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Research ArticleArticle

Indian Textiles and Gum Arabic in the Lower Senegal River

Global Significance of Local Trade and Consumers in the Early Nineteenth Century

KAZUO KOBAYASHI
African Economic History, January 2017, 45 (2) 27-53; DOI: https://doi.org/10.3368/aeh.45.2.27
KAZUO KOBAYASHI
Kazuo Kobayashi is a postdoctoral fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and a visiting scholar at the University of Tokyo. He received his PhD degree in Economic History from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2016. He is studying Indian cotton textiles in precolonial West Africa and his particular areas of interest are the history of early modern globalization, West African economic history and the history of Indian cotton textiles.
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Abstract

This article proposes to give a new answer to one of the central questions in African and global economic histories: how West Africa contributed to economies outside the region. Recent studies have highlighted that consumers played a significant role in the processes of trade and production. The article combines this consumer-led perspective with a new set of quantitative and qualitative data. Trade figures drawn from the British and French trade statistics reveal the peculiar demand for Indian indigo-blue cotton textiles, called guinées, in Senegal compared with other regions of West Africa in the early nineteenth century. This finding revises Joseph Inikori’s argument about the triumph of British cottons in West Africa. Subsequently, this article places the consumption of guinées within the wider context of commercial networks in the trade in gum arabic in the lower Senegal River region and analyzes the social and ecological factors that underpinned the persistent demand for guinées among local consumers, taking into account the continuation of local textile production in West Africa. In so doing, this article argues that consumer behavior in Senegal mattered not only for the gum trade and but also conditioned a part of global trade networks that extended from South Asia through Western Europe and reached Africa in the early nineteenth century.

  • © 2017 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
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African Economic History: 45 (2)
African Economic History
Vol. 45, Issue 2
1 Jan 2017
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Indian Textiles and Gum Arabic in the Lower Senegal River
KAZUO KOBAYASHI
African Economic History Jan 2017, 45 (2) 27-53; DOI: 10.3368/aeh.45.2.27

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Indian Textiles and Gum Arabic in the Lower Senegal River
KAZUO KOBAYASHI
African Economic History Jan 2017, 45 (2) 27-53; DOI: 10.3368/aeh.45.2.27
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Jump to section

  • Article
    • Abstract
    • Introduction
    • Shaping Consumer Preferences for Textiles in West Africa before 1800
    • Guinées
    • Gum Arabic
    • Commercial Networks in the Lower Senegal River Region
    • Social and Ecological Factors Affecting the Persistent Demand for Guinées in the Senegal River Region
    • Conclusion
    • Acknowledgment
    • Footnotes
  • Figures & Data
  • Info & Metrics
  • References
  • PDF

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