Page 108 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

trading patterns, trans-saharan 1885

towns of the northern Sahara such as Sijilmasa in reduced the global significance of all the world’s long-
Morocco, Ouargla in Algeria, or Murzuq in Libya. The distance caravan transport, including the Saharan routes.
journey to Sudanic end points such as Timbuktu However, from the perspective of northern and Sudanic
(Tombouctou) or Kano took as many as seventy days, Africa, new markets on the Atlantic coast and a general
traveling at a speed of 24 to 40 kilometers per day. Over expansion of international trade provided opportunities
the many centuries of the caravan trade, few if any tech- for economic growth. It is easy to understand why
nical improvements were made in this transport system, Sudanic societies and the neighboring gold-bearing
which was better adapted to conditions in the desert than regions would benefit from sending some of their exports
the wheeled vehicles and instrument-aided navigation south, but not so obvious why such commerce should
that changed land and sea transport in other regions dur- also continue across the desert, given the far greater effi-
ing this time. Nonetheless, movement across such lengthy ciency of water over land transport in this preindustrial
desert stretches always remained dangerous due to the era.The answer lies in the natural protection afforded by
uncontrollable menaces of sandstorms, attacks by brig- the forest zone separating the Sudan from the Atlantic.
ands, and the possibility that oasis wells might have dried Travel across that landscape was even more costly than
up or been poisoned since the last visit. travel in the Sahara, since pack or draft animals could not
A major trans-Saharan caravan was not a single busi- withstand the disease ecology there and trade goods thus
ness enterprise but rather a temporary association of sev- required human portage.
eral North African merchants under the leadership of a One of the first commodities that Europeans sought
paid guide. Although the camels were technically owned on the West African coast was gold. By the fifteenth cen-
by the merchants, in effect they were rented from desert tury the most productive source of this metal within the
communities, which also supplied the skilled labor to region did lie near the ocean, in present-day Ghana,
care for them. On arrival in the Sudan, the camels would which thus acquired its colonial name of “Gold Coast.”
be sold.When the time came for a return journey a new, Europeans managed to divert much of the gold trade
usually much smaller, number of beasts was purchased. away from the Sahara, provoking the sultan of Morocco
Despite their limited scale and lack of control over to launch an invasion of the Sahara and, in 1591, to take
their main transport capital, trans-Saharan merchants over the Timbuktu (Tombouctou) entrepôt. The Moroc-
did make use of quite sophisticated commercial instru- can effort and the still-expanding Sudanic merchant net-
ments. Thus much of their business was carried on by works within the forest zone assured some continuation
means of credit, recorded in written documents that of trans-Saharan gold trade. However, by the 1800s this
accompanied caravans in lieu of currency or any goods commerce had become much reduced and irregular,
that could not to be sold in local markets. As religious often constituting no more than a few feather quills
learning became more widespread in the Sahara and filled with gold dust, carried as supplements to other
Sudan, merchants could also extend their range of part- commodities.
nerships beyond individuals with whom they had close In any case, the large amounts of bullion exported
personal ties, confident that agreements would be guar- from the New World from the sixteenth century onward
anteed by appeal to the extensive commercial stipula- ended the major role of West African gold in the world
tions of Islamic law. economy. For Europeans, the most important export
from this region was slaves, who were shipped from the
The Impact of Atlantic Trade entire Atlantic coast of the continent in huge numbers.
Routes on Trans-Saharan Trade However, the demand for labor and military manpower
The European voyages of discovery of the fifteenth and in the Islamic world also increased during the centuries
sixteenth centuries opened up a new system of maritime after 1600. Even in its last three hundred years the trans-
traffic between Europe, Asia, and the Americas that Saharan slave trade is not nearly as well documented as