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Book chapter | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Salt, Saharans, and the trans-Saharan slave trade: nineteenth century developments |
Author: | McDougall, E. Ann |
Book title: | The Human Commodity: Perspectives on the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade |
Year: | 1992 |
Pages: | 61-88 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Sahara |
Subjects: | slave trade trade salt industry |
Abstract: | The salt-slave relationship in the western Sahara was one of great antiquity and it was firmly rooted in the desert-side exchange networks controlled by Saharans. These merchants were mostly 'Moors' or 'hassaniya' speakers, but also included 'tamashegh' speakers like the Tuareg in the Niger Bend. In the nineteenth century, both the commercial significance of the relationship and the centrality of these Saharans to its functioning continued. Three distinct distribution systems stretched across the desert edge from the Atlantic to the Azawad. Points of intersection and regions of merchant 'overlap' developed in the Mauritanian Adrar and Hodh, and in the Malian Niger Bend. Saharan society in the nineteenth century underwent processes of economic growth similar to those experienced in the Sudan, and for much the same reason: access to large pools of inexpensive slave labour. Sectors in which the use of slave labour was particularly striking were agriculture, the gum industry, and the salt industry. A rough estimation of slave numbers in Saharan populations suggests a minimum of 97,000 slaves employed in the Sahara or settled along the desert edge. App., notes, ref. |