West African Geography and Regional Influences

Sources

Geographical Motivations for Change. From the sixth through the sixteenth centuries, five major factors motivated change in the Western Sudan: expansion of reliable food production, the establishment and stabilization of governments, the creation of control over intra- and interregional trade routes and shifts in who exerted such power, war and resulting migrations, and natural and man-made catastrophes. (Though they were manifested in different regional circumstances, these same five impetuses drove the evolution of Asian, European, Mesoamerican, and Near Eastern societies.) During the 500-1590 period, there developed a series of Sudanic-Sahel regional civilizations that were able to produce surpluses of foods such as millet, sorghum, rice, and other crops in the desert fringes, the savanna grasslands, the edges of the forest areas, and the basins of the Senegal and Niger Rivers and Lake Chad. These civilizations successfully adapted to regional soil conditions and seasonal variations of rainfall, as well as to the long series of environmentally motivated migrations of various peoples throughout the area. They organized villages and isolated settlements into larger units under unified clans with access to iron tools, weapons, and military resources, and innovated warfare and military preparedness. As intra- and interregional trade evolved, they provided effective protection of the trade routes and maintained control of the gold resources being exported to the north. They also managed to resolve the persistent problem of underpopulation in strategic areas. Because of their basis in agriculture and metalworking, these states required extensive destruction of forest areas for charcoal fuel and agriculture, as well as building. They fashioned large-scale public buildings from mud bricks, stone, and wood, substantially altering the West African landscape. The Empires of Ghana, Mali, Songhai, and Kanem-Bornu, the Mossi and Hausa-Fulani states, and other political units grew indigenously from consistently successful community adaptations to physical and material circumstances. As in other parts of the world at the time, they survived droughts, flooding, military incursions, plagues, and other catastrophes to create new social and technical achievements and move forward.

The Interplay of Geography and Food Production. The early states of West Africa inherited the best assets of the intertropical climatic zone (the area between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn) and its particular agricultural

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features. The Sudan, for example, has one wet and one dry season each year, with heavy equatorial rains and flooding of river valleys during one part of the year and the aridity of frequent dust storms during the other. Throughout their histories the Empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai produced large food surpluses for their expanding populations. The southern savanna areas closest to the forest got at least six months of 1,500 to 2,000 millimeters of rainfall a year with consistently high temperatures. The central savanna got only 600 to 1,500 millimeters of rain during three to six months of the year, and those areas were consequently much drier than the southern savanna. The Sahel got only 600 millimeters of rain during less than three months of the year, but it and the central and northern savanna, particularly in the river valleys, formed one of the three primary centers in Africa for the early evolution and development of food production. Brown, sandy, structured soils called duricrusts, with strong concentrations of iron oxide and alumina mineral, were the agricultural foundation for the creation, expansion, and maintenance of the Sudanic states.

Agriculture and Economics. Growing millet, rice, sorghum, and vegetables, smoking and drying fish, along with cattle herding and horse keeping were regular components of the economies of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai. In the tenth and eleventh centuries Takrur, located in the middle Senegal River valley several miles away from the Atlantic coast, was the center of a rival production and trading system to that of Ghana. It dominated the Barisa-Silla towns and their hinterlands that lay on the fringes of the Galam-Bambuk goldfields, and its presence radically changed the production and movement of gold from the south to the north. In spite of extreme variations in soil type and mountainous obtrusions, Takrur had fertile farmland, as well as reliable river fishing and iron production and a relatively dense concentration of population. It was also the first Black-ruled Muslim state in the region. Kanem-Bornu, located in the relatively harsh climate of the eastern Lake Chad basin, has a diverse geography that makes it distinctive within the Sudanic pattern. Maximizing food production in this area required consistent labor-intensive farming on the clay soils of its alluvial plains, as well as fishing. The agricultural demands in this region were an important factor in Kanem-Bornu’s massive commitment to slavery and slave raiding.

Sources

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Philip de Barros, “Iron Metallurgy: Sociocultural Context,” in Ancient African Metallurgy: The Sociocultural Context, by Michael S. Bisson, S. Terry Childs, de Barros, and Augustin F. C. Holl, edited by Joseph O. Vogel (Walnut Creek, Cal.: AltaMira Press, 2000), pp. 147-198.

F. De Medeiros, “The Peoples of the Sudan: Population Movements,” in Africa from the Seventh to the Eleventh Century, edited by M. El Fasi and I. Hrbek, volume 3 of General History of Africa (London: Heinemann / Berkeley: University of California Press / Paris: UNESCO, 1988), pp. 119-139.

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Augustin F. C. Holl, “Metals and Precolonial African Society,” in Ancient African Metallurgy: The Sociocultural Context, pp. 1-82.

I. Hrbek, “The Emergence of the Fatimids,” in Africa from the Seventh to the Eleventh Century, edited by M. El Fasi and Hrbek, volume 3 of General History of Africa (London: Heinemann / Berkeley: University of California Press / Paris: UNESCO, 1988), pp. 314-335.

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