Slavery in the Cape

Too Close for Comfort: Master and Slave Relations in the Colonial Cape

            The effects of propinquity on the nature and development of slavery in colonial Cape society were profound. Unlike the large plantations that evolved in parts of the Americas, where enslaved Africans could develop slave cultures without the incessant supervision of whites, close contact between white masters and slaves in the Cape led to constant supervision that created intimately oppressive conditions. Therefore, slavery developed into an institution of extreme regulation and monitoring of slaves for social control with the appearances of benign paternalism, which was weaker in Cape Town than in the countryside.  These aforementioned intimately oppressive conditions entailed a form of slavery mixing physical and psychological forms of domination, domestic affection and the threat of violence, and paternalism and overseers to ensure slave subordination while also creating conditions for more cultural and racial mixing.

            Conditions of white supervision varied for slaves in both Cape Town and rural areas, depending on various factors. The similarities persist, however, for all of the above in several key ways. First, in both the countryside and Cape Town, the Dutch East India Company, the VOC, never enforced its laws against concubinage, so white males and ‘black’ female slaves produced mixed-race children throughout the colonial period, partly because of the uneven sex ratios for whites.[1] But despite the prevalence of miscegenation, there was no “mulatto escape hatch” for Cape slaves and slave children of white fathers, meaning few slave women gained freedom from relationships with white males. Few of their children with white males were manumitted or given burghership.[2] Nevertheless, the frequency of interracial sex between white men and slaves exemplifies another use of white males controlling the bodies and sexual freedom of female slaves, adding another layer of force for social control, which can be seen in Willem Menssink’s penchant for sex with his slave women.[3] Like many other male settlers, it was not unusual to have sex with slave women, although the church never condoned it.[4]

In addition to sex, white males often controlled their slaves across the Cape because the household slept under the same roof. A shortage of living space led to higher amount of intimacy between slaves and masters, rural and urban.[5] Indeed, even in Cape Gentry homes, slaves often lived inside the house.[6] Thus, slaves were not only vulnerable to slaveholders’ sexual power, but also within reach of them and their families, decreasing chances for autonomy and, especially in rural areas, limiting socialization with other enslaved peoples on neighboring small farms.[7] Moreover, slaves in both rural areas and Cape Town were vulnerable to physical violence and the threat of it, although slaveholders who took the law into their own hands with cruel punishments of their slaves instead of relying on the VOC to chastise them could be shunned by Cape society and penalized by the Company.[8]

            Despite the shared characteristics of slavery in Cape Town and rural areas, the peculiar institution developed differently from slavery in Cape Town in multiple ways. For instance, slaves on Cape farmsteads outside of the arable southwest, on the frontier or small estates, were often very few in numbers on their plantations.[9] These Cape slaves on small estates would then mostly socialize with their white masters who oversaw them personally or had a knecht or mandoor. Regardless, slaves on these small farms outside of the arable Cape were very close with their masters, and, in some cases, with Khoikhoi laborers and women, often the only available sexual partners for the mostly male enslaved workforce.[10] As mentioned previously, the mixed-race offspring of slaves and their masters were usually not freed, but a Creole culture based on the Indische culture of VOC holdings in the Indian Ocean world and European culture developed on larger estates. This was aided by the larger estates featuring more slaves from common origins, facilitating communication and socialization among slaves and developing a unique slave culture influenced by European culture, too.[11] Larger estates also featured more skilled slave craftsmen, likely better treated.[12]

While being spread out in small numbers with their white masters and some Khoikhoi workers, rural slaves also lacked privacy needed to maintain their own family units, being seen as part of the patriarchal family unit as perpetual children in need of white paternalism.[13] Despite cases intense domestic affection that could arise from paternalism between master and slave, their membership in the family included the master’s children having the right of beating slaves, indicating the unequal and hierarchical structure of master-slave relations embedded within the family.[14] Rural slave resistance, and slave resistance generally throughout the Cape, was likely undermined by slave diversity, since the population came from all over the Indian Ocean and linguistic hurdles and ethnic rivalry may have caused slave resistance to take on a more individualized form.[15] However, some forms of group resistance appear in slaves running away beyond the frontier to join Khoikhoi groups or to inaccessible areas to form small maroon bands, which are just some of the options available to rural slaves. Drosters, or gangs of fugitive slaves, such as the one Pieter of Madagascar was part of in early 18^th century Land van Waveren, were also common forms of slave resistance on the frontier.[16]

Overall, slaves in the countryside, unfortunately, were mostly concentrated in smaller farms, slept in the same home with the master, and because central authority weakened the further away from Cape Town one was, slaveholders could use more violence or brutality as they saw fit without much control from VOC authority. Unlike their urban counterparts or those in bondage on large estates, their options for socialization were primarily with European masters and Khoikhoi, so slaves and trekboers both adopted elements of Khoi culture, such as a pastoralist economy, or their Khoi-styled shelters.[17] The overly close quarters between slave and free ultimately developed into the perfect conditions for the use of paternalism as well as brute force to discipline and subordinate slaves in the Cape.

Similar to conditions of slavery in the rural Cape, urban slaves, who comprised a significant portion of all slaves in the Cape, were also under close regulation by colonial society.[18] Brutality, public beatings, and widespread abuse of slaves were common, particularly for Company slaves housed in the Slave Lodge, which also functioned as a brothel.[19] Company slaves, however, were not representative of all slaves in the Cape, particularly because of the draconian measures taken by the Company to control them with overseers since they were organized into large work gangs for various forms of labor in Cape Town.[20] Company slaves gradually became a very tiny proportion of the total slave population, hitting rock-bottom by 1795, the year of the first British occupation, with almost all reported slaves being privately owned.[21] Before the Company’s decline, the VOC managed their slaves through overseers, often slaves themselves.[22] The Company also relied on Kaffers, Eastern convicts from their Asian possessions, imported as slaves to monitor, police, and apprehend Cape Town’s slave population.[23] Like rural areas and privately-owned slaves, miscegenation at the Lodge was also frequent. In fact, an estimate for mixed-race children born there in 1671 was ¾ having mixed ancestry.[24] The case of slaves at the Lodge, however, were slightly different in that sex ratios approached a balance, so these additional women were targets for European bachelors and sailors employed by the VOC.[25] Despite the increased surveillance of the Company’s slaves, they were still able to interact with each other and socialize with other urban populations, such as males seeking prostitution, or with other slaves and residents of Cape Town, so their enslavement differed in some key respects from the rural slaves’ on small estates living inside the homes of their masters.

Besides the Company’s slaves in Cape Town, the rest of the urban slave population enjoyed comparatively much more freedom. Though attempts to limit and monitor their movement and keep them under the paternalistic slave-master relationship were utilized, urban slaves were often rented by their masters, giving them a degree of mobility and autonomy from their masters.[26] Slaves in Cape Town hired out were also more likely to pay for their own accommodation, providing additional distance between themselves and the paternalism of domestic slavery associated with living in the same home as slaveholders.[27] Predictably, these urban slaves had far more opportunities to mingle with others in Cape Town’s markets and their various types of work led to increased chances of socialization and occasions for horizontal acculturation with other subordinate peoples in Cape society.[28] These relatively mobile, unfettered Capetonian slaves also did not have to deal with an efficient or strong police force in Cape Town, allowing another degree of relative freedom.[29] Furthermore, slaves’ relative autonomy surfaced in the frequency of slave theft of white property and forming their own sub-cultures and spaces within the city visiting taverns.[30]  Urban slaves also resisted attempts under British rule for Christian conversion and moral education, preferring Islam, which spread rapidly because the port received Muslim slaves, exiles and convicts from India and Southeast Asia, exemplifying the cosmopolitan culture of Cape Town and slave society.[31]

Naturally, there were multiple measures taken by Cape Town’s slaveholders and the government to curtail the freedom of movement enjoyed by urban slaves. For instance, Cape Town’s curfew laws attempted to reduce slave autonomy and retain control of the streets for European authority.[32] The aforementioned Kaffers served as auxiliary police as well, assisting in the maintenance of the social order and symbolizing slave disunity and internal stratification.[33] The threat of sale and the public military rituals and presence in Cape Town also served as deterrents to slave autonomy and resistance in the city, showing the powers of colonial authority authority in urban space.[34] The threat of violent punishment and public beatings strengthened white authority by adding spectacle to what in the countryside would have been largely private affairs of disciplining slaves.[35] Although the authority of slaveholders was augmented in some ways in the city, slaveholders of Cape Town lacked direct political power because of elite divisions and British colonialism introduced ameliorative legislation to limit the extent of cruel punishment, thereby improving the lot of slaves in the 19^th century.[36]

In summation, slavery in both rural and urban Cape society clearly depended on the degree of propinquity to imbue it with alternative forms of social control. The high degree of paternalism, evident in the smallholdings of rural Cape society, was one form of social control that also continued to rely on physical coercion and intimidation. The Company slaves in Cape Town received less paternalism and more of the direct, constant physical, sexual, and supervision that characterized slavery on the large plantations of the Caribbean or the American South, partly because of the large numbers of slaves organized into specific work crews. Other urban slaves, exemplified by those whose labor slaveholders rented out, were more likely to live outside of their master’s accommodations and socialize with other slaves and urbanites across the city, further developing slave sub-cultures influenced by the diversity of slave origins as well as European culture. However, in all areas of slave distribution in the Cape, cultural and racial miscegenation occurred, extending to the creation of a new language, Afrikaans, a development that could only arise from oppressively close relations and contact between the masters and the slaves. Thus, the close relations of master and slave imbued slavery in the Cape with a façade of benevolence and ensured widespread miscegenation and cultural mixing through paternalism and factors such as location in the Cape.

Bibliography

Armstrong, J. and Worden, N. “The Slaves, 1652-1834,” in Elphick and Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society ( 2^nd ed., Cape Town, 1989).

Bank, Andrew. The Decline of Urban Slavery at the Cape, 1806-1843 (Cape Town, 1991).

Elphick, R. and Shell, R. “Intergroup Relations: Khoikhoi, settlers, slaves and free blacks, 1652-1795,” in Elphick and Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society (Cape Town, 1989).

Penn, Nigel. “The Fatal Passion of Brewer Menssink: Sex, beer and politics in a Cape family, 1694-1722,” in Rogues, Rebels and Runaways (Cape Town, 1999).

“The wife, the farmer and the farmer’s slaves: adultery and murder on a frontier farm in the early eighteenth century Cape,” Kronos: Journal of Cape History, 28, Nov. 2002.

Ross, Robert. Cape of Torments: Slaves and Resistance in South Africa (London, 1983).

Shell, Robert. “The Family and Slavery at the Cape, 1680-1808,” in W. James and M. Simons (eds), The Angry Divide: Social and Economic History of the Western Cape (Cape Town, 1989).

“The Tower of Babel: The Slave Trade and Creolization at the Cape, 1652-1834,” in E. Eldredge and F. Morton, (eds), Slavery in South Africa: Captive Labour on the Dutch Frontier (Boulder, Colorado, 1994), pp.11-39.

Worden, Nigel. Slavery in Dutch South Africa (Cambridge, 1985).

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[1] R. Elphick and R. Shell, “Intergroup Relations: Khoikhoi, settlers, slaves and free blacks, 1652-1795,” in Elphick and Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society (2^nd ed., Cape Town, 1989), 194.

[2] Ibid, 203.

[3] Nigel Penn, “The Fatal Passion of Brewer Menssink: Sex, beer and politics in a Cape family, 1694-1722,” in Rogues, Rebels and Runaways (Cape Town, 1999), 18.

[4] Ibid, 19.

[5] Robert Shell, “The Family and Slavery at the Cape, 1680-1808,” in W. James and M. Simons (eds), The Angry Divide: Social and Economic History of the Western Cape (Cape Town, 1989), 26.

[6] Ibid, 25.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid, 20-21

[9] Ibid, 22.

[10] Elphick and Shell, “Intergroup Relations: Khoikhoi, settlers, slaves and free blacks, 1652-1795,”  200.

[11] Ibid, 225.

[12] Nigel Worden, Slavery in Dutch South Africa (Cambridge, 1985), 87.

[13] Ibid, 95.

[14] Shell, “The Family and Slavery at the Cape, 1680-1808,” 26.

[15] Robert Shell, “The Tower of Babel: The Slave Trade and Creolization at the Cape, 1652-1834,” in E. Eldredge and F. Morton, (eds), Slavery in South Africa: Captive Labour on the Dutch Frontier (Boulder, Colorado, 1994), 21.

[16] Nigel Penn, “The wife, the farmer and the farmer’s slaves: adultery and murder on a frontier farm in the early eighteenth century Cape,” Kronos: Journal of Cape History, 28, Nov. 2002, 14.

[17] Elphick and Shell, “Intergroup Relations: Khoikhoi, settlers, slaves and free blacks, 1652-1795,”  227-228.

[18] Robert Ross, Cape of Torments: Slaves and Resistance in South Africa (London, 1983), 25.

[19] Elphick and Shell, “Intergroup Relations: Khoikhoi, settlers, slaves and free blacks, 1652-1795,”195.

[20] Worden, Slavery in Dutch South Africa, 90.

[21] J. Armstrong and N. Worden, “The Slaves, 1652-1834,” in Elphick and Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society (2^nd ed., Cape Town, 1989), 129.

[22] Ibid, 127.

[23] Ibid, 128.

[24] ^[24] Elphick and Shell, “Intergroup Relations: Khoikhoi, settlers, slaves and free blacks, 1652-1795,” 195.

[25] Ibid, 198.

[26] Andrew Bank, The Decline of Urban Slavery at the Cape, 1806-1843 (Cape Town, 1991), 127.

[27] Ibid, 62.

[28] Ibid, 61, 77.

[29] Ibid, 84.

[30] Ibid, 81.

[31] Worden, Slavery in Dutch South Africa , 98.

[32] Shell, “The Family and Slavery at the Cape, 1680-1808,” 26.

[33] Armstrong and Worden, “The Slaves, 1652-1834,” 129.

[34] Bank, The Decline of Urban Slavery at the Cape, 1806-1843, 69, 76.

[35] Ibid, 65.

[36] Ibid, 80, 83.

Contribution to the History of Songhay

Jean Rouch's Contribution à l'histoire des Songhay is rather outdated yet still useful for insights on Songhay history and culture. A reputable ethnographer who studied Songhay religion and magic extensively, Rouch's understanding of their history unsurprisingly emphasizes Islam as an alien element that laid the foundations for the collapse of the Askia. Despite this problematic frame for Songhay history, Rouch's work is one of the best earlier attempts to make sense of Songhay history from its shadowy early origins at Kukiya to the late colonial period. 

Unfortunately, Rouch repeated some of the mistakes of Delafosse and early colonial scholars. For instance, the Za dynasty were said to have been Christianized Lemta Berbers who left Tripolitania around 670. In addition, the early state of Ghana (Wagadu) is attributed to Judaeo-Syrian colonists. These mistakes inhibit a deeper understanding of early Songhay, one which clearly indicates an important role for the Sorko, Gow, and farming populations living near and along the Niger as the foundation of the first Songhay polity. This later inhibits Rouch's analysis of the Za, Si, and Askia dynasties since Islam, promoted by Askia Muhammad, is blamed for the fall of Songhay. Sonni Ali, on the other hand, was the champion of a "black" state that brought Songhay to its zenith, something commemorated in Songhay oral traditions, religion, and Rouch's problematic view of Islam's relations with Songhay religion. 

Of course, later scholars have benefitted from new approaches to the Timbuktu chronicles, epigraphic evidence from Bentia & Gao, as well as archaeological excavations at Gao and other sites in Mali to throw into question a number of theories held as gospel in Rouch's day. The picture that emerges now is one far more dynamic and one that calls into question some of the older generation's stereotypes of Kukiya as the fount of "black" Songhay paganism and even the historicity of Ali Kulun. Nonetheless, Rouch's insights are occasionally insightful here, particularly his proposed translations for Za dynasty rulers recorded in the Timbuktu chronicles. His familiarity with Songhay oral tradition and religion also adds a new dimension to the ways in which Sonni Ali and other rulers are remembered for building their empires through military conquests aided by magic or occult knowledge. 

Development and Regression on the Middle Niger

Le développement et la régression chez les peuples de la boucle du Niger à l'époque précolonial by Michael Tymowski is an ambitious work. An attempt to make sense of around 1000 years of economic progress and regression along a key part of the Western Sudan (centered on the Middle Niger), Tymowski relies heavily on the Timbuktu chronicles, external Arabic sources, and oral traditions. He persuasively makes the case for economic development with the growth of urban centers, limited private land tenure, and accelerated long-distance trade, which later declined in the 1600s and 1700s. This shows that the history of "development" in sub-Saharan African areas has always been dynamic, and not simply one of timeless "backwardness" or irrelevance. 

However, Tymowski's study is quite outdated and relies on French translations of sources in Arabic. It also relies heavily on Jean Rouch and other somewhat outdated scholarship on Songhay ethnography and oral traditions, even repeating the unproven claim that the Dia/Za dynasty of early Songhay rulers were actually Lemta Berbers. In addition, he heavily relied on the problematic Tarikh al-Fattash chronicle for assertions about servile/caste populations. This dependence on French translations of Arabic sources and outmoded scholarship on Songhay ethnography and oral traditions suggest possible limitations of Tymowski's study. While one must acknowledge that the aforementioned Timbuktu chronicles are probably reliable for the 1400s and 1500s (at least more so than for earlier centuries), Tymowski's attempt to derive meaningful conclusions or theories about the economic development of the Mali Empire and Songhay Empire may be misleading or problematic. Nonetheless, there are a number of intriguing ideas about the relationship between the towns (Gao, Djenne, Timbuktu) and the countryside, as well as the role of the state in promoting land tenure arrangements along the lines of property property or through state domains (those of the askias) that controlled and promoted the redistribution of goods. 

Christianity in the Sudan

Giovanni Vantini's Christianity in the Sudan is a dated work which, by and large, is mainly about Christian Nubia. Heavily based on the corpus of "Oriental" sources (plus some European ones) Vantini published, much of the text is like reading that compilation with some narrative commentary. It was a refresher for certain points in the history of medieval Nubia that we have forgotten about, but without any deeper investigation of the source materials, rather limited. Fortunately, advances by archaeologists and studies of Old Nubian and other textual sources has shed more light on the nature of the Nubian political system, economic structure, and religion. For instance, Dotawo is now more widely accepted as being the same state as Makuria. Sadly, Alwa, in Upper Nubia, remains a mystery in Vantini's text, but that is no surprise given the year this work was published (1980). More intriguingly for those interested in the later centuries of medieval Nubia, one can find here useful Western sources on Nubia and some important references to the Vatican's attempts to replant the Christian seed in Nubia. Some of this correspondence even touches upon the Kwararafa south of Borno, confusingly believed by some Europeans in Tripoli to have been Christians. Last, but certainly not least, some European sources also alluding to the survival of Christianity in pockets of Nubia as late as the 1740s suggest fruitful areas of research for scholars interested in Christian traces in Nubian culture. 

The Northern Factor in Ashanti History

Ivor Wilks wrote an intriguing monograph several decades ago, The Northern Factor in Ashanti History. Due to our similar interest in the "northern factor" in Yoruba history (and, to a lesser extent, Dahomey and Borgu history), we found it imperative to actually read it. Wilks presents what may be a sometimes exaggerated role of Islam in 18th century and early 19th century Asante, but it does seem quite likely that trade routes to the North through Begho and later centers was of paramount importance. Like the Oyo Yoruba state, the Asante state appears to have tapped into both Atlantic and broader Sudanic/trans-Saharan trade routes. 

Unlike Oyo, the Ashanti did not require large amounts of imported horses for cavalry units. Nonetheless, the gold and kola nuts of Ghana were highly valuable commodities that brought traders from both the Western and Central Sudan into the region. Through control of or taxation of trade routes used by these northern traders, the Asante state could derive great revenues as well as import cloth and other goods not available from the trade with Europeans on the coast. Aspects of this history is revealed by written sources from Gonja and the north. European accounts plus other sources similarly shed light on the importance of these northern ties that linked this part of Ghana with the Middle Niger, the Sahara, and Hausaland. 

West African Muslims from far afield, in addition to Muslims from areas to the north conquered by Asante, were also a valued community for their literacy, the esteem in which their religion was held, and their economic importance. Whether or not Dupuis's "sketch" of Asante history as revealed to him by manuscripts and conversations with notable Muslims in Kumasi is very reliable for how the Asante themselves saw their history, it is nonetheless important to recall that the Asante rulers sponsored a history, or chronicle,  written by Muslims. The attempt by Wilks to reproduce the accounts given to Dupuis reveals just how problematic this source material can be, though it does reveal how one could and should endeavor to utilize Arabic and European sources (plus oral traditions) to make sense of the history of the Asante. 

Medieval Arabic Epigraphy from Mali and Songhay History

Arabic Medieval Inscriptions from the Republic of Mali: Epigraphy, Chronicles and Songhay-Tuareg History by P.F. de Moraes Farias has long been on our reading list. One of the essential studies that endeavors to incorporate medieval epigraphic sources into our understanding of the history of the Songhay and the eastern arc of the Niger, this important work, despite its (necessarily) occasional speculative nature, raises a number of questions about the received wisdom on the history of Mali. First, by exploring the problematic way in which Heinrich Barth, Delafosse, and others have problematically assumed the 17th century Timbuktu chronicles can be treated as a reservoir of basic facts and data without any deeper ideological or textual analysis, this study illustrates how and why the funerary and non-funerary epigraphic evidence has been ignored, sidelined, or treated as peripheral. 

However, the funerary sources, as early sources covering dates from the early 11th century until the end of the 15th, are actual textual sources from the period before the rise of Sonni Ali and Askia Muhammad I. They shed (some) light on earlier rulers at Gao and Saney with more than just the kingslists that appear in the 17th century chronicles. Moreover, by ignoring the innovative nature of the tarikh genre in the 17th century Western Sudan, and the specific political and socioeconomic conditions which shaped its development after the fall of the Songhay imperial state and the establishment of the Arma, modern scholars have underappreciated the creativity of the chroniclers and their own motives. Furthermore, the chroniclers themselves lamented the lack of sufficient or detailed records from the early history of the Western Sudan, so epitaphs and other inscriptions from the 11th-15th century become exceptionally important sources to supplement our meager knowledge of that era.

That said, the inscriptions obviously cannot tell us everything. They do, however, provide a vista onto how the deceased and those who erected stelae or inscribed tombstones for the dead conceived of time, the calendar, their connection to the larger world of Islam, and hints of kingship, ethnicity, language, or cultural change. Part of this can be seen in Bentyia, where inscriptions record Songhay, Berber, and what appear to be Mande names. The intense interplay between Songhay and Tuareg cultures also challenges us to rethink casual or simplistic assumptions about "race" and culture, too. For instance, the askia title, which appeared in inscriptions centuries before the rise of Askia Muhammad at the end of the 15th century, may have a connection to a word of Berber derivation referring to a male slave (though this is a complex question that requires deeper familiarity with Songhay linguistics and oral tradition). It's quite clear, too, from reading de Moraes Farias, that the Ali Kulun character of Tuareg oral literature was likely the source for how the Timbuktu chroniclers sought to make sense of the period of Mali imperial domination of Gao and the eastern Niger. This suggests that some of the narratives about that period reported in the chronicles are unhistorical and the chronology of Malian rule and the different dynasties that ruled Gao will remain up for debate. 

Whether or not the epigraphic evidence can be used to postulate how kingship might have operated at Gao before the period of Mali's domination is uncertain, but de Moraes Farias's theory of rotating succession in the 11th-13th centuries is an intriguing one., After all, based on the funerary inscriptions from the early 1100s and 1200s at Gao and Saney (another site near Gao), he speculates that there may have been two lines or royal clans who alternated kingship. The first one was definitely Muslim by the second half of the 1000s, and the second one, the so-called Zuwa 'dynasty' may have either been officeholders who shared power with the earlier 'dynasty'. 

Besides raising questions about the Timbuktu chronicles and how medieval inscriptions in Arabic force us to rethink or reconceptualize space, belief, and culture in the medieval Sahel, one is also left with tantalizing references to what may have been early Sufist influence in the Sahel at Junhan. One is also left wondering why it funerary inscriptions were in vogue at Gao, Saney, Bentyia, and Essuk (Tadmakka) but no evidence for the practice has been found yet in Kanem. One would expect that similar connections with Tripoli, Qayrawan and other parts of the Maghrib (as well as similar Saharan and Sahelian Berber populations) did not lead to the development of funerary inscriptions at sites like Njimi (or perhaps at Manan, the earlier capital of Kanem which remains unknown). If the early prominence of Ibadis in Kanem's trans-Saharan trade is a factor, something similar was also an inhibiting factor at Gao.

The Sokoto Caliphate

Murray Last's The Sokoto Caliphate is perhaps outdated, but still highly useful for an overview on the history of Sokoto. Beginning with the regional background and the origins of Uthman Dan Fodio early Community of followers, Last covers the jihad, the early expansion and consolidation of the Caliphate, its administration, and the vizierate. Basing his work mainly on local Arabic sources penned in the 19th and 20th centuries, Last's work is supplemented by the journals, letters, and colonial-era documentation when available. Thus, the portrait of the Caliphate is undoubtedly one of its elite. Those eager to find a deeper social history or economic history of the Sokoto Caliphate will be disappointed. Indeed, the study itself is mainly focused on Sokoto and its hinterland, meaning those eager for a complete history of Sokoto that includes the developments in all its emirates during the period from, say, 1804-1903, will not find it here. Nonetheless, Last's history is still significant in its rich use of the aforementioned sources to demonstrate how Uthman Dan Fodio's successors created an Islamic state which managed to survive for a century, transforming the larger Central Sudanic region in the process. 

In fact, through its early days battling with Gobir and establishing a new state after their hijra, to the establishment of a more established administrative structure during the reign of Muhammad Bello as caliph, one must note the accomplishments of the jihad. First, the Hausa kingdoms were transformed in a process that drew from Fulani, Hausa, Tuareg and other ethnic groups supporting it (or, indifferently allowing it). Second, the Shaikh and his successors were able to transcend a strictly Fulani base for power by moving beyond a solely Fulani/Fulani clan alliances and marriages. Third, Bello was able to promote the settlement of "cattle Fulani" in the sparsely settled area of Sokoto's hinterland, thereby encouraging them to become sedentary, more productive and more amenable to thorough Islamization. Fourth, the jihad established a state system in which the moral authority of the caliph was strong enough to never be successfully rebelled against by the major emirates. Fifth, the Sokoto rulers cultivated a unity through their adherence to Islam and the guidance of Islamic Law and religion as recommended in the writings of Uthman dan Fodio and his brother and son. Unlike their "pagan" and other enemies, the forces of the Sokoto caliphate were usually more unified, even when the major emirates to the east only sent "presents" as tribute or did not fully participate in the annual campaigns.

Of course, Sokoto's growth and economic importance also transformed the Central Sudan. Borno, which lost some of its territory to the forces of the jihad, mainly coexisted peacefully with Sokoto after al-Kanemi's heroic saving of the kingdom. Relations with Baghirmi were to be peaceful in order to secure an eastern route to the Nile, when the Mahdi was supposedly to appear (Islamic millennialism in the Sokoto Caliphate is a topic worthy of additional study). The Tuareg and Agades were of course already linked to Hausaland via the salt trade and other forms of commerce, but the Sokoto Caliphate's expansion likely helped to secure it as the economic center of the vast region. Studying its economic history and the role of slavery, textile production, the salt and kola nut trades, and trans-Saharan commerce will be our next areas of research.