<L.Barrows@cepes.ro>

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-Africa@h-net.msu.edu (September 2000)

Andrew F. Clark. _From Frontier to Backwater: Economy and Society in the
Upper Senegal Valley (West Africa), 1850-1920_. Lanham, Maryland, and
Oxford: University Press of America, 1999. xiv + 278 pp. Tables, figures,
key to abbreviations, and bibliographical references. $47.00 (cloth), ISBN
0-7618-1438-8.

Reviewed for H-Africa by Leland Conley Barrows <L.Barrows@cepes.ro>,
UNESCO European Centre for Higher Education (UNESCO-CEPES), Bucharest,
Romania.


This curious book is yet another example of a well-known genre, the
revised and published PhD dissertation, in this case coming nine years
after the author defended the original version at Michigan State
University. It represents an "attempt to examine the interaction of
politics, economy, society, and ecology in the upper Senegal valley, in
West Africa, from the mid-Nineteenth Century until the end of the First
World War" (p. ix). Or to put it more succinctly, Clark has attempted to
capture a seventy-year period of change in an area that to him represents
"a unified ecological region" (p. 31), for he believes that: "A regional
framework, transcending narrow and shifting political borders, permits a
greater understanding of the environment and its impact on socio-economic
history. It also allows for more careful consideration of the economic and
social structures and processes operative in the area..." during the
period being studied. In short, Clark wishes to be the Fernand Braudel of
the "_Haut-Senegal-Niger_".

According to what is almost a standard structure for a monograph in
African history of this sort, a "Preface", in which the author states his
purposes as given above, is followed by eight chapters, the first, serving
to  discuss the sources used; the eighth, serving as the Conclusion, and
the ones in-between, consisting of micro-histories and other such topical
discussions.

Thus, the first chapter describes and evaluates the different sources used
in terms of the perceived dichotomy of French colonial, particularly
archival, sources _versus_ an elaborate array of African oral sources.[1]
The pros and cons of both as well as the pitfalls to which they may give
rise are analyzed. Summing up the debate, Clark writes that "The written
and oral sources provide a prism, not a window, on the past" (p. 20).

The second chapter is essentially a geographic and ethnographic survey of
the region that picks up and continues the arguments made in the
"Preface", and that will be developed throughout, on the advantages of a
"regional perspective". Chapter 3 covers "The "Regional Economy" in the
Late Nineteenth Century" with short sections on "Production" including
"Agriculture", "Animal Husbandry", "Mining", "Craft Production", and
"Raiding" (the latter, according to the author, having "played a critical
role in the regional economy during the nineteenth century" even near the
end of the century when the French were more-or-less in control), and
"Exchange", i.e., trade, both local and long-distance.

Chapter 4, describes the "Political Economy" of the region between 1850
and 1890. In particular, it gives brief aperus of the historical
development of the local African polities, particularly Gadiaga [2],
Bondu, Khasso, and the more decentralized (if not acephalous) regions of
Guidimaka and Bambuk, as punctuated by El Hadj Omar's jihad (1854-1860),
the rebellion of Mahmadou Lamine (1885-1887), and in the background, the
increasing French presence in the area along the navigable portions of the
Senegal and Falm Rivers, particularly after 1855. Indeed, the increasing
French presence, particularly the growing political and economic weight of
the French fortified posts at Bakel, Kayes, Medine, Senoudebou, and
Bafoulabe along the Senegal and Faleme Rivers and French control of the
river banks is what gave rise to an increasing distinction in the region
between a "core", centered on the Senegal and Faleme River Valleys, and a
"periphery", consisting of the inland areas.

Chapter 5, consequently, focuses on the River and the towns, particularly
Bakel, Kayes, and Medine, the political and economic importance of which
increased greatly between 1850 and 1890 as the French stepped up their
presence in the region and passed through it on their way to the upper
Niger valley, occupying Bamako in 1883. Chapter 6, again focusing on the
Senegal river valley and the riverine towns of Bakel, Kayes, and Medine,
traces the continued economic and political development of the region to
an "Apoge" and then into "Decline", the 'decline' occurring primarily
because the French colonial frontier moved East, with Bamako/Koulikoro
becoming the termini of a completed Kayes-Niger Railway in 1904, and the
gap in the railway between This and Kayes being filled in 1924, thus
ending the role of Kayes even as a transshipment point. Some serious
natural phenomena also contributed to economic decline: flooding in 1906
that destroyed much of Kayes, and famines, particularly that of 1913 and
1914. To these should be added the negative effects of World War I
recruitment.

The theme of decline is again underscored in Chapter 7 on "The Political
Economy of the Hinterland, 1820-1920" in which, the author argues that
although economic decline came later in the hinterland than in the core
colonial areas along the River, it had become so widespread by the end of
the period that the distinction between center and periphery was obscured,
"the entire region [being] peripheralized within the French colonial
empire in Africa" (p. 195).

Finally, the "Conclusion" simply reiterates earlier statements about the
eventual economic stagnation of the region through a combination of
natural disasters, the declining world market for such commodities as gum
arabic, French military recruitment during World War I, and above all, the
fact that the colonial frontier completed its move to the East after
completion of the Dakar-Niger Railway in 1924. Thus the region became a
labour reserve for the peanut producing areas of western Senegal. The
peripheralization of the region, indeed its disunity in the formal
political sense, reached its apoge in 1960 when the independence of
Senegal, Mauritania, and Mali distributed it among three independent
countries, the capitals of which are quite distant. Given the author's
unstated premise that economic prosperity rode the crest of the advancing
French wave, he could well have used Robert W. Clower's well-known phrase
about "growth without development" (referring to Liberia) [3] to describe
the French-sponsored "development" of this part of _Afrique Occidentale
Francaise_.

This book presents many problems to the reader, not the least of which is
the author's basic premise of the unity of the region, most clearly stated
in terms of its being a "unified ecological region",  a transitional
savanna zone between the desert on the North and the rain forest on the
South, drained by the Upper Senegal and Faleme Rivers, but distinct from
the Gambia and Niger catchment areas (that in fact closely intersect with
the Senegal catchment areas). In short, the limits and even the unity of
his "unified ecological region" are ambiguous.

Then, politically, the region was and remains anything but unified. The
author presents a mosaic of distinct polities themselves undergoing
processes of disaggregation at various points during the period under
study: Gadiaga with its periodic bursts of civil war between its two
components, Guoye and Kamra, and its dynastic struggles; Khasso, also in a
state of chronic civil war, its leader, Diouka-Sambala (1854-1880) during
the much of the period under study, facing many challengers; Bondou, whose
ruler, _Almamy_ Bokar Saada (1855-1885) also faced many challengers, the
more or less acephalous Bambuk, and the right bank Soninke settlements of
Guidimaka under the constant pressure of the Douach Moorish Confederation.

If one considers that Clark's mentor, David Robinson, could claim that the
far more unified _Almamate_ of Fouta-Toro "exhibit[ed] the traits of a
'plural society'",[4] how can Clark himself seriously argue that there was
anything very unified about the Upper Senegal except, possibly, as the
temporary result of outsiders who might attempt to unify it by force, the
latter including El Hadj Omar, intensively but briefly, then the French,
by degrees after 1855, and again, intensively but briefly, Mahmadou Lamine
(1885-1887). Then, although the region acquired a sort of political unity
as part of the French colonial empire, and more specifically, of French
West Africa, that same empire completed the disunification of the region
by attributing parts of it to three separate territorial divisions that
crystallized into post-independence national boundaries.

A comment in the third paragraph of the Conclusion (p. 222) makes the
matter even less clear: "The reconfiguration of the upper Senegal into an
integrated economic and cultural region, rather than a group of isolated
political and social formations, requires a new approach to and
utilization of the available sources". Is the reader really expected to
conclude that the basis of regional unity in this case is little more than
the fruit of the author's historical imagination?

The book itself lacks unity in the sense that much of it consists of
poorly integrated micro-histories of the local polities of the region,
portions of which are narrated in different chapters. Clark gives the
reader an aperu of, for instance, the fractioning of Gadiaga into Guoye
and Kamra and of various civil wars resulting from rivalries among the
lineages of the Bathily royal house caused in part by the pull of
French-oriented trade. In the case of Khasso, he describes the ascendancy
in 1854 of King Diouka-Sambala over his rivals and his acceptance and
confirmation in 1855 by the French, but says almost nothing about the
French explorer and trader, Ferdinand Duranton, whose romance with and
marriage to Diouka-Sambala's sister, Sadioba, had contributed to setting
the pre-conditions of a pro-French policy on the part of Sambala's father,
Aoua Demba. Of course, it was the threat posed by El-Hadj Omar and
Diouka-Sambala's brother, Khartoum-Sambala, that cemented the alliance
with the French that lasted until Diouka-Sambala's death in 1880.

Clark also relates the history of Bondou in terms of its complicated
dynastic history, stressing the emergence of Bokar Saada [5], as _Almamy_
from 1855 to 1885, who, like Diouka-Sambala of Khasso, became a
French-sponsored ruler in opposition to El Hadj Omar and his choice of
_almamy_, Omar San. These and other micro-histories, that are interspersed
with eleven tables giving mostly economic data, and thirteen figures
consisting of charts and maps, simply do not add up to a coherent
historical synthesis of the sort that the author claims to have written.

One of the most unsatisfactory accounts in the book is that of the
so-called revolt of Mahmadou Lamine (pp. 115-122). In particular, it fails
to make clear the extent to which Lamine's campaigns were truly of an
anti-colonial nature directed against French overrule, even though Clark's
discussion of this episode in the history of the region is the object of
fourteen notes (nos. 41-52, pp. 131-134 and nos. 32-33, p. 157) listing
almost every archival document and published source available on the
subject in the National Archives of Senegal and in the French Colonial
Archives. (Surprisingly Clark does not cite any oral sources in regard to
this episode, despite the importance that he purports to attach to oral
sources in the writing of African history.)

What is clear is that Mahmadou Lamine began his campaign of conquest by
intervening in the succession crises in Bondou that began with the death,
in December 1885, of Almamy Bokar Saada. His popularity, it seems, came as
a reaction, not so much to the French presence itself, but to the
autocratic behaviour of the French-protected rulers in the area and, of
course, to the reforming Tijjani Islam that he propagated. Himself a
Soninke, he was able to build a multi-ethnic coalition. But none of these
activities really prove that he was opposed to French overrule in the
region. Earlier, in 1880, he had had a falling out with a major religious
figure, the Tijjani leader, Cheikh Ahamadou of Segou, having even been
imprisoned for several years, in Segou, by order of the latter. Possibly,
with a little more discernment and tact, the French authorities might have
persuaded Mahmadou Lamine to become a pro-French Tijjani leader, centered
at Bakel, as they would later be able to do with El Hadj Malik Sy at
Tivaouane, in the conquered Wolof polity of Cayor. Indeed, Mahmadou Lamine
continued to protest his pro-French sympathies as late as September 1886
(note 42, p. 132), that is, five months after the attack on and siege of
Bakel by his forces in April 1885 that historians view as his definitive
declaration of war against the French.

The fact is that the French may have provoked Mahmadou Lamine by their own
preemptive strike against his forces at Conguel, six kilometers from
Bakel, two weeks earlier. One must not forget that the first French
commandant, Colonel Henri Frey, to have to deal with Mahmadou Lamine, was
favourable to him and then changed his mind out of loyalty to (but owing
to manipulation by) certain French allies. Frey being replaced because of
his perceived softness to Mahmadou Lamine, the next commandant, the
hard-liner, Colonel Joseph Simon Gallieni, came to the job determined to
crush this leader, regardless of what his true feelings had been in regard
to French overrule. Gallieni completed the job, first by having Mahmadou
Lamine's adolescent son, Soybou, executed in May 1887, under doubtful
circumstances (a detail not mentioned by Clark), and then by launching the
raid that led to the death of Mahmadou Lamine himself near Lamen-Kotto in
Gambia in December 1887. In short, Clark could have given a far more
focused account of Mahmadou Lamine's intentions than he did, all while
making clear (as he also did) that the effects of the rebellion on the
local economy were not all that significant.[6]

Even the descriptions of the supposedly non-political economic and social
evolution of the region seem, in places, to be truncated and incomplete.
Nevertheless, a few of the themes evoked are handled well. The reader
learns a great deal (pp. 160; 166-170; 181-182; 185-187, notes 8-13;
191-192, note 40; 211; and 225) about the pragmatic attitudes and
practices in regard to slavery of the advancing French administration,
particularly in the areas forming the unstable interfaces between
direct-ruled French territories like Bakel, Medine, and Senoudebou, and
most of the hinterland that retained _de facto_ independence from France
until the end of the 19th century. The French did very little to suppress
slavery in pro-French and allied French polities like Bondou and Khasso,
even in some cases permitting the operation of slave markets under the
guns of French forts and making "no genuine efforts to halt friendly
rulers from pillaging caravans and settlements" (p. 75) [7].

Clark's very good discussion of the founding and the role of the "villages
de libert" [freedom villages] (pp. 166-170) in 1887 by Gallieni confirms
the appropriateness of the sour comments about these villages made by such
scholars as Denise Bouche and Jean Suret-Canale to the effect that they
were "villages de captifs du commandant", and their residents, "captifs
des blancs" [8]. As Clark explains the matter, these villages "provided an
answer to the administration's labor shortage problem while simultaneously
addressing the increasingly important issue of abolition" (p. 166),
particularly after the founding of the French Antislavery Society in 1888
and its insistence that French rule lead to the total abolition of slavery
in the French Empire.

Clark also makes some very interesting observations about the effects of
World War I recruitment in the region. He perceives it as having had the
incidental effect of stimulating emancipation. Chiefs and other freemen
filled their recruitment quotas with slaves who, if they were not freed
upon enlistment, were able to purchase their freedom with the enlistment
bonus that they received. Returned veterans came back with a sense of
their status as free men. They challenged chiefly authority, and some of
them were able to fill reserved slots in the colonial administration. The
reader cannot help but get the impression that Clark approves of the
social consequences to the region of the war in Europe. But he says almost
nothing about those recruits and draftees who were killed or maimed, or
about their families. Only one comment, on p. 182 indicates that: "In 1915
a few jobs in the civil service were reserved for injured soldiers".
Likewise, Clark has nothing to say about the appropriateness or the
inappropriateness of the French use of Africans in a European war -
strange for an author who, in other respects, for instance, in regard to
questions of spelling, tends to be "politically correct".

The most valuable portion of this book is the discussion of sources and
historiography that composes the first chapter. The author clearly knows
how to question and to criticize both the panoply of French written
sources, particularly the materials in the French archives, and the oral
informants whom he identified and interviewed. Clark's listings in the
"Bibliography" plus the notes that follow each chapter are very detailed;
however, the actual results, so far as his narrative is concerned, are
disappointing. Clark has certainly assembled sufficient material for a far
more deft analysis of the events by the casting of oral sources against
French written sources, than seems to be the case.

At one point in Chapter 1 (p. 7) Clark states that: "The same rigorous
analysis that has, until recently, been given only to oral sources should
be applied equally to written sources". How one wishes that he had
followed his own advice with regard to specific events that are
differently stated or can be differently interpreted depending upon
whether one relies on written or oral sources. The usual case in this book
is that a statement that needs to be footnoted, as in the case of a
comment about slavery and slave-raiding by French allies (no. 31, p. 112)
will give rise to a long note listing archival correspondence and oral
informants with no indication as to what particular point was derived from
or supported by what particular source. Most of the time, unfortunately,
the impression that the reader gets is that the French archival sources
were crucial; the oral sources, more an embellishment. As indicated above,
none of the notes referring to the section on Mahmadou Lamine include
references to any direct oral source (however, as Clark correctly points
out, some of the French accounts were themselves based on oral
informants).

Clark, moreover, is critical of the historical/anthropological writings of
such early French scholar-administrators as Maurice Delafosse, Charles
Monteil, and Paul Marty, accusing them of "hasty composition and a lack of
critical method". But Clark seems to have forgotten that when these men
were writing, mostly before 1920, narrative historical writing was in
vogue as, for instance, in the case of _The French Revolution_ (1910) [9]
by Alphonse Aulard. These French authors simply applied the dominant model
to African history in which, indeed, they were pioneers. Even later works,
like, for instance, _L'Empire peul de Macina_ by Amadou Hampat Ba and
Jacques Daget (Paris and The Hague: Mouton, 1962), the place of which in
the canon of the historiography of independent Africa Clark would surely
not contest, is also written in this possibly archaic but eminently
readable, entertaining, and informative style.

In one case (and probably others) Clark clearly did not check out the
written works of a French authority as well as he should have before
making the following remark about Louis Lon Csar Faidherbe, twice governor
of Senegal between 1854 and 1865, and the executor of a firm French policy
in the area. He writes that "Louis Faidherbe wrote extensively about
French 'pacification' in Senegambia though he focuses on the jihad of
al-Hajj Umar in the 1850's. He discusses other topics (Senegambian
languages, Islam, local and ethnic history) but with considerably less
skill and enthusiasm than his own exploits" (p. 11).

Clark here is obviously referring to Faidherbe's last and most well-known
(to non-specialists) work, _Le Senegal: la France dans l'Afrique
Occidentale_ (Paris: Hachette, 1989) and has been impressed by the two
pages (158-159) introducing the section in the book dealing with the
French struggle against El Hadj Omar. Here Faidherbe, referring indirectly
to El Hadj Omar, praises the civilizing capacity of empires in that they
create unity out of chaos and permit "material and intellectual
exchanges... to the greater advantage of progress". However, in his
empire-building efforts, El Hadj Omar would have "as his adversary a
governor of Senegal who would defeat him" the governor in question thus
assuming for France the responsibilities and the glory of empire.

The reality is that this book, a hodgepodge of many things, 501 pages
long, was published in 1889,[10] the year of Faidherbe's death. Much of
its authorship is doubtful. Although it consists of bits and pieces of
Faidherbe's private writings on a number of subjects, including
observations that he made during his posting to Algeria between 1866 and
1870, much of it consists of several times published and republished
military annals and the Governor's reports to the Ministry of the Navy.
After 1884 or 1885, Faidherbe himself could probably not write because of
the effects of arthritis on his hands, even if he could dictate. He was
much helped, as he himself acknowledges (p. 10), by his son-in-law,
Captain M. Brosselard-Faidherbe, and two aides-de-camp, Captains Bizard
and J. Ancelle. In short, this book and the other publications that it
assimilated were as much the work of the French Ministry of the Navy as of
Faidherbe and his assistants and was intended to serve both as propaganda
in favour of completing the conquest of the French Sudan as a fitting
memorial to Faidherbe himself.

The account of the French struggle against the forces of El Hadj Omar
(1854-1860) that Faidherbe led takes up seventy-eight pages (pp. 158-236)
as compared to thirty-six (121-157) pages devoted to the struggle, also
led by Faidherbe, between 1854 and 1858 to "free" the gum trade from
control by the Trarza and Brakna Moors and to fix the Senegal River as the
frontier between Mauritania and Senegal.

For Clark to claim that Faidherbe "discusses other topics (Senegambian
languages, Islam, local and ethnic history)...  with... less skill and
enthusiasm than his own exploits" suggests that he has not read _Le
Senegal..._ and Faidherbe's anthropological and linguistic studies of
Algeria and of Senegal very carefully. Had Clark been more discerning, he
would have discovered a Faidherbe who was indeed very enthusiastic about
the purely scholarly aspects of African studies. Developing an interest in
linguistics, Faidherbe theorized (much ahead of his times) that the Basque
and the Berber languages might be related.[11]  By observing the
linguistic similarities of Fulfulde (Poular), Wolof, and Serrer, he came
close to the modern understanding of the relationships among the speakers
of the West Atlantic African languages group.

Considering that Clark, prior to publishing the book under review, had
chalked up a good publication record, seven of his articles, all of which
are derived from the original dissertation, being listed in the
"Bibliography", this reviewer cannot help but ask himself to what extent
the faults that he has identified have resulted from the rigours involved
in preparing the manuscript for publication - about which he can only
surmise. The disjointed succession of micro-histories indicated above,
despite a very ample discussion of sources and historiography and the very
full set of notes and bibliography suggest that the University Press of
America imposed a drastic shortening of the original thesis - something
that economy-minded presses tend to do - a task that proved to be a bit
beyond the capacity of or the time available to the author. As any author
or editor knows, cutting is difficult, particularly when the subject is
complex and the cutting must be done rapidly and under pressure. All too
often, one will make the cuts without inserting proper 23.transitions -
"bridges" over the gaps.

And this book completely lacks an index, an incredible omission for what
purports to be a work of scholarship. And then to make matters worse, the
Press accepted tables, maps, and figures that are very crudely
constructed: maps that appear to be traced by hand, place names written
onto these maps by hand in a less than felicitous script, and charts, like
Figures 4 and 5 (pp. 64-65) that appear to have been prepared with an old
typewriter. The author's determination to place the captions for figures
below rather than above the given figure creates a messy situation in the
cases of figures longer than one page, as, for instance, in Figure 1 (pp.
10-11) in which the caption, "Principal Explorers and Directors of
Missions in the Upper Senegal Valley", appears half way into what is in
fact a list of European explorers in the region.

In light of these infelicities, it seems almost superfluous to complain
that the "Notes" have been placed at the back of each chapter rather than
at the foot of each page. Given the availability and the ease of use of
Adobe Page Maker, Microsoft Excel, CorelDRAW and many other very good word
processors and desk top publication softwares, the presentation of this
book is hardly excusable. Does the University Press of America not provide
editorial assistance and advice to its authors in regard to formatting and
presentation? Did the Department of History of the University of North
Carolina at Wilmington fail to provide proper secretarial assistance to
one of its academic staff members? One takes a look at the tables and maps
appearing in the _magnum opus_ of Clark's mentor, Professor David Robinson
of Michigan State University, the contrast is saddening. In _The Holy War
of Umar Tal: The Western Sudan in the mid-Nineteenth Century_ (1985),
tables, charts, and maps are exquisitely designed and printed; the
publisher, however is Clarendon Press, Oxford. Need one say more?

So what is really valuable in this very uneven study? Certainly the
chapter on sources and historiography and the truly comprehensive
Bibliography are first rate. The only criticism that one can make is that
Clark has failed to state where he has deposited his recordings of and
notes on oral interviews.

Should Andrew Clark wish to redo and expand his book, he has certainly
assembled the building blocks for a considerably more substantial study.



_NOTES_

[1] The "Bibliography" and the chapter endnotes reveal an exhaustive
consultation of the archival resources, available for the region and the
period, housed at the Archives Nationales de France, Section Outre-Mer
(Aix-en-Provence), the Archives du Service Historique de l'Arme, Section
Ancienne: Serie Outre-Mer (Chteau de Vincennes, Vincennes); the Archives
Nationales du Senegal, Ancienne Serie (Dakar), and the Archives Nationales
du Mali (Bamako). The "Bibliography" also reveals that Clark consulted
ninety-nine oral informants, some of them more than once, at various
locations in the region being studied and at other locations in Senegal
and Mali. Clark differentiates among the types of oral testimony that can
be obtained from different categories of transmitters: formal oral
tradition by _griots_, informal oral traditions that can be recited by
such persons as village elders, and finally, personal reminiscences;
_i.e._, the accounts of eyewitness (who for purposes of this study were
obviously elderly people).

[2] The question of the spelling of the names of places and persons in
francophone Africa, particularly Senegal and Mali, has always posed a
problem for English speakers because the same ethnic groups existing in
Senegal and in Gambia have given rise to separate ways of phoneticizing
the same sounds. The name, "Diallo" in Senegal is "Jallow" in Gambia. The
matter was complicated when the Senegalese government decided in 1971 to
adopt a phonetic alphabet for Senegalese names (_Journal Officiel de la
Republique du Senegal_ 116, 28 June 1971: 623-628), and Philip Curtin
decided to make extensive use of this system of orthography in writing his
very influential two-volume study, _Economic Change in Precolonial Africa_
(Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1975).

 The system, however, never caught on in Senegal for the writing of
contemporary names, for which the French spellings continue to be used,
and has been used only selectively by most historians, or rejected
outright as in the case of this reviewer, for the designation of the names
of historical persons and places. As French continues to be the official
language of Senegal and Mali and the second official language of
Mauritania, this reviewer prefers to use the standard French spellings of
names and terms specific to the region under study, including those
derived from Arabic (thus "El Hadj Omar" rather than "al-Hajj 'Umar";
Gadiaga" rather than "Gajaaga", "Gumou" rather than "Gemu", and for names
of more general interregional importance, what have become standard
English spellings, hence "Bambuk" rather than "Bambouck" or "Bambuhu" - a
spelling that even Clark, who uses the Senegalese orthography selectively,
rejects. Thus one avoids the absurd situation of a name or a term that is
spelled one way when it appears in a direct quotation derived from an old
French document or to designate a contemporary person or place, and
another way when it appears in the author's text to designate a historical
personage or place, as on p. 139 where Clark refers in one context to
"Njay Sur", a _traitant_ employed by the Maurel and Prom Company, and in
another, to the "Wolof founding N'Diaye lineage", "Njay" and "N'Diaye"
being in fact the same name and the Maurel and Prom Papers (the Company
archives housed in Bordeaux, France) referring sometimes to "N'Diaye-Sour"
and sometimes to "Diaye-Sour".

[3] _in_ Robert W. Clower, _et al._, _Growth Without Development: An
Economic Survey of Liberia_ (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1966).

[4] It is only fair, however, to point out that although Robinson uses
the term in the original and unpublished version of his PhD dissertation
"Abdul Bokar Kan and the History of Futa Toro, 1853-1891" (New York,
Columbia University, 1971) to designate Fouta Toro, he drops it in the
published version, _Chiefs and Clerics: Abdul Bokar Kan and Futo Toro
(1853-1891)_ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975) even though he cites in a
footnote, on p. 26, the work by L. Kuper and M. G. Smith, _Pluralism in
Africa_ (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1969)
from which he originally derived the term.

[5] Again on a matter of language, Clark should have made clear that
in the cases of certain proper names, like that, for instance, of Bokar
Saada, or of Abdoul Bokar Kan (a leader, a "grand elector", of Fouta Toro
in the 1870's and 1880's), the French archives and most of the historical
literature written through the 1960's will refer to Boubakar Saada and
Abdoul Boubakar respectively, this because the original French
transliterations reflected Wolof usage in which "Bokar" is "Boubakar" and
the fact that the French through the 19th century tended to view the
Senegalese hinterland through Wolof eyes.

[6] In fact, Gallieni made a deliberate effort to conduct the campaign
against Mahmadou Lamine in a way, called the _tache d'huile_ that would
spare the economy as much as possible (see Matthew, Virgil, "Joseph Simon
Gallieni (1849-1916", _in_, Gann, L. H., and Duignan, Peter, _African
Proconsuls: European Governors in Africa_ (New York: The Free Press and
Stanford: The Hoover Institution, 1978), pp. 85-88.

[7] Regarding French assistance to escaped slaves, Clark has captured
a significant 1855 quotation from the pen of Governor Louis Lon Csar
Faidherbe: "Favorisez l'evasion et recueillez comme hommes libres, dans
nos etablissements, les esclaves des pays avec lesquels nous serons en
guerre. Rendez au contraire scrupuleusement ceux des pays avec lesquelles
nous sommes en paix" (from ANS 3B 77, pice 9, Faidherbe to the Commandant
of Bakel, 3 October 1855, in note 30, p. 129) - all the more interesting
in that at the end of his life, Faidherbe dedicated his _Le Senegal: la
France dans l'Afrique Occidentale_ (Paris: Hachette, 1889) to the great
French emancipator, Victor Schoelcher.

[8] See, Suret-Canale, Jean, L'Afrique Noire: l're coloniale
(1900-1945 (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1964), pp. 85, who quotes, Bouche,
Denise, "Les Villages de liberte en A. O. F." Bulletin de l'Institut
Francais d'Afrique Noire, Serie B 3-4 (1949): 491-550; (1950): 135-215.
Clark himself has based much of his discussion on Bouche's published
_doctorat d'etat_ thesis, _Les Villages de liberte en Afrique noire
francaise, 1887-1910_ (The Hague: Mouton, 1968)

[9] first published as _Histoire politique de la revolution francaise_
(Paris: Armand Colin, 1901).

[10] For a thorough discussion of the origins of this book and in general
of the problems that will be faced by anybody wishing to write a biography
of General Faidherbe, see the following: Barrows, Leland Conley,
"L'Oeuvre, la carriere du general Faidherbe et les debuts de l'Afrique
Noire Francaise: une analyse critique contemporaine" _Le Mois en Afrique:
Etudes politiques, economiques, et sociologiques africaines_ 235-236
(August-September, 1985): 121-123, n. 5.

[11] The suggestion is found in several pages of notes found in the
Og-Lamoitier Papers, the small collection of what remains of Faidherbe's
private papers as well as in _Collection complete des inscriptions
numidiques (lybiques) avec des apercus ethnographiques sur les Numides par
le general Faidherbe _(Lille: L. Danel, 1870). On the other hand,
Faidherbe seems to deny the idea in a study that he wrote with the
anthropologist, P. Topinard, _Instructions sur L'Anthropologie de
l'Algerie_ (Paris: Typographie A. Hennuyer, 1874), p. 4.


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