LOCAL AND LONG DISTANCE TRADE AND INCIPIENT STATE FORMATION ON THE BAMENDA PLATEAU IN THE LATE 19th CENTURY

Abstract

In his article Long distance trade and the formation of the State Terray criticises Coque ry, Amin and others for assuming a direct relationship in West Africa between control over long distance trade by dominant elites and state formation (Terray 1974). Instead, he draws attention to the fact that it is control over the means of for external trade (i.e. slave labour and the means of acquiring captives) which leads directly to privileged, but not exclusive, access to foreign commodities by a dominant class. The true role of long distance trade therefore, consisted in the introduction of slave type relations of into social formations dominated until then by the kin based mode of production (Terray 1974: 339). In general terms therefore, West African kingdoms of this kind would appear to belong to that category of 'secondary states' which Gordon Childe described for the Ancient Near East, developing on the periphery of primary states in order to supply the latter with raw materials and semi-processed goods. In this respect, the view that West African kingdoms have ultimately to be viewed as part of the various world economies to which they have belonged at different periods, appears to be justified (Gutkind and Wallerstein 1976). But this, as a generalisation, holds true for many other areas of secondary state formation and it leaves open the question whether absolute differences exist in the structure of the social formations that perform these functions or whether such variations refer to their position, at any particular time, in a single developmental trajectory. Certainly, the questions that Terray provides us within his analysis of the Abron kingdom, derive from a relatively developed situation when control over long distance trade and over the consumption and circulation of foreign commodities is already in the hands of a dominant class. However, by couching his critique in the wider framework of the primacy of over distribution and exchange. Terray is forced to provide us with an essentially static analysis of his particular case. A dependence on slave labour by the ruling class is reduced in Terray's analysis, to an absolute technical requirement for gold mining rather than as a response to the need for more intensive to meet increased external demand and internal requirements for foreign goods. A narrow focus on demands that these technical conditions be fulfilled even though we know comparatively that deep mining of gold, copper and other minerals was technically feasible for essentially kin based societies in other parts of Africa. Given the recent recognition of a more flexible interpretation of Marx's views on the relationship between production, distribution, exchange and consumption (Grundrisse 1973: 99; Friedman 1976), we can argue instead that control over the means of for ex change, increased external demand for the product of the former and the internal distribution of foreign commodities gained in return, form an organic whole such that one cannot simply be derived form the other. Hence rather than repesenting the development of early states as a disruptive break from some earlier form of kin based society, such that one 'mode of pro duction' penetrates and comes to dominate another, we must view it more in terms of how elements in the preceding social formation are elaborated and come to be controlled by an