Page 162 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

W

of the Wagadu military and political elites in production the continents. Blanchard goes on to say that the changes
and trade. in African gold mining and the gold trade permanently
According to a late eighth-century source (al-Fazari of established Africa’s position in an intercontinental
Baghdad),Wagadu was 2,000 kilometers long and 160 monetary-commercial system for the next four hundred
kilometers wide and was “the land of gold.” The condi- years. For several centuries the Wagadu empire had a cen-
tions for the expansion of the empire and the develop- tral role in this system as a distributor of West Africa gold.
ment of its domestic economy can be tied to its place in
the medieval world economy. Ian Blanchard, a scholar of Extending
medieval economic history, has written a detailed study the Empire
of the history of bullion (gold and silver) production and Given its location between the desert and the savanna,
marketing in the Middle Ages that provides useful the empire had two orientations: One was the northern
insights. He relates that during the years 930–1130, an frontier (irrigated farming and salt production) and the
“industrial diaspora” occurred as the major focus of gold other the southern frontier (rainfall farming and gold pro-
and silver production was relocated from Central Asia to duction). From the sixth through the twelfth centuries,
Africa and Europe respectively and a new intercontinen- Soninke-speaking traders, peasants, and political elites
tal monetary-commercial system began to emerge.Tech- moved northwards from the empire’s core zone into the
nological changes in the production base of the West southern Sahara to found or to settle in oasis communi-
African gold industry—namely, the introduction of the ties (sixth–twelfth centuries). Nomadic Berber-speaking
mercury amalgamation process—resulted in a dramatic groups were driven out, assimilated, or subjugated.
increase in annual gold production. One consequence of Because of their social commitment to a specialized set
this development was the appearance (between 1136 and of agricultural practices, when the northern “frontier”
1175) of a distinct North African zone of cheap and plen- Soninke took over new land, they introduced a well-
tiful gold, extending from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red defined combination of intensive cultivation techniques
Sea. The presence of cheap African gold and equally and a particular social-administrative organization.
cheap and plentiful European silver led to the emergence Southward expansion created a different kind of fron-
of a distinctive Afro-European bullion market that was tier. Soninke-speaking traders, officials, soldiers, and
characterized by long-term price stability and an “anti- peasants from the core settled in the Middle Niger Valley
cyclonic” circulation of the two metals. West African and the Lakes region at the eastern end of the Middle
gold passed north to the Mediterranean world and in Niger Valley—also referred to as the Niger Delta. Oral
exchange a countervailing supply of European silver histories record the names of the towns and villages they
flowed south. The process created an Afro-European founded between the eighth and the thirteenth centuries.
market structure that distributed the two metals between Indigenous Mande-speaking fishing communities and

1939