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Serawoollies, Tillibunkas and Strange Farmers: the Development of Migrant Groundnut Farming along the Gambia River, 1848–95

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Ken Swindell
Ken Swindell
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
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Extract

Local and long-distance labour migrants were an important element in commercial groundnut farming along the Gambia river during the mid-nineteenth century, well before colonial partition. Seasonal and periodic circulation of migrant farmers had prior equivalents in the movements of traders across the Western Sudan, especially those associated with slaving. Traders were important in the development of groundnut cultivation and the initiation of migrant farming, when they realized the groundnut trade could be a valuable replacement for the abolished slave trade. In the pre-colonial era migrant farmers payed ‘custom’ to local rule for the land they farmed. This arrangement eventually gave way to a system of shared labour-time with individual host farmers in return for land. This change was accelerated by the abolition and decline in domestic slavery, which provided a new pattern for the Strange Farmer system. Thus the mobility of population in the Western Sudan, together with the evolution of the Strange Farmer system, provided vital marginal inputs of labour in an area of low population densities and facilitated the development of groundnut farming during the era of legitimate trade.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , January 1980 , pp. 93 - 104
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

1 It is frequently assumed that ‘navétane’ is derived from the Wolof word ‘navet’, which menas ‘rainy season’. An alternative explanation is that it is derived from ‘navette’ the French for ‘shuttle’. Tillibunka, or Tilibo, is a Mandinka word that means ‘man from the east’ and is used to describe migrants from the Upper Niger valley. When ‘SeraWoolli’ is used to refer to migrants this is a nineteenth-century form of Serahuli, or Sarakolle, which is an ethnic term.

2 During the 1974–1975Google Scholar farming season the Gambian Government undertook a Sample Survey of Agriculture organized by Mr D. Y. Lele of F.A.O. The present author in co-operation with the above undertook a Sample Survey of Strange Farmers, sponsored by S.S.R.C. together with initial grants from the Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham. I would also like to record my thanks to Alieu Jeng, of the Centre of West African Studies for his advice on searching relevant records in the Public Record Office. Mr Jeng has just completed his Ph.D. on ‘The Gambian groundnut industry 1830–1924.’

3 General accounts of the Strange Farmer system and migrations are to be found in the following: Fouquet, J., ‘La traite des arachides dans le pays Kaolack’, Études Sénégalaises, Institut Français d'Afrique Noire, no. 8 (1958), 80–82Google Scholar; Jarrett, H. R., ‘The Strange Farmers of The Gambia’, Geographical Review, xxxix (1949), 649–57;CrossRefGoogle ScholarKuczynski, R. R., Demographic Survey of the British Colonial Empire, vol. i (London, 1948), 335Google Scholar; Labouret, H., Les Paysans d'Afrique occidentale (Paris 1941), 222–6Google Scholar; Palmer, J. H., ‘Notes on the Strange Farmers’, Sessional Paper, no. 15 (Bathurst, 1946)Google Scholar; Pollet, E. and Winter, G., La Société Soninké (Dyahunu Mali) (Brussels, 1969), 136.Google Scholar

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