Bazin - War and Servitude in Segou

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War and servitude in Segou

Jean Bazin
Published online: 28 Jul 2006.
To cite this article: Jean Bazin (1974) War and servitude in Segou, Economy and Society, 3:2, 107-144, DOI:
10.1080/03085147400000007
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W a r and servitude in Segou
Jean Bazin
Introductory note
T h e following article by Jean Bazin is taken from a forthcoming
collective work devoted to slavery in pre-colonial Africa." 'Slavery' is
in fact the notion that we took as the starting point to circumscribe our
subject. I t is a notion, however, that has no theoretical status-and
this became apparent to us at an early stage. So each of us had to grasp
a phenomenon without knowing either its contents or its exact scope.
T h e work is thus in the first place a series of questions: is there a
specific form of bondage that can be called slavery? to what extent
does this form correspond to the representation of it made by the
societies where this form of bondage is found? are we dealing with a
'mode of production'-a notion which itself needs to be defined? T o
answer these questions we needed to apply a method capable of making
Downloaded by [University of Arizona] at 00:15 05 February 2015
adequate concepts appear, since none such were available. Above all
we had to relate to the practice of slavery-and its representation-as
it had been reported to us by those who had lived it. I n this respect
the studies collected in this work, though they may not claim to be a
theoretical contribution, are, we hope, a contribution to theory. T h e
article by Jean Bazin is one of the best illustrations of this.
CLAUDE MEILLASSOUX
Abstract
This article discusses the problem of 'slavery' in the social system of
Segou, Mali. The analysis considers the concept of jon on the axis
jon-horon (captive-free man) elucidating the ambiguities of the two
descriptions on the scale with slave and king at the extremes. The
concept is discussed with reference to the organisation of production,
distribution and exchange; the contrast between state and private
ownership and the nature of dependence are also examined. Jonya (the
condition of jon) is related to the state and an attempt is made to
determine whether it should be seen as a form of slavery or, on the
contrary, as a form of public service; the warrior jon's political power
is a significant element of the analysis.
Introduction
T h e following text is an essay in the partial description of a social
formation that has disappeared. I t makes no other claims. As such,
however, it implies that certain questions are raised.
* Claude Meillassoux, editor, Slavery in Pre-Colonial Africa. Paris : Maspero,
1974.
108 Jean Bazin
Why should a social formation be anything other than that which is

manifest :l the confrontation of groups which continually produce and
reproduce themselves as different and opposed, the specific forms of
this confrontation (which it presupposes and which it brings into being),
the specific form of these groups? Our obsessional need to find, beyond
its existence, that is to say beyond what is practised, a structure which
would be its substance or essence-is this need not merely a result of
the theoretic attitude (which knows only objects and not practise^)?^
Does not our passionate desire to order social formations under this
or that mode of production spring from a university paranoia?
Why should we suppose that social formations have a sort of being-
in-themselves that is purely material (vulgar materialism) or purely
structural (Althusser) of which everything else is only an effect or a
representation? Is this not a way for theoretical knowledge to reconstruct
social reality in its own image (an object to be known and a subject
contemplating it)-in other words, what is it, in a social formation, that
reproduces itself? Relations which are abstract and as such common
to many formations, or only the specific form that they take in this
formation? For my own part, I tend to believe that a social relation
cannot be separated from the meaning it is given, the meaning that it
has for the classes that it carves out; that a social relation cannot but
exist within a discourse and that this discourse has a social reality which
is material and cannot be reduced to the representations of subjects.
That is why I use the critical analysis of a category as a guiding thread
in this text. Together, the categories functioning in a social formation
are the code which is followed in it, that is to say, the network of
divisions within which its differentiated practices make sense.
Is it necessary to divide up social reality into a certain number of
distinct regional entities (or instances)? I s not the division that we make
between economic,political and ideologicalitself categorial, that is, specific
to the mode of appearing (the code) of the bourgeois society within
which we speak?
What does it mean for production to be determinant? Is it deter-
minant because it is the production of material goods that are necessary
to a society (bourgeois materialism, productivism) or because the
production of material goods is indissolubly the production and
reproduction of the specific social forms in which these goods are
produced?
Do we finally arrive, through knowledge, at a secret level of social
reality which is unknown to the actors themselves, to an essence
which is a privilege reserved for us, the theoreticians? T o the extent
that a social form reproduces itself, and reproduces the domination of
which it is the medium, everything tends to make it appear as natural
rather than as a form, and at the same time as quite separated from
others. The task of a critical discourse (or Marx's in Capital) is to
re-establish the forms as such and to link again what has become
W a r and servitude in Segou 109
~eparated.~ It is not a question of revealing a Truth, but saying what

is forbidden, of destroying the categories of the dominant discourse.
In one sense, it is truly a task of description.
Slavery in Segou
0.1. The subject of this text and its scope is the word jon, usually
translated as 'captive' or 'slave'. I shall analyse the different meanings
it can assume (both in its simple and composite forms) in Segou
(Mali), on the basis of a series of discursive sequences differing in type
(interviews, lineage or village accounts, 'national' epic), in date,4 and
in the varying status of those who relate them in the present social
structure, and of their ancestors in the earlier structure (dynastic
lineage, war leaders, caste people, royal slaves, subjected villagers). I
take this term as it is given, in its relative imprecision: the semantic
field of such a category, as well as its distortions, the separations which
it creates and those which it ignores, in my opinion all indicate the
latent form of the social practice in which it functioned. It is true that
it includes different relations of production (productive captives and
predatory captives, simple relations of service, and production of a
commercialised surplus . . .) ; but this ambiguity is significant because

it refers to the connections of these relations within a single formation:
the 'Bambara' state of S e g ~ uIn . ~fact, in our view the concept of jonya
(condition of 'jon') only appears to be undefined in so far as it cannot
be identified with what is commonly-i.e. in the framework of bourgeois
categories-understood to be slavery: taken as a whole, it is beyond
the difference which we accept between political and economic domin-
a t i ~ nThe
. ~ slave is only a kind of labourer, a labourer who is not free:
the jon cannot be reduced to this, or at least never entirely; if he appears
as such, this is only in one of his temporary and specific forms. Slavery
is the private appropriation of a person by another (the fact that the
class of these individually 'free' workers is in fact collectively appro-
priated by the bourgeois class,7 seems to be ascribable to slavery only
by a linguistic misconception specific to militant rethoric); on the
contrary jonya does not imply any particular form of appropriation; it
can just as well be public as private, state as domestic.
0.2. On the other hand it is impossible to establish a strict equivalence
between this term jon, as it is used in Segou, and the concepts either
of a separate (be it only juridically) social group or of a specific position
within the relations of production. First because it is by no means a
concept; it is a practical category, a symbolic element in this type of
perpetual interplay of social denomination: distribution of honorific
and degrading names, and relative definition of statuses. It is within
this categorising model organised around two poles-jon on the one
hand and horon ('free man') on the other-that certain practices are
still reflected and legitimated (e.g. with whom may I ally without
l l0 Jean Bazin
forming a misalliance? To whom must I give and from whom may I

receive? etc. . . .). The functional efficiencyof these categories, i.e. the
number of social manipulations which they permit, is directly related
to their ambiguity. That is why they never define the possibility of a
knowledge, even if they wear its mask in this spontaneous pseudo-
sociology created by the artificial situation of an informant being
questioned and reproduced by 'vulgar' anthropology (in the sense in
which Marx speaks of vulgar economics). The simple antinomy doulosl
eleutheros was no doubt adequate to the expression of daily social
habits, although it led one to confuse the barbarian to be sold in the
market with the Athenian as debt slave to another Athenian, and
although one could only understand the situation of the State slaves,
Hilots in Sparta or peasants of Egypt (Finley 1964), as semi-servitude
or quasi-freedom. Similarly, it is better to see the couple jonlhoron as
delimiting a continuous axis on which each individual (or each group),
by making use of the diversity and the opposition of criteria, seeks
to place himself in the best position possible by an estimate which can
always be challenged and which is never recognised by more than a
varying section of the partners. The usefulness of such a statutory
language for the domination which it serves-as one of the elements
of reproduction of a social formation-is precisely in its ability to

express within itself the fundamental antagonisms while concealing the
position of the real breaks which they imply and to transfer the plurality
of relations of production, as well as the contradictions specific to each
one of them, on a single statutory scale where the differences appear
as merely quantitative.
0.3. The options are all the greater in the state of Segou since, at
least within the central apparatus and its direct dependant^,^ no one
is excluded from qualification as jon in some way or another if the
diverse relevant principles and points of view are taken into considera-
tion. Even the absolute and absolutely recognised extreme position of
horonya ('condition of free man') remains theoretically vacant, since the
Jara-Ngolosi's dynastic clan itself is the descendant of a jon from the
previous dynasty. On the other hand there are very few jon who have
no legitimate claim to a degree of horonya which separates them from
the absolute degradation of the slave subject to sale on a market. This
is due to a double ambiguity of categories. On the one hand, the term
jon can indicate simultaneously a personal determination of status
independent of the factual situation-because the 'mark of servitude'
is transmitted hereditarily: it is the extreme case of the 'slave' king9
and a factual situation independent of any statutory quality: the
condition of absolute heteronomy, of despotic appropriation of one
person's will by another.
Thus for example the explorer Raffenel, prisoner of the

Masasi of Kaarta, completely at the mercy of his presumed
War and servitude in Segou I II
protector, Barka, an intriguing prince from Kamera, is in a

situation which recalls jonya :
'I was thus under the command of Barka; I was dependant
on him; in other words, I was his captive as my negroes pointed
out in my presence' (Raffenel 1856, vol. I, pp. 431-2).
Because horonya is not reducible to the mere fact of not being enslaved
but, at least ideally, defines a condition of economic and political10
autonomy, strict relations of hierarchical obedience, of an authoritarian
division of labour, which guarantee
- the cohesion and efficiency of the
political and warring apparatus of Segou, are necessarily conceptualised
as servitude.
When Seribajan, a Traore of the chiefly (Masa) Digani lineage, was
offered the leadership of Farako, through the mediation of his friend,
king Da's favourite griot, first he refused three times, one of his des-
cendants relates. 'I don't want to become the fama's jon.' Because, in
a way, it is to give up one's status as 'free man' to accept a position of
subordination, to hold power-whatever its extent-through and for
another.
This second ambiguity of the term jon is that it refers simultaneously
to two orders of domination, that of a master over his slave and that of
the State over its dependants (in other words of the famall over his
subordinates). That is why although some consider all the Segu-Kaw
('people of Segou') as a body, to be jon as the instruments of royal
will, the latter have the right to consider themselves 'free' since they
are in the public service of the warrior community, and not the
instruments of production of any private person.
Production
1.1. Of the various forms which it includes, jonya however refers to
the common ground of its production. For whatever position the jon
may have been allocated, they must first have been produced as jon.
The present servile condition thus recalls an initial act of violence,
capture, which caused it. In a sense, the term jon primarily describes
this purely factual situation of 'captive'. Because this meaning is always
recognised, even latently, many people whose effective situation of
dependence is defined as jon, make efforts to erase any allusion to such a
degrading original episode in the account of their lineage history. It
does seem however, that such individual cases of violence are in the
majority of cases the real origin of the jonya. But reference to this
initial appropriation can only define the jon abstractly as distinct from
the concrete forms of reproduction of the relation of appropriation. If
capture effectively produces the jon, it only serves to reproduce his
dependence to the extent to which this strictly individual event is
transformed into a social taint which is transmitted to the descendants
I I2 Jean Bazin
although weakening from one generation to the next. At a given period,

most captives are only captive in memory and most jon are only jon
by birth (woloso-jon: 'jon born at home'). But because, in the final
analysis, the possibility of reproduction of this dependence (in its
absolute form) is very limited, society is compelled to constantly
recapture, as if the personal disgrace of capture were the most efficient
weapon of subordination.
1.2. Although it does not involve the extraction of an object from its
given natural form, but the extraction of an individual from a specific
social form, the production of slaves is a form of production; it is the
transformation of a horon into a jon. Among all predatory activities, it
is the only practice which is really productive, since the plundering of
goods is a mere change of ownership and place. The dominant moment
of this production is the practice of violence on an individual to remove
him from the network of links and separations (age, sex, kin, affinity,
lineage, clientship, village) which previously defined him as unique in
his place and his rights. A defined person is turned into an undefined
individual, particular but no longer specific, an anybody who can be-
come anything, be arbitrarily assigned to any task.
However, capture is only the dominant element of this complex
process of transformation. The captive is not yet the slave. The break
with his relations of origin must be sharpened in order to create an
entirely new servile personality.
The captive is first marked (in particular, so that he will be recognised
as such if he escapes). Ayuba Suleyman relates that as soon as he was
seized by a group from Malinke, his hair and beard were shaved-
which he considers to be the highest indignity-in order to pretend
that he was a war spoil (Curtin 1967, p. 40). Those who, in Segou
became ton-jon, i.e. the king's warrior captives, had their heads shaved,
but kept one or two tufts of hair (tulu) on the top (see Monteil 1923,
p. 40 and p. 313). The mark of the Segukaw, three slits on each side
of the temple at the lower jaw-bone, seem to have been originally the
mark which the Kulubali imposed on their jon.
The captive also receives a new name. Some names are more or less
reserved for slaves: Allamason, Allahina (God has had pity). In Segou
the fama imposes a special name (ton-jon-togo) usually in the shape
of a proverb or a slogan, e.g. Ke-mafe (contraction of a phrase which
means 'it is better to be someone's man than to be alone'), Kolon-
jugu-jiri ('the wood of a bad well', i.e. the wood of a bad well falls
back into the well, the harm which one commits falls back on oneself),
Da-ye-ma-cen ('the mouth destroys the man'), etc. It is often said that
the slave adopts his master's jamu (clan name as well as honorific
name). In fact, the ion really has no jamu since he is never greeted in
that way.
By removing the captive from the location of the capture, the trans-
port of the jon also completes the production of servitude by reducing
the likelihood of liberation, i.e. of reintegration into the original relations.

The greater the distance, the greater the increase in the value of the
jon (see Mungo Park, p. 288). Similarly, the fact that he is ignorant
of his place of origin and even of free life gives a child greater saleable
value (which is however reduced by the risk of death). The nudity or
almost nudity of slaves, the inhumanity with which they are treated,
during this transport from production point to place of sale, are not
merely accounted for by the rapacity and cruelty of the merchants.
They are also caused by a symbolic violence, a systematic practice of
dehumanisation, which culminates in sale.
1 . 3 . Capture is not the only source of slavery. The initial violence
necessary may be internal rather than external, i.e. exercised by the
community itself on one of its members. As well as capture, Mungo
Park (chapter 22, p. 290) distinguishes three causes of slavery: famine,
insolvency, certain crimes; but he adds immediately that 'war is the
most productive source of all'.
Despite the explicit generality of his statement in this chapter Mungo
Park in fact describes mainly Malinke country (from the Niger valley
to Gambia). I t is a politically disorganised zone, an area of predation
disputed by the surrounding authorities (Segou, the kulubali of Kaarta,
the chiefdoms of Fu1adugu)-and, as Mungo Park points out, famines

are most often directly or indirectly due to war. I t is also the slave
merchants' (Malinke or Janake) zone of residence and operation, inter-
mediaries of the European trading posts on the Atlantic coast-and
insolvency appears essentially as a risk inherent to commercial enterprise,
which is mainly based on credit sale and purchase (it is particularly
in fact a rather theoretical weapon of European dealers against their
African intermediaries).
It seems that very few of the jon from Segou have their origin in
this type of internal violence. I t can be assumed that this type of jon
are either reduced to local servitude according to a regime which may
be linked with intensive exploitation but is closer to bondage than to
slavery since the individual is not really separated from his kinship
links and lineage allegiance ; or else directly exported to external buyers.
I n any case, the form of production of its slaves does not affect the
control of Segou in any way.
However the presence of the State of Segou gives subject village
communities the possibility of expelling one of their undesirable
members by handing him over to the fama as jon (and at the same
time by 'giving themselves' to the fama: the 'juniors' or junior branches
of certain lineages have the possibility of acquiring a position of power
in the central warrior apparatus, a position which they are refused in
their village). At least two famous cases are known: Zan Jara, ancestor
of a very important lineage of tonjon chiefs, is said to have been
handed over to Biton as jon by his village (in the Beledugu) which
accused him of stealing bees. Ngolo Jara himself, ancestor of the
114 Jean Bazin
dynastic lineage of the Ngolosi, is said to have been handed over to

Biton as disongo (annual tribute, usually paid in cowries). I t seems
that this wasn't a form of bondage (due to poverty in cowries) but a
real expulsion resulting from intra-lineage conflict. Ngolo, when he
became fama, is reputed to have gone back to destroy his own village
and to massacre his paternal uncles.
On the other hand capture is not necessarily production of a jon
because it may be the second or third capture of individuals who are
already jon, i.e. a mere change of hands and location. Mungo Park
notices that, during Monzon's war against the Kaarta, of 900 prisoners
taken in a single day by the Segou army, only 70 were horon (chapter
22, p. 289). Like most of Segou's rival organised armies, that of Kaarta
includes regiments of captives, and it is also usual for horon warriors or
chiefs to be accompanied by their personal jon on foot and heavily
laden, while their masters are on horseback and better armed (see
Raffenel 1856, I, pp. 435 ff). Moreover, a captured horon has some
chance of seeing his family attempt to get him back by paying a ransom
(usually one or two captives as replacement). But many village com-
munities are also large consumers of servile labour assigned to agri-
cultural labour (Malinke, Southern Jula cities, Marka villages)12 and
their slaves are the easiest prey to rainy season raids against agricultural
villages. In many cases capturing operations take the form of a re-
distribution of the servile mass for the benefit of Segou and at the
expense of the peripheral poles of accumulation. (The situation is
different in the predatory zones which can be assumed to be much less
rich in slaves: Bambara land at the south-west of Segou, Senouflo-
Minianka, Bobo). I t must be noted however that recapture cannot be
reduced to a mere transfer: once the slave is settled in a unit of pro-
duction, a personal link tends to develop with the master lineage which
makes his resale, and even more so that of his children (woloso-jon),
difficult and the intensity of exploitation tends to diminish gradually.
Thus recapture results in the 'liberation' of the jon from this link, the
transformation of the woloso into jon and the continuous reinsertion
into circulation of a section of the servile mass while it reintensifies
exploitation in the interest of a new master.
If capture is not always production of a jon, it is also because servile
life is twice preferable to death, by the prisoner himself-it is said that
the Bobo, for example, often committed suicide after their capture-
and by the victor. Even if the production of slaves is what determines
it, Bambara war is in no way reducible to a rational economic operation.
Each victory was marked ritually by the sacrifice of a few lives. After
the capture of a village the Segukaw usually executed old men and
women (the dene-koro-shu-'corpses at the bottom of the wall') as well
as a few important personalities: war leaders, courageous warriors (by
contrast with the Toucouleurs who, it seems from reading Mage's
accounts, eliminated the entire captured male adult population).
War and servitude in Segou 115
Besides many ton-jon lineages are descendent from sons or close relatives
of defeated chiefs (see on this point, concerning Kaarta, Raffene,
1856, I, P. 444).
1.5. T h e production of jon considered simply as capture, is operated
according to different principles. T h e 'people of Segou' usually dis-
tinguish three types of operations :l3
(a) Kele (the word indicates simultaneously army and expedition). I t is
a long-term project, involving considerable personnel (which implies a
previous phase of more or less extensive mobilisation of subject villages
and of material preparations : weapons, powder, bullets, food, etc.) and
a complex system of co-operation between specialised groups both
before the fight (numu for the manufacture of bullets, somono for
transport, etc.)14 and during the battle (Clite troops, assault corps,
cavalry, etc.). T h e fama and the keletigi ('The one who has the war',
usually one of the ton-jon chiefs appointed to the leadership of the
operations) appear as the indispensable co-ordinators of this complex
process. All the loot (at least theoretically) is handed over to the fama
who redistributes part of it.
(b) soboli ('to send the horses in a gallop'). This is a rapid raid conducted
by a small group (about 40) of professional warriors dependent on the
fama (ton-jon), undertaken on his instructions or at least with his

agreement, and aimed against one or a number of villages from a zone
which is not subjected to Segou. T h e aim is neither to take a village
nor even to fight, but to take what can be taken with greatest ease
(women, children, cattle, etc.). I t is an operation which can be set up
during any season (by contrast with the kele which can only take place
during the dry season).
(c) jado. This is nothing more nor less than robbery, sometimes
practised by an isolated individual, but more often by a group of
about ten men, on horseback or on foot, without organisation or
leader, and without any sharing of the loot (each person keeps what
he catches). I t is called 'mad dogs in the bush'. The robbery of men
(and particularly of children) is the most frequent aim. The victims
are immediately resold to intermediaries who assume the responsibility
of removing them rapidly from the location of the crime. T h e operation
can take place within the kingdom and even on occasion at the expense
of a neighbouring village. I t is clandestine and theoretically liable to
the death penalty. I n fact it is often merely unofficial, the fama being
compelled to tolerate the fact that his ton-jon, professional warriors and
predators, who live essentially on loot, have recourse to this means
when wars are infrequent or less productive. However, this tolerance
does not give him any right over the profit of these lootings.
1.6. Of these three forms, the war enterprise (kele) is the mode most
productive in slaves and also the dominant mode, the other two in
Segou are merely supplementary. What defines precisely the specificity
of the State of Segou is that, in a given (though variable) zone, jon
116 Jean Bazin
producing violence is exercised in a dominant way by a specialised

apparatus. The hierarchic structure of this apparatus (and the unequal
distribution of the product which it legitimates) and its authoritarian
division of labour, while they guarantee its efficiency, impose servile
instrumentality on each of its agents. And most of them are themselves
captives or descendants of captives. That is why in the language of the
'people of Segou' jonya refers both to its production, to the violence
experienced and to the violence given, to the captives and the captors;
the same category simultaneously defines the main product of the war
enterprise, the slave, and the relations within which its producers
operate. What transpires is that the ambiguity of jonya, is precisely the
process whereby the State of Segou defines itself in the internal difference
of its two moments:
(a) The massive production of slaves in response to external demand
for servile labour. This demand is multiple and heterogeneous. It comes
from very different social formations which do not use slavery in the
same way: Arab and Saharan worlds, merchant cities near Segou,
village agricultural production, etc. However, here the capitalist
system's demand for its colonial periphery no doubt plays the dominant
role. In a way, the state of Segou belongs to this series of political
formations brought about by the development of the slave trade on the

Atlantic coast.
(b) The massive production of royal dependants, or control by the
state of internal social relations, i.e. the transformation-mainly in the
central zone--of lineage and village structures into a mass of individuals
who share only their common subjection to the fama, and are differenti-
ated only by their role in the authoritarian division of labour and their
position in the hierarchy.
These two moments cannot be separated. The war enterprise (kele)
ensures the reproduction and later the extension of the war apparatus
both directly, through the accumulation of men, and indirectly, through
the sale of captives which allows Segou to replenish supplies of guns,
horses, etc. That is why the kele is at the heart of the system. The
legitimation of royal power is a function of military success and of the
continuous flow of hierarchically-redistributed wealth. That is also why
the appropriation of men is central to the kele to the extent of deter-
mining its strategy and tactics, even if other reasons and aims-which
may be nothing more than pretexts-appear to determine each operation.
Distribution
2.1. The second moment to look at is that of the distribution of the
jon. If the first moment defines the condition of captive only as an
abstract entity-i.e. disregarding differences created before or after the
simple fact of capture-this second moment creates differences by
allocating the captives within a number of networks of relations of

production, choosing one of many places within these networks and at
the same time placing them on a hierarchised scale of statutory positions.
This allocation is analysed in two phases: distribution (or sharing) on
the one hand, exchange on the other. Or rather, it takes place on two
axes: one hands over the captives partly to the fama and partly to his
dependants, i.e. makes them into collectively appropriated jon (but the
collectivity is incarnated in the fama) and privately appropriated jon.
The other separates the jon kept by the Segukaw, by the 'producers'
for their own direct reproduction (simple-to fill the gaps caused by
war--or extended), from those who are exchanged with non-producing
buyers, i.e. strangers to the warrior community. Finally, there are three
categories which, in decreasing statutory order are: (I) the jon sold as
slaves (either by thefama or by his dependants. (2)Thejon appropriated
and personally kept by the dependants. (3) The jon appropriated and
kept by the community (ton or foroba), i.e. in fact by the fama acting
in its name: ton-jon or foroba-jon (see below, 5.5).
2.2. The distribution of the loot immediately follows the successful
expedition and its return to the capital. It usually takes the form of a
hierarchised redistribution: in principle the entire loot must first be
concentrated in the hands of the fama who takes his share, then hands
over the rest to the leader of the expedition who hands some over to
the subordinate chiefs, etc. In fact the soldiers attempt to conceal part
of their gains (cowries or clothes, etc.) despite the supervision which
the fama enforces on the battlefield through specialised spies. Captives
are among the goods which are difficult to conceal except for the
booreladen, those young children who can be hidden in a bag (boore).
It is generally considered that the fama takes between two-thirds
and one half of the loot. However the royal treasury thus constituted-
it is also supplied by cowry tributes and agricultural labour prestations-
at least partly serves to ensure a certain continuity in redistribution
during peaceful periods. It can be assumed that the rate of redistribu-
tion is closely dependent on the political conjuncture, any reduction in
the redistribution flow being capable of bringing about shifts in allegiance
or of favouring the formation of rebel factions. It is greatest in situations
of competition brought about by conflicts, often armed, between princes
for succession to the throne. I t must be added that the fighters are not
the sole beneficiaries of this redistribution: the fama gives wealth and
captives to his favourites and his advisors (jeli,15certain numu, sorcerers
and many mori, famous muslims responsible for his baraka).
This principle of hierarchised redistribution is applied to all goods ;
however for captives, who are loot par excellence, a second principle
seems to be combined with the first; a principle of sharing: when a
warrior has personally captured one or more people, the fama directly
leaves him half his take. It was however rare for a warrior to bring
back more than one captive: in this case the fama kept the captive
118 Jean Bazin
and gave him half of his value in cowries or in various goods. Most
frequently each capture was claimed by many warriors who then had
to share the profit.
2.3. The second phase of this distribution, which separates the jon
who are kept in Segou from those who are sold, first presents the
problem of its determination. In what ratio is this distribution made,
and according to what criteria this selection? Needless to say I do not
have any figures, and this is a very complex mechanism since it is
closely connected to the reproduction of the state in Segou and involves
all its levels of operation. I will limit myself to a few hypothetical
observations:
I. The mode of predation is relatively determinant. The illegaljadoya
operations imply a rapid sale of the victims. Jado tends to produce
nothing but commodity-slaves (it is also the most reliable way to turn
a horon into a slave without the possibility of appeal). That is why
this mode of predation, although very 'artisanal', can appear to the
buyers to be an important, but particularly a more regular source of
supply. Shabayni (1967, pp. 4 6 7 ) notes, during 1750-60, in the region
west of Timbuctu which he calls 'Awsa',l6 that if this practice of
individual kidnapping, very severely punished by local law, did not
exist, there would be few slaves for export to the Maghreb: it consists
mainly in robberies of children, since people over 15 are difficult to
sell in the Maghreb. On the other hand it is a very fragmented but
continuous supply-very few traders bringing more than two or three
slaves at one time.
2. This second moment of the distribution is articulated with the
first: most of the fama's warrior dependants sell most of the jon (at
least the male ones) who are redistributed to them, either immediately
or over a period of time. It is a tendency essential to the system (see
below 4.2) but it is unevenly applied depending on the hierarchical
place and status of the dependant.
3. The fama is the largest slave trader. The ratio of slaves sold
compared to those integrated in one position or another in the war
apparatus, is a function of the intensity of thesaurisation (in gold,
cowries, precious goods and cattle), of the needs in men of the different
sectors of the system, of the needs in guns and horses.
It must be noted that the system necessarily lacks elasticity: once
integrated as foroba-jon in principle captives can no longer be sold.
There are possibilities of stock-piling-Mungo Park (1799, p. 257 and
pp. 318-19) notes that some of the slaves sold by Segou to Kangaba
in 1796 were shackled for three years-but they are limited since there
is some danger in keeping too large a number of prisoners in the capital.
4. The jon's sex is relatively determinant. One generally tends to
keep women (only those who resist are sold). They ensure an extended
demographic reproduction and make polygamy at the higher levels of
the hierarchy easier. They are also very valued for their productive
services, in particular in agriculture (warriors do little agriculture). I t is

no doubt a tendency of most predatory groups: buyers clearly suffer
the consequences and Shabayni (op. cit., pp. 27-8) notes that in
Timbuctu women are more expensive and very scarce (less than 10
per cent of captives).
5. Differences in status before capture play an important part. Some
of the captives kept by Segou are destined to fill the gaps in the specific-
ally military apparatus or to increase its offensive power. Not everybody
can become a warrior. It is unlikely that a jon stupefied by years of
domestic servile tasks-'slaves are usually stupid' says Shabayni (op.
cit., p. 47)-should overnight turn out to be a great captain. What the
dominant ideology perceives as an intrinsic personal quality, courage,
is made up primarily of a certain practical knowledge of fighting and
implies essentially the interiorisation of a code of values, based on
honour, which servitude, for its very reproduction, must necessarily
erase. I t is therefore normal that among captives, horon warriors or
their sons be preferred to others for integration in the army and
particularly in its klite corps. On the contrary adults of fighting age
who have just lost their freedom are devalorised on the market because
it is very likely that they won't accept their fate easily and will attempt
to escape it by any means; traders prefer to buy those who, before their
capture, were already jon or woloso (see Mungo Park, 1799,chapter 22,
P. 290).
Exchange
3.1. Exchange has two results. I t is the final degradation of the jon
and it is also his transfer to a system very different from the warrior
community which produced him, to a mercantile system. If, in the
production of total servitude, capture is the first stage the second is
sale, or in many cases a series of purchases and sales, through which
the individual is definitively separated from his society of origin. Only
the captive 'alienated' to the point of sale, turned into a commodity, a
thing among things, is really jon in the full meaning of the term. A
captive is not a slave. T h e Bambara oppose the marfala jon (jon by the
gun) to the koloma-jon (jon through cowries). I t is statutorily less
degrading to have been subjected to the violence of weapons only and
not that of the market. Corollary: it is very degrading for the warrior-
peasant who lives a life known as banmanaya to buy his jon. I t is easily
the proof of an inability to 'win' them himself at war, or of an appetite
for the accumulation of wealth-two features which set the peaceable
and despised image of the Marka.17 The marfala-jon is thus most
frequently captive of a warrior and later captive-warrior himself. T h e
purchased jon is slave of an agricultural or artisanal task. Although in
reality not all the jon of Segou fight, in theory it is considered that all
120 Jean Bazin
have the possibility to do so, and thus to reveal their 'courage'. By

once again generously risking his life-which servitude has indeed
saved-the warrior jon reconquers his honour, even if only post-
humously. On the other hand, the slave's life belongs to none other
than his master.
3.2. The 'people of Segou', principally producers of jon, sell them
but rarely buy any. Some because war is enough to enrich themselves
with captives, others because it does not even give them enough wealth
to prevent them from having to sell those whom they have. The internal
circulation of the jon remains weak. Besides the fama, the main
seller, refuses to have an exchange relationship with his dependants.
Thus sale is generally export and exchange marks the jon's departure
from the warrior community. Slaves are not sold on the markets of
Segu-Sikoro (the capital) and the main ton-jon villages (they are mainly
food markets). The Bambara sell them at home to the travelling foreign
buyers (mainly Marka and Maures) or go and sell them in the Marka's
merchant cities situated at the periphery of the central zone of the
kingdom (Nyamina, Sinsani--or Sansanding-Nyaro, etc.). The fama
sends small groups of them by river up to Bamako, Kangaba (important
slave market where gold dust is acquired in exchange) and even Kankan
(Mungo Park, p. 257 and pp. 318-19). In all cases exchange tends to
appear only on the basis of a geographic, ethnic and religious separation
between producing and purchasing groups. These separations express,
although only approximately, the difference between predatory and
mercantile economies, between two complementary modes of accumu-
lation which can only reproduce themselves in their mutual separation.
Among these trading groups, the Marka certainly play the dominant
role, first because without having a monopoly, they are the favourite
intermediaries between the Bambara-who by tradition refuse to engage
in any commercial activity-and other groups (Maures and Maghrebins,
Maninka-mori and Jakhanke in the west, Jenekaw-people of Djenne-
in the east, Jula in the south). Their two metropoles, Nyamina and
Sinsani, are in a way the official ports of the kingdom. The network
of the marka-dugu communities subject to the fama, paying tribute
but maintaining a fairly large autonomy, constitutes a sort of mercantile
and peaceful adjunct to the warrior state of Segou.
3.3. The jon are a source of profit for the Marka in two ways. First
as commodities, through the profit realised on their resale to more
peripheral purchasers. If the available information on prices is un-
reliable (from 20.000 to 80.000 cowries for an adult male slave; from
two to twelve slaves per horse) at least it indicates that the slave market
was subject to rapid and large variations, because of the irregularity
of production, each large expedition bringing about a temporary glut.
(Informants tend mainly to remember the much lower prices of the
Samorian period, a phase of massive production). These variations can
be the source of sizeable profits. If the fama is a more difficult partner
because he can use his supply capacity on more distant markets, and
his power over the Marka to influence negotiations, the ton-jon on the
contrary, in a hurry to dispose of their take to satisfy their needs, are
no doubt a source of greater profit.
But a great part of the slaves bought from the Bambara is locally
kept and allocated to production. A large proportion of the population
of the merchant cities is servile. At Busen in the south of Sansanding,
it is remembered that the jon were more numerous than the horon.
At Sansanding each of the four great original lineages (Kuma, Sise,
Sako, Sanogo) owned between 200 and 1,000 of them. The Kuma are
reputed to have had many thousands in 1863 (Mage, p. 276). T o these
must be added those of the often very wealthy recently settled traders,
like the Silla, attracted by the town's prosperity. According to Mungo
Park the total population was approximately ~o,oooinhabitants. The
number of these slaves can only be understood by reference to the
complex process of accumulation of which they are the corner stone.
They constitute the main material of a capital-in a system based on
slavery the labour force takes the form of a means of production-
which is increased by their surplus labour as well as being a merely
commercial capital (use of servile manpower for exchange activities)
and a productive capital (production for sale). It is what Caillie, des-

cribing the Djenean economy, calls a 'speculative use of the slave'
(vol. 2, p. 208) by contrast with those regions in which the jon seems
to him to be used only to relieve the masters of the burden of the
agricultural labour necessary to subsistence.
3.4. In Sansanding and its satellite markadugu (Togu, Busen, etc.)
slave labour is distributed over three sectors. First the production of
foodstuffs (mainly millet) which remains determined by the subsistence
needs of the 'familia' since the marka do not themselves trade grain.
For this purpose slaves are partly settled in agricultural villages (cike-
bugu) around the town, under the leadership of slave-foremen (jonkun-
tigi). The second sector is that of commercial activities, in particular
of long-distance trade with the Worodugu (Tengerela area): the slaves
operate as carriers or escorts (salt and materials in one direction, cola
in the other); some even acquire the responsibility of these distant
expeditions in the master's name. T o this are added local operations,
packing of commodities, accounting of cowries, retail trade, etc. (see
Caillie's description of Djenne). Artisanal servile production constitutes
the third sector: slaves grow cotton, female slaves (jonmuso) spin it,
under the supervision of their mistresses, male slaves weave it. Barth
mentions Sansanding as an important centre for weaving and the
manufacture of clothing (vol. 3, p. 358) and this industry is sufficiently
important to enable the town to deliver on the spot 1,000 'dampe'
loincloths to Amadou in 1863 as an exceptional tax (Mage, p. 275).
These products are sold to the Bambara, the Maures (in exchange for
salt) and in Worodugu.
B
122 Jean Bazin
3.5. T h e combination of these three sectors, although all jon do not

participate equally in all three, allows for continuous global exploitation
of the servile mass, dry season activities (weaving, long distance trade)
being complementary to those of the wet season (agriculture). But this
exploitation is neither continually nor normally practised at its most
intensive level. Total domination, which is necessarily based on pure
violence (shackling, and various punishments) affects only a minority
of jon (those who have just been bought), and may be regarded as a
form of training.
The continuous reproduction of maximum exploitation would
demand a specialised repressive apparatus, incompatible with the
lineage structure of the community, and too expensive considering the
limited development of the trading sector. T h e state of Segou does
not play this role (but only that of supplier of slaves), first because the
Marka communities tend to preserve their internal autonomy, but
mainly because it in fact plays the opposite role of attraction and
refuge zone (the status of royal captive is an enviable objective). T h e
Bambara of the neighbouring villages, particular the Icala who are
more or less independent of Segou, capture the fugitives only to resell
them when they do not go as far as to set up raiding operations against
marka agricultural villages.

I n most cases the slave, as his 'seniority' increases, acquires in-
dividually a certain autonomy at a rhythm and within limits determined
by the master's wealth in servile labour, the sector in which he is used,
but also the particular character of the personal relationship between
each jon and his master. That is why, from a synchronic and global
point of view, the real regime of slavery can be very variable (by
contrast with what certain old colonial hands would have us believe).
T h e starting point of the process is usually the jon's marriage (or rather
his official pairing, since there is no ritual): the master gives the new
family unit a jon foro (a jon's field) separate from the master's field
(foroba) which the new unit may work autonomously and to its profit
during free time whose length varies.18 T h e main part of the jon's sub-
sistence continues to be ensured by the produce of the foroba : however
the evening meal, those of the free days, can be the responsibility of
the slaves. Even if the produce of the jon foro must therefore ensure a
complement of subsistence, this division of the process and time of
labour can however allow, under certain conditions, some personal
accumulation by the jon, i.e. his appropriation of part of the surplus
labour. Of course all depends on the length of time of free labour and
the distribution between redistributed subsistence and directly produce
subsistence, but also on the amount of family labour the jon has at his
disposal. I n fact, the jon of Sansanding in particular are sellers of food
. products (millet) bought by the Maures or the traders of Djenne and
Timbuctu. They also grow cotton (or else the master gives them part
of the cotton they have grown on his fields) and weave for their own
account. To this are added the personal profits which trusted slaves
can make from the trading expeditions in which they participate. This
accumulation which can be used for the purchase of slaves (the jon-
majon or 'slaves of slaves') contributes to the increase in the servile
family's autonomy. However the slave in fact only owns property by
tolerance and the accumulation which he realises is always precarious
since the master, at least theoretically, retains the possibility of levying
what he wants at any moment. In particular the slave's death is the
occasion of the most important levies, although no doubt his descendents
are never totally dispossessed. Parallel with this increase in autonomy,
the relation of servitude tends to turn into a relationship of clientship,
to internalise in the form of political faithfulness to the master and his
lineage. The appropriation of the surplus takes the form of occasional
'gifts' and 'assistance' from the subordinate to his superior. The use-
fulness of the jon is no longer strictly economic. In the conflicts which
tore Sansanding apart in the nineteenth century, between Sise and
Kuma factions for the control of the chiefship (dugutigiya) and the
economic advantages which it confers (tax on caravans), then later
between pro-Bambara and pro-Toucouleur, from 1859 onwards, the
jon of the main lineages constitute the main part of the military and
political forces present (see Mage's account).
Captives' captives
4.1. A truly 'Bambara' slavery is contrasted to this 'Marka' slavery.
That at least is what the 'people of Segou' say, and it is an indication,
in an excessively simple ethnic terminology, of the variety of real social
relations within a single category. At first this difference is only
quantitative. Usually the Segou Bambara have few slaves because they
buy none or very few and sell most of those whom they acquire by war
or raiding expeditions. The typical image given derisorily by the
Marka of the ton-jon warrior is that he rushes to sell his jon (for cowries),
to go and drink. This interpretation is recognised by the ton-jon des-
cendents, but they derive glory from it. For, if the capture of slaves
makes one important, their ownership corrupts. The proof is that
those who accumulated them do not have the power to catch them
(the Marka never participate in wars). The honourable man is not a
wealthy man. Just as he will risk his own life for little, he must also
get rid of the goods which he wins by risking it-and the favourite
form of this squandering is generous consumption of do10 (millet beer)
and di (mead), they are the daily ritual of the old soldier, pre-fight
drugs but also recurrent signs that the sole meaning of his existence is
to fight. The real ton-jon has no needs. 'He fears only humiliation and
shame.' When he leaves for war, he even sells his sleeping mat, leaving
nothing behind him so that no one can inherit from him (words of
G. Diara, descendent of the royal dynasty, related by Sauvageot, p 29).
1 24 Jean Bazin
4.2. This honourable 'poverty', as an ideal norm of behaviour,

however also appears to be the cover for a real poverty. The offensive
potential of the kingdom is based as much on the mass of troops which
can be mobilised-occasional warriors who also produce their own
subsistence within the framework of the village-as on the existence of a
permanent body of quasi-profesional warriors, concentrated mainly in
the capital and the two garrison villages which surround it (Mbeba,
Banankozo, Farako, etc.) : the latter do little agriculture and usually
not enough to satisfy their needs; they are even less likely to have any
surplus product to sell and exchange for materials, clothes, weapons,
etc., and to pay matrimonial compensation (in cowries). They are thus
closely dependent on the resale of their war loot, supplemented by the
produce of the jadoya operations which they carry out on their own
account when necessary. As for their leaders, the very fragility of their
status as captives merely risen in status obliges them to redistribute
constantly (in the form of drinking parties or of gifts of 'prestige
goods') to their subordinates as well as to those jeli or other people
who take responsibility to spread word of their fame; so that their
appearance of wealth is only due to the intensity of the flow of wealth
which passes through their hands, and they are in this way condemned
to accumulate only fame. It is thus, to a large extent, because of need,

that the slave is essentially exchange value for those who produce him.
Those slaves who are kept-and who, besides, remain potential exchange
value~~~-are integrated in the family units: their labour is added to
that of the masters or partly replaces it but is not part of a process of
mercantile accumulation.
The Mbeba warriors do little agriculture. They sell most of their
captives except the women-who, in any case, once married and
mothers, lose their servile status-and a few jon whom they keep 'to
make the banco'.
At Banankozo, Da-ye-ma-cen (Kulubali), important warrior chief of
.famu Da, leads a production and consumption unit (gwa) of about
zoo people. A collective field is grown by the group but it is not adequate
to its maintenance. There are no individual fields (at least for the men).
Subsistence is mainly based on the sale of war loot (cowry), gifts
from the fama, and the production of other of the fama's captives,
who are assigned essentially to agricultural tasks and settled in neigh-
bouring villages dependent on Banankozo. The captives produced by
the group are concentrated in the hands of the gwatigi (as well as the
rest of the loot). By their sale he ensures the satisfaction of the collective
needs (foodstuffs, clothes, matrimonial compensations . . .); he re-
distributes some of them to his dependants who sell them for their
personal needs (supplementary food, beer, various entertainments);
finally he keeps a few whom he distributes among his women. Each of
his seven wives has at least one who cultivates for her, under her
supervision.
The difference between 'bambara' and 'Marka' slavery is qualitative.

In both junctures-predatory and merchant--of the global process of
production, the jon does not in fact exist in the same form, and therefore
the relation of servitude itself varies. According to the 'people of
Segou', the Marka have many slaves because they don't like to work
themselves and prefer to supervise; the Bambara on the contrary work
in the fields with their captives and form with them a single unit of
consumption (the collective meal brings together all the men of the
group whatever their status). Whereas among the Marka, the horon
consider weaving degrading and reserve it for captives, in Bambara
villages masters and slaves can practise it concurrently. And the same
goes for war, in which captives can participate with the hope of retaining
at least part of the loot which they win. Briefly, as the 'people of Segou'
say, 'the Bambara and his jon are one'. The proof is that a captive can
inherit the wife of his deceased make (master) and even assume the
leadership of the gwa as a sort of regent, if there is no legitimate heir
of the right age (a practice which has been observed in certain cases).
Needless to say that the transfer of this difference to the ethnico-
religious language of the Bambara-Marka opposition shifts it from its
precise location, that of relations of production. In fact, on the one
hand all communities classified as 'marka' are not orientated by a

process of merchant accumulation; some are even integrated to some
extent into the Segou war apparatus and thus somewhat 'Bambara'
in their way of life. On the other hand, if the Bambara themselves
dislike taking on specialised commercial activities, certain communities
are orientated towards the production of saleable surplus to supply
the important demand for foodstuffs, in particular that of the Maures
and of the merchant cities at the edge of the desert, as well as that of
Segou and the more war-orientated communities. Two examples: the
Bware Bambara of Tango in Kala, regularly sold foodstuffs to the
Maures as well as to 'merchants from the East'. With the produce of
these (cowry) sales they bought slaves on the market at Nyaro. However,
they also obtained slaves in war, by participating in the expeditions led
by the Sarnake chiefs of Pogo, vassals of Segou. Nearer Segou, about
20 km south, the Sola Bambara remember that certain gwa succeeded
in acquiring a servile labour force by the sale of agricultural surplus
on the local markets, certainjon being however obtained by (compulsory)
participation in the fama's wars.
4.4. But shouldn't this difference in the condition of the jon also be
discussed with reference to the difference of status of the masters? T o
the extent to which reproduction of the relation of servitude depends
on reproduction of the status distance which it implies,jonya necessarily
takes a different aspect when each jon is very likely to be jon to none
other than another jon. Because most of the possessors of captives, in
Segou and in the central zone, are themselves held as captives by the
fama, the category jonya, by being generalised, loses its discriminatory
126 Jean Bazin
power, or as an informant puts it 'the strength of servitude (jonya

barika) is not great'. A society 'without free men' has some difficulty
in being slaving. Besides because it is weak, the gap must be kept silent:
whereas in markadugu slavery and the distribution of servile and free
status between families are easily subject to public and open discussion,
in the Bambara villages of Segou this kind of information is obtained
only with great difficulty and under the seal of secrecy. The word
jon-as a qualifier naming someone-seems to be the subject of a
rigorous taboo, which is by-passed by the use of various euphemisms
('people who are with so and so', 'people whom one has in one's hand' :
bolola-mogow). It is significant that the origin of this taboo is attributed
to the Ngolosi, under whose reign it was, it seems, forbidden to say
'so and so is my jon'. The dominant ideology of the kingdom is to
assert not a strict separation of the levels, but rather the common and
equal dependence of all towards a single master who is himself after
all none other than the descendent of a 'successful'jon.
Although this reminder of the origins of the dynasty may on occasion
have been degrading-e.g. in the mouth of its enemies, the kulubali
fama of Kaarta, cousins of the former masters of Segou-it is significant
that the account of the life of Ngolo Jara, of his servitude in the ranks
of Biton's jon, then of his progressive conquest of power, takes a choice

place in the jeli's most ordinary accounts, who build a whole subtle
ideological game on this theme, in which power is at the same time
inherited by its legitimate owners and conquered at their expense-a
kind of display of the irresistible rise of a new man certainly favoured
by fate but whose main legitimation is to have been a ton-jon among
other ton-jon, brought to power by the consent of his equals. Besides,
the fama is reputed to have symbolically joined in the dance when the
woloso-don was played (the dance rhythm specific to the woloso).
4.5. Thus ownership of a slave does not necessarily make a man free.
T o the extent to which the ton-jon warrior is dispossessed of his direct
gains, all he has appears to be the gift of a superior, and finally of the
fama, i.e. a reaffirmation of his dependence. So that even the slave he
owns is still a sign of his servitude. That may be a cause of submission.
T o the numu (blacksmith) leaders of Byanza the fama fairly regularly
donated a slave, whom they hurriedly resold: for, says their descendent
'did we need slaves, while we were ourselves dependent (mu-fe-mu)
"people with somebody")'? And even the wealth which the king gives
to his close advisors,jeli Dante orgaranke20Simagan, is still royal wealth,
since it is only given to show the generosity of the giver and on the
other hand the position of favourite is always eminently precarious.
What the fama gives to his people still belongs to him. Similarly, in the
family community, what is held individually still belongs to all. Similarly
the slave's wealth has always as limit what the master agrees not to
take from him. In other words the despotic relation, the appropriation
by the fama of the person of his dependants-the form taken here by
W a r and servitude in Segou 1 27
the State-tends constantly either to subordinate to itself, or to reduce,

relations of private appropriation. As long as State power remains
strong-and this is directly related to the efficiency of the war apparatus
-it is able to dispossess its subordinates and its local agents sufficiently
to deprive them of any possibility of constituting an autonomous pole
of power.
4.6. It is significant that those who can most easily accumulate jon
are either individuals or groups outside the power sphere (marka,
Somono, mori . . .) or nyamakala ('caste people') and particularly jeli,
who have access to a front line political role but are statutorily precluded
from access to leadership. T h e Kone jeli of Segu-sikoro, simultaneously
griots and shoemakers, owned about sixty slaves settled in two villages
south of Segou and led by a jonkumtigi (a woloso). These jon practised
agriculture and weaving for their masters. T h e surplus not directly
consumed was sold. T h e jon also had a personal income (jonforo,
crafts) but the master annually levied what he wanted from it.
T h e Dante jeli (the lineage of Centigiba, Da's favourite griot) were
even richer and privately owned many villages or parts of villages on
the left bank.
T h e situation is different for the chiefs (ton-jon-kuntigi). Although
owning more domestic slaves than their subordinates they usually do

not own villages of slaves, i.e. the majority of their subordinates in
principle are not their own dependants but royal jon (foroba-jon or
ton-jon) placed under their orders by decision of the fama but remain
'despotic' property, and theoretically they only have a power of military
command over them, implying certain prerogatives without any powcr
of exploitation. I n fact on this point we see a struggle which continued
throughout the whole history of Segou. T h e rapid decline, then the
elimination of the Kulubali dynasty (in the years 1750-5) are at the
same time the condition and the result of the distribution of all state
subjects and captives between the main ton-jon leaders who set them-
selves up as so many autonomous and rival lordships, and the offensive
power of the kingdom gradually dissolves in these internal conflicts.
T h e period of Ngolosi domination corresponds to a reversal of this
situation. T h e first two kings of the dynasty, Ngolo (1765-90 approxi-
mately) and Monzon (1790-1808) operate a real reconquest of the central
zone and replace the local lords by their own jon. For the leading group
-and in the accounts of its contemporary descendants-the kingdom
is then nothing but a single community with a strictly military ('tech-
nical') internal hierarchy and whose sole master and sole pole of
accumulation and redistribution of wealth and men is the fama. I n
fact the distribution between the captives who have a leader and those
who are commanded by proxy-a distribution which may seem juri-
dically clear between private appropriation and 'despotic' or collective
appropriation-is continuously dependent on the political relation
between the dynasty and the great aristocratic lineages, constituted or
1 28 Jean Bazin
in the process of reforming themselves, on which it is necessarily

dependent, and continuously variable in function of the personal and
particular situation of each leader. Thus to the years of the kingdom's
relative decline, after the loss of Masina (1830--60)corresponds a
progressive increase in autonomy of the jon leaders most distant from
the centre who tend to gradually acquire a position comparable to that
of the horon lords allied to Segou and to establish themselves as rival
predatory powers. That is also why it is difficult to make the distinction
between the two sorts of jon at the local level, and sometimes it is
still the cause of close disputes.
At Nzogofina, for example Monzon installed as ton-jon chief Toto
Keita with a hundred jon under his leadership, whose descendants are
mostly the present villagers. For the Keita, thesejon although independent
today, were formerly their own property and their sole task was to
cultivate the land for their warrior masters. For the villagers, on the
contrary, it is a 'hundred guns', i.e. men armed with guns, ton-jon
warriors whom Monzon placed there under the leadership of a nyema
('one who is in front'): Toto, or according to his captive name, Dugu-
dadye. According to them, the keita thus considerably confuse their
own jon-they had few of them and other people in the village had
some-and those of the fama's warriors placed under their command.

Besides the Keita recognise that if they could sell the former (even at
the second generation) they could not sell the latter as if private
appropriation in the final analysis, can only be conceived by reference
to exchange. By contrast the villagers recognise that they cultivated a
foroba-for0 whose produce was at the disposal of the Keita or at least
under their control. (However this labour of the dependent warriors
'for someone else' represented only a tiny part of their total agricultural
labour, similarly in reverse the slaves 'work for their own account'
was only a tiny part of their total labour. Consequently the former were
not fed by their nyema, the latter were fed by their masters.)
Similar ambiguities at Banankozo: the Kulubali of the Dayemacen
lineage pretend that as well as their domestic slaves (see above, 4.2).
they had others in the agricultural villages; they still remember the
name of the jon-kuntigi: Seme (the narrow hoe) and Jele (the hatchet)
which somewhat indicate their agricultural specialisation. However,
according to other sources Semenbugu and Jelebugu were the fama's
jon villages, settled by him but no doubt under the control of Banankoro
and responsible for feeding its warriors.
Similarly the jeli Dante, because their ancestor Tyentigiba, Da's
favourite, had no doubt been made more or less officially responsible
for the political control of the left bank of the Niger and maybe had
rightful access to a share of the loot earned by the contingents who
lived there, tend to see as jeli-jon (griots' jon) all the peoples of the area.
The villagers on the contrary assert that, although the Dante had
effectively settled their very numerous personal slaves in certain
War and servitude in Segou 1 29
villages, the rest of the population was at the exclusive service of the
fama and could not thus be qualified merely as 'ton-jon'.
Everything seems to happen as if everyone, when in a position of
'inferior' attempted to appear only subject to the state, presented as a
community abstract and indifferent to any particular interest, and
when in a 'superior' position to uniformly consider all his subordinates
as personal jon. T h e very form these ambiguities assume in the deter-
mination of jonya precludes their reduction to inadequate knowledge.
I t must rather be said that on the basis of a single categorising system
(the difference jonlton-jon), a single implicit knowledge, a number of
contrasted images of the same society are developed, produced by the
antagonistic interests of the groups which formed it and which, mutatis
mutandis, still form it.
State captives
5.1. T h e conceptualisation of the dominant group, those who control

the central state apparatus, the dynastic lineage and those close to it is,
at least schematically, organised around a basic assumption: the
subjects of the kingdom are the fama's jon. That is what is explained
to Captain Marchand at the court of Mari Jara, the last king of Segou,
then settled in Farako (September 1889): 'All the subjects of the fama
without exception are his captives and there is no free man outside the
royal family'.21 T h e fact that Mari, a kind of symbol manipulated by
rival chiefs, has no more than nominal power, in no way affects the
principle : and the contemporary descendants of the Ngolosi, although
dispossessed of any formal power, still hold to it, even if they no longer
assert it brutally, but rather by their negative and ironic reactions to
what they call the illegitimate status pretensions of their former subjects.
At least this image of a generalised servitude is also given by the horon
foreign to the central apparatus (allied or tributary Bambara, Marka
descendants of rival or vassal chiefs) with the difference that they even
include the Ngolosi in it ('Since the elimination of the Kulubali there
are no free men left in Segou').
5.2. This statement implies that:
I. T h e population, that of the central zone of the kingdom at least,
can in its totality be considered jon; each villager should thus be
related to an ancestor raided by the Segou armies and arbitrarily settled
here or there by the fama. I t is assumed that there no longer is, or
that there has never been, a local population, i.e. a social body who
resisted to this arbitrary creator. It is presupposed that family groups
(gwa) neighbourhoods, villages, groups of villages, local cases of
arbitration, etc., briefly that all the local institutions can be reduced to
the will of one fama or another, presented as supreme and absolute
creator of institutions. Thus such thinking is built on a systematic
130 Jean Bazin
repression of any history which is not that of the state, a repression

most effectively practised by the jeli and which, according to who one
is talking with, results either in real or in false ignorance. Resides
jonya means nothing other than the dispossession of any autonomous
history, this deprivation of any link (with the land, the lineage . . .)
other than the servile link itself.
2. These jon are the exclusive property of the dynastic lineage and
thus have no other master than the head of this lineage collective. T h e
fama (theoretically the king's brothers and sons have no autonomous
power on the ton-jon). T h e state of Segou thus appears as one enormous
family community with a core of 'free men' and a disproportionate
mass of captives, managed in the common interest by its patriarch:
state servitude as generalised private servitude.
5.3. T h e counter-conceptualisation of the dependants-despite its
factual diversity based on each group's interests since it primarily
implies the fragmentation of this universal and undifferentiated servi-
tude into a series of subtle status categories-however has as
common theme reference to the idea of ton. By ton is meant a voluntary
association (specifically separate from kinship) between (individual or
collective) partners equal in rights. According to a historical account
familiar to all, with a number of versions and on the basis of which

each person articulates the specific story of his lineage or village, the
state of Segou originated in a ton. But its origin is also presented as its
principle whose permanence is asserted beyond all its factual perver-
sions. Although it certainly includes objective elements, this account
must be understood for what it basically is: the mythic form of a
political question on the nature of the state continually posed by the
mass of dependants. T h e prccise nature of this original ton is a con-
troversial question : association of village communities before the arrival
of Biton Kulubali, association of young men of the same age grade
($an-ton) or of hunters (donso-ton) instituted by Biton himself. T h e
basic point is that ton implies no relation of domination (which in
fact means that within it the power of the lineage seniors continues to
reproduce itself autonomously). T h e associates or ton-den ('children of
the ton') entrust the management and the organisation of the association
to a tontigi ('he who has a ton') equal among equals. Besides Tontigiya
originally seems to have been exercised either simultaneously by a
number of leaders or rotated between the member lineages. T h e state
of Segou is born of the transformation-maintenance of this original
form of contractual association and authority by concensus. From
peaceful (or at most defensive)-its most notable activity is the regular
organisation, through everyone's contributions (disongo) of feasts and
collective drinking bouts-the ton becomes offensive and warring, or
rather looting. Increasingly distant villages are forced to participate in
it. Those who refuse are destroyed and their captured inhabitants
become the collective property of the ton and are distributed among its
members. This is the origin of the ton-jon who are distinguished from
the ton-dem by the tulu (tuft of hair on the shaved head). Other villages
prefer to submit to threats: their inhabitants have an ambiguous status;
distinct from the founding members (ton-den) whose subjects they
become, they are however not individually captive. But these distinctions
rapidly get blurred because, at the same time, internal power is in fact
more and more monopolised by Biton Kulubali and his family who
tend to reduce the ton-den to the position of ton-jon. T h e ton thus
becomes what it is not: fanga (power through strength, domination).
T h e tontigi becomes fama. T h e break is, in most versions, symbolically
marked by the massacre of the people of Dugukuna, one of the founding
villages of the ton, very close to Segu-koro. T h e ton-den warriors of
the village, physically deprived of lineage seniors, are from now on
without kin and thus assimilable to the jon: Biton has their heads shaved
(see Monteil 1923,pp. 39-40). This transformation does not take place
without many rebellions occurring, as well as the emigration of a no
doubt substantial section of the free villagers of the region. Finally
the Kulubali do not succeed in giving dynastic continuity to their
power: their lineage is physically eliminated by a conspiracy of the
most important ton-jon chiefs. On the basis of in fact radically trans-
formed social relations-contingents of warrior jon have been substituted

to lineage entities-the principle of a rotation of supreme power between
the chiefs is brought back (apparently based on their seniority of entry
into the ton). But the system can just as well appear as generalised civil
war between rival lordships. T h e reconstruction of a dynastic continuity
by the Ngolosi is the result of a coup de force (under the threat of arms,
Ngolo forced the chiefs assembled on an island to swear allegiance to
him as well as to his descendants). But is also has a contractual basis
since the fama's legitimacy is limited by his ability to organise successful
war expeditions and to manage the ton for everyone's benefit.
5.4. Through the numerous versions and the ambiguous interpreta-
tions, two aspects of the state-a particular group's despotic power or
common interest association with a merely functional hierarchy?-are
confronted with one another in the present account as no doubt they
have continuously confronted each other throughout the history of the
kingdom. If the reference to the state as ton is used as a common base
in the thinking of the dependent groups, it is however done according
to two distinct modalities :
(A) There is a first category of subjects who, using the difference
between ton-den and ton-jon deny any relation between their belonging
to the ton and any form of servitude. 'We entered the ton but we are
not jon' (an nana don ton-na, nka an te jon ye). They refuse any assimila-
tion to the ton-jon because they consider it to be historically false (a
linguistic misconception) or because they see in it the result of a ten-
dentious deformation of the relations within the state whose very
legitimacy they reject (abuse of power). I n fact, in many villages of the
132 Jean Bazin
central zone, the difference is still recognised between the original

'people of the village' (dugulen) and the 'people of the fama' (fama ka
mogow), people without faith or place, come later and occupying
separate neighbourhoods, jon placed there by royal argiter to cultivate
in and 'supervise' the village. From this point of view, very few villages
appear as ex-nihilo creations by the fama and if, in certain cases, the
original population has been militarily eliminated as a result of rebellion
or have preferred flight to subjection, in many others it remains in
varying proportions. Even in a garrison village like Mbeba, very close
to the capital there are still one or two families who, faced with the
mass of the ton-jon's and the sofa's descendants, from whom they
cannot apparently be distinguished, assert their horonya and their ritual
power of 'masters of the earth' (dugukolotigi). The policy of the Ngolosi
seems to have been to gradually impose a fusion of the two groups,
but its effects have remained very uneven from one village to the
next. The dominating role of the 'people of the fama' parasiting on the
community, often taking over its best lands (the soforo, i.e. the lands
nearest the houses) and its political leadership (the dugutigiya or
'headship of the village') has only succeeded in enlivening conflicts and
intensifying resistance to assimilation. So that the image of a uniform
and generalised servitude (see 5.1 and 2) tends to be replaced by a

continuous variety of particular situations for each village or each
neighbourhood. Every family unit (gwa or du) must pay the cowry
tribute (disongo) and send warriors (cebo): it is the common mark of
political subjection. But labour prestations are not compulsory for all:
and it is precisely such an intervention of the state in production, in
the autonomy of the communities' labour process which can separate
the jonya from those very people who are statutorily 'free'.
In certain horondugu ('free' villages) there was no collective field for
the fama (foroba); in others it was only cultivated by the 'people of the
fama' but not by the dugulen; in others everyone worked on it horon
and ton-jon, under the leadership of the local war leader. But the most
significant point is no doubt that questions on this subject often set
off conflicts between the different fractions of the village.
It must be understood that the 'free' villagers' counter-conceptu-
alisation only continues to mobilise the interest of the groups present
with such enthusiasm because it is in fact polysemic. It implicitly refers
to what we consider to be a series of a number of differing and successive
social formations, whereas those who think this do not necessarily
presuppose-and no doubt this has some legitimacy-a discontinuity so
radical or so total. Interventions by the colonial state and later by the
Mali state in village politics in, for example, the appointment of the
dugutigi are a continuation of the state of Segou's practice to favour its
own people at the expense of the 'locals' and most contemporary
conflicts for 'village chiefship' have this treble historical density. On
the other hand the colonial state seems not only first to fight slavery
only to monopolise it for its own profit (distribution of slaves to the

conquest troops and to the allies, use in Segou of the 'crown slaves'
as a free labour force, use of the 'freedom villages' as pools of labour)
but also it only finally suppressed it in order to universalise it in the
form of forced labour or forced agriculture. Similarly the socialist
Mali state, by compelling each village to grow a collective field whose
produce must be used for communal accumulation and 'development'
but seems in fact most often to be appropriated by the local or central
bureaucracy appears to the villagers as an attempt to operate an excessive
generalisation of the jonya.
B. The second category of subjects includes those whom 'free'
villagers call the 'fama's people' but who themselves refuse to have
their ancestors called such and claim on their behalf the qualification
of ton-jon. For, they say, to be ton-jon is to be only the ton's captive
(ton ka jon) and thus really no one's, not even the fama's 'it is the ton
which has taken you ; you have become jon of the ton' (ton de ye i mine,
i kera ton ka jon ye). 'We are jon of the ton but we are not commodity
jon' (an ye ton ka jon ye, nka sani-jon t'an ye). The term ton-jon is thus
supposed to define all those who, appropriated by the Segukaw col-
lective remain the property of this collective alone, for which the fama
is only an organisational pole and manager, similarly to a lineage

senior as dutigi managing the collective property (foroba), because in
this sense ton-jon is strictly equivalent to foroba-jon, the only difference
being the model on which the collective entity is thought: association
outside the kin or family lineage community. If the ton-jon are, among
the captives, the 'fama's share' it is not that he owns them privately
but because he 'is' the community.
In the same way the difference between the ton-jon and the body of
the sofaz2can be discussed. Indeed, the sofa appear more as the personal
jon of the fama and his lineage. They constituted a private guard for the
fama in his own residence, and of his brothers or sons in the villages to
which they had been assigned (dendugu-'son's villages'). Among the
captives brought back from the war, the fama often chose young
children as future sofa : deprived of any memory of their condition and
their community of origin, in other words more thoroughly 'slave', they
were more liable to be uncorruptibly devoted to the royal person. T o
this the descendants of the sofa answer that being closer to the fama
and his grateful and daily intermediaries with the outside world, the
sofa were thereby hierarchically superior. It seems that the body of
sofa in fact, at least in certain cases, played the role of a political police
in the exclusive service of the fama and worked to strengthen the
despotic character of his power against the mass of his ton-jon.
Concealed under this somewhat legalistic debate-jon of the ton or
the fama?-the question of power, of its form and its distribution,
must in reality be posed. Because either ton is nothing other than an
abstract entity object of a mythical or ideological reference which
134 Jean Bazin
conceals the effective servitude of the mass of Segukaw to the interests

of a particular group and the state can in practical terms be identified
with the royal 'house'; or the ton is realised in the form of a more or
less institutionalised warrior democracy, a common interest association,
and in this case, in the name of jonya one indeed moves from servitude
to (public) service.
Here again the debate cannot be read independently of its reality.
The term jon is also used to describe the party, the USRDA. According
to a Segou political leader the ton-jonya is supposed to be analogous to
this total devotion to the collectivity which, at the time of the socialist
option, the party demands of everyone. However this devotion can
take the form of a servitude if the party appears in practice as the
instrument of domination of a bureaucratic bourgeoisie: 'we are the
captives of the government', say the peasants of the Senegalese co-
operatives (quoted by D. B. Cruise O'Brien, 1971).
State captives: producers and predators
6.1. In so far as this question of power is posed it forces us however

to dismantle the apparent identity of status previously indicated by the

terms ton-jon or foroba-jon. By taking into account the mode of appro-
priation alone, an abstract category is produced, i.e. the real differences
of standing in the politico-warring apparatus are made latent. These
differences can easily be restored by a more complete analysis of the
uses of the term ton-jon and of the contradictions of its semantic field.
It is significant for example that certain descendants of ton-jon warriors
indignantly reject any assimilation to the foroba-jon-this term more
specifically defining those among the captives who, while remaining
collective property, are assigned by the fama to the somono lineages of
Segou to increase the available labour power in this essential but
subordinate and degrading (the somono never fight) sector (com-
munications by river, transport of warriors and of what they need in a
campaign, manufacture of powder . . .). In the same sense Charles
Monteil (1923, pp. 297-300) rightly notices that within the mass of
State captives (foroba-jon) 'the ton-jon constitute a form of aristocracy'
which he attempts to explain by their greater seniority. But in fact,
here the function, the way of life are determinant. 'The ton-jon are
those who forcibly take people and sell them as slaves to drink mead',
adventurers who loot everything they find, specialists of jadoya (brigand-
age) say the people of Mbeba. In 1891, Captain Briquelot gives a
similar definition of them (a group of captives whose duty is to perform
lootings, murders, revenges and dirty tricks decided by the f a m ~ ) . ~ ~
Adventurers, warriors and basically fearless people, which is indeed
what redeems them from servitude. And all this has nothing to do, it
is said at Banakoro, 'with stories of ton' by contrast with the usually
accepted etymology (jon of the ton): the ton-jon are in no way slaves
(jon). All captives assigned to a productive task, agricultural (cike-jon)
or artisanal are slaves. When the army of Segou takes a village, some
become slaves (those who are sold and those who are affected to
agriculture), the others become warriors (ton-jon). But how could those
whose job is, in fact, to 'produce' slaves by capture, be slaves themselves?
6.2. Thus everything takes place as if the opposition jonlton-jon can
take two divergent values simultaneously.
ton-jon jon
(I) the state's (or the fama's) Private captives (or slaves)
captives as a whole
(2) dependants assigned to dependants assigned to production.
predation
T h e two distributions are not superimposable since among the real
Segukaw (excluding the Marka) the main body of producers are state
captives (see 4.1 and 2).
I t is possible that the juridical meaning or the term ton-jon (meaning
I) and its wide extension is a more recent elaboration, the distinction
between warriors and non-warriors having lost its practical value since
the colonial conquest.
I t is also possible that this variation of meaning implies a shift on the
phonological proximity of two distinct roots: ton ('association') with
more open and high tone /o/ and ton (or to or tun) with more closed
and low tone /o/, a term which is no longer used much and whose
meaning is unclear: it is the quiver (the bow was the dominant weapon
before the introduction of the gun) but it is also the totality of the
material and magico-ritual (boli) means, the whole 'baggage' of the
warrior. T h e one who holds and controls these offensive and defensive
means of reproduction of a given group is the tontigi (or tuntigi). Those
who follow him, his dependants, are his ton-jon or tun-ta-jon (from ta:
to take). I n the old Mande classification of clans (Dieterlen 1955),
there are on the one hand the leading clans (mansaren)-the mansa of
Mali is in a way the supreme tontigi (he appears in his audiences carrying
a bow and a quiver-see Ibn Battuta)-and on the other hand sixteen
'tun-ta-jon' (ton-jon is also the title of one of the Futa-tooro dynasties,
in the fourteenth century, no doubt a vassal of Mali).
Today tontigi (tuntigi) indicates the notable, the one who is at the
head of a wealthy and large household, who by the number of his
dependants is in a position of autonomy and autarcy, i.e. the free man
(horon transposed from the Arabic how) but not only from a statutory
point of view. Similarly the term jon, in the expression ton-jon taken in
this second sense tends to qualify more a position-that of subordinate
in relation to his chief-than a status.24One is only ton-'jon' in relation
to a ton-'tigi'. As C. Meillassoux observes (1963, p. 215, note I) 'the
136 Jean Bazin
word jon has led a number of writers, and Delafosse is the first among
them, to think that they were slaves. In truth, jon has a wider meaning
and is occasionally applied to individuals subjected, voluntarily or
otherwise, to another individual or to a group. . . . If there were slaves
or hostages among the ton-jon it is not this condition which is described
by the expression ton-jon which applies also to free men (boron).' If
on the one hand (meaning I ) it does indeed refer to a process of (state)
appropriation of the individuals which deprives them of their horonya,
indeed on the other (meaning 2) it describes those who are united by
the job of arms and the respect for a same warring code of honour and
among whom the status difference (free men/captives) marked by the
original degradation of capture, becomes far less significant than
courage in battle and position in the military hierarchy.
6.3. However, these so-called quasi-professional warriors in Segou
only form a factual group, with open limits-and the ambiguity of
their definition is in this respect significant. War is in no way conceived
as the monopoly of a particular status category and, in the system of
representations, the war function does not appear distinct and specific.
According to official ideology, war is the concern of all courageous men
(cefari) and courage, being a strictly personal category, can theoretically
manifest itself at any moment and in any person, be he the most humble
of cike-jon (agricultural captive). On the other hand, agricultural
labour can never be dishonoring in itself. It is not a job but the normal
activity of man. Professional specialisation is devalorised, precisely
because it precludes this ideal autarcy of the peasant producing his
subsistence and necessarily implies the dependence of the caste groups
on a group of agriculturalists. The mode of life considered as normal
and dignified-which is sometimes called banmanaya-harmoniously
combines in the rhythm of the seasons agricultural production and
predatory activities. And in fact, among all the Segukaw, very few
people are entirely exempted from agricultural labour (even the
warriors of Banankoro and Mbeba grew fields when they had time)
and very few are totally excluded from war activities. That is why
many informants (among them the Ngolosi) are entitled to say that the
fama did not have what can be truly described as 'slave villages' (com-
parable for example to those of the rich Marka or of the Jula cities):
all his dependants (ton-jon in meaning I) were in fact at the same time
compelled to labour on the collective fields for his benefit, to war
service as well as to other more irregular duties (the building of sur-
rounding walls and of huts for the royal or princely compounds for
example).25
6.4. However as the state becomes more developed war tends to
transform itself into a complex process less and less comparable to the
'artisanal' raids practised by a village or an isolated band. As domination
extends geographically, the length and frequency of operations increases.
That is why a social division of labour through polarisation of the mass
of state captives necessarily comes about, some becoming warrior far

more than agriculturalists, others agriculturalists far more than warriors.
I n the capital and garrison villages which surround it, a quasi-permanent
armed force is formed, composed of Clite troops and ready at any
moment to launch a rapid offensive in response to the rebellion of a
village or to organise soboli on the edges of the kingdom. On the contrary
expeditions of greater scale against objectives with a large resistance
ability (conquest of a new region, war against a rival kingdom, etc.)
are far less frequent but demand wider recruitment in the other captive
villages and in subjected villages. I t is thus more a statistic than a
normative division of labour: theoretically dependants could be
classified in function of the greater or lesser intensity of their parti-
cipation in wars. T h e differentiation remains one of degree rather than
nature and it operates according to a number of divergent modalities
and principles :
I . Distribution according to age (and sex): only mature men fight
(although leaders can be older). T h e rest of the population devotes
itself to agricultural (and other) tasks.
2. Distribution between communities. T h e successive .famu-but also
the vassal or allied leaders at the edges of the kingdom--constitute, in
their capital or near it, quasi permanent units of warriors (ton-jon

meaning 2 or sofa) whose subsistence is mainly ensured by agricultural
captives (cike-jon, jon in meaning 2) who participate only rarely in
military operations. Each garrison-village thus has its halo of dependent
cikebugu. I t is the case of Mbeba (created by Monzon) and Banakoro
(created by Da). But most of the ton-jon villages adopt an intermediary
position: they produce their own subsistence and regularly send a
fraction of their male population as warriors (by rotation between
the different lineage^).^^ I n fact the differences are very subtle and
variable from one ton-jon-dugu (ton-jon villages) to another. Everything
often depends on the local warrior chief's glory and 'luck' in fighting
(he is often an Clite warrior who, after good and loyal service, has
obtained from the fama a number of 'people' to settle in a peripheral
village, on more fertile land and with greater autonomy). Thus a
certain community famous for its remarkable actions at the period of a
famous leader can in the following generation fade totally in the
background militarily.
3. Distribution within the communities. Ton-jon villages are divided
into a number of base units: cikulu (team) or kin (neighbourhood).
There is a hierarchy of these units, one of them controlling the war
leadership (which is not necessarily to be identified with the 'village
chiefship'), there is also an internal hierarchy in each of them. These
base groups are made up of individuals or microlineages of various
origins, brought together by royal prerogative around a central lineage
(nyema 'he who is in front'). After each expedition the fama distributes
the new captives among the nyema (and can create new units). A unit
C
138 Jean Bazin
which, for example, has suffered important war losses, thus obtains
what it needs to restructure itself (they are gwa-kanabo-jon; kanabo
means to mend clothes or fill holes in a roof between two winters).
These disparate elements constitute more or less integrated units.
Some tend to reproduce the model of the family-lineage community.
That was the case for example of the gwa (or cikulu) 'Ciminjela' in
Segu-sikoro, composed of a dominant lineage (the descendants of the
Kulubali chiefs of Ciminje, near Sokolo) and of a series of micro-
lineages captured and added at various periods (Daw, Sidibe, etc.). All
the members of the gwa cultivated (as well as their individual fields
jonforo) a joint common field (foroba) whose produce was centralised
and managed by the gwatigi. The unit was exogamous; the gwatigi
regulated marriage affairs and paid matrimonial compensation for the
first wife of all men who cultivated for him. The unit included 40 to
60 men.
In Fakoro on the contrary most of the units (cikulu or kin) included
around the central lineage that of the kintigi (neighbourhood leader),
many distinct gwa, each cultivating its own foroba and looking after
its own marriage deals. The unit was not in principle exogamous,
thought there was a tendency to avoid internal alliances. Moreover all
the members of the neighbourhood cultivated a cejoro ('warriors' or

'men's field') whose produce, kept and managed by the kintigi served
to common interest expenses and to the nourishment of the warriors
sent by the The unit could include hundreds of people.
Each unit, whatever its internal format, is at the same time a labour
team (that is the meaning of cikulu) of the fama's collective fields, and
a group of warriors; the gwatigi or kintigi leads his people in combat,
concentrates in his hands, then possibly redistributes the loot acquired
by his group. But whereas the secondary lineages only serve in rotation,
the hyema lineage participates in each expedition in which the village
is involved. Thus to the hierarchical difference between elements of
the group is added an unequal distribution of agricultural and predatory
activities. The dominant lineage is also the warrior lineage par excellence.
6.5. Apart from this relative differentiation between warriors and
producers, the division of labour also operates in a far more formal
and rigid way by the constitution of specialist groups who are endo-
gamous and hereditary. This division preexists to the state, it appears
in a 'natural' form; to the peasants, men of the soil (banmana) are
opposed the casted artisans, men of their trade: Kule (bushel makers),
numu, jeli. . . . T o agriculturalists are opposed herders (fula). To
people of the land (gelemakaw), people of the river (jilamaw). But on the
basis of this natural division the state intervenes in an authoritarian
way. T o the somon+and in particular to the three main lineages of
the Somono area in the capital, Jire, Dembele, and Tyero-the fama
attributes state captives (foroba-jon) to work under their authority as
canoers and carriers. Other captives of all origins are assigned to the
specialised body of the foroba-fula ('public peuls') entrusted with the

care of the royal cattle, and assembled in many campsites (were) often,
but not necessarily, around a core of really peul captives. Casted people
(nyamkala), by definition always dependent on a master or a host
lineage (jatigi)-but of a dependence very different from jonya-are
never really captives, i.e. their captivity is reduced to a mere change of
master. Nor are they ever replaced in their professional activity by
captives. But in contast with those who remain in the service of a
village community others are placed more directly in the service of the
fama and of the warring apparatus and can in certain contexts be
assimilated to the t o n - j ~ n . ~ ~
6.6. I now return to the question of power. From the point of view
of status, state captives seem to be an undifferentiated mass, even if
some of them are somewhat kept away by their assignation to specialised
groups. The despotic relation of appropriation (famalton-jon or foroba-
jon) tends to erase or displace the status differentials which are based
on the triangular hierarchical model common to most of the surrounding
formations: free man (boron)-professional castes (nyamaka1a)-slaves
(jon). In a way a despotic society always has an egalitarian form.
Because 'freedom' is the privilege of only one (see Hegel) all others
are equal in a generalised servitude. But this egalitarian form is

used to conceal-and thus reproduce-inequalities of fact, i.e. the
order of power. The mass of state captives is distributed in function
of an unequal distribution of productive and predatory activities. This
functional distribution (regular warriors/occasional warriors) more or
less cuts across the military hierarchy (war leaders/troops) and the
hierarchy of goods (some, by looting produce mainly 'wealth' or
cowries, cattle, slaves . . . ; others, by labour, produce essentially sub-
sistence goods). Here power is distinguishable neither from the warrior
way of life nor from the acquisition of 'wealth'. Understood as a quasi-
physical substance, as the ideology of the kingdom represents it, it is
concentrated in the single person of the sovereign; but as a relation
it defines, although in an imprecise and fluid way, a social group or
class, whose reigning dynasty is the core and the organising centre,
and which exists (reproduces itself) by the practice of a double domina-
tion: on its victims, who produce the fruits of its lootings, and on those
who by the production of food surplus and their activities as war
auxiliaries, allow it to devote itself efficiently to looting. This dominant
group imposes its own code as universal value, whose axis is warrior
honour and socially values individuals in function of their courage or
their fighting skill, independently of the usual hierarchies. Thus, for
example, the scorn in which the jeli are usually held is opposed to the
fact that those of Segou did not just sing but fought in the front line
and are even supposed to have been regrouped by Monzon into a
separate unit (kelebolo) occupying the advance guard.29 That is what
legitimates the considerable power acquired by some of them within
140 Jean Bazin
this dominant group. Indeed, according to official ideology, the acquisi-

tion of such power is not limited by status since it depends only on
actions and on the royal favour which they bring about-the epic
contains numerous accounts of these sudden social rises.30 I n fact, as
the warring ethos necessarily arises out of education and tradition
(see 2.3), it is not surprising that, at the origin of dominant ton-jon
lineages, few obscure slaves risen in status are found, but many won-
over nobles, sons or brothers of war chiefs defeated by Segou, juniors
of large families escaping intra-lineage conflicts known as fadenya ('the
fact of being son to the same father') and come of their own accord
to entrust themselves to the fama, local notables first allied to Segou
and later integrated into the central military apparatus, adventurers of
all sorts searching for loot or for a mode of life different from ordinary
village routine. For many of them the ton-jonya implies nothing else
than a sworn and unconditional allegiance to the fama since they
haven't even been captured.31 For all of them, the loss of autonomy
which they have suffered or accepted is compensated by the factual
power which they have. Though all power comes from the king, the
king is nothing without his warriors. No important decision is taken
without their advice. An expedition which they do not favour is doomed
to failure. And basically no one either becomes or remains fama without

at least their silent consent. T h e 'pubs' of Segou-Sikoro where the
warriors meet to drink, the 'courts' of the main chiefs, are so many
places where, with greater or lesser clandestinity, a 'public opinion'
is constituted which the reigning dynasty must take into consideration.
Factions are made and destroyed around rival princes for succession
to the throne. But this sort of informal democracy-which is suggested
by the idea of ton-remains the privilege of the Clite of warriors.
Translated by Helen Lakner
Notes
I. Cf. the terms Marx uses in Capital: erscheinen, sich darstellen.
2. Das theoretische Verhalten. Cf. Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, No. I .
3. 'I have sweated blood and water to find the things themselves, that is to
say, their connections.' Marx to Engels, August 24, 1867).
4. Concerning what I have collected personally: 1968-1970. The transcription
of Bambara terms conforms with official Mali transcription.
5. 1720 approximately-1861. Under Toucouleur domination, the State
apparatus continues to exist but in the form of rebel and nomadic organisation,
practising guerrilla warfare. After the taking of Segou (April 6, 1890)
Archinard returns the throne to the Jara, but for a short while only, on 29th
May Mari Jara is executed.
6. Or as Marx says (Grundvisse, Dietz ed., p. 400) relations of appropriation
and relations of domination are identified. 'There is no overall distinction
between political power and power of ownership' says Maine about Indian
towns (see the analysis made by L. Dumont of the notion of artha in Homo
Hierarchicus, pp. 36870). The situation is the same for medieval lordship.
7. See M a n , Capital, vol. I, Section 7.

8. It is necessary to distinguish-although this distinction is never rigorous
and there is a continual movement from one category to the other-the
direct dependants of the State, mainly royal captives, settled mainly in the
central zone close to the capital, i.e. those who are rightly called the 'people
of Segou' (Segukaw) and on the other hand the inhabitants of the tributary
village communities, subjected to Segou, but all the same maintaining a
certain degree of autonomy in direct relation to their distance from the
centre.
9. This is also the case, in reverse, of the junior in a family-lineage
community (gwaor du). He is statutorily a 'free man' (horon) although in a
situation of strict dependence in relation to the senior (gwatigi or dutigi).
But this dependence is not in principle assimilated to jonya (however see
note 24).
10. In its legal-bourgeois representation slavery is only the negation of the
'free' labourer, i.e. of his purely subjective and abstract freedom. On the
contrary what is denied in jonya is the concrete individual, particularly
defined, man of this land, of that name, of that kin and his freedom (horonya)
understood as real autonomy, as mastery of the conditions of his existence
(which he may at least have in his role as head of household).
11. tfama' which is usually translated as 'king' means at the same time rich
man and powerful man-the one who holds the power of imposing by force
(fangs)-by contrast with the fantan (at the same time poor and powerless).
The fama thus also contrasts with the masa who has a sacred Dower of
arbitration and who is neither necessarily rich nor powerful.

12. Let us recall that Mungo Park notes in Malinke country a ratio of one
horon for three jon and that RenC CailliC considers that in Kankan as well
as in the more eastern Jula cities, most agricultural labour is performed by
slaves.
13. Mungo Park distinguishes 'two sorts of war': real war or 'killi' (i.e.
kele); that is official war, with rules, including a declaration of war and
pitched battles; and on the other hand 'plundering or stealing' or 'tegria'
(i.e. tegereya from tegere 'brigands', transposed from the arabic tagwir).
That is unofficial war, rezzou, secret rapid nightly expedition led by a group
of horsemen or in extreme cases bv an isolated individual. He auotes two
examples of this type of expedition organised by the king of Fuladugu
against the Jalonke (500 horsemen in one case, zoo in the other). These
operations can fit into a sort of hereditary 'feud' between regions or between
nations (Mungo Park, chapter 22, pp. 291-4). Concerning tegere and soboli
see Meillassoux 1963, pp. 215-16. (But the practice of soboli is not only
characteristic of the beginnings of the kingdom of Segou).
14. numu is the name of the caste of blacksmiths. The somono canoers and
fishermen are not really part of the casted groups; but their professional
specialisation makes them hierarchically inferior and forces them to endogamy.
15. jeli is usually translated as griot. In fact they do not monopolise the
function of griot. It can be filled by most of the artisanal castes (including
the numu) although it is usually filled by the jeli whose artisanal speciality
in BambaraIand seens to be shoemaking.
16. See the interpretation suggested by I. Wilks and Ph. Ferguson: 'In
vindication of sidi a1 Jaff Abd al-Salam Shabayni' in C. Allen and R. W.
Johnson, eds. African Perspectives, 1970.
17. The term 'Marka' is in Segou used loosely. It tends to describe groups
settled among the Bambara but distinct from them by the practice of trade
and Islam and at the same time by their ethnic (the Barnbara call the
Soninke Marka) or geographic (people coming from the Sahel) origin. All
142 Jean Bazin
Muslim traders are not 'Marka' (those from the south for example are called
Jula). And in contrast at the period of the Bambara kingdom only a few
Marka villages (markadugu) of the Segou region did indeed practise trade
and Islam.
18. One day a week, sometimes two, sometimes none. T o this must be
added what comes before (the morning before sunrise) and what follows (the
end of the afternoon) the working day for the master.
19. By contrast with what the 'traditionalists' usually assert, it was not
really forbidden to sell woloso-jon. It was only extremely unlikely because
illogical in a strategy of accumulation based on servile labour, a strategy
which was precisely not that of the ton-jon.
20. Garanke: soninke caste of shoemakers. The simagan came from Jafunu,
under the Ngolosi.
21. National archives, Bamako. Monographies of the Segou circle. 'Notice
sur le royaume bambara de Segou. Renseignments: Mage, Barth, et a
Farako' I 889.
22. In the Bambara kingdom the sofa are a special corps, residing in separate
villages (formed into 'sofa districts' at the beginning of the colonial period).
Under Toucouleur domination the term is of much wider usage and indicates
practically all the warriors who are not talibe. Today in Segou 'sofai' and
ton-jon are often confused.
23. National Archives, Bamako. Rapports Politiquest, Segou, year 1891.
Report by Captain Briquelot, September IS, 1891 (Part W: organisation of
the kingdom of Segou).
24. It can also be noticed that in the family community the same term
jonforro describes the individual fields handed over to the captives and those
given to the 'free' juniors. In a way, the slave-commodity only inaugurates
a new social form of appropriation of individuals; the distribution of men
among family communities 'isolated and opposed to one another' also implies
their appropriation; in the family 'the wife and children are the slaves of
the man'. Marx, The German Ideology, p. 61, ed. Sociales.
25. Even the jon held privately and settled by their master in a village to
cultivate were occasionally recruited for wars in the same way as other
villagers. That was the case for example of the captives owned by the Kone
jeli (see 4.6). But there are many ways to participate in a war: private
captives usually had the role of armour bearer or carrier by their master's
side, which gave them little opportunity to make themselves noticed by
remarkable actions. However it happened that warriors, weary of too frequent
recruitment, sent their captives to replace them.
26. Each village is attached to a given company (kelebolo); for each
expedition the leader of the company (kelebolotigi) decides on the number
of warriors necessary.
27. The armies of Segou did not live entirely at the expense of the
inhabitants. The soldiers took care in particular to take millet with them,
in the form of basi ('couscous').
28. The numu for example are forced to period of collective labour (also
called 'foroba') for the manufacture of bullets. The fama forces them into a
hierarchical organisation with this aim (numu chiefs-numukuntigi-are named
as responsible for a group of villages). Certain numu are regrouped in garrison
villages and participate in expeditions.
29. However all the griots were not warriors and among those who were,
not all are as famous as the Dante for example. Parallel to the usual hier-
archical classification by castes (kule, numu, jeli in descending order) which
continues to direct the rules of endogamy-an evaluation of individuals (or
of lineages) is established in relation to their war 'honour'.
30. It appears in reverse ratio to status since the horon lineages of Segou,
Somono and Marka are at the bottom of the scale of honours (they do not
fight) and on the contrary courageous warriors, with the exception of vassals
or allies, are all at least in a sense ?on' of the fama.
31. Indeed many family accounts attempt to conceal such a degrading
original episode as capture. However it seems right that certain warriors
were 'voluntary' recruits. T h e jeli say that the Segukaw have three origins:
some are there because they have been captured, others because they have
been attracted by deceptive and promising speeches, others have come by
themselves.
References
Barth, H. (1965) Travels and Discoveries la tradition des NiarC', Cahiers #Etudes
in North and Central Africa. Reedition Africaines 14 (vol. IV. no 2).
I 965 : Centenary Edition. F. Cass : Mage, M. E. (1868) Voyage duns le
London. 3 vol. Soudan Occidental. Paris: L. Hachette
Caillie, R. (1965) Journal d'un voyage & cie 1868.
d Tombouctou et d 7ennd. Rktdition Monteil, Ch. (1923) Les Bambara du
1965 : Anthropos Faris. 4 vol. Sdgou et du Kaarta Paris: E . Larose
Curtin, Ph.D. (1967) (ed.) Africa 1923.
Remembered. Narratives by West Africans Cruise O'Brien, D. B. (1971) 'Co-
from the Era of the Slave Trade. operators & Bureaucrats', Afvica, xli,
University of Wisconsin Press 1967
No. 4.
Dieterlen, G. (1955) 'Mythe et
organisation sociale ou Soudan franqais', Park, M. (1799) Travels in the Interior
Journal de la Societe de Africanistes, Districts of Africa. London: W. Bulmer
XXV, I et 2. & CO. 1799.
Finley, M. I. (1964) 'Between Slavery Sauvageot, S. (1965) Contribution d
and Freedom'. Comparative Studies in l'histoire du royaume bambara de Sdgnu
Society and ~ ; s t o rAvril
~ , ~ I 964, vol. (Thhe complementaire 1965). Rontott .
VI, no. 3. Shabayni, S. (1967) An Account of
Meillassoux, C. (1963) 'Histoire et Timbuctoo and Housa. RCCdition 1967.
Institutions du kafo de Bamako d'aprhs F . Cass: London.

Bazin - War and Servitude in Segou

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Economy and Society

War and servitude in Segou

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Why should a social formation be anything other than that which is

~eparated.~ It is not a question of revealing a Truth, but saying what

commercialised surplus . . .) ; but this ambiguity is significant because

forming a misalliance? To whom must I give and from whom may I

of reproduction of a social formation-is precisely in its ability to

Thus for example the explorer Raffenel, prisoner of the

protector, Barka, an intriguing prince from Kamera, is in a

although weakening from one generation to the next. At a given period,

the likelihood of liberation, i.e. of reintegration into the original relations.

the chiefdoms of Fu1adugu)-and, as Mungo Park points out, famines

dynastic lineage of the Ngolosi, is said to have been handed over to

fama (ton-jon), undertaken on his instructions or at least with his

producing violence is exercised in a dominant way by a specialised

formations brought about by the development of the slave trade on the

allocating the captives within a number of networks of relations of

services, in particular in agriculture (warriors do little agriculture). I t is

have the possibility to do so, and thus to reveal their 'courage'. By

and a productive capital (production for sale). It is what Caillie, des-

3.5. T h e combination of these three sectors, although all jon do not

marka agricultural villages.

political forces present (see Mage's account).

4.2. This honourable 'poverty', as an ideal norm of behaviour,

to accumulate only fame. It is thus, to a large extent, because of need,

The difference between 'bambara' and 'Marka' slavery is qualitative.

hand all communities classified as 'marka' are not orientated by a

power, or as an informant puts it 'the strength of servitude (jonya

of Biton's jon, then of his progressive conquest of power, takes a choice

the State-tends constantly either to subordinate to itself, or to reduce,

owning more domestic slaves than their subordinates they usually do

in the process of reforming themselves, on which it is necessarily

some-and those of the fama's warriors placed under their command.

5.1. T h e conceptualisation of the dominant group, those who control

repression of any history which is not that of the state, a repression

familiar to all, with a number of versions and on the basis of which

formed social relations-contingents of warrior jon have been substituted

central zone, the difference is still recognised between the original

and generalised servitude (see 5.1 and 2) tends to be replaced by a

only to monopolise it for its own profit (distribution of slaves to the

is only an organisational pole and manager, similarly to a lineage

conceals the effective servitude of the mass of Segukaw to the interests

State captives: producers and predators

6.1. In so far as this question of power is posed it forces us however

to dismantle the apparent identity of status previously indicated by the

of state captives necessarily comes about, some becoming warrior far

their capital or near it, quasi permanent units of warriors (ton-jon

the members of the neighbourhood cultivated a cejoro ('warriors' or

specialised body of the foroba-fula ('public peuls') entrusted with the

are equal in a generalised servitude. But this egalitarian form is

this dominant group. Indeed, according to official ideology, the acquisi-

to failure. And basically no one either becomes or remains fama without

7. See M a n , Capital, vol. I, Section 7.

arbitration and who is neither necessarily rich nor powerful.

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