African Minerals as Export Commodities
Although Africans valued iron, copper, and a number of other metals and alloys, their willingness to export gold was responsible for sparking the global interest in the continent’s mineral endowments. By the first millennium a.d., gold was exiting the continent via both Trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean trade networks, ultimately reaching distant locations in Europe and Asia via a series of intermediary merchants.
The north-south trade that flowed back and forth across the Sahara was barely feasible until the domestication of the camel, which occurred sometime after 100 a.d. Starting as early as the third century, gold was one of the trade goods that these beasts of burden carried north across the desert in the form of dust, bars, nuggets, and sometimes jewelry. Mines controlled by the inland West African kingdoms of Ghana and Mali initially supplied virtually all of this gold. Over time, this output was supplemented, and eventually surpassed, by the production of the Akan mines located in the forest regions of what is the contemporary state of Ghana—mines that continue to generate mineral wealth to this day. In the tenth century, al-Masudi, the peripatetic, Baghdad-born “Herodotus of the Arabs,” described the form of “silent” or “dumb bartering” that these miners preferred—and also the extent to which they would go not to reveal the source(s) of this gold, thereby perpetuating the mysteriousness of its provenance:
Their donkeys, ladened with grains, leather, cloth and salt, and traders arrived . . . where men lived in holes (no doubt, mines). There, the traders spread out their goods along a stream or near a thicket. Then they announced their presence by beating on a special drum. . . . The merchants went away. The shy . . . miners crept from their hiding places and laid out a measure of gold dust. They, too, departed. Sometime later the traders returned, and, if the amount of gold dust was acceptable, they took it and left. If not, they went away again and the miners came back and made a counteroffer. Each group went back and forth until an agreement was satisfactory to both sides. Through years of experience, both sides had a general idea of what exchange would be acceptable, so the system generally moved quickly and smoothly. The silent miners inspired a lot of curiosity by trading in this manner. But, even if they were captured, as sometimes they were, the . . . miners chose death over betraying the location of the mines.[6]
Whether or not al-Masudi’s account was accurate, these miners’ alleged “death before divulgence” approach further deepened the intrigue associated with Africa’s mineral wealth. To be sure, the commitment to secrecy that these miners displayed would be considered extreme in any era. Meanwhile, almost a millennium earlier, Herodotus had described a similar form of silent, gold-centered commerce between West Africans and the Carthaginians, while also claiming that the Ethiopians located far up the Nile were so rich that they bound their prisoners in gold fetters. No less an individual than the so-called “Father of History” himself can, thus, be counted among the contributors to the powerful illusions and delusions associated with Africa’s mineral wealth.
The gold that was exchanged in this rather unconventional form of commerce eventually reached the southern shores of the Mediterranean. Upon arrival on Africa’s northern coast, it was either retained and used, for example, to mint local currency, or was shipped across the sea to Europe. In exchange, Berber and Arab merchants transported salt, copper, and, to a lesser extent, food southward. Although the journeys across the Sahara were arduous and the prices of goods going in both directions quite high, demand was unremitting, and many of the items that survived the trip south, including different styles of cloth, became favorites within African elite circles. In order to protect the gold mines—the engine that drove this cross-desert luxury trade—the kingdoms that emerged on the northern edge of the West African savannah, such as Mali, Ghana, and Songhay, featured large armies that effectively blocked attempts by North Africans to gain direct access to the deposits. Thus, just as sub-Saharan Africans successfully fended off foreigners’ efforts to make direct contact with the producers of coveted minerals elsewhere on the continent, so too did these West African states prevent their intracontinental neighbors to the north from wresting control of valuable gold deposits.
Along the East African coast, gold also played an important role in local commerce, as well as in long-distance, transoceanic trade. In this region, the Swahili city-states that had sprung up along the Indian Ocean coast from present-day Somalia to Mozambique resembled the termini located on either side of the Sahara due to their geographical and commercial importance.[7]And, similar to the way that Saharan traders linked the populations lying to the north and south of the desert, merchants operating out of these coastal centers acted as the commercial bridge between the mineral wealth emanating from the African interior and the buyers who came from as far as East Asia.
Just as Muslim writers were familiar with the trade in West African gold, they also knew of the existence of gold on Africa’s eastern coast. And, as we saw earlier, they didn’t hesitate to craft, and perhaps embellish, depictions of it. These accounts date as far back as to the time of al-Masudi (871–957), who mentioned in his writings that the source of this precious export was located in the region that is now Zimbabwe. Some centuries later, in 1225, Zhao Rukua, the superintendent of customs at the Chinese port of Quanzhou, also mentioned the presence of gold on the Swahili Coast in his work The Description of the Barbarians, an account of the countries where Chinese merchants traded and the goods that the populations of these nations offered. In fact, the production of this volume may very well have coincided with the emergence of gold as a significant commodity in the Indian Ocean trade, initially along the coast of present-day Somalia. By the fifteenth century, following the ascendancy of the city-state of Kilwa and its control of Sofala, the Swahili Coast polity through which this mineral was exported, gold had become the chief source of wealth of the southern portion of the East African coast.
As al-Masudi had correctly noted, the African goldfields that fed this expansive, transoceanic network were located in present-day Zimbabwe. These mines were managed by a succession of regional states, one of which was known as “Great Zimbabwe” (c. 1100–1450), whose kings allegedly lived surrounded by locally mined gold and copper ornaments and ate off of plates imported from Persia and China. Positioned at the head of the Sabi River valley, this kingdom was ideally situated for exploiting the long-distance trade between the goldfields of the plateau to its west and the (Indian) oceanic coast to the east. Not coincidentally, Great Zimbabwe’s ascendance corresponded with the rise of the coastal city-state of Kilwa. The inland kingdom supplied the coast with the gold and ivory that, from roughly 1300 to 1450, made Kilwa the richest in the array of these coastal polities. Duties imposed by the leader of Great Zimbabwe upon goods traveling overland to the coast also constituted a major source of wealth for the kingdom. So too did the tribute that regional, ethnic Shona chiefdoms offered in the form of ivory, gold, and food. Craftsmen resident at the capital of Great Zimbabwe worked this gold into fine jewelry, both for local, royal consumption and for trade with coastal communities, often in exchange for iron, cloth, or beads. Swahili merchants would typically then introduce this gold into the wider Indian Ocean trade. Eventually, Monomotapa (the Kingdom of Mutapa) replaced Great Zimbabwe, but this succession only bolstered the flow of gold to the coast. Unlike the rulers of Great Zimbabwe, who imported from further west the gold that they sent onward to the coast, Mutapa’s regents could rely on readily available, alluvial gold from the streams of the Mazoe region of the plateau.
Undoubtedly, the most sensational broadcast of Africa’s mineral wealth was the pilgrimage of Mansa Musa, the ruler of the Mali Empire (c. 1230–1600), to Mecca in 1324–25. En route to the Arabian Peninsula, he and his massive entourage arrived in Cairo, in a procession of five hundred slaves, each carrying a six-pound staff of gold; one hundred camels, each carrying three hundred pounds of gold; and another one hundred carrying food, clothing, and other supplies. Just imagin
e the impact that this spectacle must have had! Moreover, Mansa Musa spent so abundantly in Egypt and gave away so many gifts of gold that the value in Cairo of this precious metal fell and failed to recover for some time thereafter. Over the ensuing decades, and then centuries, Mali’s fame continued to spread—no doubt as a consequence of Mansa Musa’s profligate trip. Indeed, as early as the fourteenth century, European geographers and cartographers began to grant the kingdom particular attention, regularly featuring it on maps. For example, in the Catalan map produced by Abraham Crepques in 1375, the king of Mali is shown seated on a throne in the center of West Africa holding a rather sizable nugget of gold in his right hand (see figure 1).[8]
Figure 1. Abraham Crepques’s map, c. 1375. Bibliothèque nationale de France.
For all of the attention that Africa’s minerals were generating, the continent’s diamonds played no part in this global fervor. This seeming implausibility can be quite easily explained: Africans bestowed no value on these stones, and foreigners were completely unaware that the continent was endowed with diamond deposits. Hence this immense mineral wealth remained embedded, untapped. As stated in the previous chapter, anyone who has seen a rough, uncut diamond can comprehend the lack of interest in these stones. Even centuries later, as rumors began to abound within European communities resident on the continent that this or that African society utilized diamonds to adorn their homes, or employed them to weigh down their hunting sticks, or just revered them for their hardness and indestructibility, no evidence exists that suggests Africans had developed any aesthetic appreciation or functional utilization for these stones. In fact, it appears that whenever one of these claims circulated, Europeans were responsible for generating them, perhaps out of incredulity that Africans seemingly had no interest in a mineral that these outsiders treasured so greatly.
External Imaginations of Africa’s Mineral Wealth
European curiosity regarding Africa’s mineral wealth mounted considerably over time. But access to these minerals would require more than mere desire or intrigue. Prior to the fifteenth century, despite Europeans’ comprehension that the gold that reached the Mediterranean originated somewhere south of the great Saharan expanse, they possessed neither the military nor the technical means (nor perhaps the necessary appetite) to impose themselves much beyond the northern African coastal regions. Only after the Portuguese developed the navigational technology necessary for oceanic journeys and the military technology necessary to ensure that they could return home safely, did the prospect of foreigners reaching Africa’s gold mines become a possibility and, eventually, a reality.
Fueling Europeans’ unrelenting desire to reach these lands to the south was a series of long-standing, powerful myths that colored their imaginations of Africa’s mineral wealth. In many respects, the illusions that these myths helped engender were merely the latest examples in the long history of gold-generated fantasies, from Jason and the Golden Fleece to Coronado’s Seven Cities of Cíbola. In this case, however, Catalan, Italian, and Jewish merchant communities operating in North Africa were supplying firsthand accounts of Africa’s significant mineral exports, which lent these myths an aura of authenticity. These traders also suggested that the African gold that was reaching Europe constituted just a minute fraction of what would be available if the sources of these mineral commodities could be located. These European merchants believed that the gold for which they were trading derived from the mythical “Island of Gold,” a recurring site in the history of external imaginations of West African mineral wealth. In fact, many European maps of the period featured the “River of Gold,” which was probably the Senegal River. According to the myth, the “mouth of the river was large and deep enough for even the biggest ship,” and although the actual gold fields lay far upstream, by the early fourteenth century the allure had propelled a Catalan merchant to attempt to reach this legendary source. Indeed, the many unsuccessful efforts to find this deposit, which was most likely composed of the gold-producing regions of Bambuk (on the upper Senegal) and Bure (on the upper Niger), preoccupied both Muslim and Christian rulers alike for hundreds of years. As one scholar has soberly commented, this enduring obsession ultimately “cost kings their thrones, peoples their freedom, and thousands their lives.”[9]
Arab and European written accounts further stimulated these ill-advised quests. Authors regularly referred to the elusive, mythical commercial centers of the gold trade in the West African interior as the “Lands of Gold,” of which the aforementioned “Island of Gold” was often an integral component. The initial provocateur was probably the Arab writer, al-Fazari, who first referred to a “Land of Gold” (most likely the incipient kingdom of Ghana) sometime prior to 800 a.d. Numerous Arab authors would subsequently echo him, though none, as far as is known, ever actually traveled to the region. A number of learned Arab and European writers also surmised—mostly incorrectly—that the major West African trading centers for gold were situated near the sources of this precious metal. Speculation of this nature, coupled with geological ignorance, led the Persian geographer Ibn Khurdadhbih to assert in the ninth century that in the kingdom of Ghana’s capital city gold “grew in the sand like carrots” and was gathered each morning at sunrise! Displaying similar license, three centuries later the Arab geographer and historian al-Bakri described the kingdom of Ghana’s court as follows: “The king . . . sits in a pavilion around which stand his horses caparisoned in cloth of gold; behind him stand ten pages holding shields and gold-mounted swords; and on his right hand are the sons of princes of his empire, splendidly clad and with gold plaited into their hair. . . . The gate of the chamber is guarded by dogs of an excellent breed, who never leave the king’s seat; they wear collars of gold and silver.”[10]Although these sorts of literary speculation were obviously fanciful, the Portuguese and other Europeans would later discover that this West African land of “golden carrots and gold-collared canines” was, in fact, quite tangibly bountiful.
Legendary accounts of Africa’s mineral wealth were not limited to West Africa. Further south, the Zimbabwean output was so profuse that many Europeans were convinced that its origins must be the biblical land of Ophir, from which the illustrious Queen of Sheba allegedly procured the copious gold that she traded with King Solomon of Israel. This durable myth, fed by the actual gold that these interior states were furnishing for the coastal trade, over time compelled countless foreigners to brave the African hinterland in search of the famed source.
Perhaps the most provocative of the many myths that circulated was that of Prester John. This fabled Christian priest-king allegedly oversaw an immensely wealthy kingdom, which propelled innumerable journeys seeking his/its location. Although early notions of Prester John’s kingdom placed it in Asia, Europeans later believed his realm lay in Africa, in great part due to the Abyssinian King Wadem Ar’ad’s decision in 1306 to dispatch an embassy to the Papal Court at Avignon. Its arrival in Europe seemingly corroborated the Prester John myth and prompted the Holy See to send legates to Abyssinia (Ethiopia) to seek an alliance with the king, who was now perceived to be the elusive monarch. Subsequently, African and European envoys were sent with some regularity between Ethiopia and Rome. In this respect, Africans were fueling outsiders’ delusions, even if unintentionally. Down through the centuries, Prester John fantasies persisted, periodically reinvigorated by fantastical European accounts, including the following by the Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto in 1516:
The castle in which the Ethiopian sovereign resided was in an opulence far in excess of its strength: the chains on the drawbridges and gates, every hinge and bolt from top to bottom, indeed everything for which we use iron, here was made of gold. Even though this finest metal was in such abundance, it was not disdained. The great loggias of the royal palace consisted of arcades in limpid crystal. Rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and topaz, spaced out proportionately, provided a glittering frieze of red and white, green, blue, and yellow beneath the fine ceilings.[11]
I
n the wake of Mansa Musa’s trek, there were even some who believed that the Malian ruler was, in fact, the legendary Prester John. Regardless of the particular “speculation du jour,” though, Europeans’ perpetuation of the Prester John myth continued to shape their interactions with and beliefs toward Africa long after the legend should have been dismissed and taken its rightful place in history, somewhere near the final resting spot of Jason and his Golden Fleece.
Actively Seeking Africa’s Treasures
Despite Europeans’ commitment to gain unmediated access to Africa’s mineral resources, neither Portugal nor any of its immediate imperial imitators were able to capture areas of significant mineral wealth. Indeed, for centuries following their initial encounters, Africans successfully prevented Europeans from gaining access to the continent’s mineral deposits. Only following the Kimberley diamond finds, the subsequent discovery of gold on the South African Rand, and the contemporaneous onset of formal European colonization, would foreigners enjoy direct access to Africa’s mineral endowments. Having waited patiently for these opportunities, these covetous outsiders wasted no time in exploiting the riches about which they had been dreaming, literally, for centuries.
In addition to the allure of Africa’s mineral wealth, a number of other motivations drove the initial European ships southward. Primary among these impetuses was the search for a sea route to Asia and, in particular, India, so as to circumnavigate the hostile Ottoman Empire, which had expanded from western Asia into southeastern Europe. Merchants were also energized by the possibility of establishing new markets for a range of European goods and then returning home to sell exotic wares from distant lands. An aspiration to spread Christianity to new domains also played a role, as did the desire to replenish dwindling monetary reserves and to secure the various metals used in specie. Yet, of all the factors that encouraged the European navigation of the southern Atlantic, the prospect of a short route to the West African goldfields was arguably the most influential. While the immense profits that could be generated if this objective could be met undoubtedly played an instigative role, so too did Europeans’ desire to disengage commercially from Muslim North Africa and thereby reduce their reliance on a people who held antagonistic religious beliefs. Bypassing the middleman is, of course, a time-honored business strategy, but it’s even more appealing when you truly dislike him. Ultimately, Europeans believed that by gaining direct access to the West African goldfields they could finance further exploration, which would eventually reveal a sea route to India.
Stones of Contention Page 4
