The Fulbe Jihads

Although the nineteenth century was to see great changes in sub-Saharan West Africa resulting from the gradual abolition of the Atlantic slave trade and its replacement by other forms of commerce, such changes came about only very slowly and, for a long time, affected only a small part of the region. In general, the first half of the nineteenth century witnessed mainly a continuation of the eighteenth-century pattern, with the slave trade actually increasing in volume, and with events in the interior being moulded more by influences emanating from the Islamic world to the north than by seaborne contacts with Europe and America. At the beginning of the century, the most significant events in the region were the holy wars or jihads of the Fulbe people scattered across the savanna belt from the Senegal River to the Cameroun highlands. These events had nothing to do with direct European intervention in the region, yet they affected the whole of the western and central Sudan.

As we mentioned in Chapter 1, these jihads had their origin in the revival of Islam in the western Sudan, which was brought about by the Arabic-speaking Moors who came into Mauritania from across the Sahara in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This was not a once-for-all impact, but rather a continuing impulse toward religious reform, which renewed itself in every generation. The leaders of such revivals retired from the hustle and bustle of politics and trade, and went to live in remote places.