Page 61 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol III

880 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

In ancient Egypt artisans used gum arabic in making 1779). The British also briefly gained control of Saint-
inks and in the process of mummification. In the desert Louis during the Napoleonic Wars.
societies of the Sahara and Arabia, it was used as a food- During the 1820s and 1830s the volume of gum arabic
stuff, a thickener for drinks and glue, a glaze for mud- exports doubled.The gum arabic trade became the over-
walled construction, a cosmetic hair treatment, a base for whelming focus of European, Euro-African, and Arabo-
painting on wood, and a medicine for diarrhea. It found Berber merchants and the Arabo-Berber warrior groups
many additional uses in neighboring societies, including along the southern shore of the Sahara who participated
in papermaking and in cloth finishing. in the Atlantic sector. Terms of trade moved heavily in
Until the middle of the second millennium CE, gum favor of the Arabo-Berbers, and large volumes of the prin-
arabic reached Mediterranean and southwest Asian mar- cipal import, an indigo-impregnated cloth known as the
kets principally from Arabia and northern Africa. After “guinée,” flooded into the region.The desert merchants,
the fifteenth-century maritime revolution, European mar- adept at exploiting their market position, created intense-
iners discovered an abundant source of gum arabic along ly competitive conditions among the European and Euro-
the southern coast of the western Sahara. Gum arabic African gum arabic traders at Saint-Louis who sought
exports from this region, however, remained modest until their trade.The desert warriors exploited their ability to
the eighteenth century, when manufacturers extended extort tax payments from the gum arabic traders. During
techniques for the use of gum arabic in the production of the 1830s and 1840s many of these Euro-African traders
silk cloth to the manufacture of cotton cloth.Thereafter, fell into ruinous debt.This crisis in the gum arabic trade
the importance of gum arabic increased, and the “gum provoked the French conquest of the lower Senegal River
coast” became an arena of international contestation. valley during the early 1850s; it was in part an effort to
The principal markets for the seasonal purchase of break the power of desert warrior groups and to reor-
gum arabic were located along the Saharan coast of Mau- ganize the gum arabic trade.This conquest was the first
ritania and at river ports along the lower Senegal River. inland territorial conquest by the French in sub-Saharan
The Arabo-Berber tribes who controlled the gum harvest Africa.
sent their slaves to do the arduous work of scrapping the Thereafter, import-export commercial firms at Saint-
gum into leather sacks that later would be loaded on to Louis imposed their control over trade in gum arabic, and
draft oxen and carried to market. European merchants gum arabic remained the principal export from the Sene-
along the Saharan coast bought the gum from desert car- gal River valley throughout the remainder of the nine-
avanners and took it on board their ships.Afro-European teenth century.The value of gum arabic declined sharply,
merchants bought the larger volume of gum arabic at the however, as new industrial products and processes re-
river markets from desert merchants and bulked it in duced the importance of the natural exudate. New sources
warehouses in Saint-Louis du Sénégal at the mouth of were developed in the Sudan, and these managed groves
the Senegal River before it was transferred to ocean- of acacia emerged during the twentieth century as the
going ships. principal source of the world’s supply of gum arabic.
During the Seven Years War (1756–1763), Thomas Thus, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, gum
Cumming, a U.S.-born gum arabic trader based in Lon- arabic returned to its earlier role as a natural product with
don, led a small expedition of British naval vessels in a only an exceedingly modest importance in world trade.
successful attack upon the French colony of Saint-Louis Today gum arabic continues to find a wide variety of uses
du Sénégal. The British seizure of Saint-Louis in 1758 in lithography and in the production of cosmetics, con-
marked the beginning of the first of two periods of fections, and beverages.
British colonial rule in northern Senegambia (1758– James L. A.Webb Jr.