Walter Hawthorne ‘Planting Rice and Harvesting Slaves: transformations along the Guinea Bissau coast, 1400-1900', Portsmouth (NH), Heinemann, 2003 PDF

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Walter Hawthorne ‘Planting Rice and Harvesting Slaves: transformations along the Guinea Bissau coast, 1400-1900’, Social History of Africa Series, Portsmouth (NH), Heinemann, 2003, ISBN 0-325-07049-0, 258 pages, with notes, maps & bibliography. Reviewer: Philip J. Havik, IICT, Lisbon For: Africa...

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Walter Hawthorne ‘Planting Rice and Harvesting Slaves: transformations along the Guinea Bissau coast, 1400-1900’, Social History of Africa Series, Portsmouth (NH), Heinemann, 2003, ISBN 0-325-07049-0, 258 pages, with notes, maps & bibliography. Reviewer: Philip J. Havik, IICT, Lisbon For: African Review of Books, 2006 (www.africanreviewofbooks.com) The Guinea Bissau region has over the last decades benefited from the renewed focus on coastal African societies. Generally, the scholars involved have been historians working on the slave trade or on regional Afro-Atlantic trade networks. More recently africanist historians have embarked upon novel, multidisciplinary approaches that incorporate anthropology, economy and political science in the study of coastal communities (Greene, 1996, Akyeampong, 1996, Austen & Derrick, 1999; Shaw, 2002). This approach has significantly broadened and deepened our understanding of African societies after contact. Since Rodney’s (1970) and Curtin’s (1975) incursions into the history of the Upper Guinea Coast in the 1970s, the study of the Guinea Bissau region has benefited from the incisive contributions by, amongst others, Boulègue (1987 & 1989), Brooks (1993 & 2003), Mark (1985 & 2002), Pelissier (1989) and Roche (1985). Walter Hawthorne’s study on Balanta communities in the Guinea Bissau region forms a welcome addition to this effort. Based on the historian’s PhD thesis, the study covers almost the entire pre and proto-colonial period from first contact to the late nineteenth century. Its six chapters focus upon agricultural change in a decentralized society and the impact that the Atlantic slave trade had upon these transformations. Divided into two parts that deal with regional and intra-community aspects of the dynamics of interaction, the book takes a new look at Balanta society and history. These communities are currently found in the area that extends from the southern Casamance in Senegal to the Tombalí region in the south of current Guinea Bissau. In the period studied, their heartland was located north of the Geba River in what became a much coveted region for the export of captives, as well as ivory, beeswax and hides, and at a later stage of crops such as rice and groundnuts. Rather than merely exploring the shift from slaves to crops - or as some would have it from slaves to legitimate commerce - from the outside, Hawthorne attempts to identify the changes that occurred inside a West-African community, embedded in the regional context. In order to do so, he uses data culled from, mostly Portuguese, archival sources as well as oral interviews with Balanta informants. The combination of the two works proves to be illuminating and effective, by way of the symbiosis it establishes between two different perspectives, Atlantic and African. The central hypotheses of the book are that despite forming decentralised communities, the Balanta produce narratives that can be used as tools to reconstruct their past and their involvement in the slave trade, just like Shaw (2002) found in the case of the Temne in Sierra Leone. Secondly, far from being passive victims at the mercy of state-based societies, the Balanta developed their own strategies in order to safeguard their autonomy against external threats. Thirdly, the Balanta took up the challenge and engaged in Atlantic exchange in order to reap the benefits for their

communities. Fourth, he maintains that internal divisions along the lines of age and sex shaped their reactions to the regional penetration of the Atlantic slave trade, eventually resulting in revolutionary changes in Balanta society at a social, political and economic level. In the introduction the author remarks that only after several months of interviewing did he discover that the Balanta actually participated in the slave trade. The comment is revealing as so far Balanta involvement in the trade has largely been negated, as they allegedly eschewed the practice while succeeding in keeping Atlantic and African predators at bay until the nineteenth century. Apart from correcting this erroneous trope, by establishing a direct correlation between the slave trade and changes in Balanta society Hawthorne has rewritten a chapter of Balanta history. By collating oral data with travel accounts, another image typically associated with the Balanta is also deconstructed, i.e. of expert paddy rice producers. Mainly cultivating yam and maize, Balanta farmers only adopted rice farming in paddies (bolanhas) when they moved their villages to mangrove swamps in search of secure havens against slave raids. Being labour intensive, rice farming required high population densities and compact settlement patterns, which implied profound alterations in community structures and practices. But in order to work implement that shift they needed iron for the tips of their shovels (kebinde), which could only be obtained thought Atlantic markets. Paddy rice presented itself here as an alternative to the traditional product mix in the region based upon millet and maize, while giving the Balanta a competitive advantage over other communities in a regional context. However, added purchasing power was needed to allow them to make the actual transition and expand rice production and their communities, which was obtained by producing captives through slave raiding. The iron that served to improve defensive weaponry could also be used to produce arms for raiding. Hawthorne situates this shift in the second half of the eighteenth century when slave exports from the region reached historical levels and pressures on African groups in littoral regions increased. The social changes that accompanied this ‘revolutionary’ process entailed recourse to intermarriage, reforms of age grades, the creation of councils of elders and the production of captives. The ‘hunting of people’ by means of assaults on their own kind but also on more distant villages beyond their territory, including fortified Portuguese towns, provided them with captives who could be ransomed. Whereas the former were traded for cattle, non-Africans were exchanged for iron, cloth, rum and beads. Quarrels and armed conflict were so common during the era of the slave trade, that Balanta also sought to create mechanisms to reduce their destructive impact. Councils of elders, the ‘blante bindang’ emerged as political power brokers who tightened their ritual hold on young males whose labour inputs were crucial to the success of ‘bolanha’ agriculture, and who could not be lost to slavers. The building of dykes which required continuous maintenance and the preparation of the soil demanded an intricate division of labour; the organization of work groups. Therefore, male age sets were meant to bind and integrate young males where possible into village life and keep from (out)migrating, and defend their communities. Exogamic bonds amongst residential compounds and between villages were encouraged with a view to expand kinship networks, tighten community linkages and regulate conflicts. In this respect, women were the main agents of interaction among

the often distant compounds and communities, responsible for drawing in outsiders, above all traders, and raising fertility rates. This sexual division of labour at compound and community level among the patrilineal and virilocal Balanta, which is still in place, increased resistance and production levels, as well as accessing strategic commodities and accelerating demographic growth. The shift to export crops in the nineteenth century created new opportunities for the rice producing Balanta, who augmented their bargaining power as the demand for rice grew. The introduction of new varieties (such as Oryza Sativa) imported from Asia diversified supply for an expanding food market in European colonies and in Europe. Working in conjunction with settler-traders, the so called ponteiros, many of whom fled the drought stricken Cape Verde archipelago, Balanta farmers rapidly expanded paddy rice cultivation. Their hard working nature was frequently referred in European sources, contrasting with their notoriety as savage raiders, as their rice sustained the towns growing populations and was also exported to the Cape Verde islands. Balanta migrated to these fertile floodplains from the middle of the nineteenth century attracted by favourable conditions for expanding paddy rice production and commodities such as rum, gunpowder, tobacco, cloth and iron. Given the high population densities in their traditional heartland, and the frequent conflicts and food shortages that ensued, migration was seen as a viable alternative. Spreading across the region in a south- and eastwards direction, compounds and communities fissioned, reducing tensions and increasing opportunities for work groups based on age-grades whilst maintaining decentralized patterns of authority. Events are followed until the late nineteenth century when the tensions between aspiring colonizers and indigenous peoples erupt into armed conflict which would eventually lead to their political submission, but would not halt their inexorable expansion and the development of paddy rice production in ‘Portuguese’ Guinea. In just over 200 pages, the author details a society in constant flux in a region that for centuries was affected by the turbulence of Afro-Atlantic interaction. This is in itself quite an achievement given the time span and the subject matter. Naturally therefore, the choices made tend to highlight certain occurrences and marginalize others. The momentous changes discussed in the book were not limited to the Balanta; the Diola/Felupe who live(d) in the same area and are also paddy rice producers par excellence would have been subject to similar pressures. Tropes regarding their attitudes towards outsiders and Atlantic interests have also been deconstructed since the 1980s, by showing that their communities ‘adapted’ to the pressures of the slave trade and the rising demand for cereal crops. And similarities do not end here, for example regarding the role of women who mediated relations with outsiders and bartered foodstuffs with African and Atlantic traders. Though occasionally mentioned in the text, a more detailed comparison between these decentralised societies could have unearthed more parallels and differences with regard to their responses to Atlantic trade and their interaction with Mandé peoples living in the Gambia area. The diffusion of paddy rice techniques is, as Hawthorne acknowledges in the text, retraceable to Mandé farmers. But the Mandé intinerant traders, the djilas, were also instrumental for the incorporation of Diola and Balanta in regional markets and Atlantic networks. Hawthorne’s book, unfortunately,

falls somewhat short on both counts. The question of the salt trade also remains peripheral throughout the book, despite the fact that it was a key exchange good in the riverine relay trade, both with the Mandé in the interior and coastal trade settlements. And as Balanta and Diola/Felupe women were its main regional producers and marketeers, salt, being a by-product of paddy agriculture, should have figured prominently in the author’s analysis. The case of the salt tax, not mentioned in the book, introduced by Portuguese authorities in the 1840s further illustrates its relevance. The question of iron and its importance in regional and Atlantic exchanges, has been underlined by other scholars, incl. Brooks (1993). Again, the influence of the Mandé, here the blacksmiths or ‘nyamakala’, and the transmission of skills to the Balanta, would have been crucial, but is not always clearly explicated in the book. Iron formed, as did cotton cloth, a key bartering counter in the slave trade, and a means of competing with other buyers and sellers on the regional and coastal markets. The Balanta shovel or kebinde is surely one of the most characteristic farming tools of the region, synonymous with the ‘força e fama’ (force and fame) these farmers enjoy among their neighbours and agronomists alike. Its iron tip is – justifiably - therefore central to the argument of the book, and to the ‘revolution’ it was associated with. Although the author suggests that these great transformations were slow, the time frame in which they took place, i.e. two centuries, is relatively short. The density of the historical narrative is therefore considerable in order to describe and explain this ‘revolution’. This theme is not new, since Richards (1985) launched his theses on ‘indigenous agricultural revolution’ in the mid 1980s which were based upon domestically generated innovations in food production in West Africa. Curiously though, Richards work is not explored, notwithstanding the fact that it focused on swamp rice farming and the introduction of new varieties. His hypotheses regarding the occurrence of ‘a green revolution from within’ in which farmers perfected their skills and techniques relying on local knowledge systems and flexible social organisation, would have reinforced the author’s approach. Hawthorne’s recognition of the innovative impact of ‘the market’ on farming is a case in point. However, Richards is not the only missing reference which would have enhanced the book and its challenging hypotheses. The work of Van der Drift (1992 & 199?) on the Balanta in Guinea Bissau which deal with some of the issues discussed here are also conspicuously absent. Their field research on rural change is particularly relevant for the processes that Hawthorne describes, in view of their analysis which links Balanta society to external political change on the one hand and associates their political and social organization to rice farming. Van der Drift’s anthropological analysis is fundamental for an insight into the control elders exercise over non initiates, how this authority impacts upon mangrove rice production, and to what extent the latter is influenced by external factors. In addition, he looks at the evolution of the ponta system in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, singling out the Balanta’s entrepreneurial skills, correcting tropes based upon their alleged rejection of outsiders in the process. And it also provides interesting answers to how Balanta migrants actually established themselves in neighbouring territories and the way they maintained their extended kinship systems while developing relations with their new hosts.

Naturally, the limitations imposed by (africanist) publishers and the market they serve do not allow for an extra hundred pages which would enable authors to further detail and expand their arguments. The book would have benefited from a more elaborate treatment of the changes that the Balanta went through during the nineteenth century, as the extraction of slaves shifted to crops, also because of the greater availability of written sources and the increased accuracy of informants’ data. Hawthorne’s analysis which cleverly weaves the data from interviews and written sources together, copes well with the available space, but does require careful and concentrated reading. At crucial points it relies heavily on extrapolation and speculation, in order to tie the various strands and maintain the flow of the argument. This is partly due to the obvious lacunae in source material on the pre-colonial era, but is also inevitable on account of the ambitious nature of the project. The use of oral data obtained from Balanta informants is a great asset and does much to enhance the authenticity of the book’s narrative. It proves as the author set out to do that decentralised societies do have oral traditions which permit a (at least a partial) reconstruction of the (distant) past. The fact that that past included the slave trade is certainly a novelty in the case of the Balanta. If anything, the book’s main value lies in the repositioning of Balanta communities themselves in the Afro-Atlantic connection. The book is also challenging at another level, i.e. the combination between internal and external factors in shaping the transformations that occurred over several centuries. The combination of anthropological, historical and agronomic insights is unusual and gives the book’s scientific cocktail a special flavour. Such interdisciplinary approaches are to be welcomed and in that sense Hawthorne’s book should encourage africanists to do the same. Not in the least because it covers the history of a pre- and proto-colonial period, thereby filling a gap in West-African history that urgently requires scholars’ attention. Finally, the book also responds to shifts in sub-Saharan literature towards the study of decentralized or acephalous societies by highlighting a largely unknown society and its peculiar dynamics. Far from being mere victims of African and European states, they emerge as autonomous communities with home grown strategies to deal with specific situations. To anyone who has had the opportunity of visiting Guinea Bissau, the Balanta who until recently formed the country’s largest single ‘ethnic’ group, constitute a fascinating object of study as well as being wonderfully receptive hosts. All in all, it is recommended as an example of ‘modern’ africanist scholarship and as a must for those wishing to study the great changes that took place in the pre-colonial era, the agency of African societies in the Guinea Bissau region....