women's work and women's property: household social relations in the maraka textile...

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Women's Work and Women's Property: Household Social Relations in the Maraka TextileIndustry of the Nineteenth CenturyAuthor(s): Richard RobertsSource: Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Apr., 1984), pp. 229-250Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/178609 .

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Women's Work and Women's Property: Household Social Relations in the Maraka Textile Industry of the Nineteenth Century RICHARD ROBERTS

Stanford University

A history of the Maraka textile industry provides a glimpse into the fitful and uneven social and economic changes taking place during the nineteenth century in the area of the Western Sudan that is now part of Mali. Although the major historical events of this period are well understood, historians know very little about the social and economic history of the West African interior. Exactly how the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, renewed Islamic militan- cy, and European territorial encroachment influenced African societies remains poorly understood. This is even more apparent for the Middle Niger valley, located near the geographical center of continental West Africa. Para- doxically, the gradual end of the Atlantic slave trade and the coincident expansion of the so-called legitimate trade in agricultural crops increased the use of slaves within Africa to meet demand for all types of African goods. The nineteenth century was thus an era of commodity production and market activity which was probably unparalleled in the history of West Africa prior to this period. The inhabitants of the Middle Niger participated in these changes, and this study describes what these changes meant to one group of African men and women.

The Maraka textile industry is especially revealing of these changes because it straddled two superimposed systems of production which came in- creasingly into conflict. At the base of the household economy was a form of production designed for the maintenance of the household at a constant level.'

An initial draft of this article was presented at the Symposium on Women in African History, Santa Clara University, May 1981. It has since benefited from considerable criticism and discussion. I would like to thank my colleagues in the Department of History at Stanford University, as well as Martin Klein, Paul Lovejoy, and Soumaila Diakite, for their help making this study intelligible to a wider audience. My research on the Malian textile industry is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

1 The debate on household structure and organization which surrounds A. V. Chayanov, The Theory of the Peasant Economy, D. Throner, R. Smith, and B. Kerblay, trans. and eds. (Home- wood, Illinois: Irwin, 1966) is voluminous and contradictory. See, for example, Marshall Sahl-

0010-4175/84/2249-2363 $2.50 ? 1984 Society for Comparative Study of Society and History

229



230 RICHARD ROBERTS

Developing at variance, but by no means incompatible, was a form of production designed for commerce and accumulation.2 Only when such production for the market altered the established organization of labor and the customary division of the social product within the household did these changes lead to both real and perceived social tensions.

Although by the beginning of the twentieth century Maraka women had lost their erstwhile control over the production process of indigo-dyed cloth, that loss was not inevitable. This study looks at how social relations within the Maraka household changed despite a static technology. Instead of focussing on technological change as the major determinant in the taxonomy of household change, this study demonstrates how shifts in the regional political economy influenced the organization of the Maraka household and the Mar- aka textile industry.3 It is therefore an effort to explore how the study of women, and especially of their work within the context of a household unit of production, may provide a more complete view of the historical dynamics and contradictions within Maraka society.

Two types of cloth, plain white and indigo dyed, were the symbols of the struggles between Maraka men and women. Plain white cloth underscored the complementarity of the household as a production and consumption unit because most of the cloth produced by a household was worn by its members. When indigo-dyed cloth began to have market value, it threatened to destroy this reciprocal economy of the household. As the regional economy expanded during the nineteenth century, and the Maraka developed a monopoly in indigo cloth, production for market competed with the customary allocation of the product of household labor, and tensions among family members increased. Slaves were intrinsic to the transformation of Maraka society, in the course of which the household heads emerged as patriarchs while women were secluded in the compounds. A normative account of Maraka division of

ins, Stone Age Economics (London: Tavistock, 1972); Claude Meillassoux, Femmes, greniers, et capitaux (Paris: Maspero, 1975); and, for a local Malian example, John Lewis, "Domestic Labor Intensity and the Incorporation of Malian Peasant Farmers into Localized Descent Groups," American Ethnologist, 8:2 (1981), 53-73. No one questions that consumer/producer ratios could diverge considerably from household to household. What is at stake is how to explain the persistence of the household through its development cycles.

2 Subsistence by no means implies simple forms or relations of production; household social relations could be quite complex. Nor should subsistence suggest autarky. In the subsistence societies of Africa, for example, surpluses were normal rather than exception, but they were stored rather than sold. The notion of a "normal surplus" was coined by William Allen, The African Husbandman (New York, Barnes and Noble: 1965). For a general introduction to the systems of exchange in Africa, see two anthologies: Richard Gray and David Birmingham, eds., Precolonial African Trade: Essays on Trade in Central and Eastern Africa before 1900 (London: Oxford University Press, 1970); and Claude Meillassoux, ed., The Development of Indigenous Trade and Markets in West Africa (London: Oxford University Press, 1971).

3 The strongest versions of this perspective for the study of the African household are to be found in Ester Boserup, Women's Roles in Economic Development (London: Allen and Unwin, 1970), and Jack Goody, Production and Reproduction: A Comparative Study of the Domestic Domain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).



WOMEN'S PROPERTY IN MARAKA HOUSEHOLDS 231

labor during the nineteenth-century in which men cultivated the cotton, women spun and dyed, and slaves wove, provides only a superficial indication of household social relations. Indeed, this approach to the household fundamentally misrepresents the relationship between men and women and the household's capacity for change.

The production process of cloth among the Maraka required the coordinated labor of the entire household, in which gender-related tasks were com- plementary. An ideology of reciprocity appeared to underlie the smooth operation of the Maraka household economy, and it continues to influence the historical consciousness of the Maraka informants I consulted in assembling evidence for this study.4 This ideology, however, only thinly disguised the growing tensions between men and women over control of the finished product of this coordinated household labor.

As the textile industry expanded to service greater regional demand, social relations between men and women changed. Gender-related tasks, however, did not change over the course of the nineteenth century; what changed was the gender-property connection intimately associated with the labor process itself. Two coincident and contradictory trends in Maraka society transformed the nature of work, the household economy, and the traditional economic spheres.5 Greater reliance upon servile labor had freed Maraka women from agricultural tasks and created conditions favorable to increased production of indigo-dyed cloth. Many women became wealthy. But although the use of slaves helped expand production, in the process it also threatened women's control over what had been their economic sphere. Indigo, traditionally a woman's crop, was by the end of the century cultivated on a large scale by slaves belonging to the male household heads. Other factors in the production of indigo-dyed cloth-labor, thread, dyeing, and weaving-became com- modities available outside of the household production unit.

By the end of the nineteenth century, men in at least one Maraka town

4 Data for this study were collected during two research trips to Mali, in 1976-77 and in 1981, supported by the Canada Council and the Social Science Research Council, respectively. Tran- scripts of the taped interviews are available at the Institut des Sciences Humaines in Bamako, Mali, the Green Library of Stanford University, and the Archives for Traditional Music at Indiana University.

5 I use the term economic sphere in the sense of Frederick Barth's "Economic Spheres in Darfur," in Themes in Economic Anthropology, Raymond Firth, ed. (London: Tavistock, 1967). The term was originally applied to circulation. I have, however, broadened the concept to include production. I take the term to mean more than occupation; intimately tied to the economic sphere are social boundaries which set apart a resource for the exclusive benefit of one group. In the Maraka division of labor, women's control over the resource "dyeing" differed from mere gender-related tasks because of the women's control also over circulation of the finished product. By economic sphere, then, I understand the oftentimes complex gender-task/gender-property relationships associated with changing patterns of work. For a similar situation, see Mona Etienne, "Women and Men, Cloth and Colonization: The Transformations of Production-Dis- tribution Relations among the Baule (Ivory Coast)," Cahiers d'etudes africaines, (No. 65), 17:1 (1977), 41-63.



232 RICHARD ROBERTS

emerged victorious in their struggle to control both wealth and the labor process itself. Their victory was rather short-lived, however, as the exodus of the slaves from Maraka towns beginning in 1905 radically changed the social organization of the textile industry once again. When the slaves left their masters, the Maraka monopoly over indigo-dyed cloth production was finally broken. These freed men and women established themselves as independent dyers and weavers throughout the Middle Niger valley, decentralizing the textile industry and subtly altering the conditions of supply and demand of locally produced cloth. After the exodus, the Maraka household was once again the arena of complex bargaining between men and women and between fathers and sons over their social and productive roles as well as over their forms of participation within the household.6

I

The Maraka occupy a series of commercial-clerical towns in the Middle Niger valley of what is now the Republic of Mali. They claim to have migrated to their present locations from the ancient kingdom in Ghana sometime between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. The Maraka therefore form part of a much wider dispersion of Muslim traders during that period. By 1644, when we have the first literary evidence, the Maraka town of Sinsani was already firmly established.7 Although the Maraka never comprised more than a frac- tion of the total population of the Middle Niger valley, their influence on the region's economic history was far greater than their numbers suggest. Most of the region's commercial production and long distance trade were in the hands of Maraka producers and traders.8

Cloth and grain were the twin pillars of Maraka's economy during the nineteenth century. Both were produced within the household economy, but under different conditions. Grain was raised on the collective field of the household, theforaba, and stored in a central granary. Cotton too was cultivated by the household, but it required several extra stages before it was

6 I admit that these dyadic relations, men and women, fathers and sons, do not encapsulate the totality of household social relations. Mothers certainly maintained considerable control over their children, especially over their daughters, through dowries, presents, and the possibility of bequeathing to them the accumulated maternal possessions. Sons and daughters among the Muslim Maraka, however, seem to have had different bargaining strategies during the period when household relations were being redefined. Certainly daughters could become wives, pawns, or prostitutes; sons, however, could enter the expanding wage and commercial markets in ways young women could not. Much more work needs to be done on complex dyadic and triadic relations within the household. The example of rapid social change, such as that attending the exodus of the slaves, may provide exactly the kind of situation which reveals the historical character of institutions and the resolution of their particular tensions.

7 Abderrahmen ben Adullah ben Imran ben Amir es Sa'di, Tarikh es Soudan, O. Houdas, trans. (Paris: Maisonneuve, 1900), 418.

8 Richard Roberts, "Long Distance Trade and Production: Sinsani in the Nineteenth Cen- tury," Journal of African History, 21:2 (1980), 169-88.




transformed into cloth. Coitrol over grain and over cloth symbolized the control of the household head over his dependents, since their daily subsistence depended on this supply.9 However, the head of the household could not exploit his dependents' labor beyond certain mutually understood limits. If he did, he would find the dependents in flight, his grain stolen, and his behavior condemned through social pressure from other household heads.

Maraka households could be quite large. They consisted of wives, their children, younger brothers of the head and their families, slaves, and clients.10 In return for their work in the fields, dependents received food, clothing, shelter, protection, and access to bridewealth payments when appro- priate. After work on the big fields, dependents had the right to free time, and slaves as well as Maraka sons and wives cultivated their private fields, jon- forow (Bambara: fields of the slave), during time off and disposed of the product as they saw fit. Maraka wives used these plots to grow condiments, which were used to enliven the regular fare of millet and sorghum, and indigo, which was used to dye cloth.

The Western Sudan as a whole experienced an uneven but general expansion of commodity production in the nineteenth century as a result of the rise of several stable and powerful states and the decline in the trans-Atlantic slave exports, the latter paradoxically increasing slave use within Africa. 1 During this period the nature of work among the Maraka changed fundamentally. 12 In

9 See especially Meillassoux, Femmes, greniers, et capitaux. 10 The Maraka were originally Muslim Soninke. By the nineteenth century the Maraka spoke

only Bambara and, while they maintained a social boundary clearly articulated from the Bambara traditionalists, they seem to have used Bambara kinship classifications modified through the Islamic idiom basic to their identity. For more detail, see Bokar N'Diaye, Groupes ethniques au Mali (Bamako: Editions Populaires, 1970); Diango Cisse, Structures de Malinkes de Kita (Bamako: Editions Populaires, 1970); and John Lewis, "Descendants and Crops: Two Poles of Production in a Malian Peasant Village" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1980). For a comparison with the Soninke of the Upper Senegal and Gajaaga region of Western Mali, see Eric Pollet and Grace Winter, Societe Soninke (Bruxelles: Editions de l'Institut de Sociologie, 1972). Kinship classification systems as ideological blueprints may misrepresent the dynamic of social relations. For all its functionalism, Jack Goody's "The Evolution of the Family," in Household and Family in Past Time, Peter Laslett and Richard Wall, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), remains a stimulating beginning for the study of the complexity and interrelation- ships within households. Some of the most interesting new work on the family in African history comprises the special issue of the Journal of African History (24:2 (1983)), "The History of the Family in Africa," edited by Shula Marks and Richard Rathbone; as they note, studies on West Africa cases are conspicuously absent (p. 16).

11 See, for instance, Martin Klein and Paul Lovejoy, "Slavery in West Africa," in The Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, Henry Gemery and Jan Hogendorn, eds. (New York: Academic Press, 1979); Paul Lovejoy, "Indige- nous African Slavery," Historical Reflexions/Reflections historiques, 6:2 (1979), 19-61; idem, Transformations in African Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); David Eltis and James Walvin, eds., The Abolition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981); Yves Person, Samory, 3 vols. (Dakar: Institut Fondemental de l'Afrique Noire, 1973-78).

12 Richard Roberts, "The Maraka and the Economy of the Middle Niger Valley" (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1978).



234 RICHARD ROBERTS

response to increased demand for grain, cloth, and salt the Maraka invested in a plantation sector. Slaves produced the surplus grain and cotton which went to service the trade with the people of the desert and the expanding regional trade networks.13

While most savanna communities were self-sufficient in cotton, indigo- dyed cloth was relatively rare.14 Cloth was dyed a number of different colors, including red, yellow, brown, and blue, and in the Western Sudan indigo dyeing was the specialization of the Maraka, just as "mud cloth" was the specialized product of the Bambara.15 Although indigo-dyed cloth remained expensive relative to other local textiles, an expanding aristocratic and patrician class of consumers increased the demand. The Maraka expanded output accordingly, in the course of which they altered the conditions of the labor process and threatened to upset the established gender-property relations that had developed during the period of subsistence household production. Maraka cloth, including blankets, wraps, and robes, commanded a lion's share of the regional demand for indigo-dyed cloth. Indeed, the Maraka expansion of indigo-dyed cloth production and trade is indicative of the changing forces of production in the Western Sudan during the nineteenth century.

Throughout the Western Sudan, as elsewhere in the preindustrial world, class and clothing were intimately related. Certain garments, especially those of indigo-dyed cloth, were more highly regarded than others. Imported blue guinee competed with indigo-dyed cloth as luxury attire. Gaspar Mollien noted in 1818 that the "inhabitants [of Timbo in Fouta Jallon] are rich. All the women have silver bracelets, large gold earrings, and wear cloth of blue guinee stuff, which is a sign of great luxury amongst these Africans."16 Clothing was very much a statement of social class. It was not necessarily that clothes made the person, but a person's social position was evident in the kind of clothing he wore. The late-nineteenth-century manner of making such a statement has been described:

As a general rule, the native dresses himself to the extent that he is wealthy. In truth, during three quarters of the year clothing is more or less useless against the cold. Thus one displays his fortune, here as everywhere, in multiplications of superfluous things. One may also find in this fashion another reason: to be dressed in three or four super-

13 Roberts, "Long Distance Trade," 173-76. 14 Notice historiques et gdographiques du cercle de Bamako, 1800-1900, 1903, Republic of

Mali, National Archives, Bamako (hereafter cited ANM), 1 D 33#1D1. 15 See Fernand Daniel, "Etude sur les Soninke," Anthropos, 5 (1910), 23-49; Pollet and

Winter, Societe Soninke; B. Marie Perinbam, "The Julas in Western Sudanese History: Long Distance Traders and the Developers of Resources," in West African Dynamics: Archaeological and Historical Perspectives, B. K. Swartz and R. E. Dumett, eds. (The Hague: Mouton, 1980), 455-75.

16 Gaspar Theodore Mollien, Travels in the Interior of Africa to the Sources of the Senegal and Gambia Performed by the Command of the French Government in the Year 1818 (London: Frank Cass, reprint 1967), 256.




imposed garments clearly indicates that one does not work himself; it is thus a sign of wealth. 17

Even non-Muslim elites wore indigo-dyed cloth. Not only was it a sign of luxury, but it separated them from the mass of the white-clad population. In the early 1860s the ruling Massassi family of Kaarta wore robes made of fine local cloth dyed quite black. 18 The price of such a robe was prohibitive for all but the wealthy: in 1865 a bubu lomasa manufactured in the Maraka town of Nyamina cost between 4,000 and 10,000 cowries, or roughly forty to ninety times the cost of daily subsistence for a man and his horse. 19 The increasing demand for indigo-dyed cloth reveals the intimate connection between a local industry embedded in a complex set of household social relations and the larger political economy of the region. In the following section, I shall explore how tensions between men and women emerged out of changes in both the scale and process of production.

II

The starting point for a social history of the Maraka textile industry is the production process as it shaped and was shaped by the Maraka household. Marriage established the framework and context for the industry, and the production process "materialized" the marriage. Marriage thus brought together divergent yet interrelated tasks of a process in which men and women retained their distinctiveness through gender-property relations. The Maraka were by no means exceptional in this regard. Elsewhere in Africa husbands and wives had separate incomes derived from different sources and from rights to different economic resources. A married woman had a right to own and acquire property separate from her husband and often had clearly defined financial obligations to the household, her children, her spouse, and her spouse's lineage.20 In the eighteenth century, Willem Bosman observed that

17 Louis-Henri-Ernest-Edmond-Gaston Tellier, Autour Kita: Etude soudanaise (Paris: H. Lav- auzelle, 1902), 238.

18 M. E. Mage, Voyage dans le Soudan Occidental (Paris: Larose, 1868), 150. 19 Cowrie equivalences are difficult to determine, for the nineteenth century witnessed a

massive inflation in the value of cowries in West Africa. The data on Nyamina cloth are from Mage, Voyage, 483; data on daily subsistence are from Mungo Park, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa (London: W. Bulmer and Company, 1816), estimated at 100 cowries a day for a man and his horse (I, p. 298), and from Lieutenant G. Jaime, De Koulikoro d Tombouctou sur la cannoniere "le Mage" (Paris: Les Librairies Associes, 1894), estimated variously at 70 cowries a day for a sailor to 250 cowries a day for a travelling merchant (pp. 221-26). See also corroborative data from 1828 in Rene Caillie, Journal d'un voyage d Tombouctou et d Jenne, 3 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1830), II, 203. For a fuller discussion of cowrie currencies in West Africa, see Marion Johnson, "The Cowrie Currencies of West Africa," Parts I and II, Journal of African History, 11:1,3 (1970), 17-41, 331-53; and Paul Lovejoy, "Inter-regional Monetary Flows in the Precolonial Trade of Nigeria," Journal of African History, 15:4 (1974), 563-85.

20 Nancy Hafkin and Edna Bay, eds. Women in Africa: Studies in Social and Economic Change (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), 6.



236 RICHARD ROBERTS

"married people have no community of goods, but each hath his or her own particular property. "21 Among the Ga of southern Ghana, women often coop- erated with their husbands in joint commercial ventures, but capital was personal and its circulation within the family was treated as a loan.22 Property among the WoDaaBe Fulbe of Niger remained distinct throughout married life. When a wife left her husband or was divorced by him, she removed all her property including clothes, furniture, and livestock.23 In societies where divorce is common, a woman's control over property and over income-producing skills is a guarantee of her survival between marriages.24 Moreover, independent property and skills assure women a degree of autonomy within marriage. Among the Maraka, these separate gender spheres of property had a particularly crucial impact on the history of the textile industry because Mar- aka women had the right to a distinct economic sphere: dyeing.25

This notion of separate gender spheres of property should not suggest that the household was composed of atomistic actors each vying to maximize personal wealth and income, nor should it suggest that the household operated like a firm, with a manager's ability to adapt functions and performance rationally to the demands of the market.26 The idea of the firm tends to camouflage the complex operation and associated social tensions of the two superimposed systems of production which characterized so much of nineteenth-century West Africa. While the head of the household may have

emerged as a manager during this period, this circumstance occurred as ex-

panded production gnawed at the reciprocity of household tasks and changed the customary division of the social product. During this time, however, the

gender-specific tasks of subsistence production probably remained comple- mentary. Such was the case among the Baule of the Ivory Coast, where women cultivated yams, but needed men to clear and prepare the yam mounds, and men needed women to provide thread for weaving. The product of their respective labors belonged to the primary producers, so that yams

21 Willem Bosman, A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea, Divided in the Gold, Slave, and Ivory Coasts (London: Frank Cass, reprint 1967), 202, quoted in Jack Goody, Production and Reproduction, 6.

22 Claire Robertson, "Ga Women and Socio-economic Change in Accra, Ghana," in Women in Africa, Hafkin and Bay, eds., 117, 121, 124.

23 Marguerite Dupire, "Women in a Pastoral Society," in Women in Tropical Africa, Denise Paulme, ed. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1963), 83.

24 See, for instance, Jerome Barkow, "Hausa Women and Islam," Canadian Journal of African Studies, 6:2 (1972), 317-28.

25 Rougier, Enquete sur l'Islam, Banamba, 1914, ANM 1 D 33#3. 26 The idea of the household as a firm is suggested by A. G. Hopkins, An Economic History of

West Africa (London: Longmans, 1973), 21. For the strongest defense of the family/household in terms of neoclassical theory, of which the theory of the firm is part, see Gary Becker, A Treatise on the Family (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981). See Jane Guyer, "Household and

Community in African Studies," African Studies Review, 24:2/3 (1981) 97-102, for a review of the more general issues.




belonged to women and cloth to men. Sharing the social product established the basis of household reciprocity and confirmed the viability of each gender's tasks. This reciprocity was not static, however. Men and women could avoid the obligation to share the social product only by going outside marriage to acquire these goods and services. Unmarried women could use male slaves to prepare their fields, and men could use female slaves to spin their thread.27

Changes in market forces could also encourage subtle transformations in established gender-related tasks with resulting alterations in control over the final product. Although Beti men of Southern Cameroun traditionally controlled the cocoa production process because male-defined tasks established the size of the fields and male rituals determined the fertility of the soil, women controlled the distribution of food crops. With an expanding market for cocoa, however, men altered the complementarity of the labor process by insisting on their gender-property rights in order to take advantage of market conditions and to earn cash. Women continued to work on "male" fields, but they no longer shared the harvest.28 A similar set of contradictory variables influenced the Maraka textile industry. The long-established gender division of labor with its attendant control over the social product was eroded through male usurpation of the factors of production.

The Maraka produced both white and dyed cloth. White cloth was destined for home consumption and for trade on the edge of the desert. Dyed cloth catered to luxury consumers. These two types of cloth represented divergent yet interrelated processes of production. White cloth was the result of collective enterprise under the direction of the male household head; indigo-dyed cloth was women's work. White cloth was produced within a simple gender division of labor associated with the subsistence functions of the household. Even when the household head expanded production of white cloth for trade with the Maures of the desert, the division of labor and gender-property relations were not affected because the scale of production did not alter control over the social product. The production of dyed cloth was socially much more complex. This was not just a matter of an extra stage or two in the manufacturing process. Rather, the production of dyed cloth was at once

27 Etienne, "Women and Men." 28 Jane I. Guyer, "Food, Cocoa, and the Division of Labour by Sex in Two West African

Societies," Comparative Studies in Society and History, 22:3 (1980), 364. Changes in Beti farming are part of the widespread feminization of subsistence, which is a consequence of capitalism in colonial and neocolonial situations. Depending upon the region, men either spent more time producing cash crops or selling their labor power. Women's production of subsistence guarantees the extraction of surplus value in capitalist enterprises on a higher level because it reduces the costs of social reproduction. Meillassoux, Femmes, greniers, et capitaux; Carmen Deere, "Rural Women's Subsistence Production in the Capitalist Periphery," in Peasants and Proletarians: The Struggles of Third World Workers, Robin Cohen, Peter Gutkind, and Phyllis Brazier, eds. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979). See also Harold Wolpe, ed., The Articulation of Modes of Production (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980).



238 RICHARD ROBERTS

dependent on the product of household labor (for the cotton and weaving) and

independent from household redistribution. The social complexity of the production and distribution of indigo-dyed cloth stemmed from this double relationship. Louis Corviaux, the French resident of the Maraka town of Sinsani in 1901, intuitively recognized much more than he understood of the gender division of labor and its complementarity when he described textile production:

These two plants [cotton and indigo] and their products are very different from each other in nature; yet their contexture and composition are intimate. [They] are made to be united, since they end in a marriage which results in a cloth which is absorbed in an enormous quantity in our Soudan, with the Maures, with the Tuareg, and in the Sahara.29

As we shall see, this marriage was not always a happy one. Until the French arrived in Bamako in 1883 and gradually stimulated mar-

ket demand for raw cotton, cotton was grown on the large household fields.

Usually the cotton field was worked by the whole household under the direction of the household head, and it benefited all the members.30 Cotton was

planted during the rainy season but since it was the last crop to be harvested in December and January it did not compete with the cereal harvest.31 Western Sudanese cotton, which had short spindly fibers, was fairly resistant to insect

parasites, changes in temperature, and humidity.32 It also made strong dura- ble cloth. Almost every Sudanese village had its own source of cotton.

Once harvested, the cotton was carded and spun. This was women's work and constituted part of their contribution to the household's subsistence econ-

omy. In 1847 Anne Raffenel described the process which remained virtually unchanged at the end of the century:

Ginning is practiced by the women, and takes place on a flat stone; on a small part of the surface one puts well dried cotton. This is forcedly pressed between the stone and a small metal rod (made by the ironworkers) held in the hand. This primitive technique

29 Louis Corviaux, "Les produits du cercle de Segou et Territoires de Sansanding," Revue de cultures coloniales, 8 (1901), 299.

30 Rapport sur l'Association Cotonniere Coloniale, campaign 1912-1913, dossier 1913, ANM 1 R 118.

31 Note sur le coton, Segu, 28 April, 1897, ANM 1 R 116; Rapport commercial et agricole, 4th Quarter 1902, Segu, ANM 1 R 69; F. Vuillet, "L'agriculture du pays de S6gou," Renseigne- ments coloniaux (1920).

32 This was to be an important variable when the French began their cotton colonization schemes in the late nineteenth century because metropolitan firms were experiencing real concern over diminishing world supplies of cotton for their mills. The French tried to introduce long-fiber cotton, but met with poor results. Note sur le coton, 1 May 1905, ANM I R 116. For more detail on the activities of the Association Cotonniere Coloniale, see Adolphe Saint-Martin, "La Com-

pagnie du Cotonniere du Niger, 1919-1929" (these de troisieme cycle, Universit6 de

Montpellier, 1976).




makes the operation very long. After that, the cotton is placed on a [hand held] carder (usually of English origin) and then transformed into thread of different thicknesses.33

Women's skills in carding and spinning, however, were valuable. In 1906 Louis Le Barbier noted that many old women, probably divorced or widowed, had no other resources than the product of their spinning.34

Once spun, the thread was woven by men. As Raffenel noted, weaving was a socially degraded occupation, but not usually restricted to castes. "Wea- vers, herders, and cultivators are not united into castes, and their industry is not exercised by special men. All the inhabitants compete together, free men and captifs [slaves]. Weaving is a little esteemed industry."35 Weaving was men's work, although the degradation of weaving, already apparent in 1847, was intimately associated with the expansion of commodity production and greater reliance upon slave labor. By the mid-nineteenth century, all weavers in Maraka towns were slaves.

Dyeing in the Western Sudan was traditionally women's work. In 1796 Mungo Park remarked that women dyed cloth blue. In 1910 Fernand Daniel was more precise when he noted that "throughout the Soudan the cultivation of indigo has been monopolized by the Sarakole [Maraka]."36 In the Middle Niger valley, dyeing was dominated by free (non-slave) Maraka women.37 The origin of women's control over dyeing remains unclear, although the tasks involved were similar to women's usual domestic chores. Dyeing consisted of gathering wood, pounding, drawing water, tending the fire, and washing clothes.38 While these tasks may have resembled the labor women customarily provided the household, indigo dyeing certainly differed because of the gender-property relationship. Dyeing added value to cloth, and not only esthetic value. Dyeing added market value.

It was probably through dyeing that women came to control the indigo crop, although the plant was not traditionally women's property. As long as women did not produce marketable quantities of dyed cloth and as long as

33 Anne Raffenel, Nouveau voyage au pays des Negres (Paris: N. Chaix, 1856), I, 407. For the 1897 description, see Note sur le coton, Segu, 28 April 1897, ANM 1 R 116.

34 Louis Le Barbier, Etude sur les populations Bambaras de la Vallee du Niger (Paris: Dujarric, 1906), 33. The same point is made by Charles Monteil, Le coton chez les Noirs: Etat actuel des nos connaissances sur l'Afrique Occidentale Francaise (Paris: Publications du comit6 d'6tudes historiques et scientifiques de I'AOF), p. 53.

35 Raffenel, Nouveau voyage, I, 385. Among the Fulbe, weaving was a major activity of a caste, called mabo. Monographie du cercle de Jenne, 20 November 1909, ANM 1 D 38#3.

36 Daniel, "Etude sur les Sonink6," 40. 37 Monographie du cercle de Jenne, 20 November 1910, ANM 1 D 38#3; interviews with

Mulaye Sise (session 1) 22 December 1976, Sinsani; Massitan Jare and Nya Berete, 18 February 1977, Segu; Ba Haidara, 8 March 1977, Sinsani; Baba Kuma (session 2), 13 March 1977, Segu; Tatace Kuma, 20 February 1977, Sinsani; Tata Tunkara, 3 January 1977, Segu.

38 Marietta Joseph, "West African Indigo Cloth," African Arts, 11:2 (1978) 34.



240 RICHARD ROBERTS

market demand for the cloth remained relatively constrained, indigo, as a factor of production, had no commercial value.

Indigo grew best in low-lying humid areas, which accounts for its important role in the Maraka economy of the Middle Niger valley. Maraka women with their daughters and female slaves harvested up to three crops per year, since picking the leaves did not harm the plant. Once harvested, indigo leaves were sun dried for two or three days and then crushed and pounded in a mortar and moulded into various shapes and sizes. The preferred shape was similar to a baseball, but in the late nineteenth century, indigo loaves were also common, possibly indicating greater commercialization.39 Once moulded, the indigo balls were again sun dried and could be stored for up to two years.

Actual dyeing took place in clay pots and the method remained relatively unchanged until the importation of chemical indigo in the mid-twentieth century. Four or five indigo balls were commonly placed in a three- or four-liter water bath to which various specialized ashes (usually those of the N'kouna tree) were added as a mordant. The mixture was permitted to ferment for three days before it was ready to use. Park was impressed by the product. He remarked in 1796 that "the colour is very beautiful with a fine purple gloss; and equal in my opinion, to the best Indian or European blue."40 Several informants estimated that one vat of indigo solution was sufficient to dye within one week the amount of thread needed for five cotton blankets.41

While we do not yet have adequate data to generalize about productivity within the textile industry, the scattered references give some rough indica- tions. In 1796 Park estimated that, on the average, women could spin enough cotton in a year for six to nine garments, each of which sold for between 1,500 and 6,000 cowries.42 Two separate informants estimated that the average woman had an annual yield of dyed cloth sufficient to make between twenty-five and fifty pagnes, each worth a basic price of 2,400 cowries.43

39 Catalogue, Soudan Francais, Exposition de Bordeaux, 1895 (Bordeaux, 1895), Republic of France, National Archives, Section Outre-Mer, Soudan II 3; Notice sur l'agriculture au Soudan, 1896, ANM 1 D 12.

40 Mungo Park, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa (London: William Bulmer and Company, 1807), 421.

41 Interviews with Tata Tunkara, 3 January 1977, Segu; Tatace Kuma, 20 February 1977, Sinsani; Ba Haidara, 8 March 1977, Sinsani; Massitan Jare and Nya Berete, 18 February 1977, Segu.

42 Park, Travels (1807), 410. Park's estimate was based on the mithgal, a unit of measure and value of gold, which he converted to cowries during his second trip to the Niger River in 1805 at the rate of 3,000 cowries to one mithgal. Mungo Park, Journal of a Mission to the Interior of Africa in 1805 (London: John Murray, 1815), 276-78. For more discussion on the mithgal, see Marion Johnson, "The Nineteenth-Century Gold Mithgal in West and North Africa," Journal of African History, 9:4 (1968), 547-69.

43 Interviews with Ba Haidara, 8 March 1977, Sinsani; Massitan Jare and Nya Berete, 18 February 1977. At these rates, women could earn a net income of between 62,500 and 133,000 cowries per year at the very least. In 1906, Le Barbier estimated that a pagne measuring 13 bands, each of which was about 15 centimeters wide, contained 86 threads in the warp and required




Claude Meillassoux has estimated for Gumbu that a woman could spin enough cotton for two to three pagnes in four days, or three days if she worked continuously and intensively.44 That women could realize much greater profits by producing finer cloth and blankets is indicated by the prices for various kinds of Maraka cloth recorded by Edmond Caron in 1887:

Kosso jalan (primarily indigo blanket) 13,000 cowries Kosso je (primarily white blanket) 8,000 cowries Luxury-dyed pagne 7,500 cowries Ducuruni-fin (short-dyed pagne) 4,500 cowries45

The social complexities of Maraka cloth production begin to reveal themselves in an analysis of the factors of production. The bulk of the cotton was grown on the household field through the labor of all the members who benefited from this field. The household head thus controlled the reservoir of cotton which was subsequently spun by the female members and woven by the slaves. The bottleneck in the process of white cloth production remained the carding, cleaning, and spinning of cotton thread, in other words, work which women contributed to the household economy. In opposition to this stood women's control over indigo and indigo dyeing; the household had no right to her labor as a dyer. Yet her skills were useless without access to cotton.

The economics of Maraka family life revolved around competing yet com- plementary gender-task and gender-property relations moderated by a complex set of mutual obligations and responsibilities which bound the unit together. The household was not a homogeneous unit, but one in which individuals had distinct rights and obligations. The household head fed the family; the family worked for him. Women bore and reared the children, performed agricultural tasks, and did domestic chores; daughters and female slaves spun cotton under the direction of the wives of the household head. Free Maraka women normally received a portion of the cotton as recompense for their spinning. Each evening during the cotton harvest, women were given a basket of cotton to spin for the group and a basket of cotton for their own use. In addition, a woman often took the best capsules for herself.46 If a wife

about 2,100 meters of thread on the average. A pagne which measured ten bands was considered quite good, so the one Le Barbier described was probably of superior quality; the ten-band variety required about 25 percent less thread. Ducurni-fin were even shorter. See Le Barbier, Etude, 32-34.

44 Claude Meillassoux, "Etat et conditions des esclaves a Gumbu (Mali) au XIXe siecle," in Esclavage en Afrique precoloniale, Claude Meillassoux, ed. (Paris: Maspero, 1975), 249-50.

45 Edmond Caron, De Saint Louis au port de Tombouctou: Voyage d'une canonniere (Paris: Augustin Challemel, 1892), 326.

46 Interviews with Massitan Jare and Nya Berete, 18 February 1977, Segu; Ba Haidara, 8 March 1977, Sinsani; Sane Tambara, 22 February 1977, Segu; Cemoko Ture, 5 March 1977, Segu.



242 RICHARD ROBERTS

believed that her husband was not giving her a proper share, she stole from the collective supply.47 This stock served as the basis of her own cloth, which she dyed and sold on her own account. Purchases of additional cotton from her husband or on the market augmented her production.48

Each year women customarily gave their husbands a new set of indigo-dyed garments, pants and a bubu. This "gift" re-established household reciprocity for the course of the year.49 In return, the household heads normally autho- rized their slaves to weave their wives' cloth. Dyed cloth for the household's consumption was woven as part of the slaves' regular obligation; however, slaves who wove for a third party (the wife, in this case) were customarily paid. Costs of weaving ranged from 20 cowries for a small pagne to 100-250 cowries for a blanket. These sums were ordinarily retained by the weaver. The reciprocal obligations of this quid pro quo variety were instituted early in marriage. One of my informants suggested that this arrangement, which at once protected the individual property of the wife yet created the basic conditions for household reciprocity, was consecrated when the young wife gave her husband all the cloth she dyed during their first year of marriage. This served as the nucleus of his commercial capital.50 Moreover, women were not obliged to dye their husbands' clothes, but did so in order to ensure the smooth running of the household economy. Husbands often sent their slaves to tend their wives' plots of indigo and help with the harvest.51

The household economy in its subsistence phase was based on the reciprocity of tasks and of property. Production for the market eroded the equivalence of these tasks and put a premium on capital accumulation. As the scale of production was increased through the use of slaves, the economics of the Maraka household were transformed and so were the established relations between men and women.

III -

Social transformation of Maraka society began in the late eighteenth century with the consolidation of the Segu Bambara state and accelerated during the first half of the nineteenth century in response to the long-term stability of the Ngolossi Jara dynasty which encouraged Maraka commercial pre-eminence in the region. In the early decades of the nineteenth century the Maraka ex-

47 Interview with Cemoko Ture, 5 March 1977, Segu. Such rectification through theft may have been quite common; see a similar point on stealing made by Mage, Voyage, 407.

48 Interviews with Sane Tambara, 22 February 1977, Segu; al hajj Moktar Mangane, 19 February 1977, Sinsani; Ba Haidara, 8 March 1977, Sinsani.

49 Interviews with Sidi Yahaya Kone, 1 February 1977, Sinsani; Baba Kuma (session 2), 13 March 1977, Segu; Sane Tambara, 22 February 1977, Segu; Ba Haidara, 8 March 1977, Sinsani.

50 Interview with Cemoko Ture, 5 March 1977, Segu. This original commercial capital was often the most difficult to acquire. See Jean-Loup Amselle, Negociants de la savanne: Histoire et organisation sociale des Kooroko, Mali (Paris: Anthropos Editions 1977).

51 Interview with Sane Tambara, 18 February 1977, Segu.




panded their plantation sector as a commercial strategy to secure a greater share of the desert-side and regional trade. They also serviced the luxury demand for salt and dyed cloth from the new aristocratic and patrician consumers spawned by the stability and scale of states in West Africa.

Slaves formed the basis of this transformation. Fundamental changes were also under way in the organization of the household and in the textile industry. These changes appeared in the scale of production and in the commercialization of the factors of production. Greater reliance upon slave labor freed noble Maraka, men and women alike, from the need to participate in household agricultural tasks. Men devoted more time to Koranic education and to trade; women were progressively secluded in the compound. In Muslim areas, seclusion of women was generally regarded as a status symbol. It underlined class differences by asserting that these women's labor in the fields was not required.52 For women, seclusion lessened time spent on household tasks. As Jerome Barkow has shown in his study of two groups of Hausa women, seclusion provided a release from laboring in the fields and the opportunity to devote their new leisure time to developing craft skills.53 Among the Maraka, women spent more time dyeing. However, the scale of women's production of indigo-dyed cloth remained dependent upon the collective production of cotton and the continued functioning of the household economy.

Augmented production and trade of indigo-dyed cloth created social tensions in the Maraka household. Seclusion permitted Maraka women to increase production, but eventually cost them dearly: they lost control over several factors of production, which reduced both the independence of their work and their right to dispose of its product. Seclusion also reduced women's scope for direct commercial transactions. Local trade was conducted by young daughters and female slaves on behalf of secluded women. However, effective demand for luxury cloth was in regions far beyond the production zone. Maraka women were therefore obliged to consign their goods to their husbands or other male relatives for the long-distance trade,54 and they often specified what was wanted in return: luxury imported cloth, amber, coral, beads, gold, and slaves. The husband usually received "presents" from his wife for the services rendered in selling her goods.55

Maraka women accumulated jewelry. Jewelry represented conspicuous

52 See, for instance, Vanessa Maher, Women and Property in Morocco: Their Changing Relation to the Process of Social Stratification in the Middle Atlas (London: Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 1974); M. G. Smith, "Introduction," Baba of Karo by Mary F. Smith (London: Faber and Faber, 1964); Goody, Production and Reproduction; Germaine Tillion, Le harem et les cousins (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1966).

53 Barkow, "Hausa Women," 327. This is also the basis behind Polly Hill's notion of "hidden trade." Polly Hill, "Hidden Trade in Hausaland," Man, 4:3 (1969), 392-409.

54 Interviews with Ba Haidara, 8 March 1977, Sinsani; Sidi Yahaya Kone, 1 February 1977, Sinsani; Sane Tambara, 22 February 1977, Segu.

55 Interview with Sane Tambara, 22 February 1977, Segu.



244 RICHARD ROBERTS

consumption, but it was also a form of liquid capital easily converted into other goods. Also, objects of amber, coral, and gold were easily transported if a town had to be evacuated during a siege, or if a woman divorced her husband. Furthermore, jewelry was divisible when bequeathed to women's heirs or divided into dowries for their daughters.56

Women sometimes requested that their husbands return with slaves. Wom- en preferred to buy female slaves, who could help them with all gender- related work.57 Female slaves who were owned by Maraka women and who lived in their compounds helped with, and sometimes replaced altogether, their mistresses' labor in domestic chores.58 Female slaves also participated in the dyeing process, greatly increasing the scale of production. One informant noted cases where female slaves replaced free women's labor in the entire dyeing process, from cultivation of the indigo to the actual dyeing.59 Some women bought male slaves, probably because they could weave. A woman could thus avoid paying for weaving or asking her husband for the use of his slaves.

Despite the benefits of owning male slaves, Maraka women did not usually invest in them because it was not economically rational for them to do so. Both male and female slaves of Maraka women were obliged to work on the household fields; reciprocally, they were fed by the household head. Male slaves of the Kuma family women of Sinsani worked on the collective field five days out of the week, only one day less than slaves belonging to the household head. Two other days were spent working in fields belonging to their mistresses.60 In Nyamina, male slaves of Maraka women worked either a similar pattern or three days for the household, three days for the mistress, and one day for themselves.61 As one informant put it, for male slaves the first priority was work for the collectivity.62 In contrast, female slaves of Maraka women worked for the household only during periods of heavy labor demand, especially during the harvest.63

56 Interview with Cemoko Ture, 5 March 1977, Segu. See also Charles Monteil, Un metropole soudanais: Djenne, metropole du delta central du Niger (Paris: Societe d'Editions G6og- raphiques, Maritimes, et Coloniales, 1932), 162; For a parallel case, see Abner Cohen, Custom and Politics (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), 66-68.

57 Interviews with Massitan Jare and Nya Berete, 18 February 1977, Segu; Ba Haidara, 8 March 1977, Sinsani; Baba Kuma (session 2), 13 March 1977, Segu; Sane Tambara, 22 February 1977.

58 Interviews with Tata Tunkara, 3 January 1977, Sinsani; al hajj Moktar Mangane, 19 February 1977, Sinsani.

59 Interview with Sane Tambara, 22 February 1977, Segu. 60 Interviews with Tata Tunkara, 3 January 1977, Segu; Ba Haidara, 8 March 1977, Sinsani;

Binke Baba Kuma (session 2), 21 March 1977, Sinsani. 61 Interviews with Massitan Jare and Nya Berete, 18 February 1977, Segu; Cemoko Ture, 5

March 1977, Segu. 62 Interview with Binke Baba Kuma (session 2), 21 March 1977, Sinsani. 63 Interview with Ba Haidara, 8 March 1977, Sinsani.




Male slaves of Maraka women were thus subject to double exploitation. They owed their labor to the household, which resembled labor obligations of ordinary household slaves, and they also worked for their mistresses. Their double duty left them little free time. Still, women owned some males, for they sometimes inherited them.64

Women, who expanded production of dyed cloth through their own slaves' labor, became wealthy. Many bought jewelry and luxurious imported cloth. Their wealth stood in marked opposition to their husbands' wealth. As head of the household, men were obliged to pay taxes, provide sufficient nourishment for the group, care for visiting relatives and travellers, and redistribute their holdings for the benefit of the household, its slaves, and clients. Throughout his life, the household head was the embodiment of the household and hence responsible for its well-being. In contrast, a woman's wealth was her own; she had no obligation to redistribute it. As long as the political economy of the Middle Niger region discouraged expanded commodity production and long- distance trade, a woman's right to a part of the product of her labor was not challenged. As the political and economic conditions of the nineteenth century favored economic growth, however, women's augmented production of dyed cloth and their increased earning power sharply challenged men's wealth and possibly their authority. At the very least, men were jealous of women's wealth.65

Increased demand for dyed cloth during the nineteenth century led to greater commercialization of the factors of production in the dyeing industry. Men began to invade the economic sphere of women and to cultivate indigo, which for the first time had a market value. Indigo had been a women's crop because of its intimate relationship with dyeing, which remained women's work. Indigo had not been commercialized before because the dyeing had been on such a small scale that adequate supplies of indigo could be grown on small plots. As demand for dyed cloth expanded, however, so did the need for indigo. It was now being cultivated and processed in slave villages. The indigo produced by the household head's slaves belonged to him,66 and he sold it in the market and retained the proceeds.

64 Interview with Karamoko Sumare, 6 January 1977, Segu. Karamoko Sumare's grand- mother, Nanu Kone, inherited many slaves. Muslim inheritance provided a share for daughters, albeit a smaller share. For West African practice, see F. H. Ruxton, Maliki Law: Being a Summary from French Translations of the Mukhtasar of Sidi Khalil (London: Luzac and Com- pany, 1916).

65 In Nyamina during the 1860s, the wealthiest inhabitant was a woman, Kolotigi Fili, who used her wealth to organize the Bambara resistance against the Umarians. See Mage, Voyage, 483, and Cheik Moussa Kamara, "La vie d'el hadj Omar," Bulletin Institut Fondemental de l'Afrique Noire, Series B, 32:2 (1970), 391-92.

66 Interviews with Seydu Jane (session 1), 4 January 1977, Sinsani; Massitan Jare and Nya Berete, 18 February 1977, Segu; Ba Haidara, 8 March 1977, Sinsani; Cemoko Ture, 5 March 1977, Segu.



246 RICHARD ROBERTS

Male invasion of Maraka women's traditional economic sphere was most complete at Baraweli, a newly settled Maraka community on the right bank of the Niger River. Baraweli was founded in the 1860s by Maraka migrants and followers of al hajj Umar. Since most of these migrants were originally from the left bank of the Niger not far from Nyamina, they must therefore have participated in the general expansion of commodity production that occurred throughout the Middle Niger valley during the nineteenth century; thus they must certainly have experienced the tension growing between the two superimposed systems of production at the level of household social relations. Through resettlement, these Maraka migrants seem to have redefined the social basis of the household economy. In Baraweli, indigo was a principal commercial crop and directly under the control of the household head. Wom- en's access to indigo now depended upon their husbands' sources.67

In Baraweli, the patriarchs' control over the household social product was complete.68 Women continued to dye, but the proceeds belonged to the head of the household. Husbands gave their wives jewelry, but this was now compensation for their services-the inverse of the customary Maraka model. The appropriation by the males of a previously exclusive female economic sector was a pervasive feature of Maraka social history in the nineteenth century. Expanded commodity production was a dynamic force in the social transformation of the essentially fragile household economy, which had evolved during an era when market forces were not well developed.

IV

Just before the 1905 planting season the slaves on the Maraka plantations of Banamba began to leave their masters. Their flight started a radical social movement which over the next ten years spread throughout the Western Sudan and fundamentally transformed established relations and organization of production among a large portion of the Western Sudanese population.69 For the Maraka, who had come to rely upon slave labor, this transformation was especially significant. Moreover, the expansion in demand for local textile products, which prevailed in the early years of the twentieth century throughout the Western Sudan, was occurring at the same time as the Maraka monopoly over dyed cloth was being eroded, as this 1903 report indicates:

67 Interviews with Tijani Sylla and Mambi Sylla, 3 August 1981, Baraweli; Juma Berete, 3 August 1981, Baraweli. Jealousy, however, may not have been the motivation behind the increased tensions over disposable income. With the coming of the French, the Maraka had to pay taxes in cash, and usually at a rate substantially higher than their more agricultural neighbors.

68 Interviews Tijani Sylla and Mambi Sylla, 3 August 1981, Baraweli; Juma Berete, 3 August 1981, Baraweli; Demba Suragassi, 18 February 1977, Segu; Musa Kouyate, 26 January 1977, Segu; Sanussi Danyogo, 1 February 1977, Sinsani; Bakary Dukure, 30 January 1977, Segu; Binke Baba Kuma (session 1), 19 December 1976, Sinsani; Tatace Kuma, 20 February 1977, Sinsani; Musa Kouyate, 26 January 1977, Segu.

69 Richard Roberts and Martin Klein, "The Banamba Slave Exodus and the Decline of Slavery in the Western Sudan," Journal of African History, 21:3 (1980), 375-94.




The local cloth industry, which is of simple bands not sewn together, or [sewn together] pagnes, is in much demand by all the black populations; notably those of the Soudan, but also those of Senegal and Guinee. ... At Rufisque and at Konakry, based on information received from the natives, pagnes sell for as much as 20F[rancs]. Manufactured even last year by the Markas exclusively, the Somonos and even the Bambararas are now imitating them [emphasis added]. Trade in local pagnes greatly increases each day; it goes without saying that cotton and indigo cultivation are also developing.70

The widespread new opportunities in textile production may have provided the freed men and women, who as slaves had learned to weave and dye, with a market for their skills which helped them to survive the first difficult years of freedom.7' It is clear, however, that the exodus of the slaves from Maraka centers of textile production signalled a dramatic reorganization of the industry.

In addition, the end of the Maraka monopoly over dyeing coincided with French attempts to shape Sudanese society in light of their ideology of state power. Because of their commitment to a liberal economy, the French were by the middle of the first decade of the twentieth century no longer tolerant of judicial restriction on economic resources and occupations, a system which had been part of the precolonial political economy. This attitude on the part of the French encouraged the development of a more open market at the expense of the well-established ethnic monopolies over resources.72

The French colonial economy also facilitated the import of metropolitan manufactures, of which the largest single category was cloth. In the early 1880s, Oskar Lenz worried that "unfortunately that miserable English [textile] product, [which] is of course very cheap, expands further and stran- gles the better and also more expensive local products."73 By 1891, for example, an average of 15,000 meters of cloth was imported into Bamako each month.74 In Senegambia and northern Nigeria, for example, European imports eventually destroyed the local handicraft industries.75 This was not

70 Rapport commercial et agricole, 1st quarter 1901, Segu, ANM 1 R 69. Demand for Segu cloth in Senegal is also cited in Fama Mademba, no title, 9 December 1903, Republic of Senegal, National Archives, Section l'Afrique Occidentale Franqaise, 1 G 319.

71 Compare this situation with the freed men and women of the postbellum American South, especially in Roger Ransom and Richard Sutch, One Kind of Freedom: The Economic Conse- quences of Emancipation (London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977).

72 The interrelationship between the changing ideology of state power and the structure and performance of the economy is the basis of my forthcoming study, "Warriors and Merchants: The State and the Economy in the Middle Niger Valley, c. 1710-1905."

73 Oskar Lenz, Timbuktu Reise durch Marokko, die Sahara und den Sudan (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1884), II, 150-51.

74 Rapport commercial et agricole, 1891, ANM 1 R 31. In June of that year 54,000 meters of cloth were imported.

75 Carol Pitt, "An Economic and Social History of the Senegambia Textile Industry" (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1978); Philip Shea, "The Development of an Export Oriented Dyed Cloth Industry in the Kano Emirate" (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1975). Northern Nigerian textiles had a brief florescence until the 1920s.



248 RICHARD ROBERTS

the case in the Middle Niger valley. While cheap varieties of local cloth probably gave way to cheap European imports, more expensive local varieties competed successfully. In the Middle Niger valley the local textile industry maintained its position albeit under altered conditions of production. Instead of withering away, the local industry expanded as the French colonial economy began to put more cash into the hands of more producers.76 Statistical evidence suggests that after an initial period of adjustment European and local cloth complemented rather than competed with one another.

CONCLUSION

This preliminary social history of the Maraka textile industry has raised a number of issues which suggest a need to rethink certain aspects of African economic and social history. First, the African household of this period can- not be regarded as a standard economic unit, however adaptable it was to changing economic conditions.77 Nor is it sufficient to underline divisions in the household merely on the basis of gender-specific tasks. Instead, it is important to see men and women as having independent tasks and property relations established as part of the labor process itself. The relations between men and women were often based on the reciprocity of their respective tasks. Household formation should be understood as part of the "materialization" of production.

Second, the Maraka household was the scene of changing social relationships. The subsistence form of production, geared as it was to maintaining the household as a production and consumption unit, was eventually subordinated to production for the market. In the process, the reciprocity of gender-related tasks and gender-property relations was altered even as the technical aspects of the industry remained the same.

Third, the patterns of change in Maraka household social relations indicate that these relations were directly influenced by changes in the larger political economy in which the household was embedded. Certainly the household had an economy of its own, but it would be misleading to assume that the household led an autonomous existence apart from the broad trends in politics and economics of the social formation in which the household participated.

Fourth, the erosion of reciprocity and especially of women's control over their established rights to an economic resource, dyeing, indicates another trend in Maraka household social relations. The combination of Islamic prac- tices and market forces heightened the tendency of Maraka households to become patriarchal. In part, this tendency was exacerbated by the progressive reliance upon slave labor which freed Maraka men and women alike from the

76 I have discussed this somewhat in "The Emergence of a Grain Market in Bamako, 1883-1905," Canadian Journal of African Studies, 14:1 (1980), 37-54.

77 Hopkins, Economic History of West Africa, 21.




need to toil in the fields. Maraka nobles came to disdain manual work, which had profound consequences when the slaves left in 1905. Maraka patriarchs then turned to their wives and children as their new captive labor force. The sons resented these changes in their relations to work and, with the flight of their inheritable property, they probably felt they had little to gain by remain- ing. Many fled to Senegal and the Ivory Coast, where opportunities were abundant. Paradoxically, many Maraka sons followed the same path as the freedmen. Wives and daughters, however, had fewer options. Neither divorce nor flight back to their kinsmen would guarantee escape from this new exploitation, since the kinsmen also were searching for new captive workers. In Banamba, at least, there appears even to have been a wave of suicides as women despaired of their changed roles. More research on the Maraka household is needed before these trends can be substantiated, but the patterns of change are evident.78 When commodity production increased the scale of capital accumulation, Maraka women appear to have lost control over what had been traditionally women's property.

Fifth, the Maraka textile industry demonstrates the social complexity of change even though the technical character of production remained virtually the same. While the social and economic history of the African handicraft industries remains to be written, it is clear that such a study must consider the very different consequences of varying development patterns within individual handicrafts. In the great Central Sudanese emporium of Kano, for example, dyeing was rationalized and conducted on an industrial level using dye pits and numerous male workers.79 But among the Maraka, textile production remained a cottage industry, despite increases in the scale of production achieved through slave labor.

Sixth, imported European manufactures did not destroy local handicraft industries evenly throughout Africa.80 In contrast to the collapse of the textile industry in the Kano emirate, the weaving and dyeing craft in the Middle Niger valley survived because it serviced uses and consumers different from those of the European products. Cheap varieties of local cloth, such as the simple white cloth, were probably replaced by cheaper imports. The weavers in the Middle Niger valley, however, continued to produce the luxury cloth, pagnes, and blankets for which the demand was as vigorous, if not more so, as before.

78 Rapport politique, Bamako, November 1911, ANM 1 E 19; Rapport politique d'ensemble du Soudan, 1910, ANM 1 E 12. See also Pollet and Winter, Societe Soninke, 371, 394.

79 Shea, "Development of Export Oriented Dyed Cloth Industry." 80 The most influential work on West African textile industry has been that of Marion John-

son, "Cotton Imperialism in West Africa," African Affairs, 82 (1974), 178-87; idem, "Calico Caravans: The Tripoli Kano Trade after 1800," Journal of African History, 16:1 (1976), 95-117; idem, "Technology, Competition, and African Crafts," in Imperial Impact: Studies in the Economic and Social History of Africa and India, C. Dewey and A. G. Hopkins, eds. (London: University of London Press, 1978), 259-69.



250 RICHARD ROBERTS

Finally, preliminary statistical evidence for the period indicates that there were more people consuming larger amounts of cloth, and they were doing so in direct relationship to the amount of cash in circulation. As a social indica- tor, higher levels of consumption of cloth suggest a transformation of the forces of production. This in turn must be related to the effects of the colonial conquest, the growth of commodity markets for items not normally associated with the market (cereals and cotton), greater monetarization of the economy, and a new ideology of state power and of the economy.

To this day, local weaving and dyeing continue to dominate the dry season activities in the towns and villages throughout the Middle Niger valley, and the women dyers of Sinsani, Marakala, and Segu have started production and marketing cooperatives.81 Some Malian women, at least, have regained control over the production process of dyeing and the social product of their work.

81 Susan Caughman, Women at Work in Mali: The Case of the Marakala Cooperative, Working Papers in African Studies, Boston University, 1981.



women's work and women's property: household social relations in the maraka textile...

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