4.2.3. UN AUTRE BOULEVERSEMENT, DES NOIX DE KOLA ET DES CHEMINS VERS LA FORET

 

TRADERS FROM THE INCREASINGLY COMMERCIAL NORTH SEEK DIRECT ACCESS TO KOLAS

Small and light, they make orange dyes. Chewed, they lessen thirst and fatigue like coffee (they contain caffeine) and bring a light euphoria. 

Zoom

The traders establish outposts, whose leaders control the routes. One of these settlements is Kong, whose rulers forbid outsiders from travelling beyond it. 

Adapted from a Google map

 

Toward 1700, a "mad" ruler (Lasari Gombele), shoots into the market and seizes the wares people leave behind as they flee. A kola trader from the Niger (Mallam Boro), and a local merchant  (Seku Wattara) unite to overthrow him.*

*Information given by Karamoko Wattara, the canton chief, and Bassidi Watara, farmer, May 4 and 6 1973. 

Interpretation

• The names show conflict between relatively uncommercial animists and Muslims, who are traders by definition. Interpretation: the king violently resists economic interests that spring up from growth and wish to profit from it. 

• The"mad ruler" story expresses a pattern: When authorities cannot contain rising interests they use violence against them. That brings a struggle that the new interests win. Commerce expands and a new cycle begins.

 

Please read on.

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The new forces' victory opens the routes to the south, and traders set up small centers on the forest's fringe.*

*A report in the Abidjan archives dates the foundation of the settlement of Grumania toward 1740, and Djimini oral tradition places another, Satala-Sokura, at about the same time. (Aubin, p. 432).

Kong prospers and becomes an important center for commerce and Islam, which are closely linked.

Du Niger au Golfe de Guinée par le pays de Kong et le Mossi (1887-89) by captain Louis Gustave Binger, 1892 / zoom

"Vue of Kong, capital of the Empire of Kong"

Captain Binger

A Kong mosque

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At the start of the 18th century

the opened routes 

bring traders to Djimini.