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Calico Caravans: The Tripoli-Kano Trade after 1880*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Marion Johnson
Marion Johnson
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
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Extract

It has often been thought that desert caravans could carry only luxury goods, and that the trans-Saharan caravans had declined rapidly in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and had virtually disappeared by the turn of the century. This paper traces the caravan trade between Tripoli and Kano for the 30 years after 1881, when the main import into Hausaland was low-value unbleached and bleached calico from Manchester. It is suggested that calicoes formed the ‘return load’ for the more valuable exports northwards, and that the ‘family firm’ could compete with the more technically efficient, but more expensive installations of the European trading companies. The survival of the caravan traders ensured that there were merchants in Kano able to take advantage of the railway to develop a new export crop.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , January 1976 , pp. 95 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

1 Robinson, C. A., Dictionary of the Hausa Language, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1906)Google Scholar, vol. 1 under akoko It is also known in the trade as ‘baft’.

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73 Nigeria, NorthernAnnual Report, 1905–1906, 431 ffGoogle Scholar. Nasruf may have been a relative of the caravan leader Mohamed b Nasouf, involved in an ‘incident’ with French troops in 1909; his caravan consisted of 20 Tripoli merchants with their domestic servants, nearly 100 Kel Oui (of whom nearly half were described as ‘black’), and about 750 camels, carrying nearly 100 tons of merchandise, in addition to foodstuffs. Marty, P., Islam et les tribus dans la colonie du Niger, 142 f.Google Scholar

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86 Laing, A. G., quoted in Hopkins, An economic history of West Africa (London, 1973), 86Google Scholar. They also kept accounts, in Tripoli currency and cowries, in a form which could ignore the shifting rate of exchange between the two—see the accounts of El Hadj Ahmed Mecrouren quoted from Col. Mircher's MSS (AN F 12 7211 1865) in Newbury, loc. cit. Using Mircher's figure of 500 cowries = 1 franc, there would have been no profit on El Hadj's ivory trade; at 1,000 cowries = 1 franc, the calico trade would have been profitless; El Hadj himself was interested in the overall profit of the venture.