Mapping the History of Cotton Textile Production in Precolonial West Africa

Abstract

The antiquity of cotton cultivation and textile production in West Africa would not be apparent to someone traveling across its present-day landscape, since varieties of New World cotton plants are now so ubiquitous. Some of them were introduced and voluntarily accepted into West African agricultural cycles during the era of Atlantic trade, while others were imposed on farmers during colonial rule.1 Archival records document the creation by Europeans of agricultural policies and experiments geared toward intensifying cotton production for export to Europe, but they have relatively little to say about Africa's agricultural history over the long term. Other kinds of written sources give some indication of how far back the history of cotton in West Africa might go. Surveys published by early twentieth-century botanists attempted to systematically document, identify, and compare plant specimens that had been collected world-wide, including Old World cottons, and suggested among other things that cotton had been widely grown in Africa prior to direct European contact. Chevalier, for example, noted that G. herbaceum could still be found in Senegal and in the upper Niger watershed between Segu and Jenne, but that it had almost completely disappeared from the upper Niger bend.3 A more extensive survey by Dalziel indicated that G. herbaceum was still being grown in northern Nigeria and in Kanuri-speaking areas around Lake Chad as well. Varieties of the other Old World cotton, G. arboreum, had been identified in the colonies of Senegal, French Guinea, Upper Volta, Sierra Leone, northern Gold Coast, and Nigeria (north and south).4 Useful though these surveys may be in certain respects, they provide only a very general relative chronology, that Old World cottons were replaced by New World varieties.5 The history of cotton in precolonial Africa is still poorly understood.In this paper I establish a general chronological framework and map out some broad geographical parameters for cotton and cotton textile production in West Africa. My aim is twofold: to contribute to the social and economic history of precolonial Africa and also to our understanding of West African consumer markets during the Atlantic slave trade. Certainly cotton production transformed more than the West African landscape and farmers' agricultural practices. Artisanal groups such as spinners, weavers, dyers, tailors, and embroiderers developed and honed their skills, created workshops, and marketed their products. They generated and maintained the crucially important links between raw cotton fiber and the purchasers of cotton and garments. Thus tracing the history of cotton and cotton textile production can reveal a great deal about precolonial social and economic history. There is a cultural dimension to this history as well. Historians have known for some time that textiles, especially cotton ones, were a major commodity in demand in ports along the Guinea Coast. Indeed, Metcalf proposed that textiles 'drove' the trade on the Gold Coast in the way that sugar 'drove' it in the Western Hemisphere. These important consumer markets for predated the direct trade with Europeans, and conditioned its operation. Clarifying more precisely the preferences and 'tastes' of West African consumers, and how they changed over time, can help us better understand how cultural factors shaped commercial transactions in the Atlantic slave trade. To address these issues I rely on a variety of types of evidence, including botany, linguistics, archaeology, and material culture, along with written data, accounts, and descriptions.7 I begin by discussing problems having to do with estimating the antiquity of cotton in Africa, and I then go on to map cotton-producing centers prior to and during the Atlantic slave trade era. Finally, I make some observations about the complexity of consumer markets for cottons and other in West Africa and how they affected trading operations on the coast. …