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Economy and Society

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Long-distance exchange and the formation of the State: the case of the Abron kingdom of Gyaman

Emmanuel Terray

To cite this article: Emmanuel Terray (1974) Long-distance exchange and the formation of the State: the case of the Abron kingdom of Gyaman, Economy and Society, 3:3, 315-345, DOI: 10.1080/03085147400000016

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147400000016

Published online: 28 Jul 2006.

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Long-distance exchange and the formation of the State: the case of the Abron kingdom of Gyaman Emmanuel Terray

Abstract

In the view of several present-day historians and economists, including Samir Amin, Catherine Coquery and Yves Person, the structure of pre- colonial African socio-economic formations may be described as the combination of peasant communities organising their labour without outside interference, and of warrior aristocracies basing their wealth and power on their control of long-distance trade. In my own view, this picture underestimates the economic and social role played in many formations by captives: in Gyaman and in Ashanti, it is essentially captives who produce the surplus from which the aristocracy's means of domination are drawn; and long-distance trade functions to allow the aristocracy to 'realise' the surplus product extracted from its captives' labour, not directly to obtain resources for itself in the form of rights or tolls. These social formations are therefore constituted by the conjunction of a kin-based tributary mode of production and a mode of production based on the exploitation of slave labour. In conclusion, I raise the question as to whether this kind of structure is not the foundation of most social formations of pre-colonial Africa, at least where States have been in existence.

One of the major contributions from Marxist thought to the study of pre-capitalist societies is concerned with the problem of the origin of the State. In defining the State as 'a machine for the oppression of one class by another',l Engels formally links its emergence to the emergence of social classes : according to him the development of class oppositions, within a particular society, after a certain point evokes institutions that appear on the surface to be the locus and instrument of arbitration or conciliation between antagonistic classes, and which actually tend to provide the dominant class with the means to maintain and reproduce its supremacy. The State's origin is therefore a consequence of the development of social classes, and in its turn this is the product of a transformation of the relations of production through which the exploitation of man by man enters a previously egalitarian society. More precisely, Engels sees in the birth of the State an effect of the extension of ~ l ave ry ,~ which is in his view 'the first great cleavage of society into an exploiting and an exploited cl as^'.^

Now for some years, a certain number of Marxist and non-Marxist anthropologists and historians, without explicitly questioning this

316 Ernrnanuel Terray

analysis, have been placing emphasis on another correlation: one which links the establishment of the State with the development of long-distance e ~ c h a n g e . ~ Already in 1964, Maurice Godelier produced a first endeavour in this direction. Seeking to define the extension of the concept of the Asiatic mode of production, Godelier asserts that, contrary to Marx's view, the Asiatic mode of production is not necessarily linked to the existence of major economic projects-irrigation, drainage, road- construction, etc. . . . - which would evoke at one and the same time the intervention of a centralised State and the levy of a surplus from the product of peasant communities to ensure the life and operation of this State. Godelier writes :

We propose to add a second hypothesis to that of Marx. We consider that another way and another form of the Asiatic mode of production can exist, by which a minority dominates and exploits the communities without direct intervention in their conditions of production, but by intervening indirectly through levying a surplus in labour or in products for its own profit. In West Africa, the emergence of the kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, Songhai, etc. . . . was not generated by the organisation of large projects but seems to be linked to control of inter-tribal or inter-regional trade exercised by tribal aristocracies over the exchange of precious products, gold, ivory, skins, etc. . . . between Black Africa and White A f r i ~ a . ~

I n this perspective, the formation of the State certainly remains linked to the emergence of exploitation, but the latter does not operate in the sphere of immediate production, where social relations are unchanged, but in the sphere of the distribution of products : it is by controlling this distribution that 'tribal aristocracies' appropriate the surplus necessary to their existence and hegemony.

Some years later, Catherine Coquery, in developing the suggestions thrown out by Maurice Godelier, endeavoured to specify the notion of an 'African mode of production' defined by 'the combination of a patriarchal communal economy and the exclusive control of one group over long-distance e~change ' .~ Catherine Coquery begins by remarking on the low productivity of agriculture in tropical Africa: 'Black Africa is undoubtedly the part of the world where agriculture was the least capable of producing surplus ~ a l u e ' . ~ Further, the tribute exacted from peasant communities was above all 'a symbolic value guaranteeing the social structure^'.^ In fact, either the products, once collected, are immediately redistributed, and the tribute exacted contributes toward the consolidation of the aristocracy's power simply by the extent to which it makes itself sole agent of this redistribution; or they make possible ostentatious consumption designed to demonstrate the aristo- cracy's wealth and power. Catherine Coquery continues the argument by asserting that so far as its own immediate consumption is concerned,

Long-distance exchange and the formation of the State 317

the aristocracy procures this 'with the help of limited domestic slavery, not comparable with a slave mode of production properly so called'.D Alternatively, it does not extract the basis of its fortune from its immedi- ate dependants-subjects; captives: 'The African despot exploited his subjects much less than he did neighbouring tribes: it is in fact from long-distance exchange that the major portion of surplus product originated. . . . Major exactions of tribute were not imposed on the village communities; they arose from outside the territory thanks to annual raids or to peaceful commercial transactions that ensured the monopolisation of products at rates far lower than their value'.lO Catherine Coquery, in her contribution to the Centre d'8tudes et de Recherches Marxistes colloquium on feudalism, states more clearly still that the aristocracy's power comes 'from its domination over commercial routes and transactions',ll and she adds: 'Maybe the State was not constructed as a result of trade, but the aristocracy strengthened itself through its grip on major trade. . . . Surplus value was extracted from these long-distance exchanges, and this surplus value enabled the ruling class to be reinforced through the accumulation of prestige goods, sometimes hoarded, more often wasted, in the framework of an economy of ostentation'.12 While still reserving the question of the precise historical circumstances of the formation of States, Catherine Coquery analyses the control they exerted over long-distance exchange as the foundation of their power.

More recently Samir Amin has put forward a similar hypothesis; in a study of the pre-capitalist social formations of tropical Africa he writes 'with long-distance trade setting societies ignorant of each other in relation to each other, that is to say in terms of products for which each society does not know the production-cost, of products that are rare and non-substitutable, the social groups who engage in this trade occupy a monopoly position from which they draw their profit'.l3 He then shows that long-distance trade can play a decisive role in the very construction of certain social formations :

This is the case when the surplus that local dominant classes can extract from the producers inside the formation is limited, because of the lower level of development of productive forces, and/or different ecological conditions, or because of successful resistance by the village community to the levy of this surplus. In this case long-distance trade enables the transfer (definitely not the generation) of a fraction of surplus from one society to another, through the monopoly profit it authorises. For the society that benefits, this transfer may be essential and may constitute the principal basis of the wealth and power of its ruling classes.14

Starting from quite different premises other historians, who make no explicit recourse to Marxism, arrive at conclusions quite close to

318 Emmanuel Terray

these. For example, in a study of the history of the commercial routes linking the Niger valley with the Gulf of Guinea, Yves Person writes: 'I consider it impossible for a commercial route of some importance to be organised in a region occupied by Stateless societies without destroy- ing very quickly their segmental structure'.l6 In practice the regular flow of trade assumes the establishment of a state of peace and security that segmental societies are incapable of guaranteeing; thus it evokes the establishment of a centralised power capable of maintaining order in important areas. In return, the formation of this power gives a new impulse to trade, which is why Person asserts 'It seems to me altogether likely that the development of the major trading centre of Djenne was made possible by the formation of the Mossi-Dagomba States. I t is probable that the Malinke traders (Dyulas) profited from the security guaranteed by the State organisation of the Mossi-Dagomba, and borrowed their territory to descend toward middle Volta in search of new goldmines.'16 Here again we have at one and the same time the assertion of a reciprocal relation between the development of trade and of State institutions, and the assertion that the second originate in the first since it creates the need for security to which the second respond.

I should like then to show from research I have carried out in the Ivory Coast, partly in Dida territory and partly in Abron territory, that this kind of thesis greatly overestimates the role of major trade in the formation of the States of tropical Africa. This role is undeniable, but it is not direct, and it is impossible to isolate it from a whole series of other factors whose operation is equally important. I t is these factors which we shall try to illuminate in the following remarks.

In the first place let us examine the security problems raised by Yves Person. As against him, I do not think that the operation of an important trade route is incompatible with the persistence of a segmentally organised social structure: the Dida example shows that coexistence is perfectly possible. Two trade routes crossed Dida territory from North to South : one linked the Divo region to Yokobwe via Tablegiku and Gitri, the other the Lakota region to Fresco via Kazeribwe and Gbagbam. The Dida transported along these routes toward the coast ivory, rubber and captives, which they exchanged for European-style commodities with their Avikam and Godie partners-fire-arms and munitions, textiles, alcohol, iron bars-sea-salt and dried fish. In just the same fashion they obtained the anklets that acted as dowry inside their own society. This circulation was extended toward the North: in exchange for the anklets brought from the coast, the Dida obtained breeches in Gouro territory and Baule territory.17 The data gathered by Marc Auge in Alladian and Avikam territory,ls and by myself in Dida territory, concur in under- lining the intensity of this flow of trade.

Now up until French colonisation Dida society maintained a purely segmental structure. The only authority recognised before the whites

Long-distance exchange and the formation of the State 319

arrived was the elders'; not only the canton chiefs but also the village chiefs were the creation-and most often the creatures-of the colonial administration. Does that mean that Dida territory had no experience of security problems? Quite the contrary: I have shown elsewherelg that war was endemic there, and abduction frequent. But the Dida managed to confront, and to a certain extent to surmount these diffi- culties with the help of the only resources that their kin-based social structure provided them. In the first place, the dictates of trade con- tributed appreciably to the maintenance of kinship cohesion: an expedition toward the coast in reality was a dangerous undertaking demanding the mobilisation of extensive supporting forces: the goods conveyed in one or other direction needed to be placed under a good escort, and the village needed to be left well guarded; only numerous and strongly integrated kin-groups therefore were able to involve themselves in this venture.20 Moreover, matrimonial strategy among the Dida was partly determined by the requirements of trade : for preference a Dida village sent its daughters to marry in areas further to the South; in practice by doing so it obtained allies and maternal nephews in the regions between it and the sea; its travellers could thus stay with these allies and nephews when they got to the coast; each village where one of their sisters had married represented for them a stage along the route where accommodation and assistance were ensured.21 When the network of kinship bonds had gaps in it, these were filled by institutions which had the effect, if not the aim, of ensuring travellers' safety. Let us instance among them the systems of clans (yuru) and of political alliances (meno). Elsewhere I have described the yuru system: all Dida are divided into four clans called yuru, each being characterised by a particular prohibition transmitted by the female line. Members of the same yuru owe each other hospitality and protection. In villages where the traveller has relatives, allies or friends (tekpa), these take the responsibility of looking after him, but where he knows no one the yuru intervenes to defend him against possible abduction atternpts.22 The bonds of political alliance that the Dida established with neigh- bouring peoples, particularly the Abidji, the Godie and the Neyo, who were also precisely their trading partners, had as an important conse- quence this same duty of mutual assistance. Thanks to these various arrangements, the Dida were able to maintain in their territory the minimum order required for the regular flow of trade without discard- ing the segmental character of their social organisation.

But, it will be said, if the Dida were able to dispense with a centralised power, it was because exchange was organised among them in a system of relays:Z4 the passage of commodities over the territory of a given people was ensured by the jurisdiction of this people itself, without the intervention of alien merchants whose protection would have required more draconian measures. In the case of the Dida, this objection is valueless : on the borders of Dida territory there circulated Apollonian

320 Emmanuel Terray

pedlars who penetrated as far as the regions of Lakota and Divo, several hundred kilometres from the coast; it was they who more than anyone kept the Dida blacksmiths supplied with ingots of crude iron. I t does not seem then that there is any necessary correlation between the presence or absence of the State and the fact that the circulation of goods should be organised and ensured by aliens or 'nationals'.

Now the Dida example is in no way an isolated one. Catherine Coquery instances the case of the great Congo trade network 'which drained products and men from enormous di~tances',~5 and whose agents were drawn especially from among the Boubangui, a segmentally organised people residing at the confluence of the Oubangui and Congo rivers. She rightly concludes that 'long-distance exchange and centralised power (cannot) necessarily be linked to each other.'26 But it would then be necessary to investigate in what circumstances and under what conditions long-distance exchange favours the formation of States, and to define what type of major trade contributes to this formation. Yet it is precisely at this point that she leaves us unsatisfied.

We have seen how Catherine Coquery, and Maurice Godelier before her, effectively explain the power and wealth of African aristocracies by the control they exerted over trade routes and long-distance exchange. Now the very varied cases that can be observed render this hypothesis in my view too general to account satisfactorily for them. T o justify my scepticism I shall make use of a precise example : the Abron kingdom of Gyaman.

Founded in the last years of the seventeenth century, the kingdom of Gyaman occupied up until the colonial conquest a territory situated at the north-east of the present-day Ivory Coast and the north-west of present-day Ghana, between the Komoe and the Black Volta, on the edge of the savannah and the forest. Even before the construction of the kingdom, this territory was already crossed by a very important trade route linking Niger with the Gulf of Guinea via Bobo-Dyulaso, Kong and Kumasi or Anyibilekru. The following products circulated along this route : from South to North, kola from Ashanti, gold, the products of European treaties, particularly fire-arms, gunpowder, sea-salt ; from the North to the South, Bobo-Dyulaso ironware, Buna cotton, captives, Sahara salt, cattle, ivory. At the beginning of the nineteenth century a second route began to cross the first on Gyaman territory itself; it linked Kong to Hausa territory via Kintampo, Salaga, Yendi, Sansanne Mango and Nikki; it was therefore oriented from West to East; from the West came Anno kola, Gyaman gold, Kong textiles; from the East manufactured Hausa goods and especially leatherware.

Now in Gyaman we can see clearly, if not 'exclusive control'-to use Catherine Coquery's expression-at least the domination of one group over long-distance exchanges. This group is the Dyula, Muslim merchants of Malinke origin, who established themselves in the great

Long-distance exchange and the formation of the State 32 1

merchant city of Bondoukou in the very heart of the kingdom. Thanks to the bonds uniting them to neighbouring Dyula communities-in Kong, Bobo-Dyulaso and Buna-the Dyula knew the state of supply of various markets and the price-differences that are the source of com- mercial profit. Through their ownership of large numbers of captives and beasts of burden, they effected the transport of an important section of commodities in circulation, and especially those from the Sudanese savannah. I n Bondoukou itself they entertained the caravans and provided them with food produced by their slaves in nearby hamlets; they put the network of correspondents they used in all the major commercial centres of the region at their guests' disposal. In fact they took on the largest share of the tasks associated with long-distance trade.

The largest share, but not all of it; in their case it is possible to talk in terms of supremacy but not of monopoly. In the first place they were not to be found to the same extent on all routes. If the trafficking between Bondoukou and the Niger valley was practically under their control, they ran into competition with the Apollonians along the Komoe river, with Ashanti merchants along the Kumasi road, and with the Hausa in the area of Salaga. Moreover the non-Dyula travellers in the kingdom also organised commercial expeditions ; most of these were directed toward the Gulf of Guinea, but some journeyed to Kong. The Dyula cannot then be 'attributed with 'exclusive' control over long- distance exchange.

Nonetheless, the Dyula did appropriate most of the benefits that this exchange made possible, thanks to the size and effectiveness of their commercial organisation. So far, Catherine Coquery's description is more or less adequate in the case of Gyaman; but now the difficulties are about to begin: for from a political point of view the Dyula were in no way the kingdom's dominant class ;every form of political, administra- tive, judicial and military power was in the hands of a warrior aristocracy of Akan origin, the Abron. Ruled by a king and four provincial chiefs, this aristocracy subjected the cultivators of Kulango stock when it arrived in the territory. They also levied a tribute from them, though a relatively light one.

I n theory the Abrons' sovereignty extended to the Dyula as to the other peoples in the kingdom. I n fact the Dyula enjoyed the status of privileged guests in Gyaman. The Imam of Bondoukou sat as a privileged royal counsellor. Many karamoko resided at the royal court and with the provincial chiefs, as advisers and suppliers of amulets, which were much sought after in war, epidemic, drought, etc. . . . The Dyula could not be subjected to a fine, nor sacrificed following the funeral of major figures, and, as we shall see, they paid no tribute. How did the Abrons' authority assert itself over them? The king intervened as supreme arbiter in conflicts between Dyula; in the time of wars, the Dyula were bound to give military assistance to the Abron. I n all, even if Dyula influence was very great, it would not be possible to extend this

322 Emmanuel Terray

to say they were part of the dominant class properly so called, and the Abron were concerned to maintain the difference: any Abron who converted to Islam was immediately and by that fact excluded from any political function; moreover, though Bondoukou was far and away the most important population centre of the country, it had never been either the capital of the kingdom nor even of one of the provinces. I t follows that in the case of Gyaman, hegemony over long-distance exchange cannot be argued to be the direct and immediate foundation of political hegemony, since these two hegemonies belonged to two distinct social groups.

This duality is not only found in Gyaman; we find it in different ways in Buna between Dyula traders and an aristocracy of Dagomba origin,27 in Salaga between Hausa traders and local Gonja chiefs, to which were added representatives of the Asantahene in the beginning of the nineteenth century,?* and even in Kong, where power seems to have been at issue between the town's major traders and the 'princes', descendants of the founder of the Seku Wataru empire, who lived in the neighbouring villages.29 In Ashanti itself, if the king and the chiefs took an active part in commercial transactions, the basic long-distance connections were maintained by Dyula and Hausa caravans.

I t would always be possible to imagine an indirect connection between long-distance exchange and political power, which would give strength to Catherine Coquery's thesis: in Gyaman the wealth accumulated by the Dyula might have been the base of Abron supremacy had the latter been in a position to constrain the former to share it with them. Since the Abron were masters of the territories crossed by the trade routes, it might be supposed that they utilised this to assert their rights over the commodities passing through. But that is precisely not the case; the Abron levied neither tax nor toll on trade and the reason seems clear for their lack of involvement: to go from Bobo-Dyulaso to Kumasi it was possible to travel via Kong and Bondoukou, but equally well via Buna and Bole : in the same way, from Kong to Salaga, it was possible to travel either via Bondoulou or Buna. Consequently if the Abron had attempted to install 'customs' or toll rights on their territory, this would simply have had the effect of diverting to Buna the trade that otherwise would have been directed toward Bondoulou and Gyaman. On three occasions, 1750, 1805 and 1825, the Abron did invade Buna and attempt to gain a real monopoly for themselves by the elimination of the rival city; but Buna seems to have been adequately protected by the very old alliance linking it with A~hanti;~O the Abron seized it, but were never able to hold it; and so they were prevented from exacting any dues on trade by being permanently in competition with Buna. The gifts that caravans customarily offered to the sovereign of the territory they were crossing could certainly be presented as a disguised due; but in the case of Gyaman these gifts were amply compensated for by those the Dyula received from the king in exchange for their advice and amulets.

Long-distance exchange and the formation of the State 323

Here again the case of Gyaman is not an isolated one. In the Ashanti kingdom certain commercial transactions-on kola and captives-were certainly subject to laws, but these laws solely affected the Ashanti partners in the transaction, and not aliens. The Asantahene Osei Bonsu replied to Dupuis when he suggested to him that he extend these laws to compensate for the loss of revenue occasioned by the abolition of the slave treaty :

I cannot act thus, Ashanti custom is different. Here only kings and great figures engage in trade, as I do. . . . If they come from another country to trade at Kumasi, they display their friendship and make me a gift; after that I most certainly cannot ask them for gold when they come and buy commodities. Moreover, some of the traders are the sons or brothers of kings, or great captains; I cannot say to them: give me some gold; I must give them gold and provisions and send them back to their land happy and wealthy so that in other countries it may be known that I am a great king and that I know what is corre~t .~l

I t is interesting to note that according to the information gathered from the Moroccan sherif Shabayni in 1790 and published by Jackson, in Timbuktu 'the Moors paid no customs duties; they say that if they are made to, they will stop bringing commodities';32 similarly in Hausa 'foreign merchants paid nothing because the inhabitants of Housa thought they needed encouragement'.33 A commercial route or a market cannot give rise to the perception of a right unless they represent a necessary access point or waterway for trade. But whenever there were many possible routes, as was most often the case between Niger and the Gulf of Guinea, local aristocracies were in a supplicant position vis-d-vis traders: their problem was not to exact tolls from them but to attract them. So they not only denied themselves any direct or indirect extraction from the traders' profits; but also as we shall see there are reasons to think that at least a fraction of these profits were levied on the wealth of local aristocracies. By the same consideration it is out of the question that this wealth could have originated from a presumed control that they exerted over commercial routes, since in most cases competition made this control ineffective; nor did this wealth arise out of gains made through long-distance exchange, since these gains remained in the hands of the traders and escaped the local chiefs' avarice ; consequently the question of its origin stays completely open.

Nevertheless, certain definitions in the work of Catherine Coquery and Samir Amin suggest another interpretation: the former for instance writes : 'Control over long-distance exchange certainly required the subordination of the rest of the population to its beneficiaries, who were concerned to retain their privilege. But the ruling class's control was mainly demonstrated indirectly through exclusive consumption of

324 Emmanuel Terray

foreign commodities, according to a process similar to the hoarding of prestige goods by the elders within a communal subsistence economy.'34 In other words the control over long-distance trade maintained by local aristocracies was over the populations they dominated, not over the agents of trade. The aristocracies endeavoured to establish themselves as sole clients of the traders and to exclude their subjects from any share in the transactions. Thus they would obtain 'exclusive consumption' of the goods supplied by long-distance trade. Their wealth and supremacy would then arise on one side from the fact that they took part in long- distance trade, and on the other side from the fact that apart from specialised merchants, they were the only ones to take part in it.

I t is true that the hegemony of local aristocracies was especially realised through the almost exclusive possession of certain goods brought in by long-distance trade. Having said that, two problems remain; Catherine Coquery tells us that local aristocracies made themselves wealthy through taking part in long-distance exchange: but it was still essential for them to have something to offer to match the prestige goods sold by the traders, and we therefore come up once more against the question of the origin of their wealth. On the one hand, Catherine Coquery also tells us that local aristocracies arrogated to themselves a kind of monopoly on these prestige goods because they kept their subjects out of the exchange process. Now this phenomenon of exclusion cannot be found in Gyaman or in Ashanti. Every traveller from Gyaman provided he had the material means could organise a commercial expedition toward the coast or Kong; every one could frequent the market at Bondoukou. As regards the Akan States of Ghana at that time, K. Y. Daaku writes: 'As for the organisation of trade, the evidence suggests that no Akan State monopolised this to the exclusion of its subjects. On the contrary all subjects were encouraged to participate in it.'35 This assertion no doubt needs modifying slightly in relation to Ashanti: on the one hand the Asantahene and the leading chiefs had legal privileges in certain cases : the first kolas sold on Salaga market were theirs, and after these had arrived the routes were closed until stocks ran out; so the kings and the chiefs alone profited from the high prices that the traders were ready to pay for the first deliveries of the year.36 On the other hand, if Bowdich is to be believed, the Ashanti aristocracy barely encouraged its subjects' commercial activities :

[The Ashanti] are as little involved in trade as the early Romans, and their government, considering that a State can only expand through conquest, would tend to repress rather than favour this impulsion to trade from fear that it might blunt their warrior genius, and also from fear that if the merchants became too powerful for their desires to be opposed, or too skilful for their activities to be clearly in view, they would sacrifice the glorv and ambitions of the nation to their greed.37

Long-distance exchange and the formation of the State 325

The fact remains that public opinion seems to have been the only weapon that the Ashanti chiefs used to divert their subjects from trade : no positive measure was adopted to this end, and in fact numerous Ashanti of all ranks became involved in trade, to the North as muchzas toward the coast. Bowdich and Dupuis ran into many caravans of all sizes on the route to Kumasi; and the origin of several conflicts between the Ashanti and their southern neighbours was in the problem of free access for these caravans to the river banks.

I n all, it can be conceded to Catherine Coquery that the kings and chiefs were the main clients of long-distance trade. 'Here only the kings and major figures are involved in trade', said the ~santahene Osei Bonsu to D ~ p u i s . ~ ~ We shall return to this. But their dominant position was not the result of formal exclusion measures proclaimed by them and operated against their subjects. Here again, it is possible to talk of privilege and supremacy but definitely not of exclusive control or monopoly.

Three questions remain open in terms of this analysis:

(I) If local aristocracies did not draw their wealth and power from exercising control over long-distance exchange or from tribute levied on peasant communities, whose relatively slight dimensions we have already noted-on this point agreeing with Catherine Coquery-where did this wealth and power come from? (2) If local aristocracies did not formally exclude their subjects from long-distance trade, how did they ensure a dominant position in this trade in relation to their subjects? (3) Lastly, if long-distance trade was not the origin of their hegemony, why were they so keen to attract it on to the territory they governed?

We shall now try to answer these questions, utilising as previously the example of the kingdom of Gyaman.

How did Gyaman intervene in long-distance exchange? I n two ways, apart from its function as a place of transit already mentioned earlier: by the export of two principal products, ivory and gold, and by the appropriation of a certain quantity of manual labour for the transport tasks implied by this exchange.

As regards ivory, the king and the chiefs totally controlled the trade: in practice the hunters were bound to remit to them the tusks of slaughtered elephants ; these were either transformed into ornaments or horns for the king and chiefs, or sold externally for their profit. Here, by way of a monopoly on the exported product, Catherine Coquery's analysis is verified. But the place held by ivory in the 'foreign trade' of Gyaman was always far inferior to that held by gold.

From the most ancient times, the territory occupied by the kingdom of Gyaman from the eighteenth century was renowned for the wealth

3 26 Emmanuel Terray

of its gold resources. Well before the establishment of the kingdom, it was this wealth which seems to have drawn Nafana gold-prospectors into the regions-today their descendants still inhabit several villages around Bondouk~u~~-and Dyula traders, who at the beginning of the fifteenth century founded the great city of Bighu (Begh~).~O In my opinion, Ivor Wilks has convincingly demonstrated that Bighu can be identified with the Beetuu of Pacheco Pereira as well as with the Bitu of As Sadi;41 now each of these authors celebrates independently the wealth of the gold seams in the country they designate by this name. Thus abundance was also underlined at the beginning of the nineteenth century by British travellers to Kumasi. Bowdich notes that Gyaman 'is without comparison being possible the wealthiest country in gold'.42 More precisely, Dupuis writes : 'Gyaman, and especially its provinces of Ponin, Safoy, and Showy, contains the richest gold-mines that my informants know in this region or in any other region of Africa. By way of illustration they said that in Ashanti, Denkyira and Wassaw, metallic veins could be found at a depth of twelve cubits (twenty-two feet) below the ground, but that in these provinces of Gyaman this depth is five cubits (nine feet)'.43 In the same period this reputation also ex- tended as far as Fezzan: Lyon, who stayed in Murzuk in 1819, writes: 'It is said that the capital of Ouangara to the south of Timbuktu is called Battagoo, and that it is a great town where much gold is found round about it.'44 If it is remembered that the Hausa gave Bondoukou the name of Bitugu, there can hardly be any hesitation in recognising Bondoukou in Lyon's Battagoo.

Some thirty years later, Gordon, who stayed on the Cape Coast in 1848, notes in turn: 'The principal mines possessed by the Ashanti are in Gyaman; . . . they are said to be extremely rich; according to our reports, forty thousand men work in them'.45

The Abron transformed part of this gold into jewels and ornaments; they utilised it to make the gold-encrusted chairs of kings Abo Miri and Adingra, so provoking the wrath of the Asantahenes Opoku Ware and Asei Bonsu and two separate invasions of their country; the massive gold stairway that according to Bowdich king Adingra used to ascend to his bed;46 and the massive gold scabbard of King Kwaku Agyeman's sword, described by Binger.47 But the rest was exported. In what direction? According to Collier 'almost all the gold that the Ashanti bring to the coast is produced in Gyaman'.48 But according to Dupuis this fraction was only a small part of the gold traded by the Abron. To begin with, this gold was directed toward Kong and Mandingo territory ; but subsequently he says-in 1820-

it gets to Ashanti; from there it moves in small quantities through the maritime provinces of Appolonia, Ahanta, Fanti. . . but the largest part of the metal is taken by traders from the interior or sent to Muslim correspondents in Yendi, Salaga,

Long-distance exchange and the formation of the State 327

Banko, Wabea and other major towns and cities of the North-East. In this condition of money, it soon reaches Zogho, Salamo, Kook and eventually Nikki . . . where it is transformed into jewels or ducats (Mitskal). Under this new form, it is also rapidly transported along the Niger to Hausa . . . and from there it circulates in all the regions of Sudan, in the desert and its kingdoms, Bornu, Egypt, Gharb.49

Gold appears therefore to have been the principal Gyaman export. Now its status is clearly different to ivory's : practically all the kingdom's travellers could be involved in the search for and extraction of the precious metal. To be sure, the gold-prospector had to pay a toll to the chief of the land and the village chief whenever he operated outside the land of his own village ; and to the provincial chief or the king as master of the royal domain when he worked outside the frontiers of his own province; moreover, all nuggets had to be remitted (but they were not traded: the royal artisans melted them down to produce the jewels and ornaments referred to above). Lastly, the king and the chiefs were able to appropriate a fair amount of the gold accumulated by private individ- uals, through their judicial powers and the fines they imposed. Given these privileges, gold-prospecting in Gyaman was a free activity. Whole villages could devote themselves to it in certain seasons, as Braulot who journeyed through Gyaman in 1893 testifies: 'The Asikaso . . . is the richest country in gold in the whole region. At the end of the rainy season the populations of the villages of the plain go there en masse and apply themselves actively to washing gold-bearing sands. I t is thus that we found in Surmakourou all the inhabitants of Kandena, near Sa~ia.'~O

But this legal freedom disguised a profound real inequality. Gold- prospecting took two different forms. In the first place, the inhabitants of the country filtered the sands deposited by the watercourses flowing over gold-bearing ground by a method similar to the water-trough. That was a simple method ; it required little labour, even if it seems to have been not particularly profitable; the head of every family could therefore practise it with the help of his immediate dependants; this is why all along the gold-bearing rivers captives of the king and his chiefs worked side by side with free Abron and Kulango men and their wives. But on the other hand, real mines were exploited; when a vein was discovered, shafts were sunk at a depth of thirty or more feet; a miner went down to the bottom of the shaft and extracted earth and lumps of gold-bearing quartz by means of a kind of hoe. These were immediately brought back up to the surface in calabashes on ropes. In the day-time the quartz was crushed and ground, and the earth washed in the water of a nearby stream, or in a dyke dug for that purpose.

Now this second method presented three characteristics; in the first place, it was far more productive than the first. In the second place,

G

328 Emmanuel Terray

each mining unit brought into play many more important activities than in the former instance. Simply washing the sand required the presence of a collector or diver and a washerwoman. Sinking a shaft itself meant the presence of a miner, a labourer to get the mined earth out of the pit, and of a crusher or a washerwoman. Because of the exhausting character of the work and the necessity of keeping it at maximum stretch during the short period when it was possible, two teams worked in relays on each shaft. As moreover the discovery of a vein was uncertain, numerous shafts had to be sunk before production started; when once it was found, every effort was made to get it all; since the miners of the country did not use wooden props and made no galleries, the pits were dug at very short intervals along the line taken by the vein. In the third place, the work at the bottom of the mines was very dangerous : in practice, once the vein was reached, the miner began to dig around himself horizontally; the pit gradually therefore took the form of a cone whose sides were in constant danger of falling in. In was the general opinion that collapses were numerous, and the buried miner had only a tiny chance of escape; also the exploitation of the mines was reserved for captives.

By bringing together the preceding observations, a very important consequence emerges: if the exploitation of the mines presupposed a considerable labour-force and if this labour was recruited from among captives, it follows that only those who possessed a sufficiently numerous reserve supply of captives could profitably engage in this exploitation. Now only the kings and chiefs had access to this supply, and that is why the mines belonged to them: 'The mineral is principally extracted from large pits, which were the property of the dead king around Briquanti and Kontoosoo', writes Dupuis after the death of King Adingra.51 This appropriation of the mines by the king and the chiefs did not result, as against an overpopular belief among European travellers of the time, from some monopoly they possessed on the products of the subsoil, but from the fact that they alone had in their possession the human means necessary for such activities. More generally, the production of gold in both forms largely depended on the labour of captives since, once more by Dupuis' testimony, washing gold-bearing sands also occupied a great number of them: 'On the banks of the Barra, a river whose source is near the great Muslim city of Kherabi and which flows south to join the Tando or Assinia river, the Gyaman also practise gold-washing, and my informants relate that during the rainy season there is work there for eight to ten thousand slaves for two months'.52 Being founded on slave labour, it naturally follows that the production of gold was domi- nated by the Abron with the greatest number of captives, that is by the king and the chiefs.

In the same way too, the carriage of commodities acquired or yielded by the Abron was to a large extent ensured by their captives. On his return from Gyaman Lonsdale wrote in 1883: 'The traders in all the

Long-distance exchange and the formation of the State 329

regions of the interior mostly use slaves as porters'.53 Nine years later Lang echoes him as he journeyed to Bondoukou: 'A trader from the interior transports his commodities to the coast by means of half a dozen slaves who can be used to carry loads on the way back if they have not been sold'.54 Certainly captives were not alone in acting as porters. We have seen that all travellers from the kingdom could engage in trade and send caravans toward the coast or to Kong; the head of a family could use his neighbours or immediate dependants to carry the products he wished to take. Moreover free men could hire themselves as porters for a wage. But the most important expeditions were made up by captives who were placed under the surveillance of a son or servant of the originator of the enterprise. There again the major owners of captives played a determining role; now in the first rank of these major owners were the king and the chiefs.

Thus in Gyaman the captives had a far more important place in the economy than the 'limited domestic slavery' which Catherine Coquery mentions in passing.55 Once this importance is clear we can now answer two of the questions raised above: in the first place, the wealth of the local aristocracy arose essentially from the surplus labour it extorted from its captives; it was this surplus labour which provided it with the products which it introduced into long-distance trade ; and if it held a predominant position among the local clients of this trade, this was because it controlled the greatest share of captive labour, whose activity from Gyaman swelled the flow of long-distance exchange.

Now it must be stressed again, that the case of Gyaman was not unique, and that it cannot be explained simply by the peculiarites of gold production. Let us take up again the Ashanti example. In the eighteenth century, Ashanti trade was principally directed toward the coast, and Ashanti exported mainly captives, gold and ivory; during this period, the Ashanti situation is identical to that described for Gyaman. At the start of the nineteenth century, following on the one hand the abolition of the transatlantic black slave-trade, and on the other the long conflict between Ashanti and Kong, a kind of redirection took place: Ashanti trade turned gradually from the coast, from which the Ashanti now only expected arms and salt, and from then on moved toward Salaga, the Mossi, and Hausa territory;56 at the same time, one product came to dominate Ashanti export: the kola nut. From 1819 Bowdich tells us the reasons for this primacy of kola:

When I pressed them why they cleared the ground, managed plantations and supervised their slaves at work, they replied that the Bossee or Gooroo nut grew spontaneously and required no labour; that salt was brought to their frontier by people poorer than themselves and sold cheaply without anyone having to take the trouble to go and look for it; and that thanks to these articles -to which was added the very high price that small quantities

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of rum and iron fetched in the interior, because they forbade all trade between the coast and the interior save their own-they were able to obtain at a much better rate silk and cotton textiles of a greatly superior manufacture and quality.57

Half a century later, Bonnat confirmed this explanation: 'With this unique product which costs them nothing, not even the least attention, the Ashanti obtain all they wish from the different people ,who come to this market'.58

Now the production and trade of kola in Ashanti were organised on principles very close to those that governed production and trading in gold in Gyaman; here as there, anyone could engage in these activities; no one held any legal monopoly. But the equality provided was apparent only. The only labour required by kola export was collection, packing and transport; productivity varied little from one production unit to another ; consequently the importance of a commercialised harvest was a direct function of the extent of the factors of production that could be mobilised. Now while a free man of low rank could only utilise his immediate dependants, the king and the chiefs could put to this task the numerous captives they possessed. Kwame Arhin shows very well moreover how the Ashanti utilised the mechanism of pawning in the production of kola to obtain new captives whose labour in turn increased the wealth of the kin-group:

In the region of Bechem and Techimentia, persons who had put themselves in pawn or slaves, until then mainly employed in the extraction of gold, were subsequntly used in its gold trade. People who had put themselves in pawn came mostly from the most westerly regions of West Ashanti ; they borrowed money, in many cases to pay the costs of a trial, and promised to pay their debt and recover their liberty by collecting kola nuts, transporting them and selling them in Kintampo. . . . At the twilight of the Ashanti kingdom, the utilisation of people who had put themselves in pawn was the fastest way of obtaining slaves. Enterprising men would invest their fortune in acquiring them, would expand their kola trade and so would obtain still more slaves who in their turn would make a still larger expansion possible. With the labour of people who were placed in pawn and of captives, a man could sell more nuts in Kintampo and buy cattle, sheep and goats, whose sale would augment what the Ashanti elders regarded as the true criterion of their wealth: their stocks of g o l d - d u ~ t . ~ ~

Now as Arhin himself points out, the pawn was often the effect of the costs of justice and of fines imposed by a chief. The insolvent debtor either entered the former's service or that of the man from whom he had borrowed the necessary sums to meet the debt. But most often the latter

Long-distance exchange and the formation of the State 33 1

was always a chief or a notable figure ; in practice, the fines were payable in gold-dust, and only the chiefs and notables had at their disposal a sufficient stock of gold-dust to provide credit to penniless debtors. In all, if the Ashanti chiefs emerged as winners in the competition sur- rounding the kola trade, it was because they had captives as well as gold concentrated in their own hands, and not because they were invested with any kind of institutional monopoly.

A more general conclusion can be drawn from this comparison between Ashanti and Gyaman. Given the degree of development of productive forces attained by economies such as those of these two social formations, the principal factor in the work process was labour- power. I t was the only source of disposable energy, apart from donkeys used to carry the loads. The instruments of labour were rudimentary; as a general rule, they were individual tools whose productivity scarcely varied; consequently, the impact of the labour-process, the size of the transformation of nature that could be produced, were a direct function of those human resources that could be assembled. Thus, it was command over men-and so the possibility of organising their coopera- tion on a large scale-that was the key to economic power. In the frame- work of the kin-based system, this authority belonged to the elders, but the segmental character of the system reduced the number of workers who could be brought together under a single head; to be sure, there were different forms of association which enabled the assembly of several elementary work groups, but quite apart from its occasional character, this mobilisation stayed within narrow limits. Essentially, kin-based organisation inevitably implied a certain dispersal of the labour force. Moreover in Ashanti as in Gyaman, the earth was plenti- fully available ; the instruments of production were made of materials- wood, iron-that could be obtained directly, easily or by exchange, and their simplicity meant the vast majority of people could make them themselves; also, the subjection of the producer was not able to be accomplished through the appropriation of the material factors of production, as was the case under feudalism with the ground, and in capitalism with machines. Consequently the establishment of bonds of direct personal dependence was the chief means of expanding control over men, and so of access to wealth. Now slavery and captivity were the most effective and rigorous forms of these bonds of personal dependence ; this is why the functioning of the entire social formation was organised around them.

In fact, it is possible to consider the Abron or Ashanti States as in many ways existing as machines destined to create and reproduce the material and social conditions for the exploitation of captives. The central place occupied by captivity in these societies allows us straightaway to understand why the aristocracies in power were first and foremost military aristocracies. As is known, in Ashanti as in Gyaman, the structure of the State closely followed that of the army,

332 Emmanuel Terray

and the subdivisions of the first closely corresponded to the different sections of the second; among the obligations binding vassals to the sovereign feature first of all the duty of assistance in time of war; and among the rights reserved by the aristocracy to itself was first of all that of organising captive raids and of deciding on peace and war: now a number of captives were prisoners of war; these formed the most important part of the booty gained by the conquerors, and the rules of sharing this booty favoured the kings and the chiefs. On the ideological level, major themes of the ritual and religious activity of the State were the exaltation of the great deeds of the past, and the quest for the support of ancestors and supernatural powers in view of conflicts to come; and it was seen above that if the Asantahene discouraged his subjects from engaging in trade, this was especially to preserve their warlike spirit.60 Why this domination of military factors in public life? In a more general way, Jack Goody has shown how in this region the military technology in use exerted a profound influence on the organisa- tion of political power: in cases where it rested on the use of horses, we have dynastic kin-groups with considerable military capacity and a rotation of power between the segments of these descent-groups; in cases where it rested on fire-arms, the government was more autocratic, and was based on much narrower d y n a ~ t i e s . ~ ~ Why did military tech- nology have the power to bring such considerable consequences in its wake?

The preceding remarks give us the answer to these questions: we are in the presence of social formations in which the relations of captivity in some way constitute the central core. Now in the last instance it was military force that enabled these relations to be established and maintained: its utilisation was above all the basis of the very existence of most captives, since the majority of them we have seen to consist of prisoners of war; even if some were bought on the market, they first had to be enslaved by others, and here again this enslavement was most often the result of violence; in any case, given the occasional nature of trade in captives, no State could allow itself to rely on trade alone to obtain such an indispensable resource for itself; also for each State war continued to be the most certain method of procuring slaves; lastly, only indisputable military superiority covered the local aristo- cracies against a possible revolt by their captives. I t followed that since the relations of captivity were the dominant element in the social formation, and since military might was the chief instrument of their establishment and reproduction, it was natural for the problems raised by the creation and use of this force to be at the very heart of the social formation's functioning; and also natural that among the multiple variables determining the organisation of the State, the decisive factor should be the various forms this force took, the various methods in which it was used, and the different types of control which could be exercised over it.

Long-distance exchange and the formation of the State 333

But the dictates of the reproduction of the relations of captivity made their mark on many other aspects of the system and of political life. Above, in connection with the Ashanti kingdom, we mentioned judicial power. The kings and the chiefs had a monopoly of this power; by the biassed nature of fines, which were the most frequently applied sanction and could only be paid off in gold dust, the kings and chiefs drained off gold to their advantage. This enabled them either to buy captives or to buy arms which would assist in capturing them. We have also seen how an unpaid fine led to the guilty party being pawned, and how this practice led directly or indirectly to the increase in captives, either because through the high rate of interest the person pawned could not discharge his debt and gradually became a captive in effect, or because his labour produced the resources necessary for the purchase of extra captives. Similarly, analysis of Abron or Ashanti diplomacy demonstrates that it paid especial attention to two major preoccupations: it was necessary to win free access to zones where the means of military supremacy could be obtained-in practice this meant the coast, where European ships unloaded guns and gunpowder-and to forbid this free access to one's rivals ; and it was necessary to transform certain adjoining regions into captive reserves, forbidding the import of arms to them and the genesis of strongly organised States.

In all, therefore, the study of the Abron and Ashanti states confirms fully the definitions produced by Engels : the State, he said, is 'a machine for the oppression of one class by another',62 'the collective organi- sed power of the possessing classes . . . as against the exploited cla~ses',6~ 'an organisation of the particular class which was pro tempore the exploiting class, an organisation for the purpose of preventing any interference from without with the existing conditions of production, and therefore, especially, for the purpose of forcibly keeping the ex- ploited classes in the condition of oppression corresponding with the given mode of p r o d ~ c t i o n ' . ~ ~ In fact the Abron State and the Ashanti State certainly appear as the instruments 'which the local aristocracies provided themselves with to ensure and perpetuate the exploitation of their captives.

I t is certainly the case that this exploitation ran up against certain barriers. An account of these will enable us to understand at one and the same time the relations which the dominant aristocracies maintained with their free subjects, the articulation of the entire social formation, and the specificity of Abron or Ashanti slavery in relation to ancient slavery, correctly underlined by Catherine Coquery. These barriers were in the first instance economic. T o what usage was the surplus produced by the captives directed? T o start with, it ensured the immediate subsistence needs of the members of the dominant class, who were consequently relieved by it of any compulsion to productive labour. Next, it enabled the dominant class to obtain for itself certain goods-alcohol, textiles-which for it were the object of conspicuous

334 Emmanuel Terray

consumption, and which proclaimed its power and social hegemony. In both cases, the needs of consumption-'basic' or luxury-determined the volume of surplus labour produced by the captives. I t was not the realisation of a commercial profit which had this determining effect. Lastly, the surplus product produced by the captives was also exchanged for goods that played a part either in the immediate production process- iron, cotton--or in the reproduction process-weapons, captives themselves. But here again, as Claude Meillassoux has shown very well, these goods were sought after because of their own utility; what governed the transaction from the point of view of the buyers was not the desire to obtain an extra quantity of exchange value by reselling the commodities, but concern to acquire a particular commodity on the most advantageous terms.65 In other words, as Marx said, 'when the form of a society is such, from the economic point of view, that it is not exchange value but use value which predominates in it, surplus labour is more or less circumscribed by the range of determinate needs; but the character of production itself in no way gives birth to a devouring appetite'.66 Thus this pre-eminence of use value explains at one and the same time why the captives were not subjected in Ashanti or Gyaman to an exploitation as intense as the slaves of ancient Rome or of the southern United States, and why Abron or Ashanti slavery did not manifest that tendency to expansion and generalisation inherent in ancient or American slavery: it always allowed another mode of production to exist by its side, usually of a domestic or kin-based character, within whose framework the free subjects of the aristocracy in power worked and produced.

This persistent presence of a kin-based mode of production in the social formation is also due to the operation of another series of factors : I wish to speak of the political limits which the exploitation of captives confronted. Let us again quote Marx: 'This supervision work neces- sarily arises in all modes of production based on the antithesis between the labourer, as the direct producer, and the owner of the means of production. The greater this antagonism, the greater the role played by supervision. Hence it reaches its peak in the slave system'.67 Again, it is necessary for the State to be capable of carrying out this work, in other words for it to dispose of the military, political and ideological means needed for this purpose. If these means are limited, the expansion of slave production and the severity of the treatment meted out to captives are themselves also proportionally limited. In the light of this remark, certain obstacles to extending slavery to the whole social formation, and at the same time helping to maintain the kin-based mode of production, may be noted.

In the first place, the society could not have survived unless a certain numerical ratio had been preserved between the power of the free men and that of the captives. The Asantahene Osei Bonsu retorted to Dupuis, who had expressed anger at the massacre of the prisoners the Ashanti

Long-distance exchange and the formation of the State 335

had brought back from Gyaman in 1818: 'If I do not kill them or sell them, they will become powerful and kill my s~bjects ' .~8 Moreover, the majority of captives present in the country was made up of strangers, imported or seized in a raid. A free man could only be reduced to slavery because of his bad behaviour ; in Gyaman, he would be moreover sold immediately externally so that he would be spared the temptation of escape; in Ashanti, the Asantahene Osei Kwame forbade the export of captives originating in the kingdom;69 but these latter were not exactly assimilated to their alien fellows; in particular they could be bought back by their next-of-kin; the same was true of people in pawn. Several reasons explain this preference for captives from outside : being isolated, deprived of any attachment of social relationship, they accepted their fate more easily; born in different regions and among different peoples, it was hard for them to associate in a joint rebellion. Still more, the cohesion of the kingdom and its defensive capacity would have been seriously compromised if its free subjects could have been transformed into captives at the pleasure of the sovereign and the chiefs; rather the opposite happened, for it was the descendants of captives who gradually merged with free subjects : as we have pointed out elsewhere, the Abron and Ashanti states had none of the necessary solidity to counter the mortal danger that a real class of captives would have - constituted, with not merely the transmission of their status from one generation to another but also of their resentment and spirit of revolt.70 All these reasons of a political nature ensured a relatively genuine protection for free men, and to captives the hope of a progressive enfranchisement of their children: they guaranteed by the same fact the continuation of the kin-based mode of production.

Finally, the requirements of the reproduction of the relations of captivity determined the functioning of the kin-based mode of pro- duction itself. We mentioned above the relatively light tribute exacted by the aristocracies from their free subjects: we consider-and we will refer if we may to the article just noted on this point-that this modera- tion is to be explained by the concern the aristocracies had to treat their free subjects carefully so as to be able to count on their help in military conflicts. In this sense, the slave mode of production appears certainly to be the dominant element in the social formation, since it subordinated the functioning of the other mode of production in it to the dictates of its own reproduction.

One last question was raised: why were the Abron and Ashanti kings and chiefs so concerned to attract the flow of long-distance exchange on to the territory they governed? We have already indicated the answer, and it will be enough to recall it here: the Abron and Ashanti aristocracies were anxious to take part in long-distance trade because apart from hoarding it was the only means at their disposal for 'realising' the surplus product they extorted from their captives, and so to obtain for themselves on the one hand the luxury goods

336 Emmanuel Terray

which served as material basis for their social superiority, and on the other hand goods-captives, weapons-which enabled regular re- production of the social formation. In this sense, but only in this sense, long-distance trade was an essential element in the functioning of the entire social formation: like every distributive mechanism, it created no wealth; that was born in the process of production; but it gave it a concrete form appropriate to the requirements of reproduction.

If we now work from a diachronic point of view, if we cease to examine the functioning and switch to the genesis of the social formation and of the State which is its political superstructure, will we have to grant long-distance exchange a more important role? At first sight in fact, it certainly seems that long-distance trade-and in practice, the exchange of gold and kola for Sahara salt-did play a decisive part in that genesis. The researches of Wilks71 and Levtzion72 have shown that in the zone that interests us, the appearance of the State accompanies or closely follows the Mande traders-Ligbi or Duyla-and the opening up of commercial routes between the northern limits of the forest and the Niger valley. As a result of the corrections made by L e v t ~ i o n ~ ~ and Flight74 to the chronology put forward by Mrs Meyerowitz, the oldest of the Akan States, the kingdom of Bono-Mansu, appears to have been constructed during the first half of the fifteenth century. Now Mrs Meyerowitz tells us 'the town of Bono had from its beginnings a twin city, Songo, inhabited entirely by Muslims, of which many were literate; there were also commercial connections with the Muslim populations of West Sudan and North A f r i ~ a ' . ~ ~ The second king of Bono, Akumfi Ameyaw, who according to Flight reigned from 1440 to 1450, had also sent his nephew and successor the prince Obunu- mankoma into these far countries, so that he could study the gold trade,76 and it was under the reign of the latter that Bono really took wing. In particular, Obunumankoma had imposed the use of gold dust as currency and invented the system of weights to measure the gold. The relation of these innovations to trade has no need to be ~ n d e r l i n e d . ~ ~ More generally, the prosperity of Bono and the high level reached by its civilisation depended, Mrs Meyerowitz tells us, on trade.78

Similar remarks can be made concerning the great merchant city of Bighu whose origin Wilks places at the beginning of the fifteenth century.79 Bighi had been foucded by Ligbi and then by Dyula traders, originating respectively from the upper Niger and from the empire of Mali, and both drawn by the wealth of gold-bearing seams in the region. Now it appears that relations fairly similar to those that much later united the Dyula of Bondoukou to the Abron State were im- mediately established between the Mande of Bighu and the Nafana kingdom of Banda; according to the traditions collected by Kwabena Abeyaw, 'the Muslim group which lived among the Nafana was placed under the authority of Sullemamu (the imam) in Bighu. These Muslims

Long-distance exchange and the formation of the State 337

spoke Ligbi which today is still the language of their descendants. These Ligbi-speaking Muslims were traders, and the town of Bighu . . . became at that time a great commercial centre. . . . Some years later, over and above trade, the kings of Banda asked the Muslims to pray for them, especially in time of war'.80 According to Mrs Meyerowitz, Bighu had even been the capital of the kingdom of Banda,81 which is not confirmed by the data collected by Goody and Levtzion. Whatever the truth of the matter, the links created in this way un- doubtedly explain why the Ligbi of Bighu took refuge with the Nafana of Banda when they abandoned the town.82 I t is not easy to specify the date by which the kingdom of Banda was constructed; we only know that it existed for certain at the beginning of the seventeenth century, since at that time it was attacked by the king of Bono, Kurompe Ameyaw, whose reign is placed by Flight between 1600 and 1 6 1 5 . ~ ~

According to Levtzion, Bono and Bighu, who both had relations with Djenne, nonetheless did not belong to the same commercial network: 'While from Bono the route extended along the White Volta, the trade from Bighu moved either via Buna and Bobo, or by way of Bole and Wa, to the East or West of the Bla~kVol ta ' .~~ On this hypothesis, the two leading States of the region were formed at the junction of the two principal routes linking the Akan forest to the Niger valley, and were both associated with a flourishing commercial centre. Now the Abron State and the commercial town of Bondoukou only really took the place vacated by the decline of their predecessors. In Bono, this decline broke up the State, which from the end of the eighteenth century was seriously shaken by internal conflicts ;a5 in Bighu it was the commercial centre that fell victim to decline: it also experienced a crisis or a series of crises internally, and its activity was severely sapped by the troubles that ravaged Nigerian Sudan after the conquest of Songhai by the Moroccans.86 But in both cases the kingdom and the market were sufficiently closely linked for the difficulties of the one to rebound inevitably on to the other. Gyaman and Bondoukou developed strongly as a result of this dual eclipse, but what changed with their emergence was the identity of the elements forming the political and commercial structure of the region, not the structure itself.

The correlation cannot then be contested between the expansion of long-distance trade and the construction of the State, and the thesis of Catherine Coquery and Samir Amin seems therefore to recover its validity on this level. But the problem is to know whether this correlation expresses a direct causal relationship, or whether the nexus of causes and effects that led from the first process to the second did not include some intermediate link whose nature must be specified. Now if we examine the social relations established in the region following the arrival of Mande traders, we establish beyond doubt that from the end of the fifteenth century captives fulfilled the economic functions which were to be theirs in the heart of the Abron social formation.

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In his Description de Z'Afrique, published in 1506-7, Valentim Fernandes draws a quite precise picture of the gold mines where the Djenne merchants went for their supplies, and Mauny has shown how this picture can really only refer to the gold-bearing seams of the Akan forest.87 In the same period, Pacheco Pereira writes: 'Two hundred leagues from this kingdom of Mandingua there is a region where there is much gold. The inhabitants of this region have the faces and teeth of dogs, and tails like dogs. . . . The Mandingua merchants go to the markets of Beetuu, Banbarranaa and Bahaa to obtain gold from these monstrous peoples'.E* Now it is known that the Mande referred to the Akan as Ton. It seems then that these two descriptions refer to one and the same area: the country of Bitu that Wilks has shown was confused with the neighbourhood of Bighu in local t r a d i t i ~ n . ~ ~ What do these descriptions tell us about the economic role of captives? In the first place, the extraction of gold was their burden: 'There are seven gold-mines. They are shared between seven kings, each with his own mine. The mines are dug deep into the ground. The kings have slaves whom they send down the mines, and they give them women whom they take down with them; and they give birth and bring up children in these mines. The kings also provide them with food and drink.'g0 On the other hand, the captives were involved in the transport of mer- chandise : 'When these Ungaros arrive at Djenne, each merchant brings with him one or two hundred black slaves or more, to carry the salt on their heads from Djenne to the gold-mines, and from there to bring back the gold'.91 From this period, it is then the labour of captives which supplied and enabled long-distance exchange.

The importance of slave labour for the region explains why it very quickly became an importer of captives. These came from several quarters and mostly from the Niger valley. Pacheco Pereira describes the gold trade to us as a trade by relays: in the first place, we have seen, when they wished to obtain gold, the Mandingo merchants went to the Beetuu markets and the neighbouring cities; in the second place 'the inhabitants of the towns called Beetuu, Banbarranaa and Bahaa go into this country of Toom to obtain gold in exchange for commodities and slaves which they bring there'.92 It is then probable that the inhabitants of Beetuu were acting as simple middlemen, and that the slaves they soId in Toom were entrusted to them by their Mandingo partners. This is what the relevant traditions collected by Kwabena Ameyaw indicate: 'Bighu became at this time an important commercial centre. . . . The principal products coming from the forest were kola and gold, which were taken from Bighu on the northern route and exchanged for cattle, pearls, slaves, textiles, and copperware which the caravans transported South'.93 But other captives no doubt arrived from the South. From the end of the fifteenth century, Portu- guese ships brought slaves purchased in Benin to the Gold Coast;94 now we know through Pacheco Pereira that at that time the Mandingo

Long-distance exchange and the formation of the State 339

merchants frequented the castle of La Mine.95 They directed northwards at least part of the slaves unloaded by the Portuguese : in fact a quarter of a century later King John 111, who reigned from 1521 to 1527, forbade this trade because the slaves which were its object 'are dedicated to serve the devil for ever: in fact, either they remain in their original condition, or they become Muslims when because of the manner of the exchange between the Moors and the blacks of Mandingua province, they fall into the power of the former'.96 It may then be considered that some of them did not get further than Bighu and were compelled by the inhabitants of the region into extractive and porterage work of the kind we have described.

In the light of these data, how should the specific effects of long- distance trade be characterised? In our view, its real role consisted in the introduction of slave-type relations of production into social formations dominated until then by the kin-based mode of production, accompanied in mature cases by simple domestic slavery; and that it was in their turn these slave relations which evoked the formation of a State as the condition of their functioning and reproduction. From this point of view, we criticise Catherine Coquery and Samir Amin, not for having asserted that the development of long-distance exchange exerted an influence on the formation of States, but for having let it be understood that this influence operated in an immediate and direct manner: we consider ourselves that it acted on the social formation and on its political superstructures by the intermediary of a trans- formation of the relations of production which were its basis.

Certainly, it is impossible within the limits of this article to decide whether Gyaman and Ashanti constitute particular cases, or whether on the contrary the hypotheses we have drawn from the examination of these two States may be extended to other social formations of West Africa. We shall restrict ourselves on this topic to the following remarks : the importance of the role of salt and copper in long-distance exchange during the whole period from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, is well known. At this period, it was the mines of Teghazza that ensured essential salt supplies to the Sudan;97 now according to the testimony of Ibn Batuta who visited them, they were exploited by the slaves of Massufa: 'Teghazza is inhabited solely by the slaves of the Messufites, slaves who are employed in the extraction of salt'.9s The same is true of the copper veins of Takedda, which had the same role in relation to this metal that Teghazza enjoyed in relation to salt; again according to Ibn Batuta 'the copper mine is outside Tacada. They dig in the ground and take the mineral into the town to melt it down in the houses. This duty is carried out by slaves of both sexes.'g9 It is data of this kind which allow Fage to write: 'It appears that around the fourteenth century the merchant economies of the great States of West and Central Sudan depended in large measure on slave labour. I t also appears that with the expansion of trade from the Sudanese

340 Emmanuel Terray

centres, the elements of a slave economy had stretched out at the beginning of the sixteenth century to regions as far to the South as the Gold Coast and Benin.'loO We leave to Fage the responsibility for these assertions; but it if were possible-which we do not know-to produce other proofs in their favour over and above those laid out above, they would mean then that the implications of our analysis largely trans- cend the sole cases of the Abron and the Ashanti.

We should like to end on a problem of methodology. Marx writes in The Poverty of Philosophy: 'In general the form of exchange of products corresponds to the form of production. Change the latter, and the former will change in consequence.'101 Thirty years later he stated the same in the third volume of Capital:

The determinate relation of distribution only expresses the relation of production, historically defined. . . . What are called the relations of distribution consequently correspond to specific social forms, historically determined, of the production process and the relations which are established between men in the process of reproduction of human life correspond to these and flow from them. The historical character of these relations of distribution is the historical character of the relations of production of which they only express one facet . . . each form of distribution disappears with the determinate mode of production from which it issued and to which it corresponds.lo2

Consequently the relations of production determine the relations of distribution and through them the totality of social relations. Thus a social formation cannot be understood except by beginning with an analysis of the relations of production which are its base. In asserting in this way the primacy of the viewpoint of production for the study of social reality, Marx clearly separates himself from bourgeois economics which, not being very concerned with unveiling the real origins of profits, addresses itself for preference to the relations of distribution. Now why we criticise Catherine Coquery and Samir Amin is precisely for having overestimated the role of long-distance exchange, and for having isolated it from the relations of production of which it is the effect, or the reflection; it is then for having mistaken the primacy of the viewpoint of production over that of distribution.

Certainly, Catherine Coquery and Samir Amin foresaw this objection, and attempted to answer it in advance. But Catherine Coquery rejects it by means of an argument which it is hard to see as anything more than a play on words: 'Let us not be accused here of giving privileged status to the mode of circulation at the expense of the mode of production; the fundamental problem was not the transport of merchandise, but its procurement-in some way its "production". . . .'lo3 Samir Amin for his part keeps well away from this strange assimilation of production

Long-distance exchange and the formation of the State 341

and exchange: 'long-distance trade, he says, is clearly not a mode of production',104 and he specifies that the effect of this trade is to allow 'the transfer-and certainly not the generation-of a fraction of surplus from one society to another.'lo5 But he stays completely silent on the conditions under which this surplus is formed. There is then a certain incoherence in putting forward an explanation of the political super- structures of the social formation by phenomena-control of long- distance exchange, and the monopoly profit it permits-which belong exclusively to the sphere of distribution. If applied to the capitalist mode of production, Samir Amin's procedure would revert to trying to understand the bourgeois State solely in the light of the relations and antagonisms which may exist between the different social strata- industrial entrepreneurs, landed proprietors, commercial and financial capitalists-associated with the distribution of surplus value, while entirely neglecting the process by which the latter is created and the fundamental conflict-between exploiters and exploited-which is born from this process.

As far as we are concerned, on the contrary, we mainly set ourselves the task of discovering the origin of the surplus which long-distance trade ensured was distributed; to this end, we investigated the social relations inherent in the production process itself, and so we were led to provide evidence for the decisive importance of the exploitation of captives in the functioning of the social formation. The analysis of fresh cases will without any doubt permit this conclusion to be made more precise or to be attacked; in return, the method adopted seems to us to be a requirement for all researchers who see in Marx's work the foundation of the science of societies and history; for, to leave Marx with the last word,

this specific economic form in which unpaid surplus labour is extorted from the direct producers determines the relation of dependence insofar as it flows directly from production itself and in its turn reacts in a determining fashion on the latter. I t is the basis of every form of economic community, directly issued from its relations of production and at the same time the base of its specific political form. It is always in the immediate relation between the owner of the means of production and the direct producer (a relation whose different aspects naturally correspond to a definite degree of development of the methods of labour, and so to a certain degree of social productive force) that the most profound secret, the hidden foundation of the whole social edifice must be sought, and consequently the political form which assumes the relation of sovereignty and of dependence, in sum the base of the specific form which the State takes on at a given period.lo6

Translated by John Downing

342 Emmanuel Terray

Notes

I. F. Engels, Preface to K. Marx (1971), in Marx and Engeb (1968), p. 258. 2. F. Engels (1884), in M a n and Engels (1968), p. 578. 3. Ibid., p. 581. 4. For a definition of long-distance exchange, see Meillassoux (1971), p. 25. 5. Godelier in Centre d'E?tudes et de Recherches Marxistes (1969), p. 87. 6. Coquery (19691, P. 73. 7. Ibid., p. 70. The term surplus-value is used here quite improperly, since it is has no meaning outside the capitalist mode of production, where it designates the result in terms of money or a commodity of surplus labour extracted from a productive wage worker. Here it would be necessary to speak of surplus or surplus product. 8. Ibid., p. 71. 9. Ibid., p. 71. 10. Ibid., pp. 71-2. 11. Coquery in Centre d'gtudes et de Recherches Marxistes (1971), p. 244. 12. Ibid., p. 245. On the use of the term surplus-value, see n. 7. 13. Amin (1972), p. 7. 14. Ibid., p. 7. 15. Person, in Vansina, Mauny, Thomas (1964), p. 332. Peter Morton- Williams also asserts the existence of a link between long-distance trade and State formation, and illustrates his thesis with the aid of examples drawn from the area that interests us. But he describes, rather than explains, this link (Douglas and Kaberry (1969), pp. 79-98). 16. Ibid., p. 331. 17. Terray in Meillassoux (1971), pp. 146-7; Terray (1969), p. 298. 18. Auge in Meillassoux (1971), p. 157. 19. Terray (1969), pp. 302 ff. 20. Terray in Meillassoux (1971), pp. 148-9; Terray (1969), p. 328. 21. Terray in Meillassoux (1971), p. 150; Terray (1969), p. 189. 22. Terray in Meillassoux (1971), p. 150; Terray (1969), pp. 248 ff. 23. Terray in Meillassoux (1971), p. 151. Terray (1969), pp. 310 ff. 24. On the notion of relays and the distinction proposed between relays and networks by Boutilier, in the I.A.I. Colloquium in Freetown, see Meillassoux (1971), p. 30. 25. C o q u e ~ (1969)3 P- 69. 26. Ibid., p. 68. 27. Boutilier in Meillassoux (1971), p. 246. 28. Levtzion (1968), pp. 28-9; Wilks in Meillassoux (1971), p. 128. 29. Person, Samory et la Revolution Dyula, book 111, in MS., forthcoming. We here thank Yves Person for his kindness in sending us this text. 30. Fuller ( I ~ z I ) , p. I.

31. Dupuis (1824), p. 167. 32. Jackson (1820), p. 14. 33. Ibid., p. 44. 34. Coquery (19691, P. 72. 35. Daaku, in Meillassoux (1971), p. 172. 36. Rattray (1929), pp. 109-10. 37, Bowdich (1819), pp. 335-6. 38. Dupuis (1824), p. 167. 39. Person, in Vansina, Mauny, Thomas (1964), p. 330. 40. Wilks (1961), p. 5 . 41. Wolks (1969), p. 15. 42. Bowdich (1819), p. 169.

Long-distance exchange and the formation of the State

43. Dupuis (1824), part 11, p. LVI. 44. Lyon (1822), pp. 150-1. 45. Gordon (1874), p. 40. 46. Bowdich (1819), p. 307. 47. Binger (1892), 11, p. 174. 48. Collier (1824), p. 229. 49. Dupuis (1824), 11, pp. LVII f. 50. Braulot (1893), p. 80. 51. Dupuis (1824), 11, p. LVI. According to Dupuis' map, Briquanti and Kontoosoo were West of Bondoukou, between Bondoukou and Herebe. 52. Ibid., p. LVII. The 'Barra' is actually the river Ba, which flows into the Komoe. 53. R. La T. Lonsdale, Full Report on his mission to Ashanti and Gaman, April 14, 1883. Parliamentary Papers C 3687, in vol. XLVIII, 1883. 54. Capt. Lang, Report. November 17, 1892. Public Record Office, Colonial Office, African West no. 435. 55. Coquer5' (1969)j P. 71- 56. Wilks, in Meillassoux (1971), pp. 125-30. 57. Bowdich (181g), pp. 336-7. See also p. 334. 58. Gros (1884), p. 165. 59. Arhin (1965), PP. 144-5. 60. Bowdich (181g), pp. 335-6. 61. Goody (1971), p. 55. 62. Engels, Preface to Manr (1871), in Marx and Engels (1969), p. 258. 63. E n d s (18731, P. 547. 64. Engels (1880), in Marx and Engels (1968), p. 424. 65. Meillassoux in Meillassoux (1971), p. 26. 66. Marx (1867), Volume One, p. 235. 67. Marx (1894)~ Volume Three, p. 384. 68 Dupuis (1824), p. 164. 69. Reindorf (1895), p. 135. 70. Terray, in La Captivitk duns le Royaume Abron du Gyaman, forthcoming in a collective work on captivity in western and central Africa, prepared by Claude Meillassoux. 71. Wilks, in Ajayi and Crowder (1971), pp. 354-64. 72. Levtzion (1968), pp. 3-14. 73. Levtzion (1968), pp. 194-5. 74. Flight (1970), pp. 264, 267. 75. Meyerowitz (1962), p. 79. 76. Ibid.,p. 82, n. 2.

77. Boahen (1966), p. 61. 78. Meyerowitz (195 I), p. 198. 79. Wilks (1961), p. 5. 80. Banda Stool History, collected by Kwabena Arneyaw, I.A.S.R.A.1, Institute of African studies, Legon. 81. Meyerowitz (1952), p. 35. 82. Levtzion (1968), p. 11. 83. Meyerowitz (1958), p. 118. 84. Levtzion (1968), p. 8. 85. Meyerowitz (1962), p. 83. 86. Wilks (1961), p. I I ; Levtzion (1968), p. I I.

87. Mauny (1961), pp. 359-60. 88. Pereira (1937), p. 89. 89. Wilks (1969), p. 15. 90. Fernandes (1938), p. 87. H

Emmanuel Terray

91. Ibid. The 'Ungaros' are the Wangara or Dyula. 92. Pereira (1937), p. 89. 93. Banda Stool History (see n. 80). 94. Pereira (1937), pp. 121, 126. 95. Barros (1937)~ p. 124. 96. Ibid., p. 125. 97. Levtzion (1973), p. 172. 98. Ibn Batuta (1969), IV, p. 378. 99. Ibid., p. 441.

100. Fage (1969), p. 94. 101. Marx (1847), p. 86. 102. Marx (1894), Volume Three, pp. 282-3. 103. Coquery (1969), p. 71. 104. Amin (1972), p. 6. 105. Ibid., p. 7. 106. Marx (1894), Volume Three, p. 791.

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