transport costs as the major
reason.112
Guinées were manufactured in India, from where they were trans-
ported by French merchants via Bordeaux or other French ports, to
Saint Louis of Senegal. This network that fed guinées into the cir-
cuit connecting Saint Louis with the Sahara resulted from two factors
that have been discussed above. One was the French mercantilist pol-
icy (pacte colonial ) that regulated the metropolitan and colonial trade
in this period. What this policy means is that Lancashire cotton goods
were not freely imported into Senegal as they were imported into other
areas of West Africa (see Chapter 2). As we will see in Chapter 4, the
French colonial administration promoted the development of textile pro-
duction in Pondicherry as a response to an increasing threat from the
competition from the British machine-made textiles. The other was the
geography around the island of Saint Louis, which was separated from
 3  GUINÉES IN THE LOWER SENEGAL RIVER: A CONSUMER-LED TRADE …  107

the Atlantic by the Langue de Barbarie, which probably shaped the

trajectory of the maritime trade from Saint Louis that maintained a close
connection with France during the period.113
James Webb has also pointed out that textiles could deteriorate
as time passed or be consumed as a commodity at some point during
the circulation.114 This was particularly true of guinées that functioned
as money in the Senegal River and Sahara Desert regions in the early
nineteenth century. In Saint Louis, some pieces of guinée were con-
sumed among the habitants or other individuals. The rest of the guinées
were carried by Senegalese intermediaries alongside local grains (a small
denomination currency) and others to the escales, where they were
exchanged for gum arabic. Again, some quantity of guinées were con-
sumed within the land of the nomadic emirates of Trarza and Brakna,
and others further circulated into the interior of the Sahara alongside
other commodities. So, although the current of guinées formed a cir-
cuit connecting West Africa with the Sahara Desert and moved unidirec-
tionally from the coast of Senegal to the interior of the Sahara, it never
returned to Saint Louis of Senegal (Fig. 3.3).
Consumption of guinées as garments indicated a unique aspect
of cloth currency, which was related to the function of store of value.
Although guinées functioned as an exchange medium and a standard unit
of account in the trade in the Senegal River and Sahara Desert regions,
textiles had a disadvantage in that they needed space in which to be
stored. The nomads on the right bank of the Senegal River lived in tents
and therefore had limited space in which to store textiles, although they
accepted guinées as an exchange medium in the gum trade. However,
wrapping themselves with guinées could save a small amount of space in
their tents. This uniqueness proved that commodity could become cur-
rency when necessary, and vice versa.115
In light of recent scholarship of monetary history such as interface
currency and complementarities among monies, this section has so far
revisited the monetary functions of textiles in precolonial West Africa in
general; in particular, those of guinées around Senegal. The rest of the
section will look briefly at how guinées replaced local textiles as a new
currency in the precolonial period.
Senegambia produced cotton textiles and used cloth strips as a cur-
rency as early as the eleventh century in the upper Senegal River.116 The
geographical limits for the circulation of cloth currency were expanding
during the precolonial period. The diffusion of cloth currency across
108  K. KOBAYASHI

the region was inextricably intertwined with Islam and the subsequent
dispersion of textile production during the early stages of the spread of
Islam into West Africa.117 By the fifteenth century, both cotton pro-
duction as well as textile production had become established in Upper
Guinea societies. In her recent work, Linda Newson revealed that locally
woven indigo-dyed textiles called panos functioned as a unit of account
in transactions in the Upper Guinea economy by the early sixteenth
century.118
An oblong piece of textile made locally was called pagne in Senegalese
French, ‘country cloth’ in English, soro in Pulaar and tama in Soninke.
As the basic unit for transactions, each strip of cloth woven on the nar-
row loom measured approximately 2 metres long and 15–18 cm wide,
and some strips were sewn together to make a piece.119 According to
Johnson, cloth strip was quantified by length alone.120 Here, the case of
the nineteenth-century Wolof societies is taken as an example. The find-
ings from the fieldwork conducted by David Ames show there were dif-
ferent individual units of plain white cloth strip in Wolof societies. Wala
wala or sech (for one strip of cloth) was the smallest individual unit of
value, and xopa was the largest individual unit, which was equal to 16
strips of cloth.121
In the market exchange, textiles could serve as either money of large
denomination or small change. In fact, cloth currency usually had flexi-
bility in changing its monetary value by sewing strips into a piece of tex-
tile (made up of eight to ten strips) or cutting it into smaller pieces.122
Smaller pieces served the transactions with small-scale producers in nine-
teenth-century West Africa (see Chapter 2). In Wolof societies, the costs
of goods and services were stated in these units of cloth strip, and the
payments were made with textiles. Xasap (two strips of cloth) and xopa
were often-used units of value to express the prices of the commodities
in their economic exchanges. In the Wolof societies kola nut and grain
were cheap commodities, whereas cattle, such as goat, cow, horse, slaves
and bridewealth, were categorised as expensive payments. A fine horse
cost 800 strips of cloth, which was equal to the combined price of two
cows and one young female slave.123
Ames noted that a strip of plain white cloth was the basic unit of
account in the Wolof societies, but dyed textiles were more valuable
than plain white textiles. He added that dyed textiles with designs were
even more valuable than dyed textiles without, and that it was rarely
used in exchange.124 This information indicates that guinées would serve
 3  GUINÉES IN THE LOWER SENEGAL RIVER: A CONSUMER-LED TRADE …  109

as a larger denomination currency in the Senegal River region and the

Sahara. Indeed, a piece of guinée was equal to 10 soro in Senegal.125
In the precolonial period, the savannah of West Africa was home
to cotton textile production. The major manufacturers in the Upper
Guinea included the Wolof, Mandinka, Fulbe, Banhun, Casanga and
Biafada; and in the land of Waalo workmen called ‘Rabeseyr’ produced
piece goods of cotton.126 At that time, notably as the Atlantic slave
trade expanded, uncertainties in the supply and demand in West African
markets became so significant that they encouraged not only the emer-
gence of a system of credit and delayed payments but also a medium
of exchange. Theoretically speaking, in order for a commodity to be
a currency, it was of essence that it was widely available and traded. In
this regard, cloth in precolonial West African economies fulfilled these
requirements, and thus West African textiles were circulated not only as
a commodity but also as a currency.127 However, in the late eighteenth
century the inhabitants along the Senegal River came to accept Indian
guinées as a new standard unit of account.128 The guinée was exceptional
among imported textiles in the Senegal River region, because imported
textiles rarely became a currency in West Africa.129
This fact leads us to ask why Indian guinées could replace locally
woven textiles as a new standard unit of account in the region.
Unfortunately, there is no clear-cut explanation to this riddle among
existing works. Curtin gave an explanation that compared guinées with
iron bars in precolonial Senegambia. As for the comparative advantages
of guinées over iron bars, guinées were lighter than iron bars, thereby eas-
ier to transport, and hard to counterfeit.130 It seems likely that to estab-
lish the second reason for the comparative advantage of guinées over
iron bars it would be helpful to consider the case of why guinées, not
local cloth, served as a principal currency in the gum trade in the Senegal
River region. Apart from the significance of the tastes of the inhabitants
within the nomadic emirates along the river, it must be remembered that
a constant supply from outside the circuit ensured that the guinée main-
tained its role as a principal currency in the Senegal River region and the
Sahara Desert in the early nineteenth century. As Kuroda highlights, it
was necessary to supplement the existing flow with an additional supply
of money or local credit in the one-way movement of money along a
circuit.131 Therefore, the annual additional supply of guinées from India
via France was essential to sustain the important role of the guinée as a
regional currency.
110  K. KOBAYASHI

Meanwhile, as already discussed, endowment analysis in African eco-

nomic history offers an insightful viewpoint to address the riddle men-
tioned above. The constraints, both land abundance as well as labour
scarcity, combined with the climate, allowed the inhabitants of the
savannah, including the Senegal River region, to choose between agri-
culture and cash crop production. Therefore, for many farmers, textile
production was an activity during the agricultural slack season and was
subject to climatic conditions. Therefore, it was difficult to increase
cotton production in the savannah without posing any threat to food
security.132
In this regard, more importantly, the period from 1600 to 1850
witnessed an increasing aridity that caused serious droughts and sub-
sequent famines. As for the lower Senegal River region, the ecologi-
cal zone shifted from the western savannah to the western Sahel (or
the southern frontier of the Sahara) during this long period. Webb
has noted that this ecological shift ‘pushed rainfed agriculture south
to within 100 kilometres of the Senegal River’.133 Indeed, the aridifi-
cation and subsequent ecological crises brought about a change in the
economic and political life of the inhabitants in the region, and would
have negatively affected agriculture and manufacture.134 As one of the
effects of the arid conditions, droughts displaced the weaving industry
from the Senegal River region around the middle of the eighteenth cen-
tury. This means that this climate change made the production of tex-
tiles, and thereby the supply of cloth currency, more occasional.135 It
is also worth noting that nomads in the desert and desert-edge relied
on the supply of grain and cloth from sedentary farmers for their sub-
sistence.136 The climate change would be consistent with the afore-
mentioned fact that there was the growing demand for indigo-dyed
textiles among consumers in Senegambia from the late eighteenth cen-
tury. In this perspective, the displacement of the weaving industry from
the Senegal River implies that the local weavers might have been una-
ble to carry an adequate supply of textiles across and beyond the area.
This is probably why guinées from India, not locally made cotton tex-
tiles, could serve as a new currency in the Senegal River region and the
Sahara Desert in the early nineteenth century since it was possible for
guinées to be constantly supplied from India in abundance by the French
merchants.137
 3  GUINÉES IN THE LOWER SENEGAL RIVER: A CONSUMER-LED TRADE …  111

Conclusion
This chapter has explored the historical background that created the
continued demand for Indian guinées in, and beyond, the lower Senegal
River region in the early nineteenth century, from a long-term perspec-
tive. It had two main focuses. One is the trade along the lower Senegal
River region in which guinées were exchanged for good quality gum
arabic that was indispensable for industrialisation in Western Europe.
Tracing the major trade network of guinées around the lower Senegal
River region opened our eyes to the fact that the guinée trade was also
linked with Saharan trade within the lands of the nomadic emirates of
Trarza and Brakna. Guinées were not only a principal currency in the
gum trade along the Senegal River region, but they also played a similar
role in the desert trade. Examining consumption patterns of guinées in
the region has highlighted the fact that the quality of guinées, not that
of the European copies and counterfeits, met the approval of astute con-
sumers and that it was also suitable to life in the savannah, Sahel and
the Sahara Desert. The scope of the guinée trade in existing literature on
the economic history of precolonial Senegal tended to limit itself to the
Senegal River region, and rarely extended beyond it. However, the pres-
ent narrative has shown that there was a more extensive circuit of guinées
than previously discussed.
The other focus is on consumption patterns of guinées. Guinées served
desert life, consumer taste, conspicuous consumption and regional com-
merce as larger denomination money. In the savannah belt, Africans had
long produced cotton textiles during the agricultural slack season, and
used cloth as a currency in market transactions. Locally woven textiles
had shaped West African consumers’ tastes for textiles before Europeans
arrived in West Africa and brought a large number of textiles. However,
the aridification around the right bank of the lower Senegal River from
1600 to 1850 transformed savannah into desert edge, and subsequently
it became increasingly difficult to cultivate cotton in the former savannah
region. Such an ecological shift and subsequent impact on the centres
of textile production in Senegal would probably lay the foundation for
guinées to be a new regional currency from the late eighteenth century.
Also, in order to maintain monetary functions in the regional economies
it was essential to continue to supply guinées from India via France to
Saint Louis regularly. This indirect trade via France was the product of
the commercial institution called exclusif.
112  K. KOBAYASHI

In the late nineteenth century, the French conducted military cam-

paigns to expand their control in Senegal. As they made inroads into
the upper Senegal River and into the Western Soudan, they faced seri-
ous problems, among which was to ensure food locally for the mili-
tary. For this purpose, the military commander was aware of the need
to have guinées, and ordered his people to pay the food suppliers
by Indian goods in the late 1880s. This episode implies not only that
guinées continued to function as money in market transactions around
Senegambia but also that the cloth currency prevailed into the Western
Soudan. Indeed, the quantity of guinées required exclusively for the mil-
itary campaigns was 35,000–45,000 pieces in the first half of the 1880s,
and increased to around 70,000 pieces in 1886–1887. The Maurel and
Prom, a major company from Bordeaux, transported guinées to the fort
at Médine in the upper Senegal River, and the company gained con-
siderable profits from the trade. On the other hand, the Savana Mills
in Pondicherry, which had operated under the name of La Société
Poulain, Duboy et Cie in the early nineteenth century was still in charge
of production of standard guinées for West Africa in the late nineteenth
century. Even then the French could not cope with fake copies and
counterfeits of Indian textiles. Thus, demand in the Senegal River region
for guinées persisted beyond the mid-nineteenth century, and it was nec-
essary for the French to meet effectively the local demand, notably that
from food suppliers, for the success of their military conquests. For this
purpose, Pondicherry continued to play a large role as the supplier of
original guinées for West Africa even after the military campaign began in
the 1850s.138

Notes
1. Geneviève Désiré-Vuillemin, ‘Un commerce qui meurt: la traite de la
gomme dans les escales du Sénégal’, Cahiers d’outre-mer 17 (1952):
90–4; Philip D. Curtin, Economic Change in Precolonial Africa:
Senegambia in the Era of the Slave Trade, 2 Vols. (Madison, WI:
University of Wisconsin Press 1975); Michael D. Marcson, ‘European-
African Interaction in the Precolonial Period: Saint Louis, Senegal,
1758–1854’ (PhD Dissertation, Princeton University, 1976); Marion
Johnson, ‘Cloth as Money: The Cloth Strip Currencies of Africa’,
Textile History 11/1 (1980): 193–202; Roger Pasquier, ‘Les comptoirs
du Sénégal au milieu du XIXe siècle’, in Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch,
 3  GUINÉES IN THE LOWER SENEGAL RIVER: A CONSUMER-LED TRADE …  113

ed., Actes du colloque entreprises et entrepreneurs en Afrique (XIXe et XXe

siècle) (Paris, 1983), pp. 141–63; James L. A. Webb, Jr., ‘The Trade
in Gum Arabic: Prelude to French Conquest in Senegal’, Journal of
African History 26/2 (1985): 149–68; Richard L. Roberts, ‘West Africa
and the Pondicherry Textile Industry’, in Tirthankar Roy, ed., Cloth and
Commerce: Textiles in Colonial India (New Delhi, 1996), pp. 142–74.
2. 
For Indian cotton textiles of various kinds imported into West Africa,
see George Metcalf, ‘A Microcosm of Why Africans Sold Slaves: Akan
Consumption Patterns in the 1770s’, Journal of African History 28/3
(1987): 377–94; Stanly B. Alpern, ‘What Africans Got for Their Slaves: A
Master List of European Trade Goods’, History in Africa 22 (1995): 5–43.
3. J.-P. Duchon-Doris, Jr., Commerce des toiles bleues dites guinées (Paris,
1842), pp. 3–4; Saugnier, Relations de plusieurs voyages à la côte d’Afri-
que, a Maroc, au Sénégal, a Gorée, a Galam, etc. (Paris, 1791), p. 287. The
assumption that a guinée was identical to guinea cloth may be misleading.
Guinea cloth was also an Indian cotton textile. Like guinées, the English
appellation is derived from the Guinea coast region in West Africa because
these textiles produced by South Asian weavers served for the West African
trade as well. However, according to John Irwin, it was produced in
Western India and was ‘the generic term for a wide range of cheap, bright-
ly-coloured Indian calicoes, mostly striped or chequered, and very popu-
lar with negroes’. That indicates that guinée cloth was one type of guinea
cloth. In other words, guinea cloth was not always identical to guinées. For
this reason, this book employs the term guinée/guinées in order to avoid
the likelihood of confusion with other appellations. John Irwin and P. R.
Schwartz, Studies in Indo-European Textile History (Ahmedabad: Calico
Museum of Textiles, 1966), p. 65. It should be noted that India pro-
duced both guinée white and guinée blue in the seventeenth and eight-
eenth centuries. S. Jeyaseela Stephen, Oceanscapes: Tamil Textiles in the
Early Modern World (Delhi: Primus Books, 2014), pp. 387–424; Colette
Establet, Répertoire des tissus indiens importés en France entre 1687 et 1769
(Aix-en-Provence: IREMAN, 2017), pp. 106–7.
4. Le Sénégal et les guinées de Pondichéry: Note présentée à la commission
supérieure des colonies par les négociants sénégalais (Bordeaux, 1879),
p. 7; Dictionnaire universel théorique et pratique, du commerce et de la
navigation, Vol. 2 (Paris, 1859–1861), pp. 918–19.
5. The term ‘Moor’ was originally the term for Muslim Spaniards, which
in turn derived from the territory of Mauritania in the ancient Roman
Empire. Ghislaine Lydon, On Trans-Saharan Trails: Islamic Law, Trade
Networks, and Cross-Cultural Exchange in Nineteenth-Century Western
Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. xviii; Ann McDougall,
‘The Sahara in An Economic History of West Africa: A Critical
114  K. KOBAYASHI

Reflection on Historiographical Impact and Legacy’, in Toyin Falola

and Emily Brownell, eds., Africa, Empire and Globalization: Essays in
Honor of A. G. Hopkins (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2011),
p. 102, n. 42.
6. Lydon, On Trans-Saharan Trails, p. 60.
7. Saugnier, Relations, p. 287.
8. S. M. X. Golberry, Travels in Africa, Vol. 1, trans. W. Mudford (London,
1803), pp. 173–4.
9. Interview with Alasana Sanyang, dyer, Dippa Kunda, The Gambia, 9
March 2018.
10. British Library (BL), India Office Records and Private Papers, IOR/E/4/895:
Madras dispatch, 19 June 1805, pp. 75–6; IOR/E/4/901: Madras dispatch,
6 March 1807, p. 747.
11. Mireille Lobligeois, ‘Ateliers public et filatures privées à Pondichéry après
1816’, Bulletin de l’ecole française d’extrême-orient 59 (1972): 22–3.
12. Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer (ANOM, Aix-en-Provence, France),
Sénégal XIII, Dossier 3c: rapport spéciaux, June 1851.
13. Duchon-Doris, Commerce, pp. 3–4.
14.  No. 66, Ordonnance du Roi, 18 May 1843, in Sénégal, Bulletin
Administratif des Actes du Gouvernement (Paris, 1846), pp. 87–8.
15. No. 88, Ordinnance du Roi, 1 September 1843, in Sénégal, Bulletin
Administratif, pp. 125–6.
16.  Archives nationales du Sénégal (ANS, Dakar, Senegal), 2B24:
Correspondance du Commandant Laborel au Ministre de la marine
et des colonies, No. 145, 15 April 1844, Saint Louis, F 50; ANOM,
Sénégal XIII, Dossier 3c: rapport spéciaux, June 1851.
17. Philip D. Curtin, ‘Africa and the Wider Monetary World, 1250–1850’,
in John F. Richard, ed., Precious Metals in the Later Medieval and Early
Modern Worlds (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1983), p. 258.
18. Gaspard T. Mollien, Travels in the Interior of Africa, to the Sources of
Senegal and Gambia (London, 1820), p. 256; Richard L. Roberts, Two
Worlds of Cotton: Colonialism and the Regional Economy in the French
Sudan, 1800–1946 (Stanford University Press, 1996), p. 54.
19. Webb, ‘The Trade in Gum Arabic’, p. 163; Mamadou Fall, ‘Marchés
locaux et groups marchands dans la longue durée: des marchés du
Cayor aux marches du Fleuve Sénégal XVIIIe – début XXe siècle’, in
Boubacar Barry and Leonhard Harding, eds., Commerce et commerçants
en Afrique de l’Ouest: L’Sénégal (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1992), p. 79.
20. John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic
World, 1400–1800 (Second Edition, Cambridge University Press, 1998),
pp. 48–53.
21. David W. Ames, ‘The Use of a Transitional Cloth-Money Token Among
the Wolof’, American Anthropologist 57/5 (1957): 1016.
 3  GUINÉES IN THE LOWER SENEGAL RIVER: A CONSUMER-LED TRADE …  115

22. For example, although Michael Marcson gives a detailed description

of the commercial networks along the Senegal River in this period,
the connections between the Senegal River region and Saharan trade
are completely missing from his account. Marcson, ‘European-African
Interaction.’
23. Désiré-Vuillemin, ‘Un commerce qui meurt’, p. 92. There were three
principal forests for gum harvest on the right bank of the Senegal River:
Sohel, Hel-Hiebar and Al-Fatack. E. Bouët-Willaumez, Commerce et
traite des noirs aux côtes occidentales d’Afrique (Paris, 1848), p. 6.
24. ANS, 2B18: Correspondance du Gouverneur du Sénégal au Ministre de
la Marine et des Colonies, No. 202, 9 August 1840, Saint Louis, F 37–8.
25. ANOM, Sénégal XIII, Dossier 2: Relevé comparatif des quantités
exportées de la colonie à toutes destinations, pendant la période quin-
quennale de 1845 à 1849, 9 December 1850.
26. This kind of commercial network, which extended from the coast
through local intermediaries to the interior, was found in other regions
of precolonial Africa. See David P. Gamble, Contributions to a Socio-
economic Survey of the Gambia (London: Colonial Office, 1949),
p. 60; Martin Lynn, Commerce and Economic Change in West Africa:
The Palm Oil Trade in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University
Press, 1997), Chapter 3; Mariana P. Candido, ‘Merchants and the
Business of the Slave Trade at Benguela, 1750–1850’, African Economic
History 35 (2007): 13–7.
27. Bernard Schnapper, ‘La fin du régime de l’exclusif: le commerce étranger
dans les possessions françaises d’Afrique tropicale (1817–1870) ’,
Annales Africaines 1 (1959): 149–99. See Chapter 2.
28. For example, the American vessels were not allowed to trade at Saint
Louis until 1865. George E. Brooks, Yankee Traders, Old Coasters &
African Middlemen: A History of American Legitimate Trade with West
Africa in the Nineteenth Century (Boston, MA: Boston University Press,
1970), p. 299.
29. Other commodities shipped from France to Senegal in the early nine-
teenth century included European textiles, metals and metalware, arms
and ammunition, beads and semi-precious stones, alcohols and tobacco.
Curtin, Economic Change, Vol. 2, p. 88.
30. L’A. P. David Boilat, Esquisses Sénégalaises (Paris, 1853), pp. 209–12;
Anne Raffenel, Nouveau voyage dans le pays des nègres, Vol. 2 (Paris,
1856), p. 23; Ibrahima Thioub, ‘L’esclavage à Saint-Louis du Sénégal
au xviiie–xixe siècle’, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin: Jahrbuch 2008/2009
(2010): 338; George E. Brooks, ‘The Signares of Saint-Louis and
Gorée: Women Entrepreneurs in Eighteenth-Century Senegal’, in N.
J. Hafkin and E. G. Bay, eds., Women in Africa: Studies in Social and
Economic Change (Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 19–44; James
116  K. KOBAYASHI

F. Searing, ‘The Seven Years’ War in West Africa: The End of Company
Rule and the Emergence of the Habitants’, in Mark H. Danley and
Patrick J. Speelman, eds., The Seven Years’ War: Global Views (Leiden:
Brill, 2014), p. 271; Karen Amanda Sucker, ‘The Development of
Creole Society and Culture in Saint-Louis and Gorée, 1719–1817’
(PhD Thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of
London, 1999); Hilary Jones, The Métis of Senegal: Urban Life and
Politics in French West Africa (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University
Press, 2013), Chapter 1; Bronwen Everill, ‘“All the Baubles That
They Needed”: “Industriousness” and Slavery in Saint-Louis and
Gorée’, Early American Studies 15/4 (2017): 714–39. On the case of
the Gambia, see Peter A. Mark, “Portuguese” Style and Luso-African
Identity: Precolonial Senegambia, Sixteenth-Nineteenth Centuries
(Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002),
pp. 89–90; Hassoum Ceesay, Gambian Women: An Introductory History
(Kanifing: Fulladu Publisher, 2012), pp. 21–5. For a comparison with
similar female traders, called donas in Portuguese, at Benguela in West-
Central Africa, see Candido, ‘Merchants’, pp. 11–13. For the latest
scholarship about brokerage in West Africa in the precolonial period, see
Toby Green, ed., Brokers of Change: Atlantic Commerce and Cultures in
Pre-colonial Western Africa (Oxford University Press, 2012). Southeast
Asia is another place that offers a rich insight into female roles in trade.
Anthony Reid, ‘Female Roles in Pre-colonial Southeast Asia’, Modern
Asian Studies 22/3 (1988): 629–45.
31. Marcson, ‘European-African Interaction’, pp. 51–6.
32. The roles of the habitants in the gum trade in Senegal could be com-
pared with those of trading companies. Trading companies can over-
come obstacles such as lack of trust and lack of information on behalf of
individual people, so they ‘can be seen as reducing search, negotiation,
transaction, and information costs in international trade through their
specialist knowledge of markets and business environment’. Geoffrey
Jones, Merchants to Multinationals: British Trading Companies in the
Nineteenth to Twentieth Centuries (Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 6.
33. Saugnier and Brisson, Voyages to the Coast of Africa (London, 1792),
pp. 278–9; James L. A. Webb, Jr., ‘On Currency and Credit in the Western
Sahel, 1700–1850’, in Endre Stiansen and Jane I. Guyer, eds., Credit,
Currencies and Culture: African Financial Institutions in Historical
Perspectives (Stockholm: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1999), pp. 51–2.
34. Marcson, ‘European-African Interaction’, pp. 11–13; Thioub,
‘L’esclavage à Saint-Louis du Sénégal’, p. 340; Searing, ‘The Seven
Years’ War’, p. 269.
35. Gaston Donnet, Une mission au Sahara occidental (Paris, 1896), p. 46;
James L. A. Webb, Jr., Desert Frontier: Ecological and Economic Change
 3  GUINÉES IN THE LOWER SENEGAL RIVER: A CONSUMER-LED TRADE …  117

along the Western Sahel, 1600–1850 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin

Press, 1995), pp. 117–24. See also the discussion in Chapter 2.
36. Marcson, ‘European-African Interaction’, p. 21.
37. Mollien, Travels, p. 60; James F. Searing, West African Slavery and
Atlantic Commerce: The Senegal River Valley, 1700–1860 (Cambridge
University Press, 1993), p. 238. It should be noted that nomads in
the desert edge had no or little access to grain and textiles due to their
resource endowment. This would be an incentive to demand these goods
from the river traders at the escales. Philip D. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade
in World History (Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 16.
38. ANS, Q18: Compromis pour les trois escales année 1841. In the stand-
ard weight and measure for 1827 in Senegal, one barrel was equal to
280 litres. France. Ministère de la marine et des colonies, Notices statis-
tiques sur les colonies françaises, Vol. 3 (Paris, 1839), p. 306. However,
considering that the prices of these goods in transactions would vary
from season to season, from year to year, and from place to place, the
real prices might not conform to the cited ones in the text.
39. Bouët-Willaumez, Commerce, p. 7.
40. Marcson, ‘European-African Interaction’, pp. 4–5; Webb, Desert
Frontier, p. 111; Lydon, On Trans-Saharan Trails, p. xx. The Idaw
al-Hajj were a zwaya group. Towards the end of the seventeenth cen-
tury, they migrated from the Gibra in western Sahel, across the Senegal
River, into north-western Senegal, where they established themselves
as teachers of Islam. Webb, Desert Frontier, pp. 35–36. In terms of
the scale of the gum trade in each escale, the escale of Trarza supplied
695 tonnes of gum to the river traders, that of Brakna 605 tonnes, and
that of Darmancours 84 tonnes from January to April 1840. ANOM,
Sénégal XIII, Dossier 25: etat des gommes traitées aux escales 1er
Janvier au 1er Mai 1840.
41. Webb, ‘The Trade in Gum Arabic’, pp. 157–9.
42. Désiré-Vuillemin, ‘Un commerce qui meurt’, pp. 90–2.
43. France. Direction générale des douanes, Tableau général du com-
merce de la France avec ses colonies et les puissances étrangères (Paris,
1831–1851).
44. Marcson, ‘European-African Interaction’, pp. 159–60; ANS, 2B18:
Correspondance départ du Gouverneur du Sénégal au bureau du régime
politique et du commerce, 11 September 1841, No. 390, F 119.
45. Bouët-Willaumez, Commerce, p. 6.
46. Webb, ‘The Trade in Gum Arabic’, p. 154; Searing, West African
Slavery, p. 168.
47. F. Carrère and P. Holle, De la Sénégambie française (Paris, 1855),
pp. 328–9; Webb, ‘The Trade in Gum Arabic’, pp. 154–5.
 118  K. KOBAYASHI

48. Abdoulaye Ly, La compagnie du Sénégal (Dakar: Présence Africaine,

1958), p. 282.
49. Lydon, On Trans-Saharan Trails, pp. 251–2. For the significance of the
Saharan salt trade, see E. Ann McDougall, ‘Salts of the Western Sahara:
Myths, Mysteries, and Historical Significance’, International Journal of
African Historical Studies 23/2 (1990): 231–57.
50. Carolyn Keyes Adenaike, ‘West African Textiles, 1500–1800’, in
Maureen F. Mazzaoui, ed., Textiles: Production, Trade and Demand
(Aldershot and Brookfield: Ashgate, 1998), pp. 1–2.
51. Rita Bolland, Tellem Textiles: Archaeological Finds from Burial Caves in
Mali’s Bandiagara Cliff (Amsterdam: Tropenmuseum, 1991).
52. Thurstan Shaw, Igbo-Ukwu: An Account of Archaeological Discoveries in
Eastern Nigeria, Vol. 1 (London: Faber and Faber, 1970), pp. 240–4.
53. Colleen E. Kriger, ‘Mapping the Cotton Textile Production in
Precolonial West Africa’, African Economic History 33 (2005),
pp. 95–6; Colleen Kriger, Making Money: Life, Death, and Early Modern
Trade on Africa’s Guinea Coast (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press,
2017), p. 20.
54. In the 1960s and 1970s the Institute of Human Biology of Utrecht
University conducted an excavation in Mali. Bolland, Tellem Textiles, p. 28.
55. Heinrich Barth, Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa:
Including Accounts of Tripoli, the Sahara, the Remarkable Kingdom of
Bornu, and the Countries Around Lake Chad (London: Ward, Lock
& Co., 1890, originally published in 1857–1858), p. 300; Charles
Monteil, ‘Le coton chez les noirs’, Bulletin du comité d’Études his-
toriques et scientifiques de l’Afrique occidentale française 9/4 (1926):
594; David W. Ames, ‘The Rural Wolof of the Gambia’, in Paul
Bohannan and George Dalton, eds., Markets in Africa (Evanston,
IL: Northwestern University Press, 1962), p. 38; B. W. Hodder,
‘Indigenous Cloth Trade and Marketing in Africa’, Textile History
11/1 (1980): 203–4; B. K. Sagnia, ‘Minding Indigenous Industries: A
Casestudy of the Historical Background, Nature of Dissemination and
Production Technique of Manding Weaving in the Senegambia Region’,
Occasional Publication of the Gambia National Museum 5 (1984): 4;
Roberts, Two Worlds of Cotton, pp. 51–9; Marisa Candotti, ‘The Hausa
Textile Industry: Origins and Development in the Precolonial Period’,
in Anne Haour and Benedetta Rossi, eds., Being and Becoming Hausa:
Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 189, 193–4.
56. Curtin, Economic Change, Vol. 1, p. 212; Jody A. Benjamin, ‘The
Texture of Change: Cloth, Commerce and History in Western Africa,
1700–1850’ (PhD Dissertation, Harvard University, 2016), pp. 38–62;
Kriger, Making Money, pp. 23–31.
 3  GUINÉES IN THE LOWER SENEGAL RIVER: A CONSUMER-LED TRADE …  119

57. Hodder, ‘Indigenous Cloth Trade’, pp. 204–5.

58. Monteil, ‘Le coton chez les noirs’, pp. 637–42; Paul E. Lovejoy, Jihad in
West Africa during the Age of Revolutions (Athens, OH: Ohio University
Press, 2016), pp. 129–30.
59. Marion Johnson, ‘Technology, Competition, and African Crafts’, in
Clive Dewey and A. G. Hopkins, eds., The Imperial Impact: Studies
in the Economic History of Africa and India (London: Ashlone Press,
1978), p. 259.
60. For the various theories of the origins of the narrow loom in West Africa,
see Marion Johnson, ‘Cloth Strips and History’, West African Journal
of Archaeology 7 (1977): 169–79. See also, The Gambia National
Museum, What about Textiles? Traditional Textiles in the Gambia
(Banjul: New Type Press, Kanifing, 1992), p. 4.
61. Curtin, Economic Change, Vol. 1, p. 214. See also, Venice Lamb and
Alastair Lamb, ‘The Classification and Distribution of Horizontal
Treadle Looms in Sub-Saharan Africa’, Textile History 11/1 (1980):
22–62.
62. Kriger, ‘Mapping’, p. 102; Colleen E. Kriger, Cloth in West African
History (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2006), pp. 19–60.
63. Angela W. Browne, ‘Rural Industry and Appropriate Technology: The
Lessons of Narrow-Loom Ashanti Weaving’, African Affairs 82/326
(1983): 30–1.
64. A. G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (London: Longman,
1973), p. 15; Gareth Austin, ‘Resources, Techniques, and Strategies
South of the Sahara: Revising the Factor Endowments Perspective
on African Economic Development, 1500–2000’, Economic History
Review 61/3 (2008): 602–6; Gareth Austin, ‘Labour-Intensity and
Manufacturing in West Africa, c. 1450–c. 2000’, in Gareth Austin and
Kaoru Sugihara, eds., Labour-Intensive Industrialization in Global
History (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 202–3.
65. Johnson, ‘Technology’, p. 261; Marisa Candotti, ‘Cotton Growing
and Textile Production in Northern Nigeria: From Caliphate to
Protectorate, c. 1804–1914’ (PhD Thesis, School of Oriental and
African Studies, University of London, 2015), pp. 91–3.
66. It seems likely that short-staple cotton, called gossypium herbaceum, orig-
inated from South India and diffused through Middle East and eastern
Mediterranean islands into North Africa and West Africa. Roberts, Two
Worlds of Cotton, pp. 43, 55. A relative species, gossypium punctatum,
was also introduced from the Americas to Senegambia in the sixteenth
century, and grown widely in the Western Soudan. Curtin, Economic
Change, Vol. 1, pp. 211–2.
67. Austin, ‘Resources’, p. 604.
 120  K. KOBAYASHI

68. Roberts, Two Worlds of Cotton, pp. 44–5, 55. The fact that cot-
ton impoverished the soil implies that it was difficult to plant cotton
with wheat, because the harvest season for wheat was later than cot-
ton. Giorgio Riello, Cotton: The Fabric That Made the Modern World
(Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 305.
69. Sagnia, ‘Minding Indigenous Industries’, pp. 4–5.
70. Sagnia, ‘Minding Indigenous Industries’, pp. 8–9; National Centre
for Arts and Culture, Research and Document Division, Oral History
Archives (Fajara, The Gambia), File Nos. 422–427, interview with
Samba Kamisa, Bassi, 17 April 1977.
71. Candotti, ‘The Hausa Textile Industry’, pp. 192–4.
72. A. A. de Almada, Brief Treatise on the Rivers of Guinea (Liverpool:
Department of History, University of Liverpool, 1984, original in
1594), p. 24; National Records Service (Banjul, The Gambia), CSO
18/3: Wuli District, 1933; Robin Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa,
1550–1750: The Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on an African Society
(Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 44–6; Randy J. Sparks, Where
the Negroes Are Masters: An African Port in the Era of the Slave Trade
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 88.
73. Adenaike, ‘West African Textiles’, p. 6.
74. The National Archives (Kew, the United Kingdom), T 70/20: A Letter
from John Mildmay, Cape Cast Castle, 13 October 1680; John Atkins,
A Voyage to Guinea, Brazil, and the West-Indies; in His Majesty’s Ships,
the Swallow and Weymouth (London, 1735), pp. 158–68; Law, The Slave
Coast, pp. 201–2.
75. Thornton, Africa and Africans, p. 50.
76. John Thornton, ‘Precolonial African Industry and the Atlantic Trade,
1500–1800’, African Economic History 19 (1990–1991): 18–9;
Hodder, ‘Indigenous Cloth Trade’, p. 205.
77. Phyllis M. Martin, ‘Power, Cloth and Currency on the Loango Coast’,
African Economic History 15 (1982): 2.
78. Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London and Dar-
es-Salaam: Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications and Tanzanian Publishing
House, 1973), p. 104.
79. Joseph E. Inikori, ‘English Versus Indian Cotton Textiles: The Impact of
Imports on Cotton Textile Production in West Africa’, in Giorgio Riello
and Tirthankar Roy, eds., How India Clothed the World: The World of
South Asian Textiles, 1500–1850 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), pp. 85–114.
80. Hopkins, Economic History, p. 121.
81. Marion Johnson, ‘Commodities, Customs, and the Computer’, History
in Africa 11 (1984): 364.
 3  GUINÉES IN THE LOWER SENEGAL RIVER: A CONSUMER-LED TRADE …  121

82. Kriger, ‘Mapping’, pp. 106–7; Kriger, Cloth; Colleen E. Kriger, ‘“Guinea

Cloth”: Production and Consumption of Cotton Textiles in West
Africa Before and During the Atlantic Slave Trade’, in Giorgio Riello
and Prasannan Parthasarathi, eds., The Spinning World: A Global
History of Cotton Textiles, 1200–1850 (Oxford University Press, 2009),
pp. 105–26.
83. Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in
Africa (Third Edition, Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 106;
Lovejoy, Jihad, p. 129.
84. A. J. H. Latham, Old Calabar 1600–1891: The Impact of the
International Economy upon a Traditional Society (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1973), pp. 75–9.
85. British Parliamentary Papers, 1842, XI & XII (551), Report from
the Select Committee on the West Coast of Africa; together with
the Minutes of Evidence, Appendix, and Index. Part I—Report and
Evidence, 117. See also, Silke Strickrodt, Afro-European Trade in the
Atlantic World: The Western Slave Coast, c. 1550–c. 1885 (Woodbridge:
Boydell and Brewer, 2015), pp. 59–60.
86. Daniel B. Domingues da Silva, The Atlantic Slave Trade from West
Central Africa 1780–1867 (Cambridge University Press, 2017),
pp. 122–41.
87. Gareth Austin, Labour, Land and Capital in Ghana: From Slavery to Free
Labour in Asante, 1807–1956 (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester
Press, 2005), pp. 53, 75–7.
88. Paul E. Lovejoy, ‘Interregional Monetary Flows in the Precolonial Trade
of Nigeria’, Journal of African History 15/4 (1974): 571.
89.  The textile belt also included northern Zaria, Zamfara and southern
Katsina. Lovejoy, Jihad, pp. 107–9, 114.
90.  Phillip Shea, ‘The Development of an Export Oriented Dyed
Cloth Industry in Kano Emirate in the Nineteenth Century’ (PhD
Dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1975).
91. Barth, Travels and Discoveries, pp. 300–2; Candotti, ‘The Hausa Textile
Industry’. For the significance of the trans-Saharan trade in northern
Nigerian economy, albeit after the last quarter of the nineteenth cen-
tury, see also Marion Johnson, ‘Calico Caravans: The Tripoli-Kano
Trade After 1880’, Journal of African History 17/1 (1976): 95–117.
92.  Joseph E. Inikori, ‘Introduction’, in Joseph E. Inikori, ed., Forced
Migration: The Impact of the Export Slave Trade on African Societies
(London: Hutchinson University Library, 1982), p. 55.
93. Hopkins, Economic History, p. 121.
94. Colleen E. Kriger, ‘The Importance of Mande Textiles in the African Side
of the Atlantic Trade, ca. 1680–1710’, Mande Studies 11 (2009): 10, 13.
 122  K. KOBAYASHI

95. Lovejoy, ‘Interregional Monetary Flows’; Curtin, ‘Wider Monetary

World’, p. 255; Marion Johnson, ‘The Cowrie Currencies of West
Africa’, Journal of African History 11/1&3 (1970): 17–49, 331–53;
Jan Hogendorn and Marion Johnson, The Shell Money of the Slave Trade
(Cambridge University Press, 1986); Jan S. Hogendorn and Henry A.
Gemery, ‘Continuity in West African Monetary History? An Outline
of Monetary Development’, African Economic History 17 (1988):
127–46.
96. Paul Bohannan and George Dalton, ‘Introduction’, in Bohannan and
Dalton, eds., Markets in Africa, pp. 1–26; Karl Polanyi, Dahomey
and the Slave Trade: An Analysis of an Archaic Economy (Seattle, WA:
University of Washington Press, 1966). On the critiques of substan-
tivists from historians, see Hopkins, Economic History, pp. 68–70;
Curtin, Economic Change, Vol. 1, pp. 233–7; Robin Law, ‘Posthumous
Questions for Karl Polanyi: Price Inflation in Pre-colonial Dahomey’,
Journal of African History 33/3 (1992): 387–420. See also Gareth
Austin, ‘A. G. Hopkins, West Africa, and Economic History’, in Falola
and Brownell, eds., Africa, pp. 61–2.
97. Jane I. Guyer, ‘Introduction: The Currency Interface and Its Dynamics’,
in Jane I. Guyer, ed., Money Matters: Instability, Values and Social
Payments in the Modern History of West African Communities
(Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1995), p. 8.
98. Guyer, ‘Introduction’, p. 9.
99. Karl Polanyi, ‘Sortings and “Ounce Trade” in the West African Slave
Trade’, Journal of African History 5/3 (1964): 381–93; Marion
Johnson, ‘The Ounce in Eighteenth-Century West African Trade’,
Journal of African History 7/2 (1966): 197–214.
100. Curtin, Economic Change, Vol. 1, pp. 247–53.
101. Curtin, Economic Change, Vol. 1, p. 249.
102. Curtin, Economic Change, Vol. 1, p. 268.
103. Akinobu Kuroda, ‘What Is the Complementarity Among Monies? An
Introductory Note’, Financial History Review 15/1 (2008): 7.
104. Johnson, ‘Cloth as Money’, p. 197. Following Kuroda’s works,
Africanist historians started to apply the concept of complementarity
among monies to the history of money in Africa. Candotti, ‘Cotton
Growing and Textile Production’; Toby Green, ‘Africa and the Price
Revolution: Currency Imports and Socioeconomic Change in West
and West-Central Africa During the Seventeenth Century’, Journal of
African History 57/1 (2016): 1–24; Jane I. Guyer and Karin Pallaver,
‘Money and Currency in African History’, Oxford Research Encyclopedia
of African History (Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 1–29.
 3  GUINÉES IN THE LOWER SENEGAL RIVER: A CONSUMER-LED TRADE …  123

105. The work by David Ames, on nineteenth-century Gambian Wolof socie-

ties, supports the complementarity between cloth currency and others.
Here, I quote an interesting paragraph on this point from his work:
Some commodities, like garden vegetables, were worth so little than
they could not be paid for in cloth. Grain in small amounts, measured
out in gourds, was the ‘petty cash’ used in such payments. At the same
time, a very expensive commodity like a fine horse, worth two slaves,
was rarely bought with cloth-money alone by people, whole grana-
ries (worth 15 xopa), livestock, or other objects of value entered the
exchange, often in conjunction with cloth. Some exchanges, then, espe-
cially the ‘expensive’ ones, were primarily or wholly barter, but even
here most of the articles exchanged were evaluated in terms of cloth-
money. (Emphasis in original)
Ames, ‘Cloth-Money’, pp. 1018–19.
106. See Note 38 above.
107. Akinobu Kuroda, ‘Concurrent but Non-integrable Currency Circuits:
Complementary Relationships Among Monies in Modern China and
Other Regions’, Financial History Review 15/1 (2008): 28.
108. Lars Sundström, The Trade of Guinea (Uppsala: Studia Ethnographica
Upsaliensia XXIV, 1965), pp. 167–168; Johnson, ‘Cloth as Money’,
pp. 193–4.
109. Akinobu Kuroda, ‘The Maria Theresa Dollar in the Early Twentieth-
Century Red Sea Region: A Complementary Interface Between
Multiple Markets’, Financial History Review 14/1 (2007): 89–110.
110. Johnson, ‘Cloth as Money’, p. 196.
111. Kuroda, ‘The Maria Theresa Dollar’, pp. 103–8.
112. Johnson, ‘Cloth as Money’, p. 196.
113. See Chapter 2 and the previous section of this chapter.
114. Webb has estimated how quickly each commodity currency used in pre-
colonial West Africa was consumed as goods in the end. In his estimate
cloth was consumed within three years, which was as quick as salt, while
iron was used as a currency longer than cloth and salt but shorter than
brass manilas, cowries and gold. Although grain was not included in
his estimate, it was likely that it was consumed more quickly than any
other commodity currency. J. L. A. Webb, Jr., ‘Toward the Comparative
Study of Money: A Reconsideration of West African Currencies and
Neoclassical Monetary Concepts’, International Journal of African
Historical Studies 15/3 (1982): 460–1.
115.  Johnson, ‘Cloth as Money’, p. 194; Webb, ‘Comparative Study of
Money’, pp. 460–1. Precolonial Angola imported raphia textiles pro-
duced in Loango Coastal societies and used these textiles not only as
money in local markets to buy foodstuffs and slaves. But these textiles
 124  K. KOBAYASHI

were also sewn together to make tents which could withstand the wind
and rain. This was also a case where currency became commodity.
Martin, ‘Power’, p. 4.
116. Johnson, ‘Cloth as Money’, p. 198; J. F. P. Hopkins and Nehemia
Levtzion, eds., Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History
(Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 78, 85, 385; Kriger, Cloth, p. 82.
117. Johnson, ‘Cloth as Money’, p. 201; Johnson, ‘Cloth Strips’, pp. 175–6.
118. Linda Newson, ‘The Slave-Trading Accounts of Manoel Batista Peres,
1613–1619: Double-Entry Bookkeeping in Cloth Money’, Accounting
History 18/3 (2013): 356.
119. Bouët-Willaumez, Commerce, p. 4; Raffenel, Nouveau Voyage, Vol. 1,
pp. 78–9; Monteil, ‘Les coton chez les noirs’, p. 594; Curtin, Economic
Change, Vol. 1, p. 237. As for sewing strips into a piece of cloth, Walter
Rodney noted that ‘the neat craftsmanship made the stitching virtually
indiscernible’. Walter Rodney, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast,
1545–1800 (Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 181.
120. Johnson, ‘Cloth as Money’, p. 195.
121. Ames, ‘Cloth-Money’, p. 1018.
122. Sundström, The Trade of Guinea, p. 166; Johnson, ‘Cloth as Money’,
p. 195.
123. Ames, ‘Cloth-Money’, pp. 1018–9.
124. Ames, ‘Cloth-Money’, p. 1018. Indigo was available across the
Senegambia and the Western Sudan. Raffenel, Nouveau Voyage, Vol. 1,
pp. 407–8; Vol. 2, p. 218.
125. Curtin, Economic Change, Vol. 1, p. 238.
126. Rodney, Upper Guinea Coast, p. 181; Boubacar Barry, The Kingdom of
Waalo: Senegal Before the Conquest (New York: Diasporic Africa Press,
2012), p. 26.
127. Newson, ‘The Slave-Trading Accounts’, p. 357.
128. P. Dubié, ‘La vie matérielle des Maures’, in Mélanges ethnologiques
(Dakar: IFAN, 1953), pp. 220–1.
129. Hogendorn and Gemery, ‘Continuity’, p. 131.
130. Curtin, Economic Change, Vol. 1, pp. 268–9.
131. Akinobu Kuroda, Kahei shisutemu no sekaishi [A Global History of the
Monetary System] (Second Edition, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2014), p. 10.
132. Austin, ‘Labour-Intensity’; Austin, ‘Resources’. See also, John Tosh,
‘The Cash-Crop Revolution in Tropical Africa: An Agricultural
Reappraisal’, African Affairs 79/314 (1980): 79–94.
133. Webb, Desert Frontier, pp. 3–26. Quotation is from p. 11. For eco-
logical crises such as droughts, locusts and famines in precolonial
Senegambia, see Curtin, Economic Change, Vol. 2, pp. 3–7; Boubacar
Barry, Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade, trans. Ayi Kwei Armah
 3  GUINÉES IN THE LOWER SENEGAL RIVER: A CONSUMER-LED TRADE …  125

(Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 108–12; George E. Brooks,

Western Africa to c. 1860: A Provisional Historical Schema Based on
Climate Periods (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University African Studies
Program Working Papers Series, 1985), Part V.
134. On ecological factors in determining agricultural productivity in pre-
colonial Senegambia, see Klas Rönnbäck and Dimitrios Theodoridis,
‘African Agricultural Productivity and the Transatlantic Slave Trade:
Evidence from Senegambia in the Nineteenth Century’, Economic
History Review 72/1 (2019): 209–32.
135. Hogendorn and Gemery, ‘Continuity’, pp. 131–2; Newson, ‘The Slave-
Trading Accounts’, p. 358.
136. Roberts, Two Worlds of Cotton, pp. 56–7.
137. It is probably because of this fact and because there was the growing
demand for guinées around the Senegal River region that cowries were
not used as money there.
138. Roberts, ‘West Africa’, pp. 161–7. For the early history of the Savana
Mills, see Chapter 4.
 CHAPTER 4

Procurement of Indian Textiles

for West Africa, 1750–1850

This chapter examines the dimensions of textile production and how

European merchants procured cotton textiles in India for West Africa
from 1750 to 1850, the period that covers the peak of the Atlantic slave
trade and the growth of ‘legitimate’ commerce from West Africa. We
have seen that during the era of ‘legitimate’ commerce the procurement
of guinées for Senegal became crucial for the development of the textile
industry while Western Europe was in the process of industrialisation.
This chapter attempts to reveal that Indian producers played a significant
role in maintaining the south-south trade connection.
In this chapter, we will focus on the English East India Company
(EIC) and the French enterprise. The EIC, like other European com-
panies, played a pivotal role in the procurement of cotton textiles in
South Asia to provide for home as well as foreign markets, including
West Africa. Their supply of Indian textiles for the English Atlantic slave
trade contributed in making Britain one of the largest participants in
the Atlantic slave trade in the eighteenth century and thus to the rise
and development of the Atlantic slave-based economy. Meanwhile,
in the nineteenth century, the French undertook the rebuilding of
Pondicherry, which turned out to be the vital source of guinées for
Senegal to purchase gum arabic in the Senegal River valley.
Based on the documents of the EIC available at the British Library
and Indian archives, the literature has detailed various aspects of the
procurement process of Indian cotton textiles for the English market,

© The Author(s) 2019 127

K. Kobayashi, Indian Cotton Textiles in West Africa,
Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18675-3_4
128  K. KOBAYASHI

as shown in the next section. However, the procurement of textiles for

West Africa is inadequately studied. This chapter aims to fill this lacuna
by paying attention to the English business in Coromandel Coast, the
major source of Indian textiles for West Africa, with the vicissitude of
the English slave trade in mind. The chapter also attempts to compare
the English business with the French business in textile procurement in
South India. This comparative study shows different outcomes in their
business that derived from incentive issues and different degrees of devel-
opment of the manufacturing sector in Britain and France. By doing so,
a clear picture of the production side of the economic linkage with West
Africa emerges.
The rest of the chapter is planned as follows. After a brief survey
of relevant works on the English business to procure textiles in India,
the discussion focuses on English investment in textile production in
India, especially South India, with reference to the Atlantic slave trade.
Following the geographical distributions of cotton production in
South India and the basic network of textile procurement around the
Coromandel Coast region until the late eighteenth century, we will dis-
cuss the institutional change to the procurement system by the EIC,
followed by the impact of the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade and
British industrialisation. Following this, the discussion will move on to
the French business of textile procurement in Pondicherry in the early
nineteenth century and consider what caused the different results in tex-
tile procurement in South India between the English and the French.

Rethinking the Procurement of Indian Textiles

There are a good number of original studies about the procurement
and importation by European merchants of Indian cotton textiles for
European markets up to the nineteenth century. The literature has so
far advanced our knowledge about various aspects of the procurement
process of cotton textiles in India—from the geographical distribution of
raw cotton and the textile industry to the social organisation and struc-
ture of textile production, the commercial networks of cotton textiles
between the producing regions and European markets, the institutional
changes made by the colonial administration to the procurement system,
and the response from the weaver.1
However, our knowledge about the procurement and import of
Indian cotton textiles for West Africa is still very limited, compared
 4  PROCUREMENT OF INDIAN TEXTILES FOR WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850  129

with the case for East African markets.2 This is mainly due to the
concentration of scholarly interest in Europe-Asian trade. As for the EIC,
Kirti Chaudhuri noted that there was a resale of Indian cotton textiles in
London for the consuming markets of Europe, the Americas and West
Africa in the first half of the seventeenth century.3 Huw Bowen also
touches on the increasing demand for Indian cotton textiles in the West
African market in the early 1760s.4 But they provided no more than
snapshots. This chapter covers this shortcoming.
Research on the procurement of Indian cotton textiles for West Africa
by the French in the said period has been relatively advanced compared
to the English. Mireille Lobligeois and Jacques Weber extensively used
archival documents to elaborate the process of the development of the
textile industry and that of the rebuilding of Pondicherry in the nine-
teenth century.5 Richard Roberts masterfully linked this story with the
French commercial interest in gum arabic from Senegal where gum was
exchanged with guinées.6 Yet, the literature on Pondicherry needs to be
incorporated into a broader context of the European procurements of
textiles in India, in which a comparative perspective will shed light on the
similarity and difference between the English and French enterprises in
South India from the eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries. In doing
so, we can incorporate the production dimensions into our story of eco-
nomic connections between West Africa and South Asia.

English Investment in Textile

Production in South India

Geographical Distribution of the Production

of Cotton in South India
The Indian subcontinent was, and is, rich in geographical diversity,
which shaped regional economies and distinct cultures throughout his-
tory (Map 3).7 The core regions of the textile industry in the subcon-
tinent were Punjab, Gujarat, the Coromandel Coast and Bengal. These
regions shared some common features, such as active trade with differ-
ent markets, both within and outside the subcontinent, availability of
plenty of skilled labour, easy access to raw cotton, and the presence of an
enterprising business class. Between 1500 and 1800 European merchants
entered the Indian Ocean world to participate in the maritime trade in
Asia; for example, Madras, Bombay and Calcutta were established as
130  K. KOBAYASHI

major port cities for the EIC, and Chandernagore and Pondicherry for
the French.
In geographical terms, South India was physically divided into three
regions: the long and broad eastern coast that covers the Coromandel
Coast, the shorter and narrower western coast that covers the Malabar
Coast, and the plateau in the interior. These divisions were configured
by the two chains of great mountains known as the Eastern and Western
Ghats running parallel to the coasts.8
On the eastern side of South India were the three major rivers that ran
through the Eastern Ghats to the Bay of Bengal in the Indian Ocean: the
Godavari, the Krishna and the Kaveri as well as other minor rivers such
as the Pennair and the Palaur. Northern Coromandel stretches from the
Godavari Delta in the north to the Pennair Delta in the south. Southern
Coromandel includes Madras, North and South Arcot, Chingleput,
Salem, Trichinopoly and Tanjore (Map 4).
In addition to these river basins, the rainfall fluctuations, caused by
the seasonal monsoons, both north-east and south-west, determined the
rhythm of a whole range of social and economic activities including the
cotton production in South India. In addition, natural disasters such as
inundations of the coast by the sea and cyclones, in the short run, caused
disruptions of textile production, crippled shipping and transportation,
and even devastated the low-lying ports.9
Prasannan Parthasarathi has offered an important note on the cot-
ton cultivation process. Cotton was cultivated extensively on the red
soils of South India, which were light and easy to plough without much
labour. Ploughing the earth was usually carried out between April and
June, followed by sowing between August and October. The usual
method of manuring after sowing relied on a flock of cattle, sheep or
goats which was reared within the enclosure. The cotton could be picked
six to twelve months after sowing. A peasant household played a central
role in the process of picking cotton but its practice varied from region
to region. The extensive cultivation of cotton in South India did not
require either much capital or labour, and this form of cultivation was
widely found in Ganjam, Vizagapatnam, the Baramahal, South Arcot,
Trichinopoly, Dindigul and other places.10
Peasants in South India usually cultivated cotton along with grains
and other dry crops to reduce the risks posed by uncertainties in rain-
fall. The variety of cotton grown in the Tamil country was nadam (gos-
sypium nanking) which had several advantages. The nadam cotton was a
 4  PROCUREMENT OF INDIAN TEXTILES FOR WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850  131

perennial crop that lasted three to five years. This type of cotton had an
advantage in the long run. Even if it did not yield very well in times of
poor rainfall which it could withstand, it would recover in the following
picking seasons after good rainfall. In comparison with grains, the nadam
cotton could withstand droughts. Hence, planting this type of cotton
offered peasants in South India a sort of security.11
On the other hand, cotton was cultivated intensively on the black soils
of South India particularly concentrated in districts such as Tinnevelly,
Madurai, Coimbatore and the Ceded Districts (or part of the south-
ern Deccan plateau). In common with extensive cultivation that was also
practised in these regions, cotton seeds were interspersed with such crops
as coconuts, oil-seeds, pulses and spices. In contrast to red soils, how-
ever, these soils were clay-like and heavy, so cotton cultivators needed to
hire extra labour from outside their households. The hired labourers were
required not only for sowing and ploughing that normally took place
between mid-August and mid-September but also for picking that com-
menced in February or March and lasted until May. In the Ceded Districts,
there were three pickings that were conducted with a two- to three-week
interval between each, and women and children played a major role in the
first of three pickings. Therefore, they needed more capital and labour in
the intensive cultivation of cotton than those in extensive cultivation.12
While cotton was produced mostly in the interior, the weaving was
concentrated on the coasts. Therefore, it was regional trade that con-
nected the regions of cotton cultivation and those of weaving. The
Deccan was a major supply centre of cotton for the weavers in the
Northern Circars (northern Coromandel), the northern Tamil region
and other places. The Deccan region produced quality cotton.13 Joseph
Brennig noted that, ‘Northern Coromandel’s high humidity and
frequent flooding in its lowlands made the region unsuited to cotton cul-
tivation in appropriate quantities and qualities for an export industry’.
Therefore, the Northern Circars relied on the caravan trade in raw cot-
ton organised by the nomadic Banjara community ‘which escorted thou-
sand of bullock loads of cotton from the Deccan to the coast every year’.
This internal trade persisted at least from the 1630s into the early nine-
teenth century.14
Around the Godavari Delta, one of the major cash crops was indigo.
One of the main areas of indigo production was what is now the
Khamman district of Andhra Pradesh. The south-west monsoon that
begins in June and lasts until September created the cycle of indigo
132  K. KOBAYASHI

production in the region. The sowing in sandy soil took place in June
and July, followed by three cuttings. The first cutting took place in
late August or early September, and the second and third ones from
November to December. Because indigo harvested in later cuttings was
of better quality than the first cutting, the busiest season for marketing
lasted from October to February. Merchants bought indigo at important
regional markets such as Nagulvancha, Palvancha and Gollapudi, and dis-
tributed this cash crop to the weaving villages along the Andhra Coast
on the one hand, and those in Goa and Debhol on the other.15
The Deccan, the Raichur Doab in particular, also supplied cotton
to the northern Tamil region and Mysore at least from the late seven-
teenth to the early nineteenth century. Cotton and yarn supplied from
the Deccan were transported to Nellore, Walajapet and Mysore, from
which some were re-exported to Salem. Parthasarathi has estimated
the scale of these trades in the early nineteenth century, and the aver-
age scale for the years 1806, 1813 and 1814–1815) was 13,000 candies,
or more than three tonnes. In addition to the Deccan region, the Tamil
districts, Coimbatore and Tinnevelly in particular, also produced cotton
and supplied the weavers inland and along the coast, including Salem
and Cuddalore.16 These two cities played a large role in supplying the
English merchants with cotton textiles for West Africa during the period
under consideration.17

A Network of Intermediaries Between South India and Britain

The Coromandel Coast was positioned at the centre of the trade net-
works of Indian cotton textiles for West African markets during the age
of the Atlantic slave trade. There was no direct trade between India and
West Africa at that time. Indian textiles were imported into European
ports, and then were re-exported to West Africa. India and West Africa
were connected by the growing demand for Indian cotton goods that
were utilised for the early modern Europe-West African trade, namely
the purchase of African slaves and products along the Atlantic coast of
Africa. Hand-woven textiles included white goods and coloured goods
(usually, blue or red). Blue-coloured cotton textiles were known as
‘bafts’ or more simply ‘blue goods’ and ‘blue cloths’ in English. The
Coromandel Coast was also known for red dye from chay root (olden-
landia umbellata), as well as morinda in Western India, whose alizarin
enabled local skilled artisans to produce red-coloured textiles.18
 4  PROCUREMENT OF INDIAN TEXTILES FOR WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850  133

One of the staple textiles manufactured in South India was long cloth,
most of which was originally woven in Golconda in northern Coromandel
in the early seventeenth century and later across the Tamil region.
According to Radhika Seshan, long cloth was ‘perhaps the only typical
cloth of the Coromandel’. This type of textile was ‘the best or “superfine”
grades of plain white cloth’ in the region, and was known as being excep-
tionally long (around 37 yards) and 1¼ yards wide. Another was sallamp-
ores, which was also initially woven in Golconda and later in various parts
of the Tamil region. This type of textile was usually produced in 16-yard
lengths and one-yard widths.19 Initially, Cuddalore and Salem in the
South Arcot district were the major production centres of these goods in
southern Coromandel, and Nagore was also seen as an alternative source
in the early nineteenth century.20 These places also produced red-coloured
textiles, but apparently blue goods dominated the procurement process
by the EIC.21 A letter from the Company to the Governor in Council at
Fort St. George in Madras noted that even if the investment in Cuddalore
was not successful, it was ‘highly necessary to supply the deficiency of blue
goods from Nagore’ where their colour was superior to the standard set
for African markets, and their odour was also highly appreciated.22
Unfortunately, for the entire eighteenth century, we have no data or
figures on the proportion of cotton textiles that made up the total quan-
tity of exports from India to Europe, for West Africa. As for the case
of Bengal, Om Prakash has estimated that from the late seventeenth to
the early eighteenth century, 10 per cent of the total manufacturers were
engaged in the textile production for the Dutch East India Company
(VOC) and the EIC. That means that most of the artisans in India pro-
duced textiles for domestic consumption. Prakash has also assumed that
demand from the European East India Companies became ‘a vehicle for
an expansion in income, output and employment in the subcontinent’.
This implies that growing demand from the Atlantic world would prob-
ably generate additional workforce to produce textiles for the consum-
ers in Europe, West Africa and the Americas throughout the eighteenth
century.23 Similarly, Parthasarathi has calculated that exports of cotton
textiles by the EIC and the VOC accounted for 22 per cent of total tex-
tile production in South India in the first quarter of the eighteenth cen-
tury. More importantly, he noted that purchase of Indian cotton textiles
by Europeans not only increased the demand for the cloth, ‘but also
changed the type of cloth demanded’: while patterned cloths, painted
or printed, were in demand among Southeast Asian consumers, calicoes,
134  K. KOBAYASHI

or plain cloths, were sought by European consumers.24 As discussed

later, blue goods represented demand from West African markets.
In the case of South India, information on demands from African mar-
kets was transmitted through a network of intermediaries that included
the EIC’s Court of Directors in London, the Board of Trade at Fort
St. George in Madras and Commercial Residents of the Company.
Commercial Residents had under their control washermen, weavers and
dyers who worked for the EIC. Because of the absence of reliable sources,
it is virtually impossible to specify how such information had travelled from
West Africa through Britain to India. However, some archival sources show
connections between West African demand for textiles and the textile pro-
duction in South India in the eighteenth to the early nineteenth century.
The EIC’s Directors informed the Board of Trade about market sit-
uations and which types of cotton textiles including length and colour
were needed for the market. For instance, in response to the end of the
Seven Years’ War, which revived the Atlantic slave trade, the Directors
requested Fort William in Bengal, Fort St. George in Madras and the
Council in Bombay to supply London with handloom articles to pur-
chase slaves in West Africa. Among them, in particular, the letter to Fort
St. George stressed that ‘you are upon no account whatsoever omit send-
ing the full quantity of long cloths, sallampores blue as they in particular
are very much wanted’ in West Africa.25
The Board of Trade in Madras informed Commercial Residents in
Cuddalore and other places about the types of textiles the EIC required.
They would rarely reveal the final destinations or the market situation,
for Indian textiles of specific kinds.26 Therefore, Indian intermediaries
and weavers would probably not know the fact that some of their prod-
ucts reached West Africa via London.
In addition, the Board of Trade wanted a regular supply of textiles
of acceptable quality for London. They carefully checked the texture,
thickness, colour, variety and odour of these handloom articles against
the standard musters in the warehouse after these goods were delivered
from the weaving villages to the trading settlements on the coast.27 In
reality, the handloom products varied in quality, and cloths that did not
meet with the quality standards were rejected by the Board of Trade.28
This implies that procurement in India by the EIC of piece goods for
West African markets was largely dependent upon the weavers’ perfor-
mances, which in turn was based on the price of raw materials and food,
access to water and ecological conditions.
 4  PROCUREMENT OF INDIAN TEXTILES FOR WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850  135

The Advance System of the Late Eighteenth Century

In the eighteenth century, the organisation of textile production for the
EIC on the Coromandel Coast was usually based on what Chaudhuri
called the ‘advance system’. The system was not the same as the ‘putting
out system’, under which merchants advanced raw material, not cash, to
weavers, so that they could control capital. But there was no financial
independence for the weavers. In the advance system, by contrast, the
textile producers in South India could retain their independence to some
extent to determine how to spend the cash advanced for textile produc-
tion and choose their own livelihood.29 A sample cloth came to the EIC
within six to eight weeks after cash was advanced, and the remaining fol-
lowed within six months.30
It was not possible for the EIC to enter the weaving villages and to
establish direct contact with the weavers due to the language barrier.
Therefore, a solution to the advance system was Indian intermediaries
who connected weavers’ villages with the export market on the coast.
Some came from within the villages, and others from outside.31 A census
taken in 1771 shows that, out of 246 households, 90 were landowning
weavers, 68 cotton spinners and 40 merchants in a weaving village in the
Chingleput district of the Madras Presidency. In this case, Indian mer-
chants as intermediaries provided credit to artisans and supplied textiles
to an export market outside the villages. The profit they earned from the
textile trade was 4–5 per cent at most. This enabled the EIC to purchase
textiles at low cost, and thereby Indian textiles remained highly profita-
ble to them well into the eighteenth century.32
In the weavers’ villages, there were also brokers. Some brokers
would be head weavers who acted as intermediaries between the weav-
ers and the local merchants. In the north of the Godavari River such
people were knowns as kopudarudu or copdar (contractor), who had
some influence over the weavers. They received a commission of 3–5
per cent from the local merchants, the clients of the EIC. Their main
business was to purchase textiles from the weavers or to advance loan
on the loom. In addition, they helped the weavers in times of distress,
and also provided foodstuff at an advantageous rate.33 In the course of
time, some brokers became more independent and brought textiles from
the weaving villages and directly sold them to the merchants outside.
In such cases, they could earn more profits than the above-mentioned
commission.34
136  K. KOBAYASHI

In the advance system, however, there was a problem between the

brokers and the EIC. It was often the case that brokers made arrange-
ments with purchasers other than the EIC. For example, at the close of
the eighteenth century, Edward Holland, the then deputy secretary of
the Madras Presidency, reported that, once the EIC rejected the goods
of somewhat inferior quality, the brokers supplied those goods to the
French at Pondicherry. This practice of the brokers frustrated the EIC
and provided a reason for them to consolidate their control over textile
procurement later.35
Thus, one of the features of the advance system was that it allowed
the weavers to allocate the advanced cash to various requirements such
as raw material for weaving, foodstuffs to feed their family members,
maintenance of the loom and various other needs at their own discretion.
This system also offered the weavers a chance to maximise their profits
by choosing thread at the cheapest price. A major part of the advanced
cash normally went for food. Therefore, the quality of their finished
goods could vary according to the price of rice and not of cotton only, as
they had to manage with the limited amount of money in producing the
ordered goods.36

The EIC in South India from the 1770s to the 1780s

The EIC’s performance in supplying Indian cotton textiles to London
was not always satisfactory to the merchants who engaged in West African
trade. For example, the EIC was unable to provide sufficient quantity of
Indian blue cloths for merchants who invested in the slave trade around
1770. One such was a London merchant Gilbert Ross, who had inter-
ests in the slave trade with Senegambia. He presented a petition to the
Lords of the Treasury to get a licence to purchase thousands of pieces of
Indian cotton textiles in Rotterdam for trading.37 In their petition on 10
October 1770, Ross and other merchants claimed that ‘the article of East
India Blue Long Cloths is absolutely necessary for carrying on the trade
to Senegambia and make above three fourth in value of the whole goods
exported thither. … there is no substitute whatever for the said article of
East India Blue Long Cloths’ because they might have missed the sea-
son of the gum trade in Senegambia unless they secured enough quan-
tity of Indian cotton goods of that type immediately. They also mentioned
that apart from Senegambia ‘there is likewise a very considerable annual
demand for the said article [Indian blue long cloths] for the other parts
 4  PROCUREMENT OF INDIAN TEXTILES FOR WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850  137

of Africa’.38 They referred to ‘an Act of the 5th of his present Majesty
entitled an Act for more effectually supplying the export trade of this
Kingdom to Affrica etc’ as the supportive evidence that I quote as follows:

Provided that if the United Company of Merchants of England Trading to

the East Indies [EIC] shall at any time refuse or neglect to keep this mar-
ket supplied with a sufficient quantity of such goods at reasonable prices
to answer the African trade it shall and may be lawfull to and for the Lords
Commissioners of the Treasury on any three or more of them or the Lord
High Treasurer for the time being of or they shall think proper to grant
licenses to any other person or persons to import such goods into any port
of Great Britain from any ports of Europe not within His Majesty’s domin-
ions in such and the like manner and under such restrictions and limita-
tions as are herein before prescribed and directed.39

In the late eighteenth century, the increase in the demand for Indian
textiles from the Atlantic world, including West Africa, led to increasing
demand for raw cotton, yarn and also foodstuffs. These came from the
agricultural hinterland of South Asia that extended far beyond Bengal
and the Coromandel Coast—both of which the EIC controlled.40 On
the other hand, in response to this growing demand, more weavers, with
their family members, devoted more time to work on the looms for the
export market instead of agriculture.41
During this period, the procurement of cotton textiles in India for
the European purchasers in London became a serious problem for the
EIC. The famines of Madras from 1790 to 1792 affected the produc-
tion of cotton textiles in the region.42 The prices of thread and indigo
increased in Cuddalore; the price of thread increased by 50–60 per cent.
John Kentworthy, Commercial Resident in Cuddalore, wrote to Ernest
William Fallofield, President of the Board of Trade in Madras, that the
rise in the price of those materials and the ‘indifference of colour’ caused
‘a general debasement in nearly every articles of Cuddalore goods’.43
A letter sent from London to Surat in Western India urged the Council
in Bombay to ‘bring regularly to sale a considerable assortment of Surat
Goods for the supply of the African Trade in particular’—the procure-
ment of cotton goods for the Atlantic slave trade remained a matter of
concern among the EIC in South India.44
Furthermore, the EIC faced adverse conditions both in Britain and
Asia in the late eighteenth century. First, it faced a serious capital shortage
138  K. KOBAYASHI

in India after the Carnatic Wars and the Anglo-Mysore Wars. This finan-
cial problem led to a reduction in the investment in the textile procure-
ment. In 1790 the EIC invested 1.6 million pagodas to purchase textiles
in the Tamil coast, but the annual investment in textiles fell to 1.2 million
pagodas in 1796.45 Second, the rise of the Lancashire cotton industry
posed a challenge. The emerging manufacturers desired both new mar-
kets for their textiles as well as sources of raw materials such as cotton
and indigo. In the political debate in Downing Street, they increasingly
raised their voices for a complete ban on the import of Indian textiles into
Britain. In 1774, the British Parliament prohibited the imports of Indian
cotton goods except for plain chintz and muslins and those for re-ex-
port. Third, a new idea of political economy represented by Adam Smith
emerged and extended its influence. This idea helped the promotion
of free trade by attacking monopolies of trade, such as that of the EIC.
Fourth, a 1787 instruction by Charles Cornwallis, Governor-General,
eliminated private trade by the EIC servants. This reform operated in
favour of the free merchants who carried out business, especially the
country trade, on their own account outside the EIC, and contributed
to the setting up of agency houses that played multiple roles in trade,
shipping, remittances of wealth to Europe and investment in such plan-
tation commodities as indigo. Thus, these difficult situations surrounding
the EIC aided more private traders to participate in trading and financial
business and production in India from the late eighteenth century.46
In fact, this period saw a growing number of private merchants
who engaged in the Europe-Asian trade and the intra-Asian trade that
extended from India to Southeast Asia, China and Japan.47 As for British
private traders, there were three major groups. First, the EIC allowed
their servants to pursue the profits arising from trade. Bengal played
a pivotal role in the private business and after the Battle of Plassey
(1757) private trade expanded. Second, a limited number of ‘free mer-
chants’ and other private entrepreneurs were also permitted to engage
in the trade between Britain and Asia, the country trade and the pro-
duction of commodities, such as indigo, sugar and coffee. They could
conduct this business unless they infringed the EIC’s monopoly of trade.
Third, the EIC directors gave the commanders and officers of East
Indiamen a substantial financial stake in each voyage to engage in
freight-free private trade between Britain and Asia. They were allowed to
export a wider range of goods from Britain than the EIC, which retained
the right to export woollens, copper, gunpowder and firearms.48
 4  PROCUREMENT OF INDIAN TEXTILES FOR WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850  139

Among the British private merchants in Madras, for example, Thomas

Parry from Wales and John Binny from Scotland developed a trading and
private banking business from the late eighteenth to the nineteenth cen-
tury. Since the EIC limited the number of remittances sent home by its
employees, private banks, including those of Parry and Binny, could use
surplus capital to invest in the plantations of indigo, sugar refining and tex-
tile production. Such British merchant houses in India not only invested in
their own plantations but also nudged other merchants into investing their
capitals in private business opportunities that were, however, maintained by
these houses. The agency houses formed the foundation of the later British
managing agency system that spread from India to other places.49

Failure of the Aumany System in South India

These issues raised the question among EIC officials about improving
and controlling the quality and prices, respectively, of textiles for export
in India. As for South India, when the British increased their own influ-
ence as a colonial power in the 1770s, they started to enter the weav-
ing villages to establish direct relationships between the Company and
the weavers. The EIC also tried to eliminate the Indian intermediaries
who under the advance system had brought finished cloths from the
interior villages to the coast. Instead, the Company employed their paid
servants, called gumastahs, as Indian agents, to make advance to weavers
and superintend the looms. However, this institutional change, carried
out under the name of the ‘aumany system’ met with hostility from the
weavers, sometimes with violence. In the end, it turned out that the EIC
could not break the nexus between the weavers and the Indian interme-
diaries who the EIC tried to eliminate.50
The aumany system was a replication of the system that had already
been introduced in Bengal and elsewhere.51 The term ‘aumany’ meant
land and weaving villages that were placed under the direct management
of the collector.52 This system was designed to procure quality textiles
through superintendents, such as peons, appointed by the EIC. These
superintendents replaced intermediate Indian merchants who once had
connected the EIC with the head weavers under the advance system. The
superintendents knew the indigenous languages that enabled them to
conduct all requisite transactions directly with the head weavers without
local interpreters or delay.53
140  K. KOBAYASHI

In addition, the weavers, employed by the EIC, received subsistence

instead of money that had been advanced under the former system.
The aumany system appeared to the EIC ‘well calculated to answer the
important purpose of furnishing our sales [in London] with ample and
regular supplies of piece good’.54 They hoped that this new procurement
system ‘may ultimately tend to stop the manufacture of inferior goods if
the contractors are obliged to deliver them to us at considerable reduc-
tion of price they being also subject to penalty on account of any defi-
ciency of standard goods’.55
At the very beginning of the nineteenth century, there were 15–20
villages within 50–60 miles of Cuddalore, having about 1000 looms,
with which they produced blue and red handkerchiefs, sallampores and
other things.56 Richard Kinchant, Commercial Resident in Cuddalore,
informed the Board of Trade in Madras that the aumany system was
‘absolutely necessary’ to secure cotton textiles. One of the EIC’s con-
cerns was to protect the Company’s interests against the investment
of private traders. For this purpose, as far as cloths whose quality was
inferior to the standard muster are concerned, they were ‘rejected and
returned to the weavers, stamping every fold with a rejected mark to
prevent its being again brought to the factory on account of the com-
pany’.57 Besides, the EIC intended to control the weavers by offering
them certain benefits such as ‘a total reduction of the monthly tax, cus-
toms on thread’.58
It was during the French Revolutionary Wars when the aumany sys-
tem was taking effect in South India. Despite the increased demand for
piece goods of Indian cotton in continental Europe and West Africa,
French hostility towards Britain made the supply erratic.59 However,
such a challenging situation forced the EIC to review their investment
in textile production in India. In May 1794, Edward Holland instructed
John Kentworthy in Cuddalore: At present the demand for blue goods
is not very brisk, the prices are consequently very low but this is to be
attributed to the [French Revolutionary] War, we have not therefore
relaxed from the extended plan of investment we have some time inti-
mated it was our intention to adopt, not doubting that when peace shall
return these goods will again become much in request.60
The Berlin Decree issued in 1806 excluded British commerce from
continental Europe, so there were unsold cloths that accumulated at the
EIC’s warehouses in London. The EIC sent a letter to Fort St. George
in Madras in 1807, expressing the intention to limit the procurement
 4  PROCUREMENT OF INDIAN TEXTILES FOR WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850  141

to a much lower scale than had been ordered in previous years.61 On

the other hand, the EIC regarded the dwindling state of cloth sales in
Europe as ‘an opportunity more favorable than has ever occurred to
restore and improve the fabric of the investment’ in Cuddalore of which
Richard Kinchant was in charge.62
The French Revolutionary Wars affected both British trade and
domestic consumption. One dispatch from the EIC to the Madras
Presidency stated that ‘we must certainly expect to experience much
inconvenience from the present War so long as it continues during this
period our gains will be much reduced, as none but absolutely neces-
saries will find ready purchasers to exportation’ and the consumption
of their invested goods such as calicoes were expected to be ‘very small’
during this period.63 In wartime, the British Atlantic slave trade scaled
down by 40 per cent from 46,236 slaves in 1793 to 27,454 slaves in
1794. The year 1794 marked one of the sluggish years in the British
slave trade during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.64
Sinnappah Arasaratnam noted that the EIC accomplished ‘a degree of
control over the Carnatic handloom industry by 1780’.65 However, as
a whole, the outcome of the aumany system seems not to have been in
favour of the EIC, which tried to tighten control over the weavers in the
South Indian weaving villages. It should be remembered that there was
an incentive issue.66 The EIC did not give the weavers enough incentive
to fulfil their contract obligations with it, despite the fact that they were
granted such privileges as ‘a total reduction of the monthly tax and cus-
toms on thread’.67 The weavers around the Coromandel Coast were so
mobile that they could set their looms up wherever they preferred and
move from one place to another if they found better conditions were
provided.68 They would escape from indebtedness to the EIC and Indian
merchants to flee to Pondicherry around the turn of the nineteenth cen-
tury.69 Potkuchi Swarnalatha presented the case of Vizagapatnam district
in northern Coromandel region. Under the aumany system, the EIC
dealt directly with the copdars and the head weavers, instead of relying
on intermediary merchants who had connected the EIC and the weav-
ing villages before. This change to commercial networks allowed the
copdars and the head weavers to become more powerful. Indeed, soon
after the introduction of the system ‘they began to take advantage of the
Company’s contracts and used the Company’s services and peons for
their own private trading’.70
142  K. KOBAYASHI

Moreover, the EIC’s investment in textile production in India was

always subject to local and global circumstances. As we have already
seen, for example, international politics in Europe and the Atlantic world
would affect demand for Indian textiles. Also, British manufacturers tried
to discourage the EIC from importing cotton textiles from India into
Britain. In the meantime, political instability, including the Carnatic and
the Anglo-Mysore wars and caste disputes, often affected textile procure-
ment, as artisans fled to safer areas in such circumstances. In addition,
there were intense competitions with other European merchants and pri-
vate traders in the purchase of textiles. Furthermore, the weavers’ perfor-
mance cannot be neglected. It was dependent on access to water for the
washing and dyeing processes and the market for raw materials—whose
price also mattered—and on ecological conditions including natural dis-
asters and famines. It can be conjectured, therefore, that the effect of the
aumany system was restricted from the beginning.
Indeed, evidence illustrates that the aumany system did not necessarily
solve the procurement problem. As for the procurement of textiles for
West African trade, for example, the year 1802 saw an increased demand
for coloured cloths, especially plain blue goods from Cuddalore and blue
sallampores from Salem, at the Company’s sales in Britain. However, the
Company complained about the inability of the Commercial Resident
at Cuddalore to meet the EIC’s order for the purchase of textiles. In
such a situation, Salem was expected to make up for the deficiency from
Cuddalore, and Nagore’s blue long cloths were also regarded as suitable
for the West African market.71
Also, an examination at a warehouse on the Tamil coast revealed ‘very
great debasement and inferiority’ of the quality of textiles on which
investment was already made, and there were bitter comments addressed
to each of 16 assortments of the invested cloths.72 For example, one of
three assortments of long cloth, called ‘Chennamanaickpollam’, was ‘of
very bad quality throughout and loose in texture the cross threads par-
ticularly coarse this assortment inferior to N1 of Warriarpollam though
invoiced at the same price’. The referred assortment of long cloth,
Warriarpollam, was ‘very inferior with few exceptions the cross threads
too coarse and goods flimsy’. Although bleaching and packing materi-
als were approved, the generality of the pieces was ‘soiled with marking
chop’. To this adverse situation, Holland requested the Commercial
Resident at Cuddalore to explain the causes of the problem.73 The EIC
 4  PROCUREMENT OF INDIAN TEXTILES FOR WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850  143

suffered from protracted problems of this kind even into the first decade
of the nineteenth century.74

After the British Withdrawal from the Atlantic Slave Trade

In 1807, the British Parliament abolished the slave trade. This brought
about a decline in the shipping of Indian cotton textiles from Britain to
West Africa in the following years, the volume of which dropped from
on average 256,800 pieces in the years from 1805 to 1807,75 hitting a
trough in 1811 at 27,800 pieces.76 The shrinking demand for the West
African trade made the EIC reconsider investment in textile production
in the Madras Presidency:

In consequence of the present situation of the trade with Africa, and

adverting also to the want of a demand in the West Indies for the
coloured piece goods usually consigned thither; we have considered that
our stock of prohibited goods of every description, but more particularly
of Blue Goods and Romals, is more than adequate to any probably [sic]
demand. We have therefore been constrained to limit our investments at
Masulipatam [Masulipatnam] and Cuddalore to the very inconsidera-
ble sums hereafter mentioned and we have seen it necessary to reduce
the amount of goods to be provided at Nagore to about thirty thousand
pagodas.77

This letter was written to Fort St. George in Madras in 1812, just one
year after the trough of the trade of Indian textiles from Britain to West
Africa. Masulipatnam was a principal district for textile production for
the markets of Europe and West Africa in the northern Coromandel, as
was Cuddalore in southern Coromandel.78 This letter indicates that the
EIC planned to reduce its investment to procure cotton textiles in South
India for the Atlantic markets due to the shrinking demand for trade
with West Africa and the West Indies.
Nonetheless, it must be remembered that the demand for blue cloths
among African merchants did not necessarily disappear during the first
half of the nineteenth century. As discussed in Chapter 2, the shipping
of Indian textiles continued, especially dyed goods, from Britain to West
Africa in the early nineteenth century. In fact, the trade in Indian cotton
textiles recovered somewhat after 1811, and until 1830 Britain shipped
on an average 75,000 pieces of Indian textiles into West Africa.79
144  K. KOBAYASHI

Moreover, it is of great interest that the EIC continued to direct the

Madras Presidency to supply blue cloths to London, despite technolog-
ical innovations in Lancashire’s cotton industry from the late eighteenth
century. At that time British imitations of Indian textiles found a market
in West Africa. This development had an impact upon the EIC’s invest-
ment in textile production in South India, especially that of white cloths.
In the second decade of the nineteenth century, Indian white calicoes
became difficult to sell in the markets of Europe and the Americas owing
to the challenge from Lancashire. Much is known about the develop-
ment of the cotton industry in Lancashire that sharpened the competitive
edge of their calicoes over their Indian counterparts on the global stage
in the second decade of the nineteenth century.80 In the 1820s, British
cotton goods were equal in appearance to an assortment of fine calicoes,
both of Madras and Bengal, and produced at half the Indian price.81 The
shrinking volume of Indian white calicoes shipped from Britain towards
West Africa in the early nineteenth century largely mirrored the change
of competitiveness between British and Indian cotton textiles.
However, this was not true for blue goods. The price of Indian indi-
go-dyed cotton textiles at the EIC sale in London declined from 27
to 29 shillings per piece in 1820 to less than 15 shillings per piece in
1828.82 In the late 1820s, West Africa imported from Britain more than
ten times as much Indian dyed cotton textiles as Indian white calicoes; at
an average of 65,000 pieces per annum, most of the dyed goods went to
Sierra Leone to be exchanged for timber, ginger and other things.83 It is
fair to say that West African demand and consumption patterns played a
role in the EIC’s continued investment in coloured cloths in South India
in the first half of the nineteenth century.

French Investment in Textile

Production in Pondicherry
Pondicherry, or Pudu-Cheri (‘new settlement’ in Tamil), had been a land
of agriculture and handicraft industry during the mediaeval period. The
arrival of the Europeans brought considerable changes in its economy.
The Portuguese built a lodge at Pondicherry to establish the first trading
connection with Europe through which cotton textiles for West Africa
were also shipped. While the Portuguese, the Danes and the Dutch
settled there only for a short period of time before 1670, Pondicherry
became a major French settlement on the Coromandel Coast in 1674. It
 4  PROCUREMENT OF INDIAN TEXTILES FOR WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850  145

had been a naval base and an entrepôt for the French in South Asia, with
interruptions by the Dutch and the British.84
The French had a great interest in textiles in Pondicherry and encour-
aged artisans to produce a large number of textiles for export by giv-
ing them a piece of land to build houses and set up looms. The French
offered such a conducive atmosphere that various groups of weavers,
including the Kaikkolars, Devangas, Saliyars and Seniyars, castes from
Kanchipuram, Arani, Arcot and other areas, migrated and settled in
Pondicherry. They produced textiles under the same system as we have
seen in other parts of South India. Here peasant women carried out two-
step cotton cleaning. They separated the cotton lint from seeds and then
removed dirt, leaves and other foreign matter in their homes so as to
make it fit for spinning. The spinning was the domain of women and
children in the low-caste peasant families. They spun cotton into threads
by using a spindle and a sophisticated spinning wheel known as a charka.
While both cotton cleaning and spinning were originally part-time occu-
pations, in the course of time these became full-time professions of the
artisans. The yarn was sold to merchants or passed to a weaver for the
production of textiles.85
Initially, textiles were exported from Pondicherry to Southeast Asia to
buy pepper and spices. In 1682, when the French East India Company
(FIC) imported textiles from Pondicherry to France for the first time,
these textiles included guinées and sallampores. Both the manufac-
tured goods were popular in West Africa. The Superior Council origi-
nally established in Surat was transferred to Pondicherry in 1701, and
thereafter Pondicherry functioned as the headquarters of the French in
Asia. In the eighteenth century, Pondicherry produced a variety of cot-
ton textiles, especially indigo-dyed piece goods, using cotton that came
from Coimbatore, Salem, Madurai and Tiruchirappalli. During peace-
time, the number of looms in Pondicherry tripled from 500 to almost
1500 during the first two decades of the century. However, battle and
caste disputes had destructive impacts on the handicraft industry as many
artisans escaped from the port city. The FIC—and private merchants
after the end of the monopoly of the company—shipped cotton textiles
from Pondicherry to French ports such as Lorient and Nantes, and then
guinées and other cotton textiles were further shipped into West Africa
in exchange for slaves, ivory, gum arabic and other things.86 Hence, the
eighteenth century witnessed the re-establishment of the economic con-
nection between Pondicherry and West Africa by the French.
146  K. KOBAYASHI

Rebuilding Under the Initiative

of the French Government from 1816 to 1829
After the British attacked and occupied Pondicherry in August 1793,
EIC officials tried to persuade the weavers to move to Cuddalore to
settle and produce textiles for the Company.87 When Pondicherry was
returned to France in 1816, the port city was in a disastrous situation:
buildings were ruined, roads were in a bad condition, there were defec-
tive irrigation, unsuccessful cultivation and a shortage of jobs. This
created poverty among the inhabitants.88 In those days, the French gov-
ernment gave low priority to the development of colonies, especially
that of French India, and even sacrificed them in pursuit of metropolitan
interests.89 However, Pondicherry was rebuilt with the initiative of the
French government and private entrepreneurs towards the late 1820s.
One of the remarkable features in this process was the development of
a textile industry that employed the latest model of European spinning
machines. As a result, the output of textile production and exports took
off from around 1830.
In the rebuilding of Pondicherry, one of the primary concerns for
the local administration was the creation of jobs for the inhabitants.
Governor-General Eugéne Desbassayns de Richemont became the prime
mover in the rebuilding project in the late 1820s. He restored order in
the administration and the finances, built an improved bazaar, estab-
lished royal colleges and schools (where French teachers educated chil-
dren, from the upper classes to the pariahs, and these students wore,
as uniform, a blue jacket with a yellow collar), made improvements in
agriculture, granted concessions to European projects to cultivate sugar
cane, indigo, cotton, mulberry and others, and promoted the moderni-
sation of the weaving and dyeing industries. He set up public workshops
to give people jobs under the direction of the Comité de Bienfaisance
(the Committee of Charity), reorganised by the Ordonnances of 24 July
1826. By April 1827, the workshops already employed 150 workers.90
Desbassayns de Richemont called for French weavers and dyers to
improve textile production in Pondicherry. As for the weavers, Thomas
Godefroy in Rouen was nominated the chief of Pondicherry’s work-
shops in May 1827 by the Minister of the Navy and the Colonies.
Michael Gonfreville who worked as a dyer and chemist in his father’s
place around Rouen was nominated as the government dyer. He was a
renowned skilled dyer and worked at the Royal Manufacture of Goblins
 4  PROCUREMENT OF INDIAN TEXTILES FOR WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850  147

and at the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts and won some
prizes at expositions in 1819 and 1823. He was dispatched with his loom
on a royal transport vessel, and arrived in Pondicherry in September
1827.91 One of his remarkable achievements in his mission up to 1830
was that he created a building for the weaving and dyeing of cotton and
silk in Pondicherry.92
In the early nineteenth century, Bengal was renowned for the cul-
tivation and production of indigo, one of India’s major export prod-
ucts, and the region accounted for about three-quarters of the indigo
trade from India to Britain. This was partly due to a small transit
duty and partly due to the Calcutta-based agency houses, or Indo-
British partnership firms.93 On the other hand, Pondicherry was excel-
lent in dyeing textiles, especially in blue. According to the pharmacist
Bernard Plagne, who studied indigo and the water of Pondicherry in
the late 1810s, ‘the blue dyeing among others has assured textiles of
Pondicherry of uncontested preference in the market of the four parts
of the world’. He also discovered the proportion of aluminium that
explained the superiority of blue dyeing in Pondicherry.94 In May 1824,
there were 57 indigo factories in Bengal of British India, while there
were 19 factories in Pondicherry.95 The difference was owing to the
shortage of apprentices for indigo production in Pondicherry.96 The
number of indigo factories in the French territory dropped to only one
by September 1829.97
Desbassayns de Richemont devoted himself to a plan for industrial
development in Pondicherry. After he created the public workshop in
1826, he encouraged private enterprises such as Blin and Delbruck. On
27 September 1827, he wrote to Minister of the Navy and the Colonies
to request establishing a European-style spinning mill in Pondicherry
with an engineer to set it up, although this was initially rejected on
the ground that India had imported cotton spun in Britain in the pre-
vious years.98 In order to justify this demand, Desbassayns wrote to
the Minister again on 3 February 1828. In this letter, he drew atten-
tion to the current situation in India and Britain: a massive inflow of
British cotton textiles into India along with British merchants who also
planned to establish European-style factories there. However, this idea
still faced objections because it seemed that the guiding principle of the
British cabinet on free trade gave way to their personal interests and that
the government or the EIC never permitted similar establishments.99
Desbassayns wrote about Pondicherry’s advantages:
148  K. KOBAYASHI

The position of Pondicherry is 60 leagues from Tinnevély from which

the most esteemed cottons in this part of India are extracted, the safety
of our harbour, the cheap price of labour and cattle necessary to move the
machines, many weavers that have established here and that it would be
easy to multiply, the goodness of our water for the dyeing, and finally the
former reputation of our textiles.100

His request to the Minister of the Navy and the Colonies was
endorsed by two French merchants, Blin and Delbruck. Blin was a mer-
chant in Pondicherry, and Delbruck a son of a Bordeaux merchant. Their
project was to establish a large cotton spinning mill in Pondicherry with
support from the French government.101 In the summer of 1828, the
Minister of the Navy and the Colonies and the local administration in
Pondicherry gave them permission to purchase a spinning machine. Le
Prince et Poulain, a manufacturer in Paris, was in charge of sending the
spinning machine to Pondicherry. The machine was first sent from Paris
to Bordeaux, from where it was shipped on the vessel L’Alexander to
Pondicherry, which also carried Charlemagne Poulain.102

Pondicherry and the West African Market from 1829 to 1850

Le Prince et Poulain thought that Blin and Delbruck’s single spinning
mill was less than adequate. Le Prince et Poulain wrote to the Minister
of the Navy and the Colonies on 18 February 1829 asking for special
concessions and guarantees which they intended to use to quickly manu-
facture another spinning machine. According to their estimate, the daily
output of the new machine was 600–700 kilograms of cotton, which was
five times as productive as the first mill. Apart from Le Prince et Poulain,
the association members included Charlemagne Poulain, Edouard
Duboy (a manufacturer in Pondicherry), Blin, Delbruck, Duchon-
Doris Junior (a merchant in Bordeaux and a brother-in-law of Blin and
Belbruck) and A. Decrouy (a merchant in Paris and a friend of Prince
and Poulain). They too wanted to set up a weaving machine and a dye-
ing factory later.103 The Minister agreed to their request.104
While L’Alexandre was en route to Pondicherry, a new spin-
ning machine was loaded onto the vessel La Laure that set off also for
Pondicherry on 27 June 1829. The second machine was equipped with
a steam engine for cotton spinning. La Laure arrived in Pondicherry
around 25 February 1830, L’Alexandre on 30 March 1830. At this time
 4  PROCUREMENT OF INDIAN TEXTILES FOR WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850  149

there was, however, no spinning mill, either with Blin and Delbruck
or with Le Prince et Poulain.105 In the letter to Saint Hilaire on 16
March 1830, Blin and Delbruck announced that they had merged into
one firm in March that year and handed over all their land, machin-
ery, tools, materials, buildings and everything in their establishment in
Champ du Mars, and that the two establishments were united under
the name of ‘La Société Poulain, Duboy et Cie’.106 However, soon after
Governor General De Mélay ratified this transfer by the Arrêté of 19
March 1830 the new firm faced difficulty in securing financial aid. This
was later sorted out by a Scottish merchant from Madras, George Clark
Arbuthnot. Thus, with European spinning machines they launched the
production of cotton textiles in Pondicherry in 1831.107
The designation ‘Poulain et Duboy’ became prominent between 1830
and 1832.108 Image 4.1 is a sketch of the company’s establishment in
Pondicherry in 1831. The establishment was divided into two: the larger

Image 4.1  The cotton spinning and weaving mill of Poulain and Duboy in
1831 (Source Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer [ANOM, Aix-en-Provence,
France], Inde 494, Dossier 865: Inde Française, Manufactures de Pondichéry)
150  K. KOBAYASHI

one, whose main gate faced the route de Villenour, had the two-storey
building with two tall chimneys and a large pond; the smaller one facing the
route d’Ariancoupon had a two-story building, small French gardens and a
small pond. Outside the wall of the property was a two-storey residence.109
Mireille Lobligeois gave more importance to Le Prince et Poulain,
and not Blin and Delbruck, as the former brought about a ‘revolution’
in the production of cotton textiles in India because theirs was a steam
machine. The machine that Blin and Delbruck ordered needed human
or animal force to run.110 Indeed, after the new machine was intro-
duced production and trade in cotton textiles expanded. The number of
weavers in Pondicherry increased from 191 in 1832 to 623 at the end
of 1835, and the monthly output from 1300 pieces to 5300 pieces.111
In terms of quantity of cotton threads manufactured during the first
half of the 1830s, Poulain’s machines produced 2451 livres of thread
per month in 1831, which increased to 6501 livres in 1832 and 10,988
livres in 1833. Further, they produced 13,000 livres in March 1834 and
14,000 livres at the end of that year, and 188,776 livres in the first half
of 1835, namely 31,462 livres per month.112 Thereafter, textile produc-
tion flourished in Pondicherry, and the machine-made threads produced
by Poulain replaced handmade ones for various purposes, especially
in the production of guinées.113 Trade in guinées from Pondicherry to
France in 1846 was almost double the amount in 1839. In the 1830s
and 1840s, guinées were the flagship textiles exported from Pondicherry
and accounted for 80–90 per cent of the total export of cotton textiles
from there. White cotton textiles and other types were also exported
from Pondicherry, but their proportions were marginal in terms of the
total exports of cotton textiles from the colonial port.114
As we have seen, Pondicherry was renowned for dyeing cotton tex-
tiles. This practice was found also in other parts of the Coromandel
Coast at that time. However, the dyed products in Pondicherry were
known for their peculiar brilliancy of colour. British traveller, James
Holman, who visited Pondicherry in 1830, recorded in detail how cot-
ton textiles were dyed:

To dye twenty pieces, or one corge per day, requires the services of an
overseer and twelve coolies; the dye is contained in large earthen pots,
about three and a half or four feet in depth, which are sunk in the earth,
bringing their mouths on a level with the surface. Sixty of these pots are
required to finish a corge per day; and they are divided into sets of fifteen
 4  PROCUREMENT OF INDIAN TEXTILES FOR WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850  151

each, which come into use by regular rotation: thus, after using a set of
pots for a day, fresh indigo is added to them, and they are allowed to
acquire strength, until their turn comes round again.
In each set of fifteen pots, there are three different strengths of dye;
into the weakest of which, after being well washed, the cloth is dipped
twice for a few seconds, drying it in the sun between each dipping: this
gives it a good deep sky blue: it is then dipped two or three times, as may
be found necessary, in the second strength, drying it as before, between
each dipping, which should give the cloth a dark but dull blue: it is then
dipped in the third strength, which finishes the dyeing process, by giving
the cloth a deep reddish, or coppery blue: it is then dried, and afterwards
washed in a solution procured from a seed called “nacheny,” possessing
the quality of starch, which stiffens the cloth: it is then dressed, by being
beaten upon a smooth block of wood, with two heavy wooden mallets, by
two coolies, which fits it for the market.
The dye is obtained from about equal quantities of indigo and chunam
[plaster], added to water filtered through a mixture of quick-lime, and a
description of sand, containing a quantity of soda, which is procured in
this neighbourhood; in passing through which the water becomes of a red-
dish colour: —to this is also added, a solution obtained by boiling a seed,
called by the natives, “taggery,” which is of a yellowish colour. Before add-
ing the indigo, it is well ground down; the mixture is stirred frequently
for the first twenty-four hours. It is then allowed to stand for two or three
days, by which time it is fit for use; and, if of proper strength, the composi-
tion should, when stirred up, appear of a deep madeira colour.115

It was important to maintain business relations that were a major

concern for the metropolitan government. As for the textile trade from
France, the government had to manage to preserve the interests of both
French and Pondicherry’s manufacturers without showing any favour
towards foreign competitors such as Britain and Belgium.116 In this
context the government levied a duty of 20 per cent upon the entry of
guinées into France from India to protect the French cloth industry, and
that pressure from the French producers of cotton textiles led the French
government to place a ban on the inflow of Indian textiles into France
in 1828.117 Therefore, guinées faced difficulty in finding a market within
the Hexagon. Furthermore, as we have seen in Chapter 3, the French
mercantilist policy (pacte colonial) banned commerce between colonies
and allowed only French merchants to conduct trade between France
and its colonies. Hence, guinées had to be sent from Pondicherry into
France first and then shipped to other markets.
152  K. KOBAYASHI

The most important market for guinées, of Pondicherry in the nine-

teenth century, was Senegal in West Africa, where they were exchanged
for gum arabic supplied by nomadic merchants in the lower Senegal
River. As described in Chapter 2, gum fever was rising in Senegal
around 1830, so it offered a timely market for Pondicherry’s guinées. In
order to sell in Senegal, the details of guinées became a major issue in
the Ordonnances du Roi that was issued on 18 May and 1 September
1843.118 In particular, the Ordonnance of 18 May—to be enforced from
1 October of the same year—defined that a piece of guinée had to weigh
more than 2.3 kilograms and had to be more than 16.5 metres in length
and one metre in width.119 However, this specification was not known to
Pondicherry until 17 July, when some textiles had already been shipped.
This shipment was to arrive in Senegal after 1 October, obviously not
having met with the required conditions, and therefore was banned from
entering Senegal.120 In response to this problem, Pondicherry entrepre-
neurs including Poulain and Blin sent a petition to the Minister of the
Navy and the Colonies to postpone the enforcement of the Ordonnance
that was to come into effect from 1 October 1844.121
On the other hand, Article 2 of the Ordonnance of 1 September stip-
ulated that ‘each piece of guinée dispatched from the French establish-
ments of India and destined to the commerce, will be covered, in the
establishments, with a mark or stamp whose form will be determined by
the local administration, and which indicates the weights and the dimen-
sions of the fabric’.122 Article 4 of the Arrêté of 18 December 1843
also defined the mark that was in the form of cardboard (Image 4.2),
which was ‘to be attached by a thread to one of the ends of a piece [of
guinée]’.123
Image 3.1 shows valuable samples of marked guinées that have survived
to this day. They were produced in Pondicherry, probably at some point
between 1843 and August 1844. The following words are written on
them: ‘ORDONNANCES ROYALES DES 18 MAI ET 1er SEPTEMBRE
1843’ (Royal ordonnances of 18 May and 1st September 1843) around
the outer border of the mark, whose diameter is 56 millimetres, with
‘PONDICHERY’ on the upper centre, ‘GUINÉE’ on the left of centre,
and ‘Poids 2k 30, Longr 16m 50, Largr 1[m] 00’ in the centre. However,
these details did not necessarily work. In the end, the Ordonnances of 18
May and 1 September 1843 were revoked in the Décret of 17 January
1852. The general council session of 27 March 1852 even asserted that
the application of the stamp was thoroughly useless.124
 4  PROCUREMENT OF INDIAN TEXTILES FOR WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850  153

Image 4.2  Cardboard attached to the guinées in Pondicherry (Source ANOM,

Inde 494, Dossier 871: L’Arrêté signé par Gouverneur Du Camper, 18
December 1843, Pondicherry)

Conclusion
This chapter has examined the procurement of cotton textiles in India
by Europeans from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth century.
South India has been the main focus since the region was known for
indigo-dyed cotton textiles that were in great demand in West Africa.
Our focus has been divided between British and French enterprises
in South India. Both studies clearly show that the economic linkage
between West Africa and South Asia rested upon not only African con-
sumer behaviour (see Chapter 3) but also the performance of Indian
producers. Similar to African consumer demand, the performance of
Indian producers also depended on a variety of local conditions. The
adverse circumstances that negatively affected incentives for weav-
ers posed a severe challenge to Europeans who had to procure cot-
ton textiles; but favourable circumstances for quality guinées allowed
Pondicherry to play a vital role in the south-south economic linkage dur-
ing the nineteenth century.
154  K. KOBAYASHI

During this period, the EIC faced difficulties in procuring textiles in

South India owing to financial problems that arose from a series of wars
in India. The EIC documents have revealed that the demand for a vari-
ety of cotton textiles for Britain and foreign markets were rightly con-
veyed by them. Yet, there were uncertainties in their procurement. There
were various reasons for these, such as natural disasters, the price of raw
materials, weavers’ performances, Indian intermediaries’ behaviour, and
competition with other European and private merchants. It was there-
fore crucial for the EIC to systematise the procurement process of cotton
textiles in South India. Following the system that had already been intro-
duced in Bengal and elsewhere, the Company carried out institutional
changes. Under the aumany system, the EIC attempted to control the
weavers directly, eliminating Indian intermediaries who had connected
the two—the EIC and the weavers’ villages. However, this new system
also did not bring about a change in textile production. It lacked suf-
ficient incentives for the weavers to work for the Company; there were
also reports that the quality of cotton textiles did not yet meet the
EIC’s standard. Even worse, there were weavers who fled the Madras
Presidency. In the early nineteenth century, the British abolition of the
slave trade, the development of the cotton industry in Lancashire and the
lobbying campaign by the emerging manufacturers who tried to discour-
age the EIC from importing Indian cotton textiles into Britain formed a
deadly threat to the Company. These adverse situations forced EIC offi-
cials to reduce their investment in the production of cotton textiles in
South India, though they still entertained a hope that blue goods could
sell in the 1820s to some extent.
French business in Pondicherry was different from the British one.
Shortly after Pondicherry returned to France in the middle of the 1810s,
rebuilding the establishment was the top priority for the local admin-
istration. In the early stage, Desbassayns devoted himself to institutional
changes for industrial development, building public workshops to solve the
problem of unemployment among Indians. Simultaneously, he encouraged
private entrepreneurs such as Blin and Delbruck to invest in the textile
industry in Pondicherry from the 1820s. Another period commenced in
1830 when Le Prince et Poulain introduced a steam machine to spin cot-
ton into threads brought from France to Pondicherry. Consequently, the
output of cotton textiles in the French colony increased.
This chapter has emphasised that the growth of Pondicherry’s textile
production was intertwined with a global conjuncture around 1830.
 4  PROCUREMENT OF INDIAN TEXTILES FOR WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850  155

While the metropolitan government protected the local textile indus-

try via the tax levied on the import of guinées, French textiles could not
compete with Indian guinées in Senegal, a region that emerged as the
source of quality gum arabic at that time. Also, nomadic suppliers of
gum arabic preferred the quality of authentic guinées. As such, in con-
trast to Britain, which would have the technological edge in the cotton
industry during this period, France had not yet been successful in the
production of textiles whose quality satisfied West African consumers.
Such a technological gap created a path for Pondicherry’s textile industry
to thrive towards the late nineteenth century.

Notes
1. 
On the EIC and their textile procurement in India in general, see
K. N. Chaudhuri, ‘The Structure of Indian Textile Industry in the
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, Indian Economic and Social
History Review 11/2–3 (1974): 127–82. This article was reproduced in
K. N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India
Company, 1660–1760 (Cambridge University Press, 1978), Chapter 11
(under the title ‘The Company and the Indian Textile Industry’) and
in Tirthankar Roy, ed., Cloth and Commerce: Textiles in Colonial
India (New Delhi: Sage, 1996), Chapter 2. On textile procurement
in Bengal, see Hossain Hameeda, The Company Weavers in Bengal:
The East India Company and the Organization of Textile Production
in Bengal, 1750–1813 (Dhaka: University Press, 2010); Om Prakash,
‘From Market-Determined to Coercion-Based Textile Manufacturing
in Eighteenth-Century Bengal’, in Giorgio Riello and Tirthankar Roy,
eds., How India Clothed the World: The World of South Asian Textiles,
1500–1850 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), pp. 217–51. On the case of west-
ern India, Lakshmi Subramanian, ‘Power and the Weave: Weavers,
Merchants and Rulers in Eighteenth-Century Surat’, in Rudrangshu
Mukherjee and Lakshmi Subramanian, eds., Politics and Trade in the
Indian Ocean World: Essays in Honour of Ashin Das Gupta (Oxford
University Press, 1998), pp. 52–79. As for the case of South India,
S. Arasaratnam, ‘Weavers, Merchants and Company: The Handloom
Industry in Southeastern India, 1750–1790’, Indian Economic and
Social History Review 17/3 (1980): 257–81; Joseph Brennig, ‘Textile
Producers and Production in Late Seventeenth Century Coromandel’,
Indian Economic and Social History Review 23/4 (1986): 333–55;
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Rural Industry and Commercial Agriculture in
Late Seventeenth-Century South-Eastern India’, Past and Present 126
 156  K. KOBAYASHI

(1990): 76–126; Prasannan Parthasarathi, The Transition to a Colonial

Economy: Weavers, Merchants and Kings in South India, 1720–1800
(Cambridge University Press, 2001); Potkuchi Swarnalatha, The World
of the Weaver in Northern Coromandel: c. 1750–c. 1850 (Hyderabad:
Orient Longman, 2005); S. Jeyaseela Stephen, Oceanscapes: Tamil
Textiles in the Early Modern World (Delhi: Primus Books, 2014),
pp. 321–86. For the French East India Company, see Philippe Haudrère,
La compagnie française des Indes au XVIIIe siècle (Second Edition,
Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 2005). For the Dutch East India Company,
see Om Prakash, The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of
Bengal, 1630–1720 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985);
Om Prakash, European Commercial Enterprise in Pre-colonial India
(Cambridge University Press, 1998); Glamann Kristof, Dutch-Asiatic
Trade, 1620–1740 (Copenhagen: Danish Science Press, 1958); Els M.
Jacobs, Merchant in Asia: The Trade of the Dutch East India Company
During the Eighteenth Century (Leiden: CNWS Publications, 2006).
2. For the procurement of Gujarati cotton textiles for East Africa, see
Pedro Machado, Ocean of Trade: South Asian Merchants, Africa and the
Indian Ocean, c. 1750–1850 (Cambridge University Press, 2014).
3. Chaudhuri, The Trading World, p. 132; K. N. Chaudhuri, The English
East India Company: The Study of an Early Joint-Stock Company 1600–
1640 (London: Frank Cass, 1965), pp. 147–50.
4. H. V. Bowen, The Business of Empire: The East India Company and
Imperial Britain, 1756–1833 (Cambridge University Press, 2006),
pp. 238–9.
5. Mireille Lobligeois, ‘Ateliers publics et filatures privées à Pondichéry
après 1816’, Bulletin de l’ecole française d’extême-orient 59 (1972):
3–100; Jacques Weber, Les établissements français en Inde au XIXè siècle
(1816–1914), 5 Vols. (Paris: Librairie de l’Inde, 1988); Jacques Weber,
‘French India (Nineteenth–Twentieth Century)’, in Claude Markovits,
ed., A History of Modern India, 1480–1950 (London: Anthem, 2004),
pp. 495–519.
6. Richard L. Roberts, ‘West Africa and the Pondicherry Textile Industry’,
in Roy, ed., Cloth and Commerce, pp. 142–74.
7. Tirthankar Roy, India in the World Economy: From Antiquity to the
Present (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
8. The word ‘Ghat’ means ‘gate’ in English.
9. Madras, Manual of the Administrations of the Madras Presidency, in
Illustration of the Records of Government & the Yearly Administration
Reports, Vol. 1 (Madras: Government Press, 1885), pp. 1–29.
10. Parthasarathi, Transition, pp. 62–4.
11. Parthasarathi, Transition, pp. 62–3.
12. Parthasarathi, Transition, pp. 50, 64–6.
 4  PROCUREMENT OF INDIAN TEXTILES FOR WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850  157

13. Parthasarathi, Transition, pp. 67–8.

14. Parthasarathi, Transition, p. 68; Brennig, ‘Textile Producers’, 335–6.
15. Subrahmanyam, ‘Rural Industry’, 87–9; Swarnalatha, The World of the
Weavers, pp. 57–8.
16. Parthasarathi, Transition, pp. 67–71.
17. In addition to cotton imports by land from other areas of India into
Cuddalore, cotton was also cultivated to the extent of 10,120 cawnies
(54.15 square kilometres) in the district. There was no exporta-
tion of cotton from Cuddalore. East India Company, Reports and
Documents Connected with the Proceedings in Regard to the Culture and
Manufacture of Cotton-Wool, Raw Silk and Indigo in India (London,
1836), pp. 404–5.
18. Mattiebelle Gittinger, Master Dyers to the World: Technique and Trade in
Early Indian Dyed Cotton Textiles (Washington, DC: The Textile Museum,
1982), pp. 19–21; Swarnalatha, The World of the Weaver, pp. 21–9.
19. John Irwin and P. R. Schwartz, Studies in Indo-European Textile History
(Ahmedabad: Calico Museum of Textiles, 1966), pp. 39, 67, 70;
Radhika Seshan, Trade and Politics on the Coromandel Coast: Seventeenth
and Early Eighteenth Centuries (Delhi: Primus Books, 2012), p. 15;
Stephen, Oceanscapes, pp. 615–6.
20. British Library (BL), India Office Records (IOR), E/4/888: Madras
dispatch, 9 September 1801, p. 655.
21. BL, IOR, E/4/904: Madras dispatch, 16 January 1810, p. 478.
22. BL, IOR, E/4/895: Madras dispatch, 19 June 1805, pp. 75–6; BL,
IOR, E/4/901: Madras dispatch, 6 March 1807, p. 747. On the signif-
icance of smell (of indigo), see Chapter 3.
23. Prakash, European Commercial Enterprise, pp. 316–7.
24. Parthasarathi, Transition, pp. 73–7.
25. BL, IOR, E/4/863: Madras dispatch, 15 February 1765, p. 79;
BL, IOR, E/4/997: a letter from London to Bombay, 22 March
1765, pp. 611–2; C. S. Sriktivasachari, ed., Fort William-India House
Correspondence and Other Contemporary Papers Relating Thereto, Vol. 4:
1764–1766 (Delhi: Government of India, 1962), p. 92.
26. Tamil Nadu State Archives (MRO, former Madras Record Office
in Chennai, India), South Arcot 100/18464: a letter from Edward
Holland, 28 May 1794, in a letter from J. William Junior to John
Kentworthy, 19 January 1795, Fort St. George.
27. MRO, South Arcot 100/18464: a letter from Fallofield to Kentworthy,
1 May 1795, Fort St. George.
28. The annual dispatches from the Court of Directors in London to the
Commercial Department at Fort St. George in Madras included com-
ments and evaluations on the procured textiles in the Madras Presidency.
158  K. KOBAYASHI

29. Advanced supply of raw materials was organised in eighteenth-­

century western India, but it was exceptional. Chaudhuri, The Trading
World, pp. 253–62. For the putting out system, see Brennig, ‘Textile
Producers’, 350–1.
30. Roberts, ‘West Africa’, p. 148.
31. For different views on the intermediaries in South India before 1800,
see Vijaya Ramaswamy, ‘The Genesis and Historical Role of the Master
Weavers in South India Textile Production’, Journal of the Economic and
Social History of the Orient 28/3 (1985): 294–325; Brennig, ‘Textile
Producers’, 333–55.
32. Arasaratnam, ‘Weavers, Merchants and Company’, 264.
33. Swarnalatha, The World of the Weaver, p. 77.
34. BL, IOR, P/240/41: a report to Lord Pigot from George Stratten,
export warehouse keeper, 22 July 1776, Fort St. George. There were a
variety of brokers in the subcontinent, and the brokers to the European
trading companies were one type of them. For more detailed discussions
on the brokers, see Ashin Das Gupta, Indian Merchants and the Decline
of Surat, c. 1700–1750 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1979), pp. 84–5;
A. Jan Qaisar, ‘The Role of Brokers in Medieval India’, Indian
Historical Review 1/2 (1974): 220–46; M. N. Pearson, ‘Brokers in
Western Indian Port Cities: Their Role in Serving Foreign Merchants’,
Modern Asian Studies 22/3 (1988): 455–72; Arasaratnam, ‘Weavers,
Merchants and Company’, 266–7.
35. MRO, South Arcot 100/18464: a letter from Edward Holland to
Resident in Cuddalore, 28 May 1794, Fort St. George. See also, BL,
IOR, E/4/880: Madras dispatch, 28 May 1794, p. 745.
36. Arasaratnam, ‘Weavers, Merchants and Company’, 268.
37. In the eighteenth century, the Dutch ports such as Rotterdam played
an alternative source of Indian cotton textiles for the English mer-
chants who traded with Africa. BL, Add. Mss. 25,503: Minutes of
the South Sea Company, 21 February 1729, p. 385. This was in part
because the Dutch hardly imposed taxation on the VOC and their spe-
cial arrangements for the re-exports of Asian goods. Chris Nierstrasz,
‘The Popularization of Tea: East India Companies, Private Traders,
Smugglers and the Consumption of Tea in Western Europe, 1700–
1760’, in Maxine Berg, Felicia Gottmann, Hanna Hodacs, and Chris
Nierstrasz, eds., Goods from the East, 1600–1800: Trading Eurasia
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), p. 270.
38. BL, IOR, E/1/54: a petition to Commissioner of His Majesty’s
Treasury from Gilbert Ross, James Mill, William Crichton, John
Shoollred, and Thomas Bell, 10 October 1770, London, pp. 250–2.
 4  PROCUREMENT OF INDIAN TEXTILES FOR WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850  159

As discussed in Chapter 3, the gum trade was linked to the trade in

guinées produced by Indian weavers.
39. BL, IOR, E/1/54: a petition to Commissioner of His Majesty’s
Treasury from Gilbert Ross, James Mill, William Crichton, John
Shoollred, and Thomas Bell, 10 October 1770, London, pp. 250–2.
40. Frank Perlin, ‘The Problem of the Eighteenth Century’, in
P. J. Marshall, ed., The Eighteenth Century in Indian History (Oxford
University Press, 2003), p. 59.
41. Arasaratnam, ‘Weavers, Merchants and Company’, 263.
42. Stephen, Oceanscapes, p. 364.
43. MRO, South Arcot 100/18464: a letter from John Kentworthy to
Ernest William Fallofield, 13 March 1795, Cuddalore. Unfortunately,
this source does not illustrate how the quality of textiles fell.
44. BL, IOR, Home/374: extract letter from London to Bombay, 4 May
1791, pp. 5–6.
45. Stephen, Oceanscapes, pp. 365–6.
46.  Arasaratnam, ‘Weavers, Merchants and Company’, 277; Anthony
Webster, The Twilight of the East India Company: The Evolution of
Anglo-Asian Commerce and Politics 1790–1860 (Woodbridge: Boydell
Press, 2009), pp. 24–33; Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global
History (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014), p. 48. For the detailed
discussion of the agency houses, see Anthony Webster, The Richest East
India Merchant: The Life and Business of John Palmer of Calcutta 1767–
1836 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007); Geoffrey Jones, Merchants
to Multinationals: British Trading Companies in the Nineteenth and
Twentieth Centuries (Oxford University Press, 2000), Chapter 2.
47.  Anthony Reid, ‘A New Phase of Commercial Expansion in Southeast
Asia, 1760–1850’, in Anthony Reid, ed., The Last Strand of Asian
Autonomies: Responses to Modernity in the Diverse States of Southeast
Asia and Korea, 1750–1900 (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1997),
pp. 57–81; Prakash, European Commercial Enterprise, pp. 286–97; Ryuto
Shimada, The Intra-Asian Trade in Japanese Copper by the Dutch East
India Company During the Eighteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2006).
48.  P. J. Marshall, East Indian Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the
Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976); Webster,
The Twilight, pp. 24–5; H. V. Bowen, ‘Sinews of Trade and Empire:
The Supply of Commodity Exports to the East India Company During
the Late Eighteenth Century’, Economic History Review 55/3 (2002):
467; H. V. Bowen, ‘Privilege and Profit: Commanders of East Indiamen
as Private Traders, Entrepreneurs and Smugglers, 1760–1813’,
International Journal of Maritime History 16/2 (2007): 43–88.
160  K. KOBAYASHI

49. G. H. Hodgson, Thomas Parry: Free Merchant Madras 1768–1824

(Madras: Higginbothams, 1938); Stephanie Jones, Two Centuries
of Overseas Trading: The Origins and Growth of the Inchcape Group
(Basingstoke and London: Macmillan Press, 1986), pp. 9–10; Jones,
Merchants to Multinationals, pp. 11–2; Tirthankar Roy, ‘Trading Firms
in Colonial India’, Business History Review 88/S1 (2014): 31–2.
50. BL, IOR, P/240/40: a letter from John Whitehill to Peter Baars
of Jaggarnaikparam, 18 August 1775, Masulipatnam; Arasaratnam,
‘Weavers, Merchants and Company’, 271–4; S. Arasaratnam, ‘Trade
and Political Dominion in South India, 1750–1790: Changing British–
Indian Relationships’, Modern Asian Studies 13/1 (1979): 30.
51. British Parliamentary Papers, 1812, VII (397): The Fifth Report from
the Select Committee on the Affairs of the East India Company, pp.
206–7; BL, IOR, E/4/889: Madras dispatch, 23 June 1802, p. 703;
MRO, South Arcot 110/18474: a letter from Kinchant to Fallofield, 15
June 1802, Cuddalore. For the cases of Bengal and the Western India,
see Prakash, ‘Textile Manufacturing’; Hameeda, The Company Weavers;
Subramanian, ‘Power and the Weave’.
52. Swarnalatha, The World of the Weaver, p. 217.
53. Peons were one of those who were employed to superintend the
Company’s cloths. MRO, South Arcot 113/18477: a letter from
C. Wynox to Commercial Resident at Caddalore, 4 January 1804, Fort
St. George.
54. BL, IOR, E/4/889: Madras dispatch, 23 June 1802, pp. 705, 710–1.
55. BL, IOR, E/4/879: Madras dispatch, 25 June 1793, pp. 1009–14.
56. MRO, South Arcot 110/18474: a letter from Richard Kinchant to
Fallofield, 8 May 1802, Cuddalore.
57. MRO, South Arcot 110/18474: a letter from Kinchant to Fallofield, 15
June 1802, Cuddalore.
58. MRO, South Arcot 110/18474: a letter from Kinchant to Fallofield,
27 July 1802, Cuddalore; a letter from Kinchant to John Wallace
(Collector of Tritchinopoly), 26 December 1802, Cuddalore.
59. BL, IOR, E/4/884: Madras dispatch, 2 March 1798, pp. 141–3.
60. MRO, South Arcot 100/18464: a letter from Edward Holland, 28 May
1794, in a letter from J. William Junior to John Kentworthy, 19 January
1795, Fort St. George. See also, BL, IOR, E/4/880: Madras dispatch,
28 May 1794, pp. 748–9.
61. BL, IOR, E/4/900: Madras dispatch, 10 June 1807, p. 211.
62. MRO, South Arcot 113/18477: a letter from John Chameir to
Kinchant, 23 October 1804, Fort St. George.
63. BL, IOR, E/4/879: Madras dispatch, 25 June 1793, p. 946.
 4  PROCUREMENT OF INDIAN TEXTILES FOR WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850  161

64. Voyages Database. 2009. Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

Database (TSTD). http://www.slavevoyages.org (accessed 23 March
2015).
65. Arasaratnam, ‘Weavers, Merchants and Company’, 278.
66. A problem with incentives provided by the EIC has been discussed
in more detail in Karolina Hutková, ‘Technology Transfers and
Organization: The English East India Company and the Transfer
of Piedmontese Silk Reeling Technology to Bengal, 1750s–1790s’,
Enterprise & Society 18/4 (2017): 921–51.
67. MRO, South Arcot 110/18474: a letter from Kinchant to Wallace, 26
December 1802, Cuddalore.
68. Irwin and Schwartz, Indo-European Textile History, pp. 31–2.
69. Roberts, ‘West Africa’, p. 148.
70. Swarnalatha, The World of the Weaver, p. 77.
71. MRO, South Arcot 109/18473: a letter from Holland to the Commercial
Resident at Cuddalore, 3 September 1802, Fort St. George; BL, IOR,
E/4/889: Madras dispatch, 23 June 1802, pp. 765, 769–74.
72. Of 16 assortments, three were long cloth Warriarpollam, three long
cloth Chennamanaickpollam, six long cloth sheally and four long cloth
sheally half pieces. In the same letter there was also a continuation of
the examination of four assortments of Cuddalore goods: three were
long cloth fine and one sallampores middling.
73. MRO, South Arcot 109/18473: a letter from Edward Holland to
the Commercial Resident at Cuddalore, 13 September 1802, Fort
St. George.
74. MRO, South Arcot 113/18477: a letter from C. Wynox to the
Commercial Resident at Cuddalor, 28 March 1804, Fort St. George.
75. The National Archives (NAUK, Kew, United Kingdom), CUST 17/27-
29. The imports of Indian cotton textiles from Britain to West Africa
were 281,000 pieces in 1805, 336,000 pieces in 1806 and 153,000
pieces in 1807.
76. NAUK, CUST 10/3.
77. BL, IOR, E/4/909: Madras dispatch, 3 June 1812, p. 187.
78. For Masulipatnam, see Swarnalatha, The World of the Weaver, p. 22.
79. NAUK, CUST 10/3-20.
80. Giorgio Riello, Cotton: The Fabric That Made the Modern World
(Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 269–72. A recent empirical
study also supported this point. Stephen Broadberry and Bisynupriya
Gupta, ‘Lancashire, India, and Shifting Competitive Advantages in
Cotton Textiles, 1700–1850: The Neglected Role of Factor Prices’,
Economic History Review 62/2 (2009): 279–305.
81. BL, IOR, E/4/936: Madras dispatch, 29 October 1828, p. 228.
82. BL, IOR, E/4/936: Madras dispatch, 29 October 1828, p. 233.
162  K. KOBAYASHI

83. See Chapter  2.
84. Narayani Gupta, ‘Pondichéry in the Nineteenth Century: A Port
Without a Hinterland’, in Indu Banga, ed., Ports and Their Hinterlands
in India (1700–1950) (New Delhi: Manohar, 1992), pp. 89–101;
M. Manickam, ‘Trade and Commerce in Pondicherry (A.D.
1701–1793)’ (PhD Thesis, Pondicherry University, 1995), pp. 4–5.
85. Manickam, ‘Trade and Commerce’, pp. 10–41, 51–55; Parthasarathi,
The Transition, pp. 53–61.
86. H. Dodwell, ed., The Private Diary of Ananda Ranga Pillai, Vol. 12
(Jan. 1760–Jan. 1761) (New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 2005),
pp. 2–3, 7–9; Felicia Gottmann, Global Trade, Smuggling, and the
Making of Economic Liberalism: Asian Textiles in France 1680–1760
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Philippe Haudrère, La cam-
pagne française des Indes au XVIIIe siècle (1719–1795), 4 Vols. (Paris:
Librairie de l’Inde éditeur, 1989); Stephen, Oceanscapes, pp. 387–424.
87. Stephen, Oceanscapes, p. 365.
88. Lobligeois, ‘Ateliers publics’, 4.
89. Weber, ‘French India’.
90. Lobligeois, ‘Ateliers publics’, 5, 11; Weber, ‘French India’, p. 500;
James Holman, A Voyage Round the World Including Travels in Africa,
Asia, Australasia, America, etc., etc., Vol. 3 (London, 1835), pp. 368–9.
91. Lobligeois, ‘Ateliers publics’, 5, 12, 33.
92. His request to set up the building was accepted by Article 1 of the Arrêté
of 1 March 1828. Lobligeois, ‘Ateliers publics’, 14.
93. Tirthankar Roy, ‘Indigo and Law in Colonial India’, Economic History
Review 64/S1 (2011): 61–2.
94. Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer [ANOM, Aix-en-Provence, France],
Inde 537, Dossier 1034: Procés-verbal de la séance du conseil de gou-
vernement et d’administration qui a en lieu à l’hôtel du gouvernement,
26 August 1825, Pondicherry. My translation.
95. ANOM, Inde 537, Dossier 1034: le Gouverneur Civil, M. Du Puy, au
Ministre Secrétaire d’Etat de la Marine et des Colonies, 9 March 1824,
Pondicherry.
96. ANOM, Inde 537, Dossier 1034: le Gouverneur Civil, M. Du Puy, au
Ministre Secrétaire d’Etat de la Marine et des Colonies, 10 April 1824,
Pondicherry.
97. Lobligeois, ‘Ateliers publics’, 85.
98. ANOM, Inde 534, Dossier 1002: l’Administrateur Général des
Établissements français de l’Inde, Desbassayns, au Ministre Secrétaire
d’Etat de la Marine et des Colonies, 27 September 1827, Pondicherry.
99. ANOM, Inde 534, Dossier 1002: l’Administrateur Général des
Établissements français de l’Inde au Ministre Secrétaire d’Etat de
 4  PROCUREMENT OF INDIAN TEXTILES FOR WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850  163

la Marine et des Colonies, 3 February 1828, Pondicherry; Lobligeois,

‘Ateliers publics’, 47.
100. Cited in Lobligeois, ‘Ateliers publics’, 47. My translation.
101. ANOM, Inde 534, Dossier 1000: Rapport au Ministre Secrétaire d’Etat
de la Marine et des Colonies, 15 July 1828, Paris; Lobligeois, ‘Ateliers
publics’, 48–9.
102. Lobligeois, ‘Ateliers publics’, 49–51.
103.  ANOM, Inde 534, Dossier 1000: Le Prince et Poulain au Ministre
Secrétaire d’Etat de la Marine et des Colonies, 18 February 1829, Paris.
104. Lobligeois, ‘Ateliers publics’, 52–3; Roberts, ‘West Africa’, p. 152.
105. Lobligeois, ‘Ateliers publics’, 56–8.
106. The new firm was known as ‘Savana’ in the late nineteenth century. It
is one of the origins of today’s Swadeshee and Barathee Textile Mills
Ltd in Pondicherry. ANOM, Inde 534, Dossier 1000: Blin et Delbruck
à l’Ordonnateur et Directeur de l’Intérieur à Pondichéry, St. Hilaire,
16 March 1830, Pondicherry. See also the website of the Swadeshee
and Baratee Textile Mills Ltd. http://www.sbtml.com/ (accessed 1
February 2018). Little is known about Arbuthnot. As far as we know,
Arbuthnot came to India as a captain in the EIC and came to con-
duct business on his own account as an early private British entrepre-
neur working in India in the early nineteenth century. He also became
a partner of the Scottish merchant F. M. Gillanders, and had interests
in the business of sugar, cotton and Assam tea. S. G. Checkland, The
Gladstones: A Family Biography 1764–1851 (Cambridge University Press,
1971), p. 318; Jones, Two Centuries of Overseas Trading, pp. 11, 29.
107. Lobligeois, ‘Ateliers publics’, 59–65; Roberts, ‘West Africa’, p. 153.
108. Lobligeois, ‘Ateliers publics’, 64.
109. Lobligeois, ‘Ateliers publics’, 64–5.
110. Lobligeois, ‘Ateliers publics’, 82.
111. France. Ministère de la marine et des colonies, Notices statistiques sur les
colonies françaises, Vol. 3 (Paris: Imprimerie Royales, 1839), p. 102.
112. Weber, Les établissements français, Vol. 1, p. 406.
113. Lobligeois, ‘Ateliers publics’, 82, 85–6.
114. Jacques Weber, ‘Le port et le commerce maritime de Pondichéry au
XIXe siècle’, Revue historique de Pondichéry 19 (1996): 73; J.-P. Duchon
Doris, Commerce des toiles bleues dites guinées (Paris, 1842), p. 29.
115. Holman, A Voyage, Vol. 3, pp. 372–3.
116. Lobligeois, ‘Ateliers publics’, 86.
117. Gupta, ‘Pondichéry’, pp. 95–6; Weber, ‘French India’, p. 500.
118. No. 66, Ordonnance du Roi, 18 May 1843 and No. 88, Ordinnance du
Roi, 1 September 1843, in Sénégal, Bulletin Administratif des Actes du
Gouvernement (Paris, 1846), pp. 87–8, 125–6.
164  K. KOBAYASHI

119. Ordonnance du Roi, 18 May 1843, pp. 87–8.

120. Lobligeois, ‘Ateliers publics’, 88.
121. ANOM, Inde 494, Dossier 871: Amalric et al. au Ministre de la Marine
et des Colonies, 7 August 1843, Pondicherry.
122. Ordinnance du Roi, 1 September 1843, pp. 125–6.
123. ANOM, Inde 494, Dossier 871: L’Arrêté signé par l’Gouverneur Du
Camper, 18 December 1843, Pondicherry. My translation.
124. Lobligeois, ‘Ateliers publics’, 89–90.
 CHAPTER 5

Western European Merchants and West

Africa, 1750–1850: Continuity and Change

This chapter primarily concentrates on Western European merchants

who connected South Asia and West Africa with the Indian textile trade
from the late eighteenth to early nineteenth century. In the south-south
economic history discussed in this book, European merchants played
a vital role as an intermediary during this period, which witnessed dra-
matic changes in the political and economic landscapes in all corners of
the world. Western Europe was the setting of the French Revolution
that gave rise to the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and that of the
British Industrial Revolution. The slave insurrection at the French colony
of Saint Domingue in the Caribbean ultimately led to the independence
of Haiti in 1804. Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807 and slavery in
1833, while they launched a naval campaign to suppress other countries’
slave trade. Meanwhile, as seen in Chapter 2, the age of revolutions in
Europe and the Americas was simultaneously the age of jihad in West
Africa. Each political upheaval and economic development had its own
inter-regional or global repercussions. Also, trade, whether intra-regional
or long-distance, was more or less subject to international relations.
So, how did the age of revolutions affect the businesses of merchants,
especially of those who shipped cotton textiles from South Asia to the
Atlantic coast of West Africa? This chapter mainly addresses this ques-
tion. In particular, it examines the continuity and change in the British
and French businesses with West Africa.

© The Author(s) 2019 165

K. Kobayashi, Indian Cotton Textiles in West Africa,
Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18675-3_5
166  K. KOBAYASHI

The business networks through which Indian cotton textiles flowed

from India to West Africa via Western Europe have yet to be fully
explored. As far as British involvement is concerned, there is a histori-
ographical gap owing to a problem of source availability: at present,
unfortunately no sales record of the English East India Company (EIC)
exists, which means it is impossible to know from EIC records who were
the buyers of Indian textiles from them for West African trade at that
time. In order to shed fresh light on this, in the present chapter I use,
as an alternative, the valuable accounts of Thomas Lumley, a London
merchant who dealt with Indian cotton textiles, available at the National
Archives in the United Kingdom, and the TSTD which includes infor-
mation about the trade routes of each voyage. These sources and data
enable us to illustrate some patterns of trade of Indian cotton textiles
imported by the EIC through the hands of British merchants into West
African markets, albeit for a limited period.1
The following section starts with Britain’s West African trade in
Indian textiles during the transition from slave trade to ‘legitimate’ com-
merce. The records of Thomas Lumley show the detailed trade network
of Indian textiles from India to West Africa via Britain. The later part
of the section discusses the continuity and changes in British trade with
West Africa. Finally, French trade with Asia and West Africa, with special
reference to the guinée trade, is examined.

British Merchants and West Africa

During the age of revolutions, a series of political and economic changes
affected British merchants. Figure 5.1 shows the shipping of Indian cot-
ton textiles from Britain to West Africa, which closely corresponds with
the British slave trade until its abolition in 1807. It is worthy of remark
that the American Revolution (1775–1783) disrupted not only the
British slave trade from Africa to the Americas but also their textile trade
from Britain to Africa. In 1775, British vessels shipped over 200,000
pieces of Indian cotton textiles from Britain to Africa, but the scale
halved in the following year, and they carried 36,500 to 80,000 pieces
from 1777 to 1782, annually.
The abolition of the British slave trade in 1807 also impacted on their
trade in Indian manufactured goods. The volume of shipping plunged by
80 per cent from 1807 to 1811. Although the demand for Indian textiles
in West Africa still remained for carrying on the palm oil trade (Chapter 2),
 5  WESTERN EUROPEAN MERCHANTS AND WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850 …  167

600,000 60,000

500,000 50,000

400,000 40,000
(Unit) Pieces

Slaves
300,000 30,000

200,000 20,000

100,000 10,000

1821
1772
1775
1778
1781
1784
1787
1790
1793
1796
1799
1802
1805
1808
1811
1815
1818

1824
1827
1830
1833
1836
1839
1842
1845
1848
Indian cotton textiles Slaves

Fig. 5.1  British shipping of Indian textiles to West Africa and the British slave
trade, 1772–1849 (Sources Indian cotton textiles: NAUK, CUST 10/3–41;
CUST 17/1–29. Slaves: Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
[TSTD]. www.slavevoyages.org. Accessed 23 March 2015)

the British shipping of Indian textiles never came back to the pre-aboli-
tion levels. This stagnation during the post-abolition period was largely due
to the development of the Lancashire cotton industry and the lobbying
efforts by British manufacturers against the EIC’s import of Indian goods
(Chapter 4). The question here is whether or not the abolition of the slave
trade changed the business of British merchants who were engaged in the
West African trade.
During the age of revolutions, within the British Asian trade, the
major players shifted from the EIC and their associated private mer-
chants to private companies. As for the Anglo-West African trade, the
EIC had long been a major supplier of Indian cotton textiles for the
British merchants who invested in the Atlantic slave trade until it became
illegal in 1807. Thereafter, the EIC continued to supply textiles for
those who engaged in ‘legitimate’ commerce, but their role became even
less important because of the Charter Act of 1813 that abrogated the
monopoly of the EIC in the trade with India and thereby opened a win-
dow of business opportunities for new participants, notably John Palmer
and Company.2 Meanwhile, in the British African trade, private mer-
chants, mostly based in London, Bristol and Liverpool, had long enjoyed
168  K. KOBAYASHI

the dominant position, since the British Parliament had already repealed
the monopoly of the Royal African Company to trade with Africa by the
end of the seventeenth century.3
We shall now turn to British business networks that shipped Indian
textiles into West Africa via Britain. When the British engaged in the
slave trade, the EIC held auctions in London, and among the articles
for sale were cotton textiles of various types for West African markets.
Wholesalers and merchants who had a role in the slave trade were among
the major purchasers.4 Thomas Lumley was one of the major merchants
around the turn of the nineteenth century.
There seems to be little surviving evidence regarding Lumley’s family
background. However, the London Directory records Lumley as a ware-
houseman based in Guitter Lane in the City of London.5 As will be dis-
cussed in detail below, he regularly bought Indian cotton textiles from
the EIC,6 and sold them to merchants in London, Liverpool and other
places. His journal entries for the period 10 February 1801 to 1 October
1810 record this. Many such merchants were engaged in the slave trade,
and Lumley too invested in this trade on eight occasions from 1803 to
1808.7 His business networks extended from Liverpool and Glasgow in
Britain to Lisbon, Bologna and Livorno in continental Europe, and to
Kingston and New York in the Americas. These networks were main-
tained even after Britain ceased to participate in the slave trade in 1807.8
Lumley’s journal also includes the dates of transactions, the names of
the merchants to whom he sold Indian goods, the amounts and values
of the Indian textiles that were being sold, the types of textiles, and the
methods of payment. Above all, it gives the names of the vessels that car-
ried the textiles from Liverpool to West and West-Central Africa.9 As I
have done elsewhere, by combining this information with the data from
the transatlantic slave trade database (TSTD), it is possible to build an
accurate picture of the commercial networks that led from India via
Britain to Atlantic Africa.10
The journal records the 130 Indian textile transactions in which
Lumley participated in 1801. In 35 cases, his partners were Liverpool
merchants who were also members of the Company of Merchants
Trading to Africa, founded in 1750 as the successor of the Royal African
Company. They included John, James and William Aspinall, John
Bolton, P. W. Brancker, George Case, Thomas Hinde and Jonathan
Ratcliff.11 They purchased Indian textiles as exchange goods for the
slave trade. It is interesting to note that the amounts purchased for this
 5  WESTERN EUROPEAN MERCHANTS AND WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850 …  169

reason were much greater than other transactions, since in most cases
the sums paid exceeded £1500 while other transactions fetched less than
£300. For example, on 18 April 1801, George Case paid as much as
£2600 when purchasing Indian textiles for the Active.12 Lumley’s cor-
respondence records also provide evidence that Liverpool merchants
were ordering Indian textiles of various types as exchange goods for the
slave trade.13 The Lumley papers corroborate the statistical evidence pro-
vided in Fig. 1.1 on the importance of Indian cotton textiles in Britain’s
African trade along with his own significance in the Liverpool slave trade.
The data from the TSTD gives an African dimension to the available
information in Lumley’s documents by giving details of the destinations
of Indian textiles that Lumley sold to Liverpool merchants. For exam-
ple, in 1801, 21 vessels carrying Indian cotton textiles purchased from
Lumley left Liverpool for Africa. Of these, seven vessels sailed to Bonny
in the Bight of Biafra, which was the hub of Britain’s Atlantic slave trade
from the middle of the eighteenth century. During that year, the TSTD
records a total of 25 vessels as leaving Liverpool for Bonny. This means
that Lumley supplied almost 30 per cent of the Indian textiles that made
this journey in 1801.14 Similar patterns were followed in 1802 and
1803. In 1802, out of 22 voyages that left Liverpool for Bonny, six voy-
ages shipped Indian textiles supplied by Lumley; in 1803, out of eight
voyages, two were linked to Lumley. The sharp reduction in the num-
ber of vessels bound for Bonny in 1803 was probably due to the grow-
ing unpopularity of the slave trade as pressure for abolition increased.
Indeed, the total number of slave ships that left Liverpool for Africa also
decreased, from 128 in 1802 to 86 in 1803.15
In supplying other merchants with Indian cotton textiles purchased
from the EIC, Lumley was acting as a wholesaler, but he also invested in
the slave trade himself. It is not clear how this direct involvement came
about, but the existing records identify an 1803 trip from London to
West Africa by the Bedford as the first voyage in which he invested.16
During all the voyages in which he was an investor, Lumley remained
in London as a co-owner of the ship and entrusted his cargo to the cap-
tain. This pattern of trading behaviour was commonly found so as to
reduce individual risks among European merchants of the time. For the
European merchants, the long-distance trade, such as that with West
Africa, required larger amounts of capital for large-sized ships, cargoes,
insurance and wages to the crew, and involved higher risks than any
intra-European trade. The risks included disruption caused by piracy,
170  K. KOBAYASHI

shipwreck, natural hazards and seizure by ships of other countries. This

method persisted even after the abolition of the slave trade. It was also
common that partnerships were formed for a single voyage only and
dissolved on its completion, and thereby it required new partnerships
to be formed for another voyage.17 Martin Lynn noted this system as
‘immensely flexible, allowing firms to respond quickly to opportunities as
they arose, but provided little stability over a longer period’.18
Among the Lumley papers, those concerning the third voyage of the
Bedford, which took place in 1806, give the best insights into Lumley’s
involvement with the slave trade, because they range from an invoice giv-
ing an account of a transaction for the purchase of slaves in West Africa,
to records of the selling of slaves in Jamaica. The muster roll for the
voyage reveals that the ship had a crew of about 30 men, whose ages
varied from the mid-teens to the late thirties. They were from England,
Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, Sweden, Italy, the United States
and Africa. As well as the captain, officers and ordinary seamen, there
were a surgeon, a gunner, a carpenter, a cooper, a cook and some boys.
Wages were paid monthly and varied according to qualifications. Partial
advances could be made before a voyage began.19
The invoice, which was issued in London on 1 July 1806, records
that the purpose of the voyage was to purchase slaves and African goods
on the Windward and Gold Coasts. Lumley consigned the shipping of
the cargo to the Bedford’s captain, Gilbert Wenman, an Irishman. The
total value of the goods loaded at London including charges and insur-
ance amounted to £7500. They were packed separately, in puncheons,
bales or cases. Most were items to be exchanged for slaves and African
products, but there were also bags of rice and beans for feeding the
slaves. The invoice shows that textiles, especially those from South Asia,
accounted for 70 per cent of the total number of items. In particular,
there were 200 pieces of nicanees, chintz and Guinea stuff, and as many
as 1,900 pieces of romals.20
The Bedford left London on 7 July 1806. By 4 December Wenman
was at Cape Coast Castle. On that day he exchanged most of the textiles,
including 229 out of a total number of 246 pieces of bejutapaux, 200
out of a total number of 230 pieces of nicanees, 96 out of a total of 100
pieces of chellows, 1747 out of 1896 pieces of romals, and 239 out of
300 pieces of Guinea stuff. In return, he received a total of 244 slaves.
More textiles, and most of the other articles, were exchanged for goods
including ivory and water at other places. In addition, some lead bars
 5  WESTERN EUROPEAN MERCHANTS AND WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850 …  171

and pans were exchanged for gold. TSTD notes that 259 African slaves
were embarked on the Bedford. If this figure is correct, slaves must have
been among the additional goods obtained after the ship left Cape Coast
Castle.21
After Wenman had bought slaves, ivory and other goods in West
Africa, the Bedford set sail for Jamaica. While the vessel was crossing the
Atlantic the slaves made an attempt at resistance. When the ship arrived
in Kingston on 30 April 1807, the number of slaves had fallen to 233,
167 males and 66 females. They were all sold by auction during the
period from 7 May to 8 August of that year. Men and women fetched
different prices. During the first month of the auctions, slaves were often
sold for £110 or so per head. The gross sales price was £24,300, but
since auction-related expenses including charges were subtracted from
this amount Lumley’s total earnings were £20,200. Meanwhile, Wenman
purchased coffee, logwood and indigo. The Bedford started homewards
on 4 October 1807, arriving at London on 6 January 1808.22
Thus, the third voyage of the Bedford demonstrates the importance
of Indian cottons in the purchase of slaves in West Africa. Although the
evidence for this finding is based on only one case study of a transaction
that took place on the Gold Coast at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, it must be remembered that, as we have seen in Fig. 1.1, this
finding confirmed the fact that Indian textiles were important articles
even in the final phase of the British involvement in the slave trade.
It is appropriate to ask, therefore: how did British withdrawal from
the slave trade impact on the economic life of the British slave trad-
ers? This question needs to be situated in the wider context of British
overseas trade. In the first decade of the nineteenth century, British
merchants faced problems in carrying out their overseas trade due to dif-
ficult economic and political relationships with Europe and the United
States. The Continental System, represented by the Berlin and Milan
Decrees, restricted British trade with Continental Europe and later with
Northern Europe and the Baltic regions. This commercial blockade led
to the exclusion of British colonial goods from the European markets,
and consequently Anglo-Caribbean trade declined. During this period,
the United States carried out trade in Europe, including France, under
the neutral flag. However, Britain intended to prevent such trade by
Orders of Council of 1807 and 1808. These policies by Britain provoked
the United States to retaliate. As a consequence, British trade with the
United States was disrupted. The ending of the slave trade took place in
172  K. KOBAYASHI

such a situation, and it was difficult for the vessels of the slave trade to
find alternative employment.23
Therefore, it was not surprising that, in the short run, many mer-
chants faced bankruptcy or a huge loss of profits from the slave trade
soon after the formal abolition. Under such circumstances, Thomas
Lumley sent a petition on behalf of London merchants to the Chancellor
of the Exchequer, Spencer Perceval, to seek compensation from the gov-
ernment for this loss.24 John Aspinall, a leading Liverpool merchant, had
also been out of business for four or five years after the abolition, but
later became an important palm oil trader.25
Thus, the Anglo-West African trade switched from the slave trade to
‘legitimate’ commerce in agricultural products in the early nineteenth
century. However, there was continuity in this transition. First, Lloyd’s
Register of Shipping for the years 1808 to 1811 reveals that ‘the great
majority of slave trade vessels found fresh employment, and found it rel-
atively speedy, after abolition’.26 Indeed, around half of the slave vessels
that appeared on Lloyd’s Register found new owners in the years after
abolition. Following the emerging markets of the Caribbean and Latin
America, West Africa offered an opportunity for these redeployed vessels
to develop ‘legitimate’ commerce.27
Second, merchants from London, Bristol and Liverpool remained
the leading players in the palm oil trade, and chief destination among
them was Liverpool for imports from sub-Saharan Africa.28 Liverpool
merchants who once invested in the slave trade became leading palm oil
traders in the early nineteenth century, because they had the skill and
knowledge of the West African trade through their past business con-
tacts. In particular, their knowledge of the Niger Delta, which was a
prominent region for British slave trade from the middle of the eight-
eenth century, was useful as the region became a major palm oil pro-
ducing centre in West Africa before other regions began to expand. In
the early nineteenth century, especially in the 1830s and 1840s, a hand-
ful of large firms in Liverpool, such as the Tobin and Horsfall families,
played a leading role in the Anglo-West African trade. They undertook
several voyages to West Africa with large ships for large amounts of palm
oil each year.29 The Tobin family, in the time of Patrick Tobin (1735–
1794) in the Isle of Man, became established by the profits from slave
trade and estates in the Caribbean Islands, and in 1798 his eldest son,
John Tobin (1763–1851), married Sarah Aspinall, a daughter of James
Aspinall of Old Dock. The marriage marked a turning point for the
 5  WESTERN EUROPEAN MERCHANTS AND WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850 …  173

business of the Tobins, because the Aspinall family was rich and promi-
nent in Liverpool’s slave trade, especially in the Niger Delta and Angola.
Their financial support was crucial in operating their business, while their
connection with the Caribbean Islands supplied Tobin with sugar and
rum for the African trade.30
In the 1790s Tobin sailed to Africa for slave purchases several times
for major Liverpool merchants, such as George Case, the Aspinalls and
Gregsons. His major destinations were Loango and Anomabu on the
Gold Coast.31 From his marriage in 1798 to the first decade of the nine-
teenth century, Tobin co-owned the ships, most of them with William
Aspinall, for the slave trade, and the principal destination was Bonny
in the Niger Delta.32 His connections with the Caribbean Islands and
the Aspinall family put him in a leading position in the palm oil trade.
According to the 1835 Customs Bills of Entry, he imported 6054 casks
of palm oil that accounted for the largest quantity (19.5 per cent) among
all the British palm oil merchants of the year.33
During the first two decades after abolition, John Tobin came to be
involved in the local politics of Liverpool as he was elected Mayor in
October 1819, but he continued with the palm oil trade with the Niger
Delta, especially with Old Calabar. In Old Calabar, Tobin bought palm
oil from Duke Ephraim (died in 1834), who monopolised the region’s
overseas trade and imported mainly cheap Cheshire salt, Indian cotton
textiles and rum from the Caribbean Islands. These items were supplied
through his wide trade networks. He built up a friendship with the Duke
through trade and visits, and Old Calabar became his major source of
palm oil.34
In the meantime, his young brother, Thomas Tobin (1775–1863),
engaged in the oil trade with Bonny. This port in the Niger Delta grew
and replaced Old Calabar as the leading port of the oil trade in the
1830s and 1840s. Besides, Thomas Tobin also sent ships to the coasts
around the Congo River for ivory, gums and copper ore under the name
of ‘Thomas Tobin and Son’. He also formed a partnership with Charles
Horsfall, another major Liverpool oil trader of that time, and operated
the oil trade under the name of ‘Horsfall and Tobin’, which probably
dissolved when Charles Horsfall left the business in the 1830s.35
Overall, Britain’s—mostly, Liverpool’s—West African trade contin-
ued to be a family dominated business in the eighteenth and early nine-
teenth centuries. As for shipping Indian cotton textiles, there appeared
to be a small change in networks that carried the goods from India via
174  K. KOBAYASHI

Britain to West Africa. Until the first decade of the nineteenth century,
the EIC had a monopoly of trade with India, and therefore wholesale
merchants in London, such as Thomas Lumley, played a role in supply-
ing the goods to merchants, including major slave traders in Liverpool.
Notwithstanding some difficult years after abolition, these merchants
continued to carry out their business with West Africa and elsewhere.
However, after the Charter Act of 1813 ended the EIC’s monopoly of
the trade with India, individual merchants were allowed to participate in
the Indian trade by which they could get access to cotton textiles pro-
duced in South Asia.

French Merchants and West Africa

The French East India Company (FIC) established in 1664 monopo-
lised the import of cotton textiles from South Asia into France. In the
1730s, the Brittany port of Lorient became the new major base of
the FIC. Thereafter, it not only thrived in shipbuilding, trade and sales
but also played a prominent role in the distribution of Asian goods
through auctions held by the company. This pattern lasted even after
the end of the FIC’s monopoly (in 1769) marking the beginning of
free trade between France and Asia. This continuity was based on two
facts: one, the ships had to come back to Lorient; two, the ship owners
had to employ at least two officers of the Company Navy. Until 1769,
the majority of the merchants, about 45 to 66 per cent, present at the
auctions were those from Nantes. Many of these merchants played an
important role as middlemen for other merchants in Nantes and else-
where. Quality textiles were exchanged also for slaves, gum and other
things in West Africa, while some were to clothe African captives.36
From 1701 to 1790, Nantes played a leading role in the Atlantic slave
trade accounting for 44 per cent of French voyages (1346 out of
3066).37 Merchants from Nantes also engaged in the sugar trade with
the French colonies in the Caribbean, becoming the second largest
French port, next to Bordeaux, for sugar in the 1780s.38
Bordeaux, which had prospered through the wine trade from medi-
aeval times, became an important entrepôt for colonial products, such
as sugar, coffee, cotton and indigo from the Caribbean, in the eight-
eenth century. The proportion of the Caribbean in the imports of trop-
ical products into Bordeaux considerably increased from 32 per cent in
1723–1724 to 77 per cent in 1775–1776, and exports grew from 6 to
 5  WESTERN EUROPEAN MERCHANTS AND WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850 …  175

62 per cent during the same period. This Atlantic port accounted for
almost half of the total value of French re-exports from 1786 to 1789.
On the other hand, Bordeaux was blessed with navigable water channels,
such as the Garonne River and canals, that brought commodities pro-
duced in the hinterland to the port city. The regional products included
flour, wine and textiles, and major markets for these were the French
Antilles. On the eve of the French Revolution in 1788, one out of three
vessels that carried such commodities produced by slave labour in the
Americas sailed to Bordeaux.39
Before the Revolution, the expansion of the Bordelaise trade was
mostly owing to the work of Protestant armateurs, such as Jean Pellet,
German merchants such as Friedrich Romberg and Johann Jacob von
Bethmann, and Sephardim such as the Grandis family.40 The size of the
population of the city rapidly increased from 60,000 in 1747–1750 to
111,000 in 1790.41 The Atlantic port city maintained close links with
the merchant bankers from Germany and Switzerland, whose significant
presence was felt in capital-intensive enterprises such as the slave trade
and plantation management in the Caribbean.42 Thus, family networks,
geographical conditions and the Atlantic trade contributed to social
and economic integration between the port city of Bordeaux and its
hinterland.
As a whole, the French Revolution and the subsequent wars up until
the Congress of Vienna (1815) made a considerable impact on French
society and its economy. A series of reforms made during the Revolution
provided legal and economic infrastructure for the development of
French business in the nineteenth century. The Declaration of the Rights
of Man and the Citizen, that defined ‘free and equal in rights’ for all
men, ended aristocratic privileges; the Allard Law in February 1791 that
destroyed the guild system opened the door for all men to enter all occu-
pations; and the abolition of privileges of royal manufactures and that
of Marseille’s privilege in the Levant trade heralded free enterprise for
French citizens, albeit not for foreigners. The reforms during this period
also included a new tax system that removed an unfair regressive nature
of the old system, the creation of a national market, the metric system,
free use of private property and a unified law code that formed the basis
of courts.43
Also, the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars interrupted French
overseas trade. In addition, the insurrection by slaves in the French
colony of Saint Domingue in August 1791 ultimately led to the
176  K. KOBAYASHI

independence of Haiti in 1804. During this period, the sugar produc-

tion in the French colonies also declined from 102,891 tonnes in 1791
to an average of 39,279 tonnes between 1815 and 1819. France abol-
ished the international slave trade in 1814 and the slave trade within the
French territories in 1818.44 As for Bordeaux, M. L. Bachelier noted
that the warfare with Britain ‘completely stopped’ its maritime trade,
and indeed no vessels entered or left the port between November 1793
and September 1794.45 However, Paul Butel and Silvia Marzagalli show
that American vessels under the neutral flag allowed France to continue
to import Caribbean sugar and Indian textiles. Moreover, from the
1790s a number of merchant families migrated from Bordeaux to the
east coast of the United States and acquired American citizenship, which
enabled them to engage in trade as Americans.46
The end of the Napoleonic Wars generated a new boom for French
trade. While it is difficult to come by complete statistical data for certain
periods after 1815, one estimate suggests that the number of ships that
departed from Bordeaux for the Indian Ocean doubled from 1816 to
1830. The method of financing shipments was still traditional, especially
the bottomry bonds.47 This period witnessed the participation of a new
generation of merchants. Their trading activities were in continuity with
the preceding centuries. This situation lasted until the transport revolu-
tion, such as railways and steam ships, and the development of financial
institutions such as large joint-stock investments and deposit banks, from
around the middle of the nineteenth century. Continuity was also found
in a pyramidal hierarchy of merchants that consisted of petty retailers
(commerçants) at the bottom, wholesale merchants (négociants) at the
middle, and grands négociants at the top of the structure. The last group,
including the Rothschild and the Mallet families, organised and financed
interregional and international trade in high-value commodities. During
this period, French merchants continued to act as generalists in a range
of fields from ‘commodities trading and merchant banking with currency
speculation, government finance, industrial investment, and whatever
else promised a profit’.48
As for the Franco-West African trade, the major players shifted from
Nantes to Bordeaux and Marseille.49 The port on the Loire River con-
tinued to seek profits from sugar and slave trade with the French West
Indies until the abolition of slavery in 1848. In the meantime, Nantes
also showed interest in sugar plantations in Réunion (Bourbon) and
became a major importer of sugar from this Indian Ocean island, thus
 5  WESTERN EUROPEAN MERCHANTS AND WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850 …  177

developing trade with this new region while carrying on with the French
Antilles.50 The first half of the nineteenth century saw a new gener-
ation of Bordeaux merchant families seize the commercial opportunity
that emerged from the end of the monopoly granted to the Compagnie
du Sénégal. Under the Bourbon Restoration, they sought an alter-
native commerce to the slave trade that became illegal in France in
1818. The Devès was one of the pioneering families from Bordeaux
in nineteenth-century French trade with Senegal. After their bank-
ruptcy in 1807, Justin Devès and his brother, Bruno, left Bordeaux for
Philadelphia on an American ship. They came to Saint Louis of Senegal
in 1810, when this island was still under British control.51
When Saint Louis was returned to France in 1817, there were only
four French merchants on this island: Bruno Devès, Potin, Nicolas
Duréc and Bourgerel. Almost all, except Bourgerel, who was from
Marseille, were from Bordeaux and engaged in the gum trade in war-
time.52 The new generation of Bordelaise merchants arrived in Senegal
between 1810 and the 1830s, and the number of French merchants
in Saint Louis increased from only four at the reoccupation to 30 in
1837.53 Along with the brothers Justin and Bruno Devès, Jean-Louis-
Hubert Prom (‘Hubert Prom’) established himself in the island of Gorée
in 1822. In 1830, Marc Maurel also arrived in Saint Louis, and Hilaire
Maurel joined his cousin, Hubert Prom, in Gorée, and they created the
Maurel and Prom Company on 1 January 1831.54 These merchants car-
ried out trade in gum along the Senegal River valley through the trading
method used before and during the wartime: the pattern that relied on
Senegalese auxiliaries, including local interpreters and traders to conduct
river trade with the desert merchants at the escales, where gum arabic was
exchanged with guinées.55
As far as I am aware, the studies of nineteenth-century Bordeaux
merchants who engaged in the West African trade concentrated on
the Maurel and Prom Company. Yet, they did not address the trade in
guinées.56 As for the guinée trade from India via France into Senegal,
the first half of the nineteenth century witnessed competition between
Bordeaux and Marseille over the gum trade along the lower Senegal
River. While Colin Newbury remarked that these textiles were ‘car-
ried and imported exclusively by merchants of Bordeaux’,57 Margaret
McLane stated that Bordeaux and Marseille achieved ‘near parity at the
end of the 1830s’ in the Senegal trade.58 However, neither of them pro-
vides quantitative evidence to support these statements.
178  K. KOBAYASHI

Figure 5.2 provides just such a support drawing on the entrepôt sec-

tion of the French trade statistics. It charts the shipping of guinées from
Bordeaux and its major rival, Marseille, into external markets in the
1830s and 1840s, indicating that Bordeaux played a leading role in the
trade in guinées up until 1850. Since the export section of the French
trade statistics shows a persistently high share for Senegal—between
85 per cent and almost 100 per cent in the shipping of guinées from
France—it is confirmed that by far the most important outlet for guinées
brought from Bordeaux in this period was Senegal, as suggested by
Newbury.59 Senegal proved to be so important as a re-export market for

90%

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18
18

18

18

18
18
18
18

Bordeaux Marseille

Fig. 5.2  Proportions of Bordeaux and Marseille in the re-exports of guinées

from France, 1832–1850 (Sources Direction générale des douanes, Tableau
décennal de commerce de la France avec ses colonies et les puissances étrangères,
1827 à 1836 [Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1838]; Direction générale des douanes,
Tableau général du commerce de la France avec ses colonies et les puissances
étrangères [Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1839–1851]. See also Kazuo Kobayashi,
‘Indian Textiles and Gum Arabic in the Lower Senegal River: Global Significance
of Local Trade and Consumers in the Early Nineteenth Century’, African
Economic History 45/2 [2017]: 33)
 5  WESTERN EUROPEAN MERCHANTS AND WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850 …  179

guinées that in 1843 the French government came to standardise the size
and weight of guinées produced in Pondicherry for Senegal.60
Once the system of exclusif or pacte colonial was re-established, the
Bordeaux merchants took advantage of a couple of ­opportunities that
Senegal offered. First, Bordeaux is closer to Senegal than other major
French ports. Second, the merchants had close connection to French
politics. In 1821 the Baron Portal from Bordeaux was appointed
Minister of the Navy and the Colonies, whose role included ­ policy
making in the colony. Portal played an intermediate role between
the Bordeaux merchants and the government, thus his colonisation
­project—which was soon downgraded to an ‘experiment’—in Senegal
reflected the interests of Bordeaux merchants. Yet, such an attempt was
abandoned in the later Restoration period due to the rise of the Ultra-
Royalists and change of administration.61
Bordeaux merchants, as the major players in the trade with Senegal
during this period, bought gum arabic, hides, beeswax, ivory and
groundnuts—the latter’s importance increased from the 1840s—from
the traitants, who were a trader group of the habitants, or directly
from African producers. These items were shipped on French vessels
to France, and the goods in demand among Africans, such as guinées,
alcohols and weapons, were shipped from France to Senegal.62 The new
generation of French merchants followed the earlier trading patterns: the
Bordeaux merchants established in Saint Louis and collaborated with
habitants on the basis of trust in the gum trade in the Senegal River,
but the Marseille merchants bypassed habitants in Saint Louis and sailed
directly to the escales. The former pattern had an advantage in that the
habitants as middlemen offered the links with the nomadic merchants at
the escales, whereas the latter pattern gave the French merchants a pric-
ing advantage.63
The success of the Bordeaux merchants in Senegal was partly due
to the expansion of their family enterprises. Justin, Bruno and Éduard
were brothers of the same Devès family. Albert Teisseire, son of Auguste
Teisseire and Marianne d’Erneville, created ‘Buhan et Teisseire’ with
his father-in-law. There were also mergers between families, such
as ‘J. Devès, Lacoste et Cie’, which Justin Devès amalgamated into
‘P. Lacoste’ in 1850.64 Such Bordeaux family businesses became a
model for métis familial enterprises, such as the Durant brothers and the
Pellegrin family. Yet, unlike the French merchants, the métis firms them-
selves could not import guinées into Senegal due to the exclusif policy.65
180  K. KOBAYASHI

In addition to family enterprises, close associations with the habit-

ants through marriage that were also established in the eighteenth cen-
tury would lead to the success of their businesses.66 Both Hilaire Maurel
and his elder brother, Jean-Louis Maurel, married daughters of Laporte,
the powerful habitant mayor of the island of Gorée at that time, and
the descendants of Emile, the eldest son of Hilaire Maurel, continued
to run the company.67 Hilaire Maurel moved from Gorée to Saint Louis
to build a commercial base for the gum trade in 1834. His commit-
ment to this regional trade lasted until he returned to Bordeaux in
1853. In Saint Louis, from 1842, Hubert Prom served as the President
of Senegal’s General Council, which was authorised to determine the
budget and the revenue in the colony, and formulated recommenda-
tions that created the gum ordinance of 1842. The two cousins worked
together in Senegal until Hubert Prom returned to Bordeaux in 1845.68
We now turn to the French shipping of guinées into Senegal. As we
have already seen, guinées were brought into Senegal via France under
the regime of the exclusif, and the trade expanded after the ‘gum
fever’ in particular. Merchants imported guinées from Pondicherry into
Bordeaux, and then re-exported them to Senegal. Thus, these merchants
from Bordeaux could get access to a large quantity of gum arabic from
the Senegal River valley. However, there were merchants from Marseille
who also competed with those from Bordeaux over the gum trade.
In the early 1830s, Delbruck, the son of a Bordeaux merchant in
Pondicherry, thought that some precautionary measures for textiles
manufactured there were needed to prevent the repercussion of the July
Revolution. He proposed to the Minister of the Navy and the Colonies
to export guinées directly to Senegal from India since more profits could
be expected. This could be adopted with little costs to the treasury.
Delbruck recognised that guinées were ‘the only object of exchange’ in
the gum trade in Senegal.69 Ultimately, this request was rejected, because
France and the metropolitan goods were given priority over its colonies
and colonial products. In fact, the Minister expected the gum trade in
Senegal to increase the commercial opportunity for the French counter-
feits.70 However, as seen in Chapter 3, the nomadic merchants along the
Senegal River valley could tell authentic guinées from metropolitan cop-
ies and counterfeits.71 Therefore, in France’s Senegal trade, the impor-
tance of guinées produced in Pondicherry did not diminish at all during
the entire nineteenth century.
 5  WESTERN EUROPEAN MERCHANTS AND WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850 …  181

Compared to the Anglo-West African trade in Indian dyed cotton

textiles, the Franco-West African trade in Indian guinées increased con-
tinually in the early mid-nineteenth century, and Senegal was the larg-
est consumer of them (Fig. 2.7). This increase was partly made possible
by the development of Pondicherry’s textile industry which was funded
by the French government and French entrepreneurs, as we saw in the
previous chapter. Figure 5.3 illustrates the trends between the guinée
trade from French India (Pondicherry) to France and that of France to
Senegal in the 1830s and 1840s. These trends were similar. Exports from
Pondicherry quintupled between 1834 and 1839, followed by a drop
due to saturation in the Senegalese markets and a recovery during the
middle of the 1840s.
While the Bordeaux merchants had been leading players in the gum
trade in the Senegal River throughout the early nineteenth century, the
boom in the trade in the 1830s and its profits encouraged small-scale
French merchants also to try to enter the river trade. A fierce compe-
tition over the profit from the gum trade started.72 The major com-
petitors were the Marseille merchants. Like Bordeaux merchants,
Marseille merchants, such as Raphaël Cohen, Roch Olive, Jacques
Isnard, Jérôme Borelli, and Victor and Louis Régis, also traded in gum

500,000
450,000
400,000
350,000
300,000
250,000
200,000
150,000
100,000
50,000
-
1827

1846
1828
1829
1830
1831
1832
1833
1834
1835
1836
1837
1838
1839
1840
1841
1842
1843
1844
1845

1847
1848
1849
1850

French India to France France to Senegal

Fig. 5.3  Guinée trades from French India to France and from France to
Senegal, 1827–1850 (pieces) (Source Kobayashi, ‘Indian Textiles’, 36)
182  K. KOBAYASHI

arabic for guinées.73 For them, the Bordeaux merchants were their rival
in Senegal. To challenge Bordelaise predominance, the Marseille mer-
chants attempted to sail directly to the escales, where they undersold the
Bordeaux merchants who were helped by habitants in Saint Louis. This
competition diminished the profits for the Bordeaux merchants and also
the habitants in the river trade.74
The Bordeaux merchants challenged the merchants from Marseille
which ultimately led to the French territorial conquest in the Senegal
River regions from the mid-1850s. McLane divided their control over
the gum trade into two phases. The first phase, from the late 1830s
to the early 1840s, was characterised by the creation of a privileged
association to exclude the Marseille merchants from the gum trade at
the escales. The association, set up in 1842, marked a new regime for
the trade in the lower Senegal River, which was in favour of the col-
laboration between Bordeaux merchants and habitants in Saint Louis.
The second phase, from the late 1840s to the early 1850s, ended the
regime of 1842, as the Bordeaux merchants established new trad-
ing posts, that replaced the escales, to trade without the help of the
habitants.
The first phase of the competition covers the years of crisis of the gum
trade. Gum harvesting was unpredictable due to unstable climate condi-
tions which affected the price. An over-supply of guinées also led to the
decline of the guinée price from 1838 to 1841, which meant gum price
increased marginally in Senegal.75 The fall of the value of the guinée was
in favour of the Brakna and Trarza, the suppliers of gum arabic at the
escales, but it also posed a challenge to the habitants who acted as the
middlemen in the river trade. Saint Louis had imported an exception-
ally large quantity of pieces of guinées from France over the 1830s and
1840s. This led to the rise in prices in 1838 of gum arabic per piece of
guinée. It was 21 kilograms at Saint Louis and 15 to 17 kilograms at
the escales.76 Édouard Bouët-Willaumez, who served as the Governor of
Senegal from 1843 to 1844, estimated that the river traders accumulated
a debt of 2.5 million francs at the end of 1841.77
La Sémaphore de Marseille dated 20 May 1842 published an article on
the commerce of Senegal, which reported the poor harvest in 1840 and
1841 and its consequence:

The trade is not propitious. The gum is in short supply, the guinées are
very abundant, and the competition is very severe. The traitants have
 5  WESTERN EUROPEAN MERCHANTS AND WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850 …  183

operated at a loss. For us it is a crisis of commerce due to the prosperity of

precedent years which attracted many foreigners. Besides, the manufactur-
ers in Pondicherry and the shippers in France have doubled their shipping
of guinées. The result: a lack of harvest of the gum for two years.78

Due to this severe competition, the French merchants tried to sell their
stocks of guinées fast, even if they had to dump goods at a lower price.79
In order to address this commercial crisis, merchants from Bordeaux
and Marseille proposed different solutions to the colonial administration
of Senegal. The former preferred to set up a privileged association that
had an exclusive right to trade gum arabic at the escales, while the latter
called for free trade that was open to all French merchants. The colonial
administration decreed several compromis to satisfy these claims in 1837,
1839 and 1841. Yet, these institutional responses were not successful
due to lack of enforcement.80
As with the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Bordeaux mer-
chants could obtain political support for their gum trade from the
French government again. The Arrêté of 16 April 1842 gave the privi-
leged association of Saint Louis the exclusive right to trade gum arabic
for five consecutive years. The aim of this association was to ensure the
monopoly of the gum trade and the payment to the Trarza and Brakna
with a price that was favourable for the association. The creation of the
privileged association allowed Bordeaux merchants to enjoy the fruits
of the gum trade while the Marseille merchants were excluded. Shortly
thereafter, Marseille merchants, including those who traded in Indian
cotton textiles, sent a petition to the government to object to the priv-
ileged association of Saint Louis in favour of the Bordeaux merchants.81
In order to seek a solution, a commission, whose members comprised
of administrative notables and members of the Chambers of Commerce,
was organised by the Ministry of the Navy and the Colonies. Jean-
Elie Gautier, who was president of the House of Peers in France, mer-
chant shipper in Bordeaux and deputy from the Gironde, served as the
chair in the commission. Other members included Joseph Henri Galos
from Bordeaux, the director of colonies, Magnier de Maisonneuve, the
director of external commerce, Gréterin, the director of customs, and
delegates of each Chamber of Commerce from Bordeaux, Marseille,
Nantes and Le Havre. However, it was impossible to gain consensus
among the delegates of the Chambers of Commerce. To circumvent
this, Gautier turned to the testimonies of the gum merchants, several
184  K. KOBAYASHI

Bordeaux companies and, in particular, Victor Régis of Marseille and

Durand Valentin who was one of the habitant leaders in the Senegalese
community.82
Their comments shaped a committee report formulated into a Royal
Order issued on 15 November 1842. The Order restricted the gum
trade along the Senegal River into the escales, and confirmed the impor-
tance of the commissioned Senegalese traders as intermediaries in the
trade at the escales. It dissolved the privileged association but instead
created the commission syndicate, consisting of five members including
Gautier, Galos, de Maisonneuve and Gréterin.83 Therefore, the condi-
tions devised by the Order of 15 November 1842 were almost the same
as those of the Bordeaux merchants and the habitants who had bene-
fited before the crisis in the gum trade in 1840 to 1841. Such political
processes partly underpinned the predominance of Bordeaux in the river
trade, as shown in Fig. 5.2.
The gum harvest was not abundant in 1843, but it recovered from
1844 to 1846 (see Fig. 2.4). The number of Senegalese traders increased
from 53 to 88 to 121 in 1843, 1844 and 1845, respectively. This recov-
ery and high prices for gum arabic in Saint Louis enabled almost half
of the Senegalese traders to repay their debts from 1844 to 1846; and
almost half of their debts were cleared. However, poor gum harvests
over the following three years, which saw an increase in debt among river
traders, proved that the commercial system of 1842 would not work for
them.84
On the other hand, there were two major forces that saw a shift from
the system of 1842 to that of free trade. One was the abolition of slav-
ery in 1848 by which emancipated slaves who participated in the gum
trade as auxiliaries of their masters were given equal rights to trade at the
escales. The other was the Ordonnance of 22 January 1852 that reflected
heightened calls in France for free trade in Senegal.85
Durand Valentin, who was now a deputy in Senegal, along with
French merchants who sought free trade, introduced the question of the
1842 system into deliberations of the National Assembly, which decreed
to form the Commission des comptoirs et du commerce des côtes d’Af-
rique to address the issues of the gum trade in Senegal. Unlike the com-
mittee of 1842, it was Victor Régis from Marseille who spoke for the
merchants having interests in the West African trade. He gained support
from the representatives from Marseille, and thereby the Ordonnance of
 5  WESTERN EUROPEAN MERCHANTS AND WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850 …  185

22 January 1852 came to include specific provisions that reflected the

concern among the French merchants who were excluded from the river
trade under the system of 1842. It aimed to loosen the ties between
French merchants and Senegalese river traders, and broaden the possibil-
ity for Marseille merchants to participate in the gum trade. This marked
a step towards free trade at the escales, though the trading posts in the
lower Senegal River were abolished and replaced by a new one on the
left bank of the river at Podor. Also, Bordeaux merchants confronted by
this situation transferred their trading posts upriver to Bakel, where they
enjoyed their predominant position over any other European traders in
gum.86
Meanwhile, several Marseille merchants sought alternative trading
posts along the coast southwards from the Senegal River in the 1830s
and 1840s. Those included the Régis brothers, the Rabaud brothers,
Roch Olive, Jacques Isnard, Aquaronne fils, and Féraud and Honorat.
During this period Charles-Auguste Verminck, who was later known as
the ‘king of groundnuts’, was employed by Victor Régis and Maurel and
Prom until he became independent in 1852. Marseille’s interests grew
in the western coasts of Africa relative to the Senegal River in the 1840s.
While the major commodities they sought in Senegal were gum arabic
and groundnuts, those in other coastal areas of West Africa, in particu-
lar, Dahomey, the Ivory Coast and Guinea, were palm oil, groundnuts
and cabbage palm. In the late 1840s, Marseille absorbed more than 95
per cent of all groundnuts exported from West Africa to France (see
Chapter 2).87
The growing interest in these oleaginous plants among the Marseille
merchants revealed the challenges of the soap-making industry, the
most prominent industry in Marseille during the era of the July
Monarchy. Originally, the soap industry used olive oil, harvested in the
Mediterranean basin. However, during the 1820s and 1830s the indus-
try in Marseille faced difficulty in securing olive oil due to a series of
bad harvests of olives around the Mediterranean basin and increasing
demand for the product for soap making in other parts of Southern
Europe. These problems made making soap from olive oil in Marseille
costly, leading to another problem: the products of Marseille had to
compete in the British markets with cheaper soap made from flax,
groundnuts and palm oil. Meanwhile, the Marseille industry found it dif-
ficult to maintain the quality of their product. They used Leblanc soda,
which contained rich alkali that helped produce a greater quantity of
186  K. KOBAYASHI

soap than that from the same amount of olive oil. But the soap made
from the mixture of Leblanc soda and olive oil was of a lower quality: the
product was rough and more corrosive, and therefore less in demand. In
order to solve these problems, Marseille soap producers had to innovate
and look for alternative fatty products in West Africa.88

Conclusion
This chapter has situated the British and French shipping during the age
of revolutions. Western European merchants served an intermediary role
in the south-south economic linkage during this period. The chapter also
showed aspects of continuity and change in their businesses.
The EIC was the largest supplier of Indian cotton textiles for British
markets until the Charter Act of 1813 abrogated their monopoly in the
trade with India. By using the records of Thomas Lumley, this chapter
has provided more detailed information on the textile trade from India
to West Africa via Britain. Liverpool represented the British West African
trade at that time. There were several continuities in the trade despite the
abolition of the slave trade: family business remained dominant in the
British West African trade, though they were not in British trade with
other regions; merchants who invested in the slave trade also partici-
pated in the palm oil trade after abolition of the slave trade; trade con-
nections were maintained with the Niger Delta, especially Old Calabar
and Bonny. The effects of the Napoleonic Wars such as the commercial
blockade and the 1807 embargo would contribute to the continuity in
the overseas trade of post-abolition Liverpool. The situation surrounding
trade changed in the second half of the nineteenth century, when steam
ships began to be largely used and the joint-stock companies were cre-
ated. Indian cotton textiles continued to be in demand in West Africa,
but their commercial routes appeared to have been changed from the
eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century, because the end of
the monopoly of the EIC to trade with India enabled private companies
to enter the market.
As for French business with West Africa, major players switched
from Nantes to Bordeaux and Marseille in the early nineteenth century:
Nantes continued to pursue commercial interests in the Caribbean and
the Indian Ocean, whereas Bordeaux and Marseille launched new busi-
ness with West Africa. As the French trade statistics show, it was particu-
larly Bordeaux that played a leading role in the guinée trade into Senegal
 5  WESTERN EUROPEAN MERCHANTS AND WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850 …  187

in the 1830s and 1840s. They conducted the gum trade mainly in the
lower Senegal River regions with support from the Senegalese intermedi-
aries who had navigational skill and knowledge about interior geography
and local language until the territorial conquest started in the 1850s. As
with Liverpool trade with West Africa at that time, family business char-
acterised the French West African trade. Also, Britain’s African merchants
influenced the local politics of Liverpool in the early nineteenth century.
Almost following this period, strong ties with French politics helped the
Bordelaise merchants maintain their leading position in the shipping of
guinées for gum arabic around the lower Senegal River regions despite
the fierce competition posed by the merchants of Marseille in the 1830s
and 1840s.89 That is why Marseille merchants sought alternative markets
along the coast southwards from the Senegal River, and as a result there
was a division between major destinations by merchants of major French
cities in the 1840s.

Notes
1. Kazuo Kobayashi, ‘The British Atlantic Slave Trade and Indian Cotton
Textiles: The Case of Thomas Lumley & Co.’, in Tomoko Shiroyama,
ed., Modern Global Trade and the Asian Regional Economy (Singapore:
Springer, 2018), pp. 59–85.
2. For the emergence of British private trade firms in the Asian waters, see
Anthony Webster, The Twining of the East India Company: The Evolution
of Anglo-Asian Commerce and Politics 1790–1860 (Woodbridge: Boydell
and Brewer, 2009); Michael Aldous, ‘Avoiding “Negligence and
Profusion”: The Ownership and Organisation of Anglo-Indian Trading
Firms, 1813 to 1870’ (PhD Thesis, London School of Economics and
Political Science, 2015).
3. K. G. Davies, The Royal African Company (London: Longmans, 1957);
David Richardson, ‘The British Empire and the Atlantic Slave Trade,
1660–1807’, in P. J. Marshall, ed., The Oxford History of the British
Empire, Vol. 2: The Eighteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 1998),
pp. 440–64.
4. K. N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India
Company, 1660–1760 (Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 303–4.
5. London Directory (Kent’s Directory, 1801–1808).
6. The National Archives (NAUK, Kew, United Kingdom), C 114/155:
Cash Book, Jan. 1801–Mar. 1803.
7. NAUK, C 114/154: Journal of Thomas Lumley & Co., 1801–1810.
188  K. KOBAYASHI

8. NAUK, C 114/1: Letter Book, 1806–1812.

9. NAUK, C 114/154: Journal of Thomas Lumley & Co., 1801–1810.
10. Kobayashi, ‘The British Atlantic Slave Trade’.
11. NAUK, C 114/154: Journal of Thomas Lumley & Co., 1801; Wilson E.
Williams, ‘Africa and the Rise of Capitalism’, in The Howard University
Studies in the Social Sciences (Washington, DC: Howard University,
1938), pp. 19–20. George Case was the father of the Liverpool Common
Council, which was a stronghold of Tories and African traders in the early
nineteenth century. Liverpool Mercury, 19 October 1832.
12. NAUK, C 114/154: Journal of Thomas Lumley & Co., 1801; Kobayashi,
‘The British Atlantic Slave Trade’, pp. 69–77, Table 3.
13. C 114/2: Letter from Charles Fairclough to Thomas Lumley, Liverpool,
7 March 1801; C 114/2: Letter from James Aspinall to Thomas Lumley,
Liverpool, 23 April 1801.
14. Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (TSTD). http://www.
slavevoyages.org. Accessed 23 March 2015; Paul E. Lovejoy and David
Richardson, ‘“This Horrid Hole”: Royal Authority, Commerce and
Credit at Bonny, 1690–1840’, Journal of African History 45/3 (2004):
363–92; Kobayashi, ‘The British Atlantic Slave Trade’, p. 78, Table 4.
15. NAUK, C 114/154: Journal of Thomas Lumley & Co., 1802–1803;
TSTD. However, it should be noted that, according to TSTD, the total
number of slave ships that sailed from Liverpool rebounded to 121 in
1804. This pattern of decline and revival also occurred elsewhere in
Britain with the number of slave ships leaving ports other than Liverpool
decreasing from 39 in 1802 to 21 in 1803 but rising again to 29 in 1804.
16. C 114/158: Invoice of Thomas Lumley & John Ramsden, London, 5
March 1803; TSTD.
17. W. E. Minchinton, ‘The Voyage of the Snow Africa’, Mariner’s Mirror
37/3 (1951): 187–88; Jacob M. Price, ‘What Did Merchants Do?
Reflections on British Overseas Trade, 1660–1790’, Journal of Economic
History 49/2 (1989): 267–84; Jacob M. Price, ‘The Imperial Economy,
1700–1776’, in Marshall, ed., The Oxford History of the British Empire,
p. 93.
18. Martin Lynn, Commerce and Economic Change in West Africa: The Palm
Oil Trade in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 1997),
p. 94.
19. NAUK, C 114/158: Muster Roll of the Bedford, third voyage, Gravesend,
7 July 1806.
20. NAUK, C 114/158: Invoice of Thomas Lumley & Co., London, 1 July
1806.
21. NAUK, C 114/158: Accounts of Thomas Lumley & Co., London,
1806–1807; TSTD.
 5  WESTERN EUROPEAN MERCHANTS AND WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850 …  189

22. NAUK, C 114/158: Sales Records of Thomas Lumley & Co., London,

1807; C 142/24: Shipping Returns, Jamaica, 1804–1807; TSTD.
23. David M. Williams, ‘Abolition and the Re-deployment of the Slave Fleet,
1807–1811’, Journal of Transport History 2/2 (1973): 105.
24.  NAUK, C 114/3: Letter from J. C. Harries to Thomas Lumley, 17
June 1809, London; Letter from G. Harrison to Thomas Lumley, 30
November 1809, London. Meanwhile, existing sources show that after
abolition Lumley, by using his extensive business networks, continued to
import sugar, cocoa, coffee and cottons from the West Indies and Latin
America. NAUK, C 114/158: Invoice of Thomas Lumley & Co., 20 July
1809, London; NAUK, C 114/158: Invoice of Thomas Lumley & Co.
12 November 1809, London.
25. Aspinall was a Magistrate of Liverpool at the time of May 1812, but, from
his testimonies, it remains unclear about how long he had served the role
until then. BPP, 1812, III (210): Minutes of evidence, taken before the
Committee of the Whole House, to whom it was referred, to consider of
the several petitions which have been presented to the House, in this ses-
sion of Parliament, relating to the orders in council, John Bridge Aspinall,
pp. 361–62.
26. Williams, ‘Abolition’, p. 107.
27. Williams, ‘Abolition’, pp. 107–8; B. K. Drake, ‘Liverpool-African Voyage
c. 1790–1807: Commercial Problems’, in Roger Anstey and P. E. H.
Hair, eds., Liverpool, the African Slave Trade, and Abolition: Essays to
Illustrate Current Knowledge and Research (Liverpool: Historic Society of
Lancashire and Cheshire, 1976), pp. 126–56; B. K. Drake, ‘Continuity
and Flexibility in Liverpool’s Trade with Africa and Caribbean’, Business
History 18/1 (1976): 85–97.
28. Braithwaite Poole, The Commerce of Liverpool (London and Liverpool,
1854), p. 114; Lynn, Commerce, Chapter 4.
29. K. Onwuka Dike, Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta 1830–1885: An
Introduction to the Economic and Political History of Nigeria (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1956), p. 49; Martin Lynn, ‘Change and Continuity
in the British Palm Oil Trade with West Africa, 1830–55’, Journal of
African History 22/3 (1981): 342–47.
30. A. J. H. Latham, ‘A Trading Alliance: Sir John Tobin and Duke Ephraim’,
History Today 24/12 (1974): 863; Martin Lynn, ‘Trade and Politics in
19th-Century Liverpool: The Tobin and Horsfall Families and Liverpool’s
African Trade’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and
Cheshire 142 (1993): 103; Liverpool Record Office, R. C. Reid, Annals of
the Tobin Family of Liverpool and the Isle of Man (1940), p. 25.
31. The following vessels are those John Tobin was involved with as ship cap-
tain in the 1790s. TSTD, Voyage ID 80699, Brothers (1796); 81178,
 190  K. KOBAYASHI

Eliza (1795); 81603, Gipsey (1793); 82776, Molly (1797); 82777,

Molly (1798); and 83892, Union (1794).
32. The following vessels are those Tobin was involved with as one of the
co-owners in the 1800s. TSTD, Voyage ID 82169, Kingsmill (1803);
82371, Lord Stanley (1801); 82372, Load Stanley (1804); Will (1800);
84029, Will (1801); 84030, Will (1802); 84031, Will (1804); 84102,
Young William (1800); and 84103, Young William (1802).
33. Lynn, ‘Change and Continuity’, 344.
34. Latham, ‘A Trading Alliance’, pp. 862–7; Lynn, ‘Trade and Politics’,
p. 106.
35. Lynn, ‘Trade and Politics’, pp. 106–8; Reid, Annals, pp. 31–5.
36. Paul Butel, ‘French Maritime Activities in the Indian Ocean from XVIIIth
to XIXth Centuries: The Example of Bordeaux’, in K. S. Mathew, ed.,
Ship-Building and Navigation in the Indian Ocean Region, AD 1400–
1800 (New Delhi: Munshirem Manoharial Publishers, 1997), p. 98;
Eugénie Margoline-Plot, ‘Les circuits parallèles des toiles de l’océan
Indien: Lorient au XVIIIe siècle’, Histoire urbaine 30 (2011): 109; Felicia
Gottmann, Global Trade, Smuggling, and the Making of the Economic
Liberalism: Asian Textiles in France 1680–1760 (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2016), pp. 39–41.
37. TSTD.
38. Michael Stephen Smith, The Emergence of Modern Business Enterprise in
France, 1800–1930 (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University
Press, 2006), pp. 39–40.
39. Jean Tarrade, Le commerce colonial de la France à la fin de l’Ancien
Régime: L’évolution du régime de « l’Exclusif » de 1763 à 1789, Vol. 2
(Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1972), p. 755; Paul Butel, Les
négociants bordelais, l’Europe et les iles au XVIIIe Siècle (Paris: Aubier-
Montaigne, 1974), pp. 94–104; Silvia Marzagalli, ‘The French Atlantic
World in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, in Nicholas Canny
and Philip Morgan, eds., The Oxford Handbook of the Atlantic World:
1450–1850 (Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 246.
40. Richard Drayton, ‘The Globalization of France: Provincial Cities and
French Expansion, c. 1500–1800’, History of European Ideas 34/4
(2008): 427; Klaus Weber, ‘The Atlantic Coast of German Trade:
German Rural Industry and Trade in the Atlantic, 1680–1840’,
Itinerario 26/2 (2002): 111–12.
41. Jean-Pierre Poussou and Paul Butel, ‘La fierté d’une capitale provinciale’,
in Robert Étienne, ed., Histoire de Bordeaux (Toulouse: Privat, 2001),
p. 178.
42. Weber, ‘German Trade’, pp. 111–12; Françoise Thésée, Négociants borde-
laise et colons de Saint-Domingue; liaisons d’habitations: La maison Henry
 5  WESTERN EUROPEAN MERCHANTS AND WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850 …  191

Romberg, Bapst et Cie 1783–1793 (Paris: Société Française d’Histoire

d’Outre-Mer, 1972).
43. Smith, The Emergence, pp. 23–7.
44. Smith, The Emergence, p. 36. For the sugar production in the French col-
onies, see Dale W. Tomich, Slavery in the Circuit of Sugar: Martinique
and the World Economy, 1830–1848 (London and Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1990), p. 15.
45. M. L. Bachelier, Histoire du commerce de Bordeaux dupuis les temps les
plus reculés jusqu’a nos jours (Bordeaux: Imprimerie de J. Delmas, 1862),
pp. 228–29; Haruhiko Hattori, Furansu-kindai-boeki no seisei to tenkai
[The Growth and Development of Trade in Modern France] (Kyoto:
Minerva Shobo, 1992), pp. 110–13.
46. Butel, ‘French Maritime Activities’, pp. 104–5; Silvia Marzagalli,
‘Establishing Transatlantic Trade Networks in Time of War: Bordeaux
and the United States, 1793–1815’, Business History Review 79/4
(2005): 811–44.
47. Butel, ‘French Maritime Activities’, pp. 105–6.
48. Smith, The Emergence, pp. 31–4.
49. A. G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (London: Longman,
1973), pp. 129–30.
50. Smith, The Emergence, pp. 39–40.
51. Hilary Jones, The Métis of Senegal: Urban Life and Politics in French West
Africa (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2013), pp. 5, 46,
191–92.
52. Margaret O. McLane, ‘Commercial Rivalries and French Policy on the
Senegal River, 1831–1858’, African Economic History 15 (1986): 43,
60–1.
53. E. Bouët-Willaumes, Commerce et traite des noirs aux cotês occidentales
d’Afrique (Paris, 1848), pp. 12–13.
54. Yves Péhaut, ‘A l’époque de la « traite » de l’arachide: Les « Bordelais » au
Sénégal’, Revue historique de Bordeaux et du département de la Gironde
30 (1983–84): 50–1, 55–6; Arrêté relatif aux guinées non estampillées,
Saint Louis, 19 February 1847, in Sénégal, Bulletin Administratif des
Actes du Gouvernement depuis le 1er janvier 1847 jusqu’au 31 décem-
bre 1848 (Paris, 1849), pp. 18–19. Among these French merchants, the
Maurel and Prom Company was known as one of the largest and most
powerful companies operating in Senegal by the middle of the nineteenth
century. This company directly or indirectly generated capitalist organi-
sations in the late nineteenth century, such as the Compagnie française
de l’Afrique occidentale, the Société commerciale de l’Ouest africain,
and the Banque du Sénégal, which later turned into the Banque d’Af-
rique Occidentale. Leland Conley Barrows, ‘General Faidherbe, the
192  K. KOBAYASHI

Maurel and Prom Company, and French Expansion in Senegal’ (PhD

Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1974), p. 116. At
present, the Maurel and Prom Company is one of the biggest French oil
companies, operating in Africa (Congo, Gabon, Namibia, Mozambique
and Tanzania), Latin America (Peru and Columbia), North America
(Canada), Southeast Asia (Myanmar) and others. http://www.maurelet-
prom.fr/. Accessed 29 December 2018.
55. For the commercial network between Saint Louis and the escales in the
lower Senegal River, see Chapter 3, especially Figs. 3.1a to 3.1c.
56. Barrows, ‘General Faidherbe’; Leland Conley Barrows, ‘The Merchants
and General Faidherbe: Aspects of French Expansion in Sénégal in the
1850’s’, Revue française d’histoire d’outre-mer 61/223 (1974): 236–
83; Péhaut, ‘A l’époque’; Yves Péhaut, La doyenne des « Sénégalaises » de
Bordeaux: Maurel et H. Prom de 1831 à 1919, Vols. 2 (Pessac: Presses
Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2014).
57. C. W. Newbury, ‘The Protectionist Revival in French Colonial Trade: The
Case of Senegal’, Economic History Review 21/2 (1968): 338.
58. McLane, ‘Commercial Rivalries’, p. 41.
59. Direction générale des douanes, Tableau décennal de commerce de la
France avec ses colonies et les puissances étrangères, 1827 à 1836 (Paris:
Imprimerie Royale, 1838); Direction générale des douanes, Tableau
général du commerce de la France avec ses colonies et les puissances
étrangères (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1839–1851).
60. No. 66, Ordonnance du Roi, 18 May 1843 and No. 88, Ordinnance du
Roi, 1 September 1843, in Sénégal, Bulletin Administratif des Actes du
Gouvernement (Paris, 1846), pp. 87–8, 125–26; Archives Nationales
d’Outre-Mer (ANOM, Aix-en-Provence, France), Inde 494, Dossier
871, L’Arrêté signée par Gouverneur Du Camper, 23 August 1844,
Pondicherry.
61. Péhaut, ‘A l’époque’, pp. 49–50; Shepard Bancroft Clough, France:
A History of National Economics 1789–1939 (New York, NY: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1993), pp. 101–2; Michael D. Marcson, ‘European-
African Interaction in the Precolonial Period: St. Louis, Senegal, 1758–
1854’ (PhD Dissertation, Princeton University, 1976), pp. 98–113.
62. Barrows, ‘General Faidherbe’, p. 116.
63. McLane, ‘Commercial Rivalries’, pp. 43–4.
64. Péhaut, ‘A l’époque’, pp. 51–2.
65. Jones, The Métis of Senegal, p. 47.
66. On signares in Saint Louis and Gorée for the Europeans, see Chapter 3.
67. Barrows, ‘General Faidherbe’, p. 115.
68. Péhaut, ‘A l’époque’, 61; Barrows, ‘General Faidherbe’, p. 117. As for
the major role of the General Council of Senegal, see Jones, The Métis of
Senegal, pp. 127–28; Martin A. Klein, Islam and Imperialism in Senegal:
 5  WESTERN EUROPEAN MERCHANTS AND WEST AFRICA, 1750–1850 …  193

Sine-Saloum, 1847–1914 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,

1968), pp. 117–18.
69. ANOM, Inde 494, Dossier 865: Delbruck au Ministre de la Marine et des
Colonies, 30 January 1832, Paris. My translation.
70. ANOM, Inde 494, Dossier 865: Note, 12 February 1832 (?).
71. In 1833 Tourette, a diplomatic agent in Madagascar, suggested selling
metropolitan guinées in Madagascar. However, Indian guinées had already
secured the market there, and, like the Senegalese in West Africa, the
Malagasy could easily tell the difference between the authentic Indian
cloths and metropolitan imitations. Mireille Lobligeois, De la Reunion a
l’Inde française: Philippe-Achille Bédier (1791–1865) Une carrière coloni-
ale (Pondicherry: Historical Society of Pondicherry, 1993), p. 135.
72. McLane, ‘Commercial Rivalries’.
73.  Xavier Daumalin, ‘Commercial Presence, Colonial Penetration:
Marseille Traders in West Africa in the Nineteenth Century’, in Olivier
Pétré-Grenouilleau, ed., From Slave Trade to Empire: Europe and the
Colonization of Black Africa 1780s–1880s (New York, NY: Routledge,
2004), p. 211.
74. McLane, ‘Commercial Rivalries’, pp. 44–5.
75. See Chapter 2.
76. É. Bouët-Willaumez, Commerce traits des noirs aux côtes occidentales
d’Afrique (Paris, 1848), p. 14.
77. Bouët-Willaumez, Commerce, p. 15.
78. Cited in Xavier Daumalin, Marseille et l’Ouest africain: L’outremer des
industriels (1841–1957) (Marseille: Chambre de commerce et d’industrie
Marseille-Provence, 1992), p. 22. My translation.
79. Daumalin, Marseille, p. 22.
80. McLane, ‘Commercial Rivalries’, p. 46.
81. Archives Nationales du Sénégal (Dakar, Senegal), 2B20: Correspondances
du Gouverneur à Ministère de la Marine et des Colonies, Nos. 197 bis
and 207, 9 and 15 June 1842, Saint-Louis; Bouët-Willaumez, Commerce,
p. 16; Archives départementales de la Gironde, Bordeaux, France, 8M13:
Pétition a la chambre des deputes au sujet du monopole établi par le gou-
verneur du Sénégal pour la traite de la gomme, Marseille, April 1842.
82.  Durand Valentin was a notable habitant and an associate of Justin
Devès of Bordeaux. McLane, ‘Commercial Rivalries’, pp. 47–8; Bouët-
Willaumez, Commerce, pp. 16–7.
83. Bouët-Willaumez, Commerce, pp. 17–8.
84. Bouët-Willaumez, Commerce, p. 23; James L. A. Webb, Jr., ‘The Trade in
Gum Arabic: Prelude to French Conquest in Senegal’, Journal of African
History 26/2 (1985): 167.
85. McLane, ‘Commercial Rivalries’, pp. 48–9.
86. McLane, ‘Commercial Rivalries’, pp. 49–51.
194  K. KOBAYASHI

87. Daumalin, ‘Commercial Presence’, pp. 211–14, 228. Olivier Pétré-

Grenouilleau, ‘Cultural Systems of Representation, Economic Interests,
and French Penetration into Black Africa, 1780s–1880s’, in Pétré-
Grenouilleau, ed., From Slave Trade, p. 175.
88. Daumalin, ‘Commercial Presence’, pp. 210–11.
89. For the influence of Britain’s African traders on local politics in Liverpool
in the nineteenth century, see Lynn, ‘Trade and Politics’.
 CHAPTER 6

Conclusion

This book has explored the south-south economic linkage—as

­established by the West African demand for Indian cotton textiles during
the age of revolutions—as a key axis to better understand the emergence
of the modern global economy. West African consumers and Indian
artisans were linked by European merchants, and thereby there was no
direct connection between West Africa and South Asia in the period con-
cerned. In this book I have argued that such trans-oceanic interaction
was the opposite side of the same coin of early modern European com-
mercial and imperial expansion.
This concluding chapter correlates the findings from the discussion
in this book with three larger historiographies while suggesting various
possibilities for future investigations. As will be discussed below, the first
context is nineteenth-century tropical development, a new frontier that
explores multiple paths of economic development in the world. The
second is Africa and the European empires in global history. While con-
ventionally we tend to employ the framework of the convenient dichot-
omy of the ruler and the ruled, this book emphasises the significance of
consumer agency that sheds fresh light on Africa’s global engagements.
Finally, the south-south economic history presented in this book shows
that there were multiple region-based globalisations, out of whose
­interactions emerged the modern global economy.

© The Author(s) 2019 195

K. Kobayashi, Indian Cotton Textiles in West Africa,
Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18675-3_6
196  K. KOBAYASHI

Economic Development in Nineteenth-Century West

Africa
From the perspective of modern economic history, the tropics had long
served as a major source of primary products for the industrialising West.
William Arthur Lewis was a pioneering economist in this area who, sim-
ilar to Hla Myint, discussed the role of trade in the development of the
tropics. In his works, Lewis advanced the argument that the export of
primary products was the ‘engine of economic growth’ in the tropics
from the 1880s up to the eve of the First World War. Specifically, dur-
ing this period, the average annual growth rate was 3.6 per cent in the
tropical trade, a figure larger than the sum of the growth rates of indus-
trial production per annum in the United States, the United Kingdom,
France and Germany. Further, while the transport revolution and
growing demand for tropical products in the industrialising West were
regarded as preconditions, Lewis also highlighted the initiatives among
the producers who effectively responded to factor endowments, such as
land and natural environment characteristics like water, in their respective
regions.1
While Lewis’s focus was the decades before 1913, more recently,
Jeffrey Williamson suggested that the trade boom for primary products
from non-West regions had already taken place between the 1780s and
the 1870s, a century that saw the emergence of great divergence driven
by industrialisation between the ‘rich core’ and ‘poor periphery’.2 This
revisionist research encourages us to reconsider the scope of Lewis and of
the relevant theories on the export of primary products.3 As we have dis-
cussed in Chapter 2, the export of primary products in nineteenth-cen-
tury West Africa has been studied in the revised frameworks of Myint’s
‘vent-for-surplus’ theory. However, in the West African context, the liter-
ature has not yet fully explored Lewis’s alternative explanation for tropi-
cal development.
A. G. Hopkins suggested that the growth of ‘legitimate’ commerce
shifted the terms of trade in West Africa’s favour until the 1860s,
­followed by a pronounced drop that set off internal African conflicts.
David Eltis and Lawrence Jennings confirmed this trend with the com-
bined customs data recorded in Britain, France and the United States.4
Most recently, Ewout Frankema, Jefferey Williamson and Pieter Woltjer
altered their views by showing that West Africa’s aggregate terms-of-
trade boom peaked much later—in the mid-1880s. They propose that
 6 CONCLUSION  197

the trend was not only comparable to Latin America and Southeast Asia
but also implied that the Scramble for Africa could be explained in an
economic context.5 Chapter 2 showed that in the early nineteenth cen-
tury, the export of cash-crops already provided an income-earning
opportunity for small-scale producers in West Africa to purchase more
imported goods, such as cloth and cowries. Regarding palm oil, one of
the most important goods from West Africa during the nineteenth cen-
tury, the annual export growth rate was 1.29 per cent in the first half of
the century and 1.01 per cent in the second half. Further, the rate was
also 1.2 per cent from 1801 to 1880 and 0.9 per cent from 1881 to
1899.6 Therefore, West African palm oil trade expanded more rapidly in
the early nineteenth century than in the period covered by Lewis.
Trends in exports of primary products largely reflected their com-
petitiveness in the global markets, based on factors such as the relative
absence of competitors and tariffs.7 This was true for West African palm
oil in the United Kingdom until the 1850s, as the expansion of palm
oil trade was partly made possible by the increasing demand for machin-
ery, railway, soap and candles in the industrialising country. However,
in the second half of the nineteenth century, steam ships delivered new
products to Britain, such as Indian oils and fats and Australian tallow
that competed with West African palm oil for market share. Additionally,
the 1869 opening of the Suez Canal contributed to lowering the freight
rates of these goods to the UK. Furthermore, mineral and cotton oils
replaced palm oil in the lubricant market and the soap industry respec-
tively, while the spread of electricity from the 1880s as well as coal gas
and paraffin curbed the demand for candles. As such, in the late nine-
teenth century West African palm oil faced increasing difficulties in the
United Kingdom from intense competition from products from other
regions of the world.8 Thus, the transport revolution brought about
a negative impact on West African palm oil exports to the United
Kingdom, the largest market for the tropical product. In short, West
African palm oil lost its relative competitiveness in UK markets in the lat-
ter half of the nineteenth century.
While some of Lewis’s explanations need to be further studied, what
is still worth noting is that he paid close attention to the agency of pro-
ducers in tropical regions at a time when dependency theory and related
paradigms placed analytical emphasis elsewhere. In the case of West
Africa, by making use of the staple theory of economic growth, Hopkins
discussed African agency represented by their choice to produce palm oil
198  K. KOBAYASHI

and groundnuts for a wider market in the nineteenth century.9 Chapter

2 showed that the decline of the Atlantic slave trade and the growing
demand for primary products in the industrialising West made it possible
for a number of small-scale producers to get access to imported goods
along West African coasts. These producers spontaneously responded
to new market opportunities created by the growth of the ‘legitimate’
commerce that accompanied the industrialisation in Western Europe and
obtained an array of imported articles. This was particularly the case with
the Bight of Biafra, the largest supply source of palm oil during the early
nineteenth century, where slaves supplied from the Sokoto Caliphate
were used in the production and transport of palm oil. The absorption
of a large number of slaves into cash-crop production along the Atlantic
coast was made possible due to the decline of the Atlantic slave trade.
Cheap Lancashire goods found a large market even among poorer con-
sumers on the West African coast. Likewise, the demand for cowrie
shells, which travelled through the Indian Ocean via Europe, increased
significantly in West Africa. Indeed, the volume of cowries imported dur-
ing this period surpassed that of the previous era of the Atlantic slave
trade, and these circulated in West Africa even more widely than in ear-
lier centuries.
This point can be refined by using the term ‘final demand linkage
effect’ that Melville Watkins originally proposed and Kaoru Sugihara
later partially applied to East Asian experiences. According to Watkins,
who applied the term to Canada and Australia, the increased activity in
the export sector induced investment in domestic industries to produce
consumer goods for export.10 In his discussion of East Asian economic
development in which intra-Asian trade played a central role, Sugihara
masterfully shows that the mass exports of Asian primary products for
the United States and Western Europe brought about the evolution
of intra-regional trade that began in the mid-nineteenth century. For
example, the growth of exports in plantation and mining products from
Malaya to the West boosted the purchasing power of plantation and
mine workers and increased their demand for necessities. This increasing
demand was met by local and regional trade within Asia, which brought
rice from Burma and Siam, sugar from Java, and cotton textiles produced
in India and Japan.11
In the case of West Africa, the growth of ‘legitimate’ commerce
incentivised a large number of small-scale producers, including migrant
labourers from the interior, women and even slaves, to produce crops
 6 CONCLUSION  199

for export. This situation also created demand for provisions and other
necessities for these producers, and thus stimulated local and regional
economies at least until the mid-1850s. As such, external demand for
primary products and a positive response of these producers’ choice for
profitability shaped the pattern of trade-led economic growth in West
Africa during this period. Moreover, the abolition of the slave trade in
the West also made a large contribution to the domestic use of slaves
in crop production for export. Comparing these characteristics with East
Africa and other tropical regions from the late-precolonial period would
enrich our understanding of the multiple paths of economic develop-
ment in tropical regions of the world.12

Africa, Empire and Global History

More than 60 years ago, John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson wrote a
ground-breaking article on the British Empire entitled ‘The Imperialism
of Free Trade’ published in the Economic History Review. By rejecting
the traditional approach to imperial history that had exclusively focused
on the formal empire, namely colonial domination, they showed that
free trade was the main vehicle for the expansion of British influence
and economic interest overseas. Gallagher and Robinson described
the coexistence of two styles of imperial expansion in the Victorian era
(1837–1901), with often-quoted words, ‘by informal means if possible,
or by formal annexations when necessary’.13 They rephrased this as fol-
lows: ‘The usual summing up of the policy of the free trade empire as
“trade not rule” should read “trade with informal control” if possible;
trade with rule when necessary’.14 It is argued that, from a metropolitan
point of view, British informal empire significantly expanded into Africa,
China, the Ottoman Empire and Latin America during this period.
However, the novelty and attractiveness of their argument generated
intense debate over the plausibility of applying the concept of informal
empire to these regions, notably to Latin America.15 So far, historians
have shown that the degree of success for the British informal empire
to penetrate its influence into these respective regions was limited before
the 1880s. Martin Lynn proposed that ‘relations between Britain and the
wider world … need to be seen in much more pluralistic and mutually
permeable fashion’.16
Following Lynn, perhaps we have too often been trapped by the con-
ventional and convenient categories of ‘the rulers’ and ‘the ruled’ or
200  K. KOBAYASHI

those of ‘the colonists’ and ‘the colonised’. But once we turn our atten-
tion to consumers in the extra-European regions of the world, their
agency will open a window to a fresh interpretation of modern impe-
rial and global history. In that sense, Jeremy Prestholdt’s work is very
enlightening. Although scholars of imperial and global history often
argue how important the non-West was to the West’s economic devel-
opment, they pay little attention to ‘how the interests of the “periphery”
have affected distant societies’.17 One of the virtues of Prestholdt’s per-
spective is that while discussing what factors shaped consumer demand in
East Africa, he persuasively explains how such demand affected patterns
of global exchange and industrialisation in the United States and India in
the nineteenth century, and even Japan in the twentieth century. What is
more, he reveals that these African consumers also affected British colo-
nial policy in East Africa. This is an exploration of consumer agency in
East Africa that had global repercussions beyond imperial frameworks
and was contingent on the ‘domestication’ of imported goods, a process
of remanufacturing foreign goods to meet with changeable consumer
taste in the region.18 Indeed, it makes an important contribution to the
historiography of Africa in global history from the perspective of African
consumers.19
Turning to West Africa, the example of the textile trade into the
region in the early nineteenth century offers both a number of impor-
tant parallels with East Africa and qualifications of our conceptualis-
ation of West Africa’s external economic exchanges. The volume of
British cotton goods skyrocketed in the trade from Britain into West
Africa in the early nineteenth century, as we have seen in Fig. 2.5. In
order to fully account for this growth of textile trade from West Africa’s
point of view, it is crucial to explain local logics that created consumer
demand for British textiles. In other words, what motivated consumers
towards imported articles? This point, one too often taken for granted,
is essential to understanding how British fabric found external markets.
Speaking of the period covered in this book, the distinction of British
textiles in overseas markets was its low price point, not its quality. This
allowed British cotton textiles to find markets at the bottom of society
in West Africa. As in the case of the demand for Indian textiles around
the lower Senegal River, Chapter 3 has shown that the textile trade was
closely intertwined with the social and ecological contexts of the region.
Specifically, it demonstrated that the particular taste of local consumers
played a significant role in West Africa’s global trade and procurement
 6 CONCLUSION  201

outside the region, namely South Asia. Furthermore, the powerful con-
sumer demand for guinées around the Senegal River valley led to the
development of the textile industry in nineteenth-century Pondicherry.
This was a case of the ‘global survival of non-European products in the
age of industrialisation’, an agenda for future research.20
By examining the interface between the Western empires and local
circumstances in Africa, with particular attention to the social logic of
demand, we can not only better understand the imperial expansion, but
more importantly, we will also find another genealogy of globalisation
that emerged from West Africa and East Africa, respectively. This finding
enables us to avoid the prevailing paradigm of the teleological story of
the rise of the West or that of the core-periphery model of the world
system, as we will discuss in the next section. Indeed, this is the frontier
to building a bridge between African, imperial and global history stud-
ies. The expansion of the Western empires, whether informal or formal,
was a necessary but not sufficient condition for the emergence of the
modern global economy. It is fair to note that appreciation of African
agency enriches our knowledge about modern imperial and global
history.

Multiple Globalisation in the Emergence of the Modern

Global Economy
In the field of global economic history, globalisation is one of the key
issues of investigation.21 While scholarly works on globalisation are as
abundant as stars, for the purpose of historical research, the term can
be defined in two fashions. For some, globalisation means a process of
making global networks through trade, capital investment and/or flows
of people and culture. Notably, Dennis Flynn and Arturo Giraldez stress
that the year 1571—when the Spaniards built the colony of Manila as
an entrepôt that connected Asia with the Americas through silver—saw
the origin of globalisation.22 This pattern of economic intensification
at a global level is what Jan de Vries describes as ‘soft’ globalisation.23
On the other hand, globalisation can also be defined as an outcome of
the integration of different areas into a larger regional or global econ-
omy. For Jeffery Williamson and Kevin O’Rourke, for example, glo-
balisation means an international price convergence driven by reduced
transaction costs, and it occurred in the 1820s.24 Thus, Flynn-Giraldez
and Williamson-O’Rourke disagree with each other owing to different
202  K. KOBAYASHI

definitions of globalisation. Yet, nineteenth-century price convergence

can be seen as an outcome of a global trade network established in the
sixteenth century.25
The types of globalisation and their origins and development are
another major subject of research.26 It is noteworthy that some historians
recognised the multiplicity of globalisation, the idea for which this book
takes a stand.27 Janet Abu-Lughod has shown that regional propensity
within the processes of globalisation had taken place in Eurasia and the
Indian Ocean world as early as the thirteenth century.28 More recently,
Joseph Inikori also discusses a regionally based globalisation process
found in West Africa and the Sahara before the arrival of the Portuguese
by sea in the fifteenth century. Yet, according to him, these earlier pro-
cesses were ‘all aborted’ when West Africa was integrated into the larger
Atlantic slave-based economy.29 This argument is in line with the posi-
tion of dependency and world-system schools that regard under-develop-
ment as a product of the integrated Atlantic economy.30
However, the south-south economic history presented in this book
has shed fresh light on the survival of West Africa-based globalisa-
tion at least up to 1850, particularly in the post-abolition period. This
trans-oceanic linkage was originally established by the Portuguese mar-
itime enterprise in the sixteenth century, followed by other European
traders in the seventeenth and especially the eighteenth century, along
with the rise and development of the Atlantic economy. The core of this
regional economy was the transatlantic slave trade, and the purchase of
African slaves in Atlantic Africa depended to a great degree on the sup-
ply of textiles, among which Indian cotton goods played a pivotal role
throughout most of the eighteenth century. Indian weavers skilfully
produced cotton textiles of various colours and patterns that catered
for the changeable tastes of African consumers, and thus European mer-
chants struggled to procure these hand-woven products in South Asia.
As Chapter 4 has shown, their procurement depended on a variety of
local factors, particularly the performance of weavers. Cowries from the
Maldives, similar to textiles, functioned as money in transactions on West
African coasts. The import of these Asian goods by sea suggests that
West African influence, represented by consumer demand and the mode
of local transaction, extended beyond the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean
world, with European middlemen during the heyday of the Atlantic slave
trade. Therefore, the notion of the ‘triangular trade’ is not sufficient to
explain the development of the early modern Atlantic economy.31
 6 CONCLUSION  203

Then, what became of this south-south economic linkage after the

abolition of the slave trade? The prevailing account of modern eco-
nomic history explains that, as a consequence of the British Industrial
Revolution and subsequent diffusion of industrialisation into continental
Europe and the United States, the West exported cheap manufactured
goods to and imported raw materials from the non-West regions. Such a
pattern of global trade led to an income gap between the rich West and
the poor non-West. This kind of explanation is based on the core-pe-
riphery model of the global economy.32 However, the reality was more
complex. What the south-south economic linkage presented in this book
shows is that the West African consumer taste for quality textiles contin-
ued to shape a pattern of global trade and production even after the abo-
lition of the Atlantic slave trade. It must be remembered that, despite the
fact that the British exported increasing amounts of cheap machine-made
Lancashire goods to many parts of coastal West Africa, the central role
played by Indian guinées in the gum trade along the Senegal River was
never replaced by European copies and counterfeits—not at least until
the mid-nineteenth century. Given that gum arabic from the region was
still required by the manufacturing sector in Western Europe, it was cru-
cial for guinées to be produced in India and brought into Senegal during
that period. As such, this south-south economic linkage mattered in the
development of modern manufacturing in Western Europe, and thereby
in the emergence of the modern global economy.
The fundamental problem with the core-periphery model is that
it tends to obscure agencies in the non-West regions, and thereby it
ignores the ‘multi-dimensionality of global integration’ in the modern
world.33 The south-south economic history discussed in this book does
not simply focus on the global significance of West African consumer
demand for South Asian textiles during the transitional phase into the
modern period, but also reveals the breakdown of consumer agency,
namely what motivated consumers to crave Indian cotton textiles. As
we have seen in Chapter 3, local consumers along the Senegal River, as
well as in the Sahara Desert, preferred Indian textiles in terms of qual-
ity, particularly their colour and smell, which European textiles could
not match. Preference for Indian guinées had been shaped by local tex-
tile production and trade traditions in precolonial West Africa, where
domestic indigo-dyed cloth had long been popular and used as money.
Indigo-dyed textiles had also been valued among these consumers. The
dark-blue colour of the textiles suited life in the savannah, the Sahel
204  K. KOBAYASHI

and the desert, where people were exposed to relentless sun and desert
wind. Meanwhile, in the local African context, wearing dyed textiles had
a social significance: it was a sign of luxury. The natural environment and
the local industry also need to be considered in order to explain what
conditioned the inflow of Indian guinées that served as a new currency
in the regional trade in Senegal. Droughts that hit the region appeared
to have hampered the regional handicraft industry, creating conditions
that favoured the importation of guinées from India, as resource endow-
ments limited the capacity for local producers to meet demand. In addi-
tion, the geographical location of Saint Louis of Senegal and the French
trade institution shaped the trade route of guinées into the Senegal River.
Hence, such consumer demand for Indian-produced dyed cloth—shaped
not only by local textile production tradition but also by social and eco-
logical factors—determined a part of the global trade networks that
extended from West Africa through Western Europe and reached South
Asia in the first half of the nineteenth century. What has become of this
south-south economic history in the age of colonialism still calls for fur-
ther research.34
It should be noted that Indian textiles were not the sole example of
the south-south economic linkage. Cowries from the Maldives Islands
were another example. As for British trade, the south-south economic
linkage represented by Indian textiles appears to have weakened owing
to the development of the Lancashire cotton industry. However, as
we have seen above, cowries functioned as small change in precolonial
West Africa, and the shell money played a big role in the participation
of small-scale cash-crop producers in ‘legitimate’ commerce in the nine-
teenth century. Figure 2.8 shows that the import of cowries from Britain
into West Africa dropped immediately after the British withdrawal from
the slave trade in 1807. But it soon resumed in accord with the growth
of palm oil trade and in the 1830s outnumbered the scale of the pre-
vious century. The volume of cowries in the early 1840s tripled that of
the early 1780s, the peak of the British cowrie imports into West Africa
during the era of the Atlantic slave trade. Considering the important
contribution by palm oil and groundnuts to the economy and society in
industrialising Western Europe, it would be fair to say that, although the
Industrial Revolution enabled British machine-made cottons to replace
Indian handicraft products and thereby weakened the south-south con-
nection of Indian textiles, the Industrial Revolution and the growth
of ‘legitimate’ commerce aided the strengthening of the south-south
 6 CONCLUSION  205

economic linkage of cowries from the Indian Ocean at least until the
1850s. This continuity of cowrie trade was rooted in the trade tradition
in precolonial West Africa, where cowries had long been used as one of
the major currencies.
In summary, a globalising, yet region-based economic activity origi-
nated from West Africa, extended into South Asia via Europe during the
period of the Atlantic slave trade and survived in the following period
of ‘legitimate’ commerce. The earlier processes were not necessarily ‘all
aborted’ due to the slave trade, which would probably decrease pro-
ductivity and human capital within West Africa. Instead, in this book
I argue that external demand for African slaves and tropical products
would encourage West Africa’s globalisation to reach as far as South Asia
through the nineteenth century. Thus, early modern European maritime
enterprise, or the Western Europe-originated globalisation, contributed
to linking the globalisation of West Africa with South Asia. Such interac-
tions between two different region-based globalising economies, based
on intersecting demand for labour and foreign commodities, as evident
in nineteenth-century East Africa and East Asia, created an infrastructure
not only for the development of the Atlantic economy but also for the
emergence of the modern global economy.

Notes
1. W. A. Lewis, Aspects of Tropical Trade 1883–1913 (Stockholm: Almqvist
& Wiksell, 1969); W. A. Lewis, ed., Tropical Development 1880–1913:
Studies in Economic Progress (Surrey: George Allen & Unwin, 1970); W.
A. Lewis, The Evolution of the International Economic Order (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), Chapter 10.
2. Jeffrey G. Williamson, Trade and Poverty: When the Third World Fell
Behind (Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, 2011), Chapter 3.
3. Unlike Williamson, who focused on commodity terms of trade, for exam-
ple, Kohei Wakimura revisits Lewis’s discussion on factorial terms of
trade, which could be a key in explaining the historical origin of diver-
gence between the temperate and tropical regions of the world. Kohei
Wakimura, ‘Exports of Primary Products and Labour Supply in Tropical
Asia during the 19th Century: From the Perspective of “Factorial Terms
of Trade” Thesis’, paper presented at the XVIIIth World Economic
History Congress, MIT on 31 July 2018.
4. A. G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (London: Longman,
1973), p. 132; David Eltis and Laurence C. Jennings, ‘Trade between
206  K. KOBAYASHI

Western Africa and the Atlantic World in the Pre-colonial Era’, American
Historical Review 93/4 (1988): 939–44.
5. Ewout Frankema, Jefferey Williamson, and Pieter Woltjer, ‘An Economic
Rationale for the West African Scramble? The Commercial Transition
and the Commodity Price Boom of 1835–1885’, Journal of Economic
History 78/1 (2018): 231–67. For an influential view on the partition
of Africa in a non-economic context, see Ronald Robinson and John
Gallagher, with Alice Denny, Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind
of Imperialism (London: Macmillan, 1961).
6. Calculated from Martin Lynn, Commerce and Economic Change in West
Africa: Palm Oil Trade in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University
Press, 1997), pp. 13, 113.
7. Giovanni Federico and Antonio Tena-Junguito, ‘Lewis Revisited: Tropical
Polities Competing on the World Market, 1830–1938’, Economic History
Review 70/4 (2017): 1244–67.
8. Lynn, Commerce, Chapter 5.
9. Hopkins, Economic History, pp. 124–35.
10. Melville H. Watkins, ‘A Staple Theory of Economic Growth’, Canadian
Journal of Economics and Political Science 29/2 (1963): 141–58.
11. Kaoru Sugihara, Ajiakan boeki no keisei to kozo [Patterns and Development
of Intra-Asian Trade] (Kyoto: Minerva Shobo, 1996); Kaoru Sugihara,
‘Japan as an Engine of the Asian International Economy, c. 1880–1936’,
Japan Forum 2/1 (1990): 127–45.
12. As for the case of sub-Saharan Africa, the most recent, important work is
by Gareth Austin. Gareth Austin, ‘Labour-Intensity and Manufacturing
in West Africa, c. 1450–c. 2000’, in Gareth Austin and Kaoru Sugihara,
eds., Labour-Intensive Industrialization in Global History (London
and New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 201–30; Gareth Austin, Ewout
Frankema, and Morten Jerven, ‘Patterns of Manufacturing Growth
in Sub-Saharan Africa: From Colonization to the Present’, in Kevin
Hjortshøj O’Rourke and Jeffrey Gale Williamson, eds., The Spread of
Modern Industry to the Periphery Since 1871 (Oxford University Press,
2017), pp. 345–73.
13. John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, ‘The Imperialism of Free Trade’,
Economic History Review 6/1 (1953): 1–15. Citation from page 3.
14. Gallagher and Robinson, ‘Imperialism’, 13.
15. D. C. M. Platt, ‘The Imperialism of Free Trade: Some Reservations’,
Economic History Review 21/2 (1968): 296–306; D. C. M. Platt,
‘Further Objections to an “Imperialism of Free Trade”, 1830–60’,
Economic History Review 25/1 (1973): 77–91; W. M. Mathew, ‘The
Imperialism of Free Trade: Peru, 1820–70’, Economic History Review
21/3 (1968): 562–79; P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, British Imperialism
 6 CONCLUSION  207

1688–2015 (Third Edition, London and New York: Routledge, 2016),

Chapter 9.
16. Martin Lynn, ‘British Policy, Trade, and Informal Empire in the Mid-
Nineteenth Century’, in Andrew Porter, ed., The Oxford History of the
British Empire, Vol. 3: The Nineteenth Century (Oxford University Press,
1999), pp. 118–20. Citation from page 120.
17. Jeremy Prestholdt, Domesticating the World: African Consumerism and
Genealogies of Globalization (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 2008), 60.
18. Prestholdt, Domesticating the World; Jeremy Prestholdt, ‘The Fabric of
the Indian Ocean World: The Reflection on the Life Cycle of Cloth’, in
Pedro Machado, Sarah Fee, and Gwyn Campbell, eds., Textile Trades,
Consumer Cultures and the Material Worlds of the Indian Ocean: An
Ocean of Cloth (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 385–96; Jeremy
Prestholdt, ‘Clothing Empires: Japanese Industry, British Colonial
Policy, and East African Consumer Culture, 1920–1941’, presented
at the international symposium ‘Textile Pattern Designs in the Global
Entanglement: Katagami, Batik, Sarasa and “African Prints” on the
Move, 1800–2000’, Ritsumeikan University on 21 October 2017. See
also Pedro Machado, Ocean of Trade: South Asian Merchants, Africa
and the Indian Ocean c. 1750–1850 (Cambridge University Press,
2014); Katharine Frederick, ‘Deindustrialization in East Africa: Textile
Production in an Era of Globalization and Colonization, c. 1830–1940’
(PhD dissertation, Wageningen University, 2018), pp. 84–5.
19. 
As for Africa in the global economy, see, for example, W. E. B. Du
Bois, The World and Africa (Oxford University Press, 2007); Frederick
Cooper, ‘Africa and the World Economy’, African Studies Review
24/2–3 (1981): 1–86; Frederick Cooper, ‘Africa in World History’, in J.
R. McNeill and Kenneth Pomeranz, eds., The Cambridge World History,
Vol. VII: Production, Destruction, and Connection, 1750–Present, Part I:
Structures, Spaces, and Boundary Making (Cambridge University Press,
2015), pp. 556–84; Joseph C. Miller, ‘Presidential Address: History and
Africa/Africa and History’, American Historical Review 104/1 (1999):
1–32; Joseph E. Inikori, ‘Africa and the Globalization Process: Western
Africa, 1450–1850’, Journal of Global History 2/1 (2007): 63–86;
Gareth Austin, ‘The “Reversal of Fortune” Thesis and the Compression
of History: Perspectives from African and Comparative Economic
History’, Journal of International Development 20 (2008): 996–1027;
A. G. Hopkins, ‘The New Economic History of Africa’, Journal of
African History 50/2 (2009): 155–77; Gwyn Campbell, ‘Africa, the
Indian Ocean World, and the “Early Modern”: Historiographical
Conventions and Problems’, in Toyin Falola and Emily Brownell, eds.,
208  K. KOBAYASHI

Africa, Empire and Globalization: Essays in Honor of A. G. Hopkins

(Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2011), pp. 81–92; Toby Green,
‘Africa and the Price Revolution: Currency Imports and Socioeconomic
Change in West and West-Central Africa during the Seventeenth Century’,
Journal of African History 57/1 (2016): 1–24; Patrick Manning, ‘Africa:
Slavery and the World Economy, 1700–1870’, in Stephen Broadberry and
Kyoji Fukao, eds., The Cambridge Economic History of the Modern World,
Vol. 1 (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
20. I got the idea for this phrase from personal communication with the
late Professor Sir Christopher Bayly at the Truckles of Pied Bull Yard in
London on 10 December 2014.
21. Giorgio Riello and Tirthankar Roy, ‘Introduction: Global Economic
History, 1500–2000’, in Tirthankar Roy and Giorgio Riello, eds., Global
Economic History (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), pp. 1–15.
22. Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giraldez, ‘Cycles of Silver: Global Economic
Unity Through the Mid-Eighteenth Century’, Journal of World History
13/2 (2002): 391–427. See also Alejandra Irigoin, ‘The New World and
the Global Silver Economy, 1500–1800’, in Roy and Riello, eds., Global
Economic History, pp. 271–86, for the global significance of American
silver.
23. Jan de Vries, ‘The Limits of Globalization in the Early Modern World’,
Economic History Review 63/3 (2010): 710–33.
24. Kevin H. O’Rourke and Jeffrey G. Williamson, ‘When Did Globalisation
Begin?’ European Review of Economic History 6/1 (2002): 23–50.
25. Inikori, ‘Africa’; Tirthankar Roy and Giorgio Riello, ‘Trade and the
Emergence of a World Economy, 1500–2000’, in Roy and Riello, eds.,
Global Economic History, p. 145.
26. For example, see A. G. Hopkins, ed., Globalization in World History
(London: Pimlico, 2002), especially the chapters by Hopkins and C. A.
Bayly.
27. C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World 1780–1914: Global Connections
and Comparisons (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004).
28. Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D.
1250–1350 (Oxford University Press, 1989).
29. Inikori, ‘Africa’, 85.
30. Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London and Dar-
es-Salaam: Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications and Tanzanian Publishing
House, 1973); Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System III: The
Second Era of Great Expansion of the Capitalist World-Economy, 1730–
1840s (New York: Academic Press, 1989).
31. See also Giorgio Riello, Cotton: The Fabric That Made the Modern World
(Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 148.
 6 CONCLUSION  209

32. Williamson, Trade and Poverty.

33. Prestholdt, Domesticating the World, p. 175.
34. One notable exception is Richard Roberts’s research. He shows that con-
sumer demand for guinées in the upper Senegal River and the western
Soudan maintained the south-south economic linkage in the late nine-
teenth to early twentieth century. He also pointed out the direct inflow
of guinées from Pondicherry into Senegal after the 1864 tariff legis-
lation that gave merchants the right to import South Asian textiles
directly into Senegal. Richard Roberts, ‘West Africa and the Pondicherry
Textile Industry’, in Tirthankar Roy, ed., Cloth and Commerce: Textiles
in Colonial India (New Delhi: Sage, 1996), pp. 142–74. In her recent
work, Toyomu Masaki attempted to challenge Roberts with the claim
that ‘there was no direct link between the colonies of Pondicherry and
Senegal’ throughout the nineteenth century. However, we must admit
that this assertion misrepresents history. Toyomu Masaki, ‘The Export of
Indian Guinées to Senegal via France: Intra-colonial Trade in the Long
Nineteenth Century’, in Tomoko Shiroyama, ed., Modern Global Trade
and the Asian Regional Economy (Singapore: Springer, 2018), p. 110.
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Online Database
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database: Voyages (http://www.slavevoyages.org/).
 Index

A West-Central, 6, 9, 32, 37, 55, 101,

Abolition 168
of slavery; British (1833), 165; African economic history, 3, 4, 42,
French (1848), 176, 184 110
of slave trade, 43, 199, 203; British renaissance of, 4
(1807), 32, 37, 39, 41–43, 59, agency
66, 143, 154, 165, 166, 168, African, 2–4, 197, 201
171, 186, 204; French (1818), consumer, 5, 195, 200, 203
176, 177; French (1831), 32, Eurocentrism of, 5
46, 88 European, 3
Abu-Lughod, Janet, 202 agency house, 138, 139, 147
Acemoglu, Daron, 4 age of revolutions, 1, 5, 165–167,
the Active, 169 186, 195
active consumer, 5 agriculture, 15, 31, 42, 93, 110, 137,
Aden, 106 144
advance system, 135, 136, 139 Albreda, 99
Afghanistan, 7 alcohol, 6, 30, 100, 179
Africa, 1, 199 L’Alexander, 148
Atlantic, 6, 9, 13, 53, 55, 58, 65, alkali, 185
168, 202 Allard Law, 175
East, 8, 14, 65, 106, 199–201, 205 almami, 34, 35, 71
North, 33, 44, 65, 79, 94, 99, 103 Alpern, Stanley, 9
South of the Sahara, 2, 12, 29 aluminium, 147
sub-Saharan, 4, 31, 106, 172

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 241

K. Kobayashi, Indian Cotton Textiles in West Africa,
Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18675-3
242  Index

America, 2, 9, 29, 31–33, 43, 104, John, 168, 172

129, 133, 144, 165, 166, 168, Sarah, 172
175, 201 William, 168, 173
Latin, 1, 172, 197, 199 assortment bargaining, 52, 105
Meso-America, 7 Atlantic, 5–7, 31, 34, 45, 88, 107,
North, 1, 6, 8, 9 171, 202
See also United States (US) Atlantic economy, 2, 4, 9, 13, 17, 29,
American Revolution, 9, 166 127, 202, 205
Ames, David, 87, 108 Atlantic slave trade, 1–6, 12, 13,
Amin, Samir, 3 16, 29, 31, 33, 35, 41, 49, 52,
Andhra Coast, 132 65, 66, 68, 69, 82, 100, 102,
Anglo-Mysore Wars, 138, 142 104, 109, 127, 128, 132, 134,
Angola, 38, 54, 73, 173 137, 141, 143, 167–170, 172,
animism, 97 174–176, 186, 198, 202–205
Annamaboe, 58 auction
Anomabu, 173 in Jamaica, 171
Aquaronne fils, 185 in London, 168
Arabia, 44, 97 in Lorient, 174
Arabs, 8 aumany system, 139–142, 154
Arani, 145 Austin, Gareth, 4, 5, 31, 42, 98, 101
Arasaratnam, Sinnappah, 141 Australia, 198
Arbuthnot, George Clark, 149
Arcot
North, 130 B
South, 130, 133 Bachelier, M.L., 176
Arguin, 44 Bakel, 88, 185
aridification, 35, 44, 110, 111 Bamenda plain, 43
Armenian merchants, 7 Banjara, 131
Arrêté Baramahal, 130
16 April 1842, 183 Barry, Boubacar, 3, 35
18 December 1843, 152 Barth, Heinrich, 37
19 March 1830, 149 basso, 50
Asante, 35, 42, 101 Bathurst, 51
Asia, 1, 201 Battle of Plassey, 138
Central, 7 Bawol, 50
East, 4, 205 Bayly, C.A., 6
Southeast, 4, 8, 42, 63, 138, 145, Bay of Bengal, 130
197 Beads, 6, 99, 100
South, 7, 13, 82, 84, 201, 204. See the Bedford, 169–171
also India Beeswax, 50, 99, 179
Aspinall family Al-Bekri, 98
James, 168, 172 Bello, Muhammad, 36, 37
 Index   243

Bengal, 7–9, 129, 133, 134, 137–139, 176, 186, 188, 196, 197, 199,
144, 147, 154, 160 200, 204
Benguela, 6 British cotton textiles, 16, 30, 31, 53,
Benue River, 65 58, 59, 81, 144, 147, 200
Berg, Maxine, 8 British manufactured goods, 2
Berlin Decree, 140, 171 calicoes, 54, 55, 68
Bianchi, Marina, 5 chellows, 11
Bidan, 84 imports from Britain to West Africa,
Bight of Benin, 38, 40, 41, 54, 55, 54
65, 101 Lancashire cotton goods, 6, 10,
Bight of Biafra, 32, 38–41, 43, 55, 65, 106, 198, 203
101, 169, 198 muslins, 54, 55
Binny, John, 139 niccanees, 11
birds of paradise, 8 British Empire, 199
Black Power movement, 3 Buhan et Teisseire, 179
Blin, 147–150, 152, 154 Burma, 198
Board of Trade (English East India Butel, Paul, 176
Company), 134, 137, 140
Boilat, David, 15, 84
Bologna, 168 C
Bolton, John, 168 Calcutta, 129
Bombay, 129, 134, 137 Cameroons, 39
Bonny, 39, 40, 169, 173, 186 Camwood, 60
Bordeaux, 14, 63, 106, 112, 148, Canada, 198
174–186 Candido, Mariana, 6
Borelli, Jérôme, 181 candle, 29, 38, 197
Bouët-Willaumez, Édouard, 182 Candotti, Marisa, 102
Bourgerel, 177 Cape Coast Castle, 54, 55, 58, 60,
Bowdich, Thomas Edward, 50 67, 101, 170, 171. See also Gold
Bowen, Huw, 129 Coast
Brakna, 34, 35, 84, 89, 92, 103, 107, Cape of Good Hope, 54, 55, 60
111, 117, 182, 183 Cape Verde Islands, 54, 97
Brancker, P.W., 168 Caravan, 65, 92, 94, 131
Brazil, 6, 32, 50 Caribbean, 6, 9, 46, 50, 165, 171–
Brennig, Joseph, 131 176, 186
Brereton, Thomas, 46 Carnatic Wars, 138, 142
Bristol, 41, 167, 172 Case, George, 168, 169, 173
Britain, 1, 9, 13, 14, 30, 32, 38, 39, cash-crop, 1, 44, 51, 59, 197, 198,
45, 46, 50, 51, 55, 59, 62, 66, 204
81, 127, 128, 132, 134, 137, revolution, 42
138, 140, 142–144, 147, 151, Ceded Districts, 131
154, 155, 166, 168, 171, 174, cereal, 33
244  Index
Chambers of Commerce, 183
Chandernagore, 130
charka, 145
Charter Act of 1813, 167, 174, 186
Chaudhuri, Kirti, 7, 129
Chay root, 132
China, 1, 5, 8, 106, 138, 199
Chinese Seas, 8
Chingleput, 130, 135
circuit (for money), 105, 106, 109
cloth currency, 60, 82, 97, 103,
105–112
cloth strips, 102, 103, 105–108
coal, 1
coal gas, 197
coffee, 6, 8, 138, 171, 174
Cohen, Raphaël, 181
Coimbatore, 131, 132, 145
Comité de Bienfaisance, 146
commerçants, 176
Commercial Residents (English East
India Company), 134, 137, 140,
142
Commission des comptoirs et du com-
merce des côtes d’Afrique, 184
Compagnie du Sénégal, 177
Company of Merchants Trading to
Africa, 46, 58, 168. See also Royal
African Company
compression of history, 4
compromis in 1841, 90, 105
Congo, 39
Congo River, 173
Congress of Vienna, 175
conspicuous consumption, 87, 99,
102, 111
consumer demand, 11, 200, 202, 204,
209
consumers
African, 2, 68, 133, 200, 202
British, 8
European, 6, 8, 9, 133, 134
West African, 2, 7, 14, 17, 155
consumption, 11, 43, 107, 141
patterns, 6
Cooper, Frederick, 5
copdar, 135, 141
copies and counterfeits, 10, 81, 84,
111, 112, 180, 203
copper, 99, 102, 103, 138
coral, 99
core, 1, 196
core-periphery model, 201, 203.
See also Wallerstein, Immanuel;
world-system
Cornwallis, Charles, 138
Coromandel Coast, 7, 82, 128–130,
132, 135, 137, 141, 144, 150
Cotton, 35, 37, 97, 102, 147, 174
cleaning, 145
cultivation (in India), 130
gossypium herbaceum, 119
gossypium nanking, 130
gossypium punctatum, 119
nadam, 130
two distinct centres of production in
West Africa, 96
in West Africa, 96, 98
cotton textiles, 9, 10, 30, 95, 134,
140, 144, 150, 151, 198
origins in West Africa, 96
produced in Kano, 99
produced in Pondicherry, 145
produced in Senegambia, 107
produced in West Africa, 99
production in Pondicherry, 149
for West Africa, 132
country cloth, 108
country trade, 138
Court of Directors (English East India
Company), 134
cowrie shells, 9, 13, 16, 29–31, 37,
43, 64, 65, 68, 102, 103, 123,
197, 198, 202, 204
 Index   245

as ballast, 8, 65 for cowrie shells (in West Africa),

British shipping of, 66 80, 198
cypraera moneta, 64 for groundnuts (in Europe), 51
depression in imports from Britain for guinées (in Senegal), 82, 84, 87,
to West Africa, 67 103, 111, 112, 125, 201, 209
origin of shell money in the Central for gum arabic (in Europe), 49
Soudan, 65 for Indian cotton goods (for slave
palm oil-cowrie exchange, 68 trade), 132
revival of imports from Britain, 67 for Indian cotton textiles (for the
small change, 68 West African trade), 143
credit, 89, 109, 135 for Indian cotton textiles (in
Cross River, 41, 43 Senegal), 81
Cruickshank, Brodie, 67 for Indian cotton textiles (in West
Cuddalore, 15, 132–134, 137, Africa), 10, 16, 59, 129, 140,
140–143, 146, 157 143, 186, 195
currency, 64, 65, 81, 102, 105, 109 for Indian goods (in the West
Curtin, Philip, 3, 10, 104, 105, 109 Indies), 143
for Indian textiles, 2, 142
for Indian textiles (in Senegal), 29,
D 200
da Gama, Vasco, 8 for Indian textiles (in the Atlantic
Dagana, 36, 88 world), 137
Dahomey, 35, 43, 185 for Indian textiles (in West Africa),
Data Revolution, 4 12, 13, 17, 134, 166
Davis, Ralph, 13, 14 for indigo-dyed textiles (in
Debhol, 132 Senegambia), 110
Deccan plateau, 131, 132 for indigo-dyed textiles (in West
Declaration of the Rights of Man and Africa), 153
the Citizen, 175 for labour, 205
Décret of 17 January 1852, 152 for labour (in Senegal), 49
Decrouy, A., 148 for labour (in the Americas), 31
Delbruck, 147–150, 154, 180 for labour (in West Africa), 37
Delcourt, André, 45 for labourers (in the Americas), 6
de Maisonneuve, Magnier, 183, 184 for olive oil (in Southern Europe),
demand, 6, 11, 14, 37, 197, 201 185
for African slaves, 205 for palm oil (in Britain), 38, 41, 68
for blue goods, 140 for primary products (in the West),
for British textiles (in West Africa), 198
200 for provisions and other necessities
for candle, 197 (in West Africa), 199
for cotton cloth (in West Africa), 96 for slave labour (in West Africa), 43
246  Index

for slaves in the palm oil production, E

37 Eastern Ghats, 130
for South Asian fabrics (in West East India Company
Africa), 12 Dutch, 133, 158
for South Asian textiles (in West English, 15, 16, 86, 127, 129,
Africa), 203 130, 133–144, 146, 154, 161,
for the Atlantic trade, 34 166–169, 186
for tropical products, 196, 205 French, 145, 174
from the European East India economic development, 2, 37, 65,
Companies, 133 195, 196, 199
De Mélay, 149 capital-intensive, 1
Denyanke, 35 economic growth, 4, 8, 197, 199
dependency theory, 3, 4, 197, 202 The Economist, 4
d’Erneville, Marianne, 179 Efik, 41, 101
Desbassayns de Richemont, Eugéne, electricity, 197
146, 147, 154 Elem Kalabari, 39
Désiré-Vuillemin, Geneviève, 92 Eltis, David, 31, 196
Devangas, 145 endowment, 31, 39, 97, 110, 196,
Devès family 204
Bruno, 177, 179 England, 9
Éduard, 179 Ephraim, Duke, 173
Justin, 177, 179 escale des Darmancours, 92
de Vries, Jan, 201 escale du Coq, 92
dextrin, 15, 47 escale du Désert, 92
dhow, 8 escales, 88–94, 105, 107, 117, 177,
Dike, Kenneth Onwuka, 3 179, 182–185
Dindigul, 130 Eurasia, 202
drought Eurocentrism, 5
in Senegambia, 124 Europe
in South India, 131 Central, 24
in West Africa, 35, 39, 48, 110, 204 continental, 1, 140, 168
Duboy, Edouard, 148 Northern, 171
Duchon-Doris Jr., J.-P., 63, 64, 86, North-western, 8, 10
148 Southern, 185
Durant brothers, 179 Western, 2, 3, 13, 16, 39, 46, 51,
Duranton, 105 82, 84, 87, 111, 127, 204
Duréc, Nicolas, 177
Dutch Republic. See Netherlands
dyeing, 85, 142, 147, 148, 151 F
in Kano, 37, 102 Fallofield, Ernest William, 137
in Pondicherry, 147, 150 famine
modernisation in Pondicherry, 146 in India, 142
Dyulas, 97–99 in Madras, 137

in Senegambia, 124
in West Africa, 35, 44, 110
Fanon, Franz, 3
Al-Fatack, 93
Féraud and Honorat, 185
final demand linkage effect, 198
findo, 50
firearms, 90, 138
First World War, 196
flour, 175
Flynn, Dennis, 201
Forbes, Frederick, 52, 68
formalists, 103
Fort St. George, 86, 133, 134, 140,
143. See also Board of Trade
Fort William, 134
Foster and Smith, 50
four Asian tigers, 5
France, 9, 13–15, 30, 32, 45–47, 51,
53, 62–64, 84, 86, 88, 89, 92,
107, 109, 111, 128, 145, 146,
150, 151, 154, 155, 171, 174,
176, 177, 179–185, 196
Frank, Andre Gunder, 3
Frankema, Ewout, 196
French Antilles, 175, 177
French Revolution, 16, 165, 175
French Revolutionary Wars, 140, 141
Fulbe/Fulfulbe, 36
fustians, 9, 54, 55
Fuuta Bundu, 34–36
Fuuta Jalon, 34–36
Fuuta Toro, 34–36, 49, 50, 84, 87
G Green, Toby, 5
Gajaaga, 49
Gallagher, John, 199
Gallinas, 52
Galos, Joseph Henri, 183, 184
Gambia, 13, 15, 38, 46, 50–52, 54,
55, 58, 87
Index   247
Gambia River, 30, 50–52, 96
Ganjam, 130
Garonne River, 175
Gautier, Jean-Elie, 183, 184
General Council (in Senegal), 180
Germany, 26, 170, 175, 196
Ghana Empire, 65
ghost money, 105
Giraldez, Arturo, 201
Glasgow, 168
global economic history, 17, 201
global economy, 1, 2, 7, 12, 13, 17,
195, 201, 203, 205
global history, 1–5, 195, 199–201
globalisation, 12, 17, 29, 201, 202,
205
Goa, 132
Gobir, 37
Godavari Delta, 130, 131
Godavari River, 130, 135
Godefroy, Thomas, 146
Golberry, S.M.X., 44, 84, 86
Golconda, 133
gold, 8, 50, 88, 102, 103, 105, 123,
171
Gold Coast, 39, 40, 42, 54, 58, 84,
171, 173
Gollapudi, 132
Gonfreville, Michael, 146
Gorée, 45, 46, 89, 177, 180
gourmets, 90
Grandis family, 175
grands négociants, 176
Gray, John, 51
great divergence, 1, 196
Gregson family, 173
Gréterin, 183, 184
groundnuts, 16, 29–31, 50, 52, 60,
68, 179, 185, 198, 204
in the United States, 51
in Western Europe, 51
248  Index

migrant labourers; strange farmers, 91, 93, 103–105, 107, 127, 145,
51 174, 179, 180, 185, 203
used to produce soap, 51 dyeing textiles in Western Europe,
Guinea, 82, 185 13
Guinea-Bissau, 35 export from Saint Louis, 46–48,
Guinea-Conakry, 35 88, 91
guinées, 10, 15, 16, 30, 63, 79, 81, export from Senegambia, 46
82, 84, 86–90, 92–95, 103–113, for papermaking, 30, 45
127, 129, 145, 150–153, 155, for printing of textiles, 45
159, 166, 177–183, 186, 187, grande traite, 90
193, 203, 204 gum fever, 46, 152, 180
akhal, 94, 103 gum trade, 45, 46, 49, 63, 136,
baysa, 94 159, 177, 180, 181, 183, 184,
conjons, 82 187
consumption patterns of, 84 gum wars, 45
exchange medium in the gum trade, in dyeing textiles as a stiffener, 30
10, 15, 81, 86, 103, 107 petite traite, 90
filature, 82 poor harvest, 92
indigo blue dye used for, 84 price, 182
loose clothing of desert nomads, 84 production of, 48
major consumers in Senegal, 83 suppliers of, 81
of uniform size, 86 gumastahs, 139
opéapaléons, 82 Guyer, Jane, 103
over-supply of, 63, 182 Gwandu, 37
pièce de guinée, 82
preference for the quality of, 84
price of, 63, 91 H
salem, 82 habitants, 49, 88–90, 93, 107, 179,
samples of, 15 180, 182, 184
smell of, 84–86 Haiti, 165, 176
trade, 14 Hardy, Georges, 45
trade from France to Senegal, 178, harmattan, 48, 90, 93
181 hassani, 34, 92
trade from Pondicherry to France, Hassaniya, 34
150, 181 Hausa, 37
unit of account in the gum trade, 15 Hausaland, 36, 97, 98
use-value, 84 Hel-Hiebar, 93
Gujarat, 7, 8, 129 hides, 50, 99, 179
Gujarati merchants, 8 Hinde, Thomas, 168
Gulf of Guinea, 52 Hogendorn, Jan, 30, 66
gum arabic, 10, 15, 16, 29–31, 44, Holland, Edward, 136, 140, 142
52, 63, 68, 75, 81, 84, 87–89, Holman, James, 150

Hopkins, A.G., 3, 4, 31, 42, 44, 52,
98, 100, 196, 197
horse, 50, 96, 108
Horsfall and Tobin, 173
Horsfall family, 172
Charles, 173
I imports into Senegal, 62
Ibibio, 41, 101
Idaw al-Hajj, 92
Igbo, 41, 43
Igboland, 38
imitation. See copies and counterfeits
incentive, 8, 16, 117, 128, 141, 153,
154, 161
India, 1, 3, 7, 8, 13–16, 59, 63, 84,
86, 87, 103, 106, 109–111, 127–
129, 132–134, 137–139, 142,
146–148, 150–153, 166–168,
173, 177, 180, 181, 186, 198,
200, 203, 204
Northern, 7
South, 15, 16, 82, 86, 119,
128–137, 139, 140, 143–145,
153, 154, 158
Western, 8, 113, 132, 137, 158,
160
Indian cotton textiles, 4, 6–8, 11–14,
16, 26, 29–31, 53, 55, 58–60,
64, 68, 81, 85, 127, 128, 133,
136, 142–144, 153, 154, 166,
169, 173, 176, 186, 202–204
bafts, 9, 53, 132
bejutapaux, 170
blue cloths, 132, 136, 144
blue goods, 132–134, 140, 142–
144, 154
calicoes, 9, 11, 144
chellows, 9, 170
chintz, 9, 53, 170
consumption, 7, 81
Index   249
core production regions for foreign
and overseas markets, 7
decline in the shipping from Britain
to West Africa, 143
Guinea stuff, 170
handkerchiefs, 140
imports from Britain to West Africa,
59, 60, 161
long cloth, 9, 133
muslins, 138
nicanees, 9, 170
painting, 7
pencilling, 7
plain, 138
price in London, 144
printing, 7
procurement of, 129, 137, 154
romals, 53, 143, 170
sallampores, 133, 140, 142, 145
shipping from Britain to West Africa,
166
Indian Ocean, 5, 7–9, 12, 16, 64, 68,
79, 129, 130, 176, 186, 198,
202, 205
Indian oils and fats, 197
Indian textile trade, 165
indigo, 6, 35, 37, 85, 86, 102, 124,
131, 137–139, 146, 147, 151,
171, 174
industrialisation, 1, 13, 51, 53, 68,
111, 127, 128, 196, 198, 200,
203
Industrial Revolution, 1, 2, 7, 12, 14,
69, 165, 204
informal empire, 199
Inikori, Joseph, 2, 10, 14, 30, 53, 54,
62, 100, 102, 202
institution, 4, 111, 176, 204
interface currency. See currency
intra-African trade, 99
intra-Asian trade, 8, 138, 198
250  Index

Ireland, 9, 26, 170 Kriger, Colleen, 96, 100, 102

iron, 30, 58, 102, 105, 123 Krishna River, 130
iron bar, 103–105, 109 Kuroda, Akinobu, 105, 106, 109
Islam, 35, 97, 108, 117
Isnard, Jacques, 181, 185
Italy, 170 L
ivory, 8, 50, 99, 104, 145, 170, 171, Labour
173, 179 division of labour by gender (in
Ivory Coast, 185 West Africa), 43
household division of labour (in
West Africa), 97
J low productivity (in West Africa), 31
Jalonke, 34 opportunity cost (in West Africa),
Jamaica, 170, 171 98
Japan, 8, 20, 138, 198, 200 Lake Chad, 36, 96
Java, 198 La Laure, 148
J. Devès, Lacoste et Cie, 179 Lamb, P.H., 58
Jeng, Alieu, 51 Lampbar, 36
Jenne, 96 Lancashire, 2, 6, 53, 58, 144, 154
Jennings, Lawrence, 196 land-abundance, 31, 110
jihad, 29–31, 33–37, 68, 71, 101, 165 Langue de Barbarie, 45, 88, 107
John Palmer and Company, 167 laptots, 90
Johnson, Marion, 12, 14, 30, 66, 98, Latham, A.J.H., 30, 101
100, 104–106, 108 Law, Robin, 67
Jolof, 34 Leblanc soda, 185, 186
July Monarchy, 185 ‘legitimate’ commerce, 1, 6, 15, 29,
July Revolution, 180 37, 38, 43, 44, 52, 53, 58, 59,
65, 68, 69, 127, 166, 167, 172,
196, 198, 204, 205
K Le Havre, 183
Kaarta, 105 Lemire, Beverly, 11
Kaikkolars, 145 Lewis, William Arthur, 196, 197
Kajoor, 34–36, 49, 50, 84, 87, 90 linens, 9
Kan, Abdul Kader, 35 Lisbon, 168
Kanchipuram, 145 Little Popo, 101
Kano, 37, 42, 98, 99, 101 Liverpool, 39, 41, 167–169, 172, 173,
Karamkho Alfa, 34 186, 187
Kaveri River, 130 Livorno, 168
Kentworthy, John, 137, 140 Loango, 100, 123, 173
Kinchant, Richard, 140, 141 Lobligeois, Mireille, 86, 129, 150
Kingston (Jamaica), 168, 171 logwood, 171
kola, 108 Loire River, 176
 Index   251

London, 41, 50, 129, 134, 136, 137, Marzagalli, Silvia, 176
140, 144, 167–172, 174 Masulipatnam, 143
Lorient, 145, 174 material culture, 6–8, 11
Lovejoy, Paul, 33, 36, 43, 65, 100, Maurel and Prom Company, 112, 177,
102 185, 191
Lugard, Frederick, 65 Maurel family
Lumley, Thomas, 166, 168–170, 172, Emile, 180
174, 186 Hilaire, 177, 180
luxury, 8, 87, 204 Jean-Louis, 180
Lydon, Ghislaine, 84 Marc, 177
Lynn, Martin, 30, 39, 170, 199 Maures. See Bidan
Mauritania, 34, 44, 45, 88
McLane, Margaret, 177, 182
M Médine, 112
mabo, 98 Mediterranean, 51, 185
MacDonnell, Richard Graves, 52 medium of exchange, 52, 65, 81, 104,
machinery, 29, 197 109
Madras, 86, 129, 130, 133, 134, 137, the Méduse, 46
139, 140, 143, 144, 149 Merinaghen, 36
Madras Presidency, 135, 136, 141, métis, 49, 88–90, 179
143, 144, 154 migrant labourers, 51, 198. See also
Madurai, 131, 145 groundnuts; Mandinka; Soninke;
maître de langue, 90 strange farmers
maize, 50 Milan Decree, 171
Malabar Coast, 130 millet, 34, 35, 50, 90, 91, 94, 98, 105
Malaya, 198 Minister of Agriculture and
Malay Archipelago, 8 Commerce, 47
Maldives, 31, 64, 65, 202, 204. See Minister of the Navy and the Colonies,
also cowrie shells 63, 146–148, 152, 179, 180
Mali (Republic of Mali), 96 Mollan, William, 59
Mali Empire, 65 money
Malik Si, 34 complementarity, 105
Mallet family, 176 general-purpose. See formalists
Mandinka, 51, 99 special-purpose. See substantivists
Manila, 201 monsoon, 8, 130, 131
Manning, Patrick, 14, 31 Moors. See Bidan
marabouts, 33, 34, 87 Moreau, Jacob Nicholas, 11
Marcson, Michael, 93 morinda, 132
Maria Theresa dollar, 106 Mozambique, 37
Marseille, 44, 51, 175–187 mudarat, 92
Martin, Phyllis, 99 Munro, J. Forbes, 3
Martin, Susan, 42, 43 Muslim, 29, 33, 35, 36, 48, 96, 98
252  Index

Myint, Hla, 41, 42, 196 olive, 51, 185

Mysore, 132 Olive, Roch, 181, 185
Olukoju, Ayodeji, 3
Opobo, 39
N Order in Council of 1 November
Nagore, 15, 86, 133, 142, 143 (1765), 46
Nagulvancha, 132 O’Rourke, Kevin, 201
Nantes, 145, 174, 176, 183, 186 Ottoman Empire, 7, 199
Napoleonic Wars, 16, 45, 46, 176, Oyo Empire, 37
186
narrow loom, 97, 98, 101, 108
horizontal, 97 P
vertical, 97 pacte coloniale, 45, 47, 106
Nasir al-Din, 34 modified in 1832, 47
National Conservatory of Arts and pagne, 98, 108
Crafts, 147 chigguya, 98
natural disasters, 130, 142, 154 Palaur River, 130
naval campaign, 37, 165 palm kernel, 43
Navigation Acts, 46, 51 palm oil, 16, 29, 31, 37–39, 51, 52,
négociants, 176 55, 58, 60, 67, 68, 172, 173,
Nellore, 132 185, 186, 197
Nembe, 38 fine Lagos, 39
Netherlands, 9 free fatty acid (FFA), 38
neutral flag, 171, 176 hard, 38, 39
Newbury, Colin, 177, 178 price, 40
Newson, Linda, 108 producers, 43
New York, 168 production, 37, 43
Ngwa, 42 soft, 38, 39
Niger Delta, 172, 173, 186 trade, 30, 41, 55, 65–69, 166, 197,
Nigeria, 3 204
Niger River, 37, 38, 65, 96 traders, 172
nomadic emirates, 34, 48, 81, 84, 89, used as a lubricant, 29
94. See also Brakna; Trarza Palvancha, 132
nomads, 33, 87, 92, 107. See also panos, 108
Bidan paraffin (Kerosene), 197
Northern Circars, 131 Paris, 63, 148
Nunn, Nathan, 4 Parry, Thomas, 139
Parthasarathi, Prasannan, 130, 132,
133
O Pasquier, Roger, 10
Oil palm (elaeis guineensis), 38 peasant, 130, 131
Old Calabar, 39–41, 101, 173, 186 Pellegrin, 179
 Index   253

Pellet, Jean, 175 R

Pennair Delta, 130 raabu, 98
Pennair River, 130 Rabaud brothers, 185
peons, 139, 141 Rabeseyr, 109
pepper, 8, 145 Raichur Doab, 132
Perceval, Spencer, 172 railway, 29, 38, 176, 197
periphery, 1, 2, 196, 200 rainfall, 39, 48, 130
Persia, 7 raphia, 96, 101, 123
Persian Gulf, 8 Ratcliff, Jonathan, 168
Philadelphia, 177 reciprocal comparison, 5
P. Lacoste, 179 Red Sea, 8, 106
Plagne, Bernard, 147 Régis brothers, 185
plantation, 2, 9, 31, 37, 53, 175, 198 Louis, 181
Podor, 36, 185 Victor, 181, 184, 185
Polanyi, Karl, 103, 104 Réunion, 176
Pomeranz, Kenneth, 5 reversal of fortune thesis, 4
Pondicherry, 15, 16, 82, 86, 87, Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars,
106, 112, 127–130, 136, 141, 141, 165, 175
144–148, 150–154, 179–181, rice, 6, 34, 35, 50, 136, 170, 198
183, 201, 209 Richardson, David, 6, 43, 59
porcelain, 8 Richardson, George, 58
Portal, Baron, 179 Ridgway, Archibald, 68
Portendick, 44 Riello, Giorgio, 7
Portugal, 32 Roberts, Richard, 10, 129
Portuguese, 8, 10, 13, 32, 44, 50, 65, Robinson, David, 36
97, 99, 144, 202 Robinson, Ronald, 199
Potin, 177 Rodney, Walter, 3, 100
Poulain, Charlemagne, 148 Romberg, Friedrich, 175
Prakash, Om, 133 Rönnbäck, Klas, 31
Prestholdt, Jeremy, 11, 200 Ross, Gilbert, 136
Le Prince et Poulain, 148–150, 154 Rothschild family, 176
private traders, 138, 140, 142 Rotterdam, 136, 158
Prom, Hubert (Jean-Louis-Hubert Rouen, 86, 146
Prom), 177, 180 Royal African Company, 46, 102, 168
Prussian, 44 Royal Manufacture of Goblins, 146
Punjab, 7, 129 Royal Order (Ordonnance du Roi)
putting out system, 135 1 September 1843, 86, 152
15 November 1842, 184
18 May 1843, 86, 152
Q 22 January 1852, 184
Quernel, Germain, 49 rum, 173
254  Index
S Siam, 198
Sahara Desert, 48, 65, 87, 88, 90,
94–96, 103, 107, 109–111, 203
Saint Domingue, 165, 175
Saint Hilaire, 149
Saint Louis, 33, 35, 44–46, 48,
49, 63, 88–90, 92–94, 106,
107, 111, 115, 177, 179, 180,
182–184, 204
geography around, 88
population, 49
Salem, 15, 82, 130, 132, 133, 142,
145
Saliyars, 145
salt, 90, 94, 99, 123
Savana Mills, 112
Schmaltz, Julien, 46
Schumpeter, Elizabeth, 13
Scotland, 9, 26, 139, 170
Scramble for Africa, 197
Searing, James, 45, 48, 49
La Sémaphore de Marseille, 182
Senegal, 10, 13–16, 29, 30, 44,
45, 47, 49, 50, 54, 62–64, 68,
81–84, 86–88, 90, 92, 106, 107,
127, 129, 152, 155, 177–179,
181, 182, 184–186, 203, 204
Sénégal et Dépendance, 36
Senegal River, 11, 13, 15, 16, 33,
34, 36, 44, 45, 48, 49, 63, 68,
81–84, 86, 87, 89–91, 93, 96,
103, 107, 110, 111, 127, 177,
180, 182, 184, 185, 187, 201,
203, 204
Senegambia, 3, 15, 31, 32, 34–36,
42, 44–46, 65, 97–99, 104, 107,
109, 110, 112, 136
Seniyars, 145
Senoudebou, 36
Seshan, Radhika, 133
Seven Years’ War, 45, 134
Shea, Phillip, 102
Sierra Leone, 30, 32, 34, 35, 39, 51,
52, 54, 55, 58, 60, 144
signares, 89
silk, 8, 147
Silli, 98
silver, 8, 52, 102, 105, 106, 201
Sind, 7
Sine-Saloum, 50
slave, 31, 32, 34, 36, 37, 42–45, 52,
53, 67, 88–90, 93, 97, 99, 104,
108, 145, 170, 171, 174, 175,
184, 198
price, 43
slavery, 42, 49, 176, 184
slave traders, 41, 174
small change, 64, 105, 108, 173, 204
smell, 86, 203. See also guinées
Smith, Adam, 41, 138
soap, 29, 38, 51, 185, 197. See also
groundnuts, palm oil
La Société Poulain, Duboy et Cie,
112, 149
Sohel, 93
Sokoto, 37
Sokoto Caliphate, 37, 43, 98, 101,
102, 198
Solimana, 34, 35
Songhay Empire, 37, 65
Soninke, 51
sorghum, 98
Sori, Ibrahima, 34, 35
soro, 108, 109
Soudan
Central, 37, 64, 65, 68
Eastern, 97
Western, 87, 103, 112
south-south economic history, 2, 12,
16, 17, 165, 195, 202–204
south-south economic linkage, 10, 13,
16, 29, 68, 153, 186, 195, 203,
204
 Index   255

Spain, 32 Teisseire family

Spaniards, 201 Albert, 179
spice, 8, 131, 145 Auguste, 179
spindle, 145 textile production, 7
spinning division of labour (in West Africa),
in India, 145 97
in West Africa, 97 English investment in India, 140,
spinning mill (in Pondicherry), 148 142–144
staple theory, 197 in India, 128, 133
steam machine, 150, 154 in Pondicherry, 106, 146, 150, 154
Steward, Henry, 101 in Senegal, 111
store of value, 104, 107 in South India, 130, 134, 154
strange farmers, 51–53. See also in West Africa, 96, 109, 110, 203
groundnuts; Mandinka; migrant organisation in South India, 135
labourers; Soninke spread in West Africa, 97, 108
substantivists, 103 technology (in West Africa), 96, 97
Suez Canal, 197 textiles, 6, 8, 9, 15, 95, 98, 99, 138
sugar, 6, 9, 92, 138, 139, 173, 174, Theodoridis, Dimitrios, 31
176, 198 Thioub, Ibrahima, 89
Sugihara, Kaoru, 198 Thomas Tobin and Son, 173
Sulayman Baal, 35 Thornton, John, 4, 99
Sunda Islands, 63 timber, 60, 144
Sundström, Lars, 105 Timbuktu, 96
Superior Council, 145 tin, 8
Surat, 137, 145 Tinduf, 34
Swarnalatha, Potkuchi, 141 Tinnevelly, 131, 132
Sweden, 170 Tiruchirappalli, 145
Swindell, Kenneth, 51 tobacco, 6, 9, 30, 99, 100
Switzerland, 175 Tobin family, 172
John, 41, 172
Patrick, 172
T Thomas, 173
tama, 108 Torodbe, 34, 35
Tanjore, 130 Tosh, John, 42
tariff Trade Ounce, 104
in French Senegal in 1864, 209 traitants, 179, 182
in the United States in 1842, 51 transport revolution, 176, 196, 197
in the United States in the late trans-Saharan trade, 99, 102
1810s, 9 Trarza, 34, 36, 45, 49, 84, 89, 92,
taste, 2, 5, 7, 8, 13, 16, 59, 99, 109, 103, 107, 111, 117, 182, 183
111, 200, 202, 203 treaty of Paris (1763), 46
tea, 8, 92 treaty of Paris (1783), 46
256  Index

triangular trade, 202 warfare, 37, 48, 49, 176

Trichinopoly, 130 Warri, 38
Tripoli, 99 Watkins, Melville, 198
tropical development, 195, 196 weavers
tropical trade, 196 African, 96, 99, 101
Tuareg, 37, 99 Indian, 2, 53, 202
Tukulor, 98 in Pondicherry, 150
South Asian, 6
weaving
U in India, 131
ummah, 97 in West Africa, 97, 98
United States (US), 9, 50, 51, 170, modernisation in Pondicherry, 146
171, 176, 196, 198, 200, 203 weaving machine, 148
unit of account, 66, 103–109 weaving villages (in India), 15, 132,
Upper Guinea, 60, 108, 109. See 134, 135, 139, 141
also Gambia; Senegambia; Sierra Webb, James, 10, 30, 48, 63, 107,
Leone 110
Uruguay, 32 Weber, Jacques, 129
Uthman dan Fodio, 36, 37, 101 Wenman, Gilbert, 170, 171
Western Borno, 37
Western Ghats, 130
V Williams, Eric, 2
Valentin, Durand, 184 Williamson, Jeffrey, 196, 201
vent-for-surplus theory, 42, 52, 196. Windward Coast, 32, 54
See also Myint, Hla wine, 174, 175
Verminck, Charles-Auguste, 185 Wolof, 87, 98, 108, 109
Victorian era, 199 Woltjer, Pieter, 196
Vizagapatnam, 130, 141 woollens, 9, 138
Volta River, 54, 55, 60 world-system, 3, 201, 202. See also
von Bethmann, Johann Jacob, 175 Wallerstein, Immanuel

W Y
Waalo, 34, 36, 45, 46, 49, 84, 87, 90, Yoruba, 43
109, 96, 99, 101
Waalo-Waalo, 49
Wad Nun, 34 Z
Walajapet, 132 Zaria School, 3
Wales, 139, 170 zwaya, 92, 93
Wallerstein, Immanuel, 3