Dan Snow's History Hit - West Africa before the Europeans

Episode Date: February 16, 2020

Toby Green has been fascinated by the history of West Africa for decades after he visited as a student and heard whispers of history that didn’t appear in text books. Years later he wrote ‘Fistful of Shells,’ a survey of West Africa and West-Central Africa before the slave trade, and the effect the arrival of Europeans had on those societies. I asked him about what we know about that history and how integrated this region was into the global economy. We also explored the impact of the slave trade on West Africa itself, how it turned the ruling elites against their populations which they now saw as fodder for slave traders. 

Hello everyone, welcome to Dad's Notes History. I've got a real treat for you today. I've got Toby Green on the podcast. He's a British historian. He's Senior Lecturer in African History and Culture at King's College London. He's just written the award-winning A Fistful of Shells. I want to catch up with him to ask about African history, largely sub-Saharan, West African, Central West African history in the years and the centuries leading up to the arrival of the Europeans on the scene and the beginning of the gigantic transatlantic trade in enslaved African peoples. It's a piece of history that we rarely cover on the podcast. It was an absolute treat to catch up with him and listen and learn from him.

My own ignorance in the area was profound. This interview was filmed, as so many of our interviews are, and it will be going out on History Hit TV. It's the new Netflix for history. It's our new history channel. So please go and check that out. If you're listening to this podcast, you can use the code POD6, P-O-D-6. You get six weeks absolutely free of charge.

What's going on in history at the moment? We're planning the next few months and we're going to be busy. So looking forward to delivering all that new content. Lots of change going on. It's going to be fun. In the meantime, everyone, here is Toby Green.

Enjoy. Toby, thanks very much for coming on the show. Thanks, Dan. It's great to be here. You've done a very unusual and strange thing, which is you've just written a giant really important history book about a period of which and a place which they're just we i now realize there was a yawning gap in in english scholarship yes and well did i did i write such but i don't know i spent a lot of time years really uh wondering why the kind of history which I tried to write about in this book

isn't better known. And I realise it's one of the reasons is what you say, that there just isn't that kind of accessible history which places West Africa in a context which, not only on its own terms, but which makes sense to a broader public, which is what I've tried to do in this book. And the period you try and knit together a pre-European contact West Africa with the opening moves of this... well no what's...

West Africa on its own terms should we say from like the 10th, 11th, 12th centuries, which is where the book kind of starts in the early chapters. And how West Africa is beginning to, if you like, globalise. That's right. Even in that time. So even in the 12th century, you were finding traders from Basra in Iraq, in parts of West Africa. I was struck by how global the history was right from the beginning. Yes, and that's one of the things I think which some readers might find surprising in the book. That yes, in this book you'll find people from Basra and from Brazil and

you'll find West Africans trading in India or, and this is the kind of thing they'll come across in little places all the way through. Because again, with my terrible blink at European, I thought I was about to open a book that would be like reading about the Mesoamerican civilizations and then suddenly the Europeans come and the whole thing falls apart. a European point of view. I thought I was about to open a book that would be like reading about the Mesoamerican civilisations and then suddenly the Europeans come and the whole thing falls apart. But in fact, from the opening pages,

it's like, oh, you know, trade routes and gold circulating. And this felt like a part of the world that was very, very connected. Yes, it was. And I think that is one of the, that's one of the important, I suppose, rebalancings

that the book tries to do. That yes, this wasn't a region which somehow emerged into history in the 16th, 17th, 18th centuries once the Europeans started trading down the West African coast and increasingly enslaved. It was a region which was already connected to parts of the Ottoman Empire, for example, to Saudi Arabia, to places like Iraq, and also, interestingly, connected to places in Spain and southern Italy, even before the 15th century as well. So yes, it was a region which had important trading and political connections in its own right

before then. That's right. And I think that, and that's something which persisted throughout the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries as well you actually find diplomats from for example the kingdom of dahomey uh in portugal or in brazil in the 18th century one of the bits which i found fascinating was when i found this document which described the ambassadors of the kingdom of dahomey in lisbon in the 1790s the bill at the restaurant where they ate they went to the opera house every night for a month and this kind of thing. And it's not the impression that, if you like, school history syllabi have given us of West African history.

That's one of the things that the book tries to look at. But it does have a unique geographical position with advantages and disadvantages in terms of trade and state building that come from that. Like, tell me, how does geography, how do these empires and polities grow, flourish and then decline in the space we now call West Africa? Well, that's a very important question because the things which affect the rise and fall in the way of these empires and kingdoms relate to changing geographies, for example, the expanding of dry seasons,

which happens in what we call the medieval period, but also from around 1630 onwards. That has a big impact on politics in the region. Also elements of geography such as the savannah areas of West Africa, which are more open to being controlled by cavalries and so on, which allow for bigger states and regions nearer to the coast because of the different geography there, have different types of political formation. So all those things are relevant as also are the openings which trade offers or closes in that period as well. So West African political systems arise on their own terms but of course white political systems all over

the world are also related to other factors of trade and global connections. And the Sahara in terms of so sailing it was quite hard to sail between what we now call Morocco and West Africa was it but so it was we're talking about trans-Saharan trade. Yes so to start with you have this trans-Saharan trade that's right and for example in 30 or 40 ago, a lot of the history which was written about this, particularly in Portuguese, actually talked about the conflict between the caravel and the caravan. So you had the caravan, which obviously is the Saharan trade. And yes, you know, there were very complex networks. There are maps from the 14th century actually, which show these networks,

cross-crossing the Sahara through the oases and so forth. And then, yes, from the start of the 15th century, the Portuguese begin to sail down the coast of Morocco. They didn't actually have the navigational equipment, so the quadrants and such like, to make it easy to sail out of sight of land. That was one of the reasons, once you sailed south of a particular cape, which was known as Cape Bojador at that time,

you had to sail out of land to return to Portugal. That was one of the reasons that people didn't do that because they were terrified of it so it took quite so it took quite a long time for this for the for the if you like the competition to really take shape between the caravan and the caravel one of the things which is difficult I think with writing history over such a long period of time is that we can compress time we can think old you know it was inevitable that in the course of the 15th century this would take place well actually you know at the time it wasn't inevitable at all you know for people looking at it 50 years

in the future was a hell of a long time as it is for us today so i try to take account of that in the book too does racism bluntly and the impact of the and the shadow cast by the slave trade, where we think it's technologically very sophisticated, white people turning up and sort of dragging natives out of the bushes and then taking them out against their wishes to the new world. Has that racist thinking allowed, discouraged us from looking at the kind of sophistication of the kingdoms and polities that have gone before? Yes, clearly African history has always

been thought, in Britain in particular, for about 200 years through the lens of the history of slavery since the abolition movement. In the abolition movement you had, in the abolition era you had set up two obviously opposing camps. You had the pro-slavery movement who portray which portrayed Africa as a benighted continent and slavery was saving these people from from that continent and then you had the abolitionists who portrayed Africa also actually as a benighted continent destroyed by the wars of the slave trade which which had and therefore you had to abolish slavery in order to ameliorate that. Of course, one of the ironies of that narrative is that it set up an idea of African history as solely related to slavery, and it didn't allow any scope for any of the other elements of African history to come through such as art, literature, oral and written, architecture, elements of technology,

medicine, all those things which you could write about and which there is evidence of which weren't written about. And of course the other irony is that these wars were very much an offshoot of the state building process just as they had been in Europe. Europe's state building process in that period of history was also marked by innumerable wars and conflicts just as it was just as was the case in Africa which is one of the parallels which the book tries to look at. And then in that case as well why is it just a quirk of navigational technology? I mean this is one of the big questions of history is

why on earth do these like Western Europeans who've played no particular role in human history so far go and expand like a virus across the entire world in space hundreds of years. Why was it that the African states, technologically advanced, culturally sophisticated, why did they why did it prove so unequal? That's a very good question. That's one of the reasons why the book looks at over a long period of time. I think it's over a long period of time that you can get some answers to that question. To begin with, why was there an interest in that trade in the first place? We have to remember that the coast at that time, where the Portuguese arrived

from the mid-15th century onwards, they were backwaters. They were provinces, sub-provinces of the centralised hearts. For example, Senegal, which is where the Portuguese first arrived, the kingdoms around the coast there were provinces of the Empire of Mali. And Mali would have faced north and east into the Arab world. It was facing much more in those directions, that's right. But for the rulers, the viceroys of the provinces on the coast, it was to their advantage to trade with the Portuguese. They could begin to challenge and vie with the central power for supremacy.

And that happened, for example, in Senegambia. It happened in the Kingdom of Congo as well with the province in Soyo. And there are various different examples of that. So when we start breaking down our idea of Africa in quotes to the different constituent parts, it makes more sense as to why it was in some people's interests to begin trade. And then how did this trade mesh with a rise in inequality between African and European political actors? The book makes a case that one of the reasons for that is looking at this as a trade, looking at the history of money and how the types of money which were used in West Africa and which were traded

by Europeans, so a lot of the early trade is in currencies, is in copper, iron, cowries, which are used as currencies in West Africa, and the value of those decline over time, whereas what Africa exported, which was gold, to begin with, a lot of gold, and then subsequently captive labour, which was used to accumulate value in the Americas, grew over time. So that's the case that the book makes as to why that led to a rise in inequality. And so when you look at these kingdoms, like the Kingdom of Mali, Kingdom of Congo, what are the sources like?

Again, how hard is it for a historian to push aside that curtain of that bookend of the slave trade and actually see what was going on before it? Another very good question. It can be hard. It depends. The answer is different in different regions of West Africa. Congo is a good case. In Congo there's a huge amount of written sources. The Congolese kings and ruling royal families converted to Christianity very early. A lot of them became literate in Portuguese very early and wrote in passion letters in Portuguese.

Tragic. Yes, and some of them also later in in Kikongo from quite an early time so we have this autism and and some of those sort of recounted oral histories of the foundation of the kingdom from an early time too but at that time in the in the in the late 1400s in the 1500s so we have so the Congo is very well documented from that time Mali we have, so Vilama Kongo is very well documented from that time. Mali, we have a lot of Arabic accounts in Arabic of Mali dating from the 13th century, 14th century. And more manuscripts are being found. We discussed before, actually, Dan, you've been to Timbuktu, you saw some of those.

And there are more of those being found. And then there is a history in most of West Africa is an oral genre. It's retained orally and sometimes, and I've had this experience myself, it's possible to corroborate oral and written sources from an early time, from the 16th century even, but that's a slow process. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series chasing shadows where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills

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That's important, yes. It's often related to resources and accessibility, really. So the savannah is a key area. Most of the important kingdoms which arise in West Africa arise in the savannah regions. So you have Mali, which arises partly in the savannah region. Oyo, for example, in southern Nigeria arises in the savannah region. So often the spread of savannah grasslands and areas there for which you're quite, both give you a lot of cultivable land, but also are easy to militarily control. That's very important.

It's easy to move large modules of horsemen across. Yes, that's right. And the cavalry was very important in West African warfare from an early time, from before when the Europeans arrived. And so those are important elements. And then the moving boundaries of the Sahara, I think, and how those affect trade routes to the north would be very important elements as well. And those do shift over time. As I say, there were dry periods in the medieval period that kind of seemed to have stopped in the middle of the 15th century.

And there seems to have been a wetter period, but then became more significant, particularly in the 18th century. And some historians relate those dry periods to the increases in warfare which occurred then as well. A breakdown of irrigation things. Yes and then obviously harder to to feed large populations and the discord that that can provoke. So when we're thinking about the arrival of Europeans what did they, they were arriving into literal areas and finding kind of willing accomplices who they realised that would, were they? It's hard to generalise. I mean, one of the important things to remember about Europeans is, I think I've written in the introduction to the book, one of the dangers of using just

European sources is the idea that the Europeans were more important they were of course they were hugely important in some ways but in other ways most of them dropped dead within six months and the ones that survived one of their survival mechanisms was really usually to form African families they would marry locally often with well-connected wives and then there and it was often the children of those of those unions who would then often become important traders and brokers linking european ships as they arrived and african trading and political systems so um and and so you could say i suppose when you say they found winning companies in a way you could say they helped to create with their

marriages with African people, trading classes who became important brokers and became winning accomplices. So that kind of creolized population was a very important part of the trade. And you find that in Senegal and Gambia. You find it on the Gold Coast in Ghana. You find it in various parts of West Africa. Was West African society and politics more familiar than, say, Cortez found Aztec? Yes, I think in many ways they were. I think that, well, you can start with the arrival of the Portuguese in Senegami the 15th century I mean there's a shared language there Arabic Arabic is spoken in the in the in the Iberian Peninsula it's also you know Islam has reached a

Senegal Senegal by then so you have an Arabic becomes a shared lingua franca and in fact there seems to have been lingua franca between the Portuguese and West African peoples as far south as what's now Guinea-Bissau at that time. So that immediately obviously does create some kind of shared territory. There was a quite accurate map done in 1375 by a cartographer from Mallorca called Abraham Kresges of West Africa. So there was knowledge of West Africa in some parts of Europe before then. So I think that clearly, which obviously wasn't the case with Mesoamerica at all. So I think there were elements of commonality. And also an important thing to remember is

one of the reasons the Portuguese started sailing down the West African coast, so they said, was to try and form an alliance with this mythical king, Presto John, a Christian king. To get back to the Holy Land. That's right. So there was a knowledge of, a sense that there were some areas in common before the 15th century. We're so guilty of referring to West Africa as West Africa. How politically diverse is it? Do you see the same in the period before your appearance arrived? Do you see the same in the period before you were Prince of Wales? Do you see the same, whether it's the Roman Empire or the Frankish Empire,

do you see these really big territories develop in the area we call West Africa? Yeah, that's a very good question. I think, again, it depends on the period. You start to see them emerging particularly from the 11th century onwards. You have the Empire of Ghana, as it was called, which was centre in what's now Mauritania, and that controlled a really quite a large area, including areas of what's now Senegal and Mali. Then you have the Empire of Mali, which arises in Mali and controls to the Atlantic coast, areas of what would be now Burkina Faso,

Timbuktu to the north on the Niger bend. And then in the 15th century, you get some very important political changes before the Europeans arrive. So, for example, in northern Nigeria, what's now northern Nigeria, Kano really crystallizes its power at that time in Nigeria. And it's connected to areas really quite far south in Nigeria towards the Atlantic coast. And all of these, and you have in Burkina Faso, you have the rise of an empire called Mossi. You have a lot of changes in that time. So what's driving those changes in the 15th century?

Well, some people have said it might have been the impact of the Black Death in West Africa. Others have looked to shifting environmental patterns and shifting trade routes. But I think the key thing is these things are all happening internally directed in response to some of these changes before the Europeans arrive. It's not as if they're somehow in response to the Europeans. These are active systems when the Europeans arrive. What about, if you mention these empires and where they're centred. Why do I not know enough about, why am I ignorant as to the archaeology left behind,

the sort of heritage? There are some fascinating monuments in West Africa. A lot of them are in ruins. I mean, I saw a talk a few years ago given by an archaeologist who'd worked in Burkina Faso on a huge ruins called Lorapeni, which are virtually unknown outside Burkina Faso. And there's a number of those.

I mean, for example, one of the main trading centres in the Gambia River region was a place called Kantora, which was where the Atlantic system that the Portuguese were trying to develop met the Saharan system. And I know people quite well in Gambia. It's well known where this place is, so it's never been excavated.

And so one of the causes of this is lack of funds for excavations in West Africa. And also, in some ways, also just the general way in which history, the distant African past, is not really being prioritised either, in some ways ways either in or outside africa actually now is that because we it was deeply inconvenient for people to say that these cultures that in africa were sophisticated developed because of this because of the rationale for say we're going to we are going to take people against their will we're going to enslave these people and actually that's okay because they are they are incapable of self-rule. They're incapable of building the kind of institutions and political association that we have in Europe.

Yeah, from the European side, it didn't fit with the imperial myths, essentially. So it wasn't part of history as the textbooks were developed during the history of the European empires in Africa. I think since independence in Africa, various things, I mean actually in the 60s and into the 70s, there were, in Nigeria for example, at the University of Ibadan and in Senegal, the University of Sheikha and the Diop, there were really serious schools of historians working on that. But since the 80s, decline of funds available to universities in Africa, difficulties in conducting research, getting hold of visas to come and do research in European archives, all these things have tended to undermine the research into the distant African past in African, in history departments in African universities,

although you do find this obviously in archaeology departments, but all of those factors have meant that even in Africa history is a subject which has been in decline. In fact, for example, it was taken, completely taken out of the secondary school syllabus in Nigeria for about seven years until 2016. So in a way, that's another thing which in the end made me think that trying to write a book like this could be something which I ought to do because it's not simply a case of Westerners having got access to this history. As I say, increasingly, it's also the case actually in West Africa.

You mentioned Nigeria. There's going to be a billion more nigerians in the next 40 years or something i see from the economists so do um do does this feel like a part of the world that is that is um in which history like in the way that chinese people have been rediscovering their history and politicizing their history and weaponizing their history over the last 30 years is are we going to see that do you think in west africa is it going to be quite a dynamic time rediscovering their history and politicising their history and weaponising their history over the last 30 years. Are we going to see that, do you think, in West Africa? Is it going to be quite a dynamic time? I think there's a possibility that it could, and I certainly hope that that's the case, because there's still a lot of work to be done.

And as I say, it has been a subject which has been really under threat. I mean, as everywhere in the world, STEM subjects are prioritised by governments, and that's certainly also been the case in West Africa in the last 10 or 15 years. And also because when we look at some of the broader factors which today link West Africa to other parts of the world, and, for example, the way in which European governments look at questions of migration and what's driving people to try and leave West Africa, well, there are lots of reasons, but I think without a true sense of the deeper history of the African past, it's hard for people not to think that somehow the future will be better

somewhere else. And I think actually that sense of developing that awareness is actually really fundamental within education systems, not only for the African diaspora, say, in Europe, but also in West Africa itself? I'm afraid I'm going to ask you this question. It's really mean to end up with. But I get asked really actually increasingly now when I do public events about returning treasures, quote unquote, that were looted or bought or purchased

or any, got in any way and stuck in British museums. And for some, we think almost West Africa is, we think of that as an area probably that suffered more than most in terms of the loss of its portable antiquities. What is your sense, and when you're out there working, I mean, do you think that there is going to have to be some, is the physical, not just the archaeology of the places, the archival stuff, but are the physical objects going to be really important in that story?

And are we going to face increasing pressure to send them back? You can tell so many stories from an object. Funnily enough, I was at a meeting at the British Museum this morning where we went to the African ruins. In that meeting, we talked precisely about all the stories that some of the objects in the African ruins of the British Museum can tell. precisely about all the stories that some of the objects in the Africa Reels the British Museum can tell. You know, if those objects aren't present in the areas where they originated from,

there are fewer stories which can be told and fewer ways for young people there to connect with some of the things I was talking about. So I think clearly that has to be the direction of the travel into the future. And I'm sure that if, as you you said and as may be an aspiration history does become more important within the way in which uh educate you know education systems develop in West Africa that's going to be demand which we see more and more of well in the meantime they got your book okay which is is this book being um is it receiving a big audience in West Africa as well as well a friend wrote to me from Gambia to say that the main bookshop in Gambia had already sold out.

So that was encouraging. So I hope so. Well, I'm sure that's West Africa's interest in this podcast, who will snap it up now as well. Thank you very much, Toby Green. A fistful of shells. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dan. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dan. Thank you, everybody.

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