Le Maroc et le commerce transsaharien du XVIIe au début du XIXe siècle.

Abstract

Abstract It is currently assumed that the conquest of the western part of Sudan by al-Mansur's army in 1 591 brought about the decline and exhaustion of the Trans-Saharian trade between the Moroccan kingdom and the region of the Niger. The data found in the Sudanese Chronicles or in the consular reports of the xvu and xixth century allow us to question the value of this theory, which rests upon the main idea that a period of anarchy followed the ruin of the Songhai Empire, and that the Moroccan conquerors failed to establish a powerful state on the banks of the Niger. In fact the political unrest which prevailed at times in the region did little harm to the trade, which went on steadily and whose value even increased up to the first half of the xixth century : the ethnical, social and religious structures of the people of the Sahelo-Sudanese zone could easily make up for the shortcomings and failings of the political organization. What changed inexorably since the end of the Middle Age, which was the Golden Age of Trans-Saharian trade, was neither the mass nor the variety of the exchanges between the two sides of the Great Desert, but rather the whole economic impact of the Trans-Saharian trade on the development of the peoples and countries involved.