Le nom de la ville (qsâr) de Shingîti apparaît tardivement dans les documents médiévaux, au détour d'un texte portugais du début du seizième siècle, dans une liste de toponymes concernant l'Adrar de Mauritanie. Ce n'est qu'à partir du dix-septième et surtout du dix-huitième siècle que Shingîti acquiert une réputation dépassant les limites du Sahara occidental, plus alors par le renom de certains de ses savants et hommes de religion que par ses activités commerciales. A cette époque, comme durant la période médiévale, le principal centre commercial de l'Adrar est Wadàn, dont le destin est étroitement associé au commerce du sel de la Sebkha d'Idjîl, sans doute exploitée depuis les dixième ou onzième siècles.

Au début du dix-neuvième siècle, Wadân connaît un déclin définitif, sans doute en partie lié aux conflits factionnels opposant Idaw al-Hajj et Kunta, ces derniers devenant maîtres du qsâr et de la saline d'Idjîl dans le courant du dix-huitième siècle. Parallèlement, l'on assiste à un essor commercial de Shingîti: à la fin du dix-neuvième siècle, l'importance économique et religieuse de la ville est attestée à travers le fait que l'ensemble du Sahara occidental est connu dans le monde musulman environnant sous le terme de trab ash-Shingîti, le ‘pays de Shingîti’, nom répandu à l'extérieur par les pèlerins qui se rendent à La Mecque et par les caravaniers qui fréquentent la ville. C'est sur cette brusque mutation des activités de la ville que nous nous interrogerons dans cet article en tentant de la replacer dans le contexte plus général de l'évolution des échanges sahariens au dix-neuvième siècle.

The established historical view of the Upper Guinea Coast is that this naturally forested region was at first peripheral to the Manding civilization of the savanna zone. The arrival of Europeans on the coast in the fifteenth century then engendered a southward shift in the centre of gravity of historical processes. The Atlantic trade, in which the savanna states were also deeply involved, gave coastal populations vastly expanded opportunities for wealth accumulation and social mobility. In spite of numerous attempts at political centralization, ‘frontier’ conditions persisted in the region up to – and perhaps after – the establishment of colonial states. These conditions have been held to account for the region-wide importance of cultural institutions which either facilitate social accommodation between heterogenous groups (e.g. Islam, Manding and European linguistic creoles, Manding clan names, and secret societies), or reflect such processes (e.g. bilateral kinship, patron–client relations, and pre-colonial urbanization).

In a recent study, Fred Cooper argues that strikes and other forms of labor protest had a clarifying effect on official thinking not only about labor policies but also about the aims and, ultimately, the viability of colonial rule. As Africans went on strike, from the Copperbelt to the docks of Mombasa and the Gold Coast Railway, to demand better wages and working conditions, colonial administrators first envisioned and then embraced the idea of an African working class and the possibility that African workers could be managed with the same kinds of labor codes and social welfare policies that obtained in Europe.

Of course, the image of a working class applied only so far in Africa. Colonial officials never fully understood the way African workers lived or the place of wage employment in African society, and were dismayed when their newly acquired understanding of Africans as universal workers was challenged in the 1950s by former strike leaders who began to insist on Africans' rights to political autonomy. Nonetheless, as Cooper shows, the effects of recurrent, often highly effective, strikes were far-reaching. As officials confronted the financial and political implications of providing all Africans with social welfare benefits and economic development comparable to those of Europe, they decided it was time to abandon the imperial enterprise.

Pemba Peremba

Ukija na winda, hutoka na kilemba

Ukija na kilemba, hutoka na winda.

(Proceed cautiously in Pemba

If you come wearing a loin cloth, you leave wearing a turban

If you come wearing a turban, you leave wearing a loin cloth.)

Dress has historically been used as one of the most important and visually immediate markers of class, status and ethnicity in East African coastal society. As one of many forms of expressive culture, clothing practice shaped and gave form to social bodies. Examining transformations in dress and fashion illustrates, however, that boundaries between theoretically distinctive social categories were often vague in practice.

In the summer of 1995, I was hiking in the Uluguru mountains above Morogoro in Tanzania when I met an old man on the path. He was carrying a load of wood poles on his head, and we stopped to talk. I was curious about the visible deforestation on the mountainside, and asked him about the changing forest cover. He told me the following story.

During the colonial period, European officers undertook a series of campaigns in conjunction with African officials to regulate the severity of clitoridectomy and to alter the timing of female initiation in Meru, Kenya. While their efforts to ban the more drastic forms of clitoridectomy contributed to the government's stated objective of gradually eliminating the practice, this anti-clitoridectomy stance was compromised by their parallel efforts to enforce female initiation at an earlier age in order to combat abortion. Officers attributed the apparently high prevalence of abortion in Meru to the late age at which clitoridectomy took place. Whereas in other areas of central Kenya female initiation took place prior to puberty, in Meru, it was a pre-nuptial rite. Officers observed that as ‘custom’ prohibited uninitiated females from bearing children, unexcised girls who became pregnant most often obtained abortions. To eliminate the possibility of a girl being sexually mature but unexcised, administrators enforced measures requiring girls to be excised before puberty.