IN the 16th century, in most parts of sub-Saharan Africa, there were considerable cities for the time(60,000 to 140,000 or more inhabitants), large villages (1,000 to 10,000 inhabitants), often within the framework of remarkably organized kingdoms and empires, and also territories with densely dispersed settlements. This is revealed by archaeological remains and excavations as well as written sources, both external (Arab and European, prior to the middle of the 16th century) and internal (indigenous chronicles written in Arabic, the language of religion like Latin in Europe). Agriculture, livestock, hunting, fishing, a very diversified craft industry (metallurgy, textiles, ceramics, etc.), river and lake navigation, near and far trade, with specific currencies, were very developed and active. .

The intellectual and spiritual level was analogous to that of North Africa at the same time. The great 14th-century Arab traveler, Ibn Battuta, praised the security and justice found in the Mali Empire. Prior to the use of firearms, the Arab slave trade had remained marginal in relation to economic activity and population size.

From the sixteenth century, the situation worsened singularly. Thanks to firearms, the Portuguese penetrated the Congo, south of the mouth, they conquered Angola, attacked the main ports on the eastern coast and ruined them, entering what is now Mozambique. The Moroccans attack the Songhai Empire, which resists for nine years. The aggressors have firearms, while the sub-Saharans do not. Thousands of inhabitants are killed or captured and reduced to slavery. The victors seize everything: men, animals, provisions, precious objects...

Kingdoms and empires are dislocated, crumbled in principalities brought to make the war more and more often in order to have prisoners who could be exchanged, in particular against rifles, essential to be defended and to attack. This results in the displacement of populations causing new clashes, regroupings in refuge sites, the spread of a latent state of war to the heart of the continent. The raids multiplied to the point of reaching the figure of eighty per year, at the beginning of the 19th century, in the northeast of the Central African Republic, according to the Tunisian scholar Mohammed el-Tounsy, who traveled to Darfur and Ouaddaï. (current Chad) at that time (2). The percentage of captives in relation to the population as a whole therefore increased continuously between the 17th century and the end of the 19th century, and “districts that were once densely populated were reclaimed by the bush” or the forest (3).

A harmful social category

The entire socio-economic and politico-administrative fabric that had been formed was gradually perverted and then ruined. People were often reduced to self-sufficiency in defense sites that were difficult to cultivate and supply water. A huge regression in all areas. The fate of the captives worsened. A new class or malevolent social category appeared: that of brokers, caravan guards, intermediary interpreters, victuallers... the "collaborators" of the time. Certain princes tried in vain to oppose this growing trade in human beings. But the king of Portugal replied negatively to the letters of protest from the king of the Congo, Alfonso, who had nevertheless converted to Christianity. One of the latter's successors was silenced by arms. The same in Angola. The French trading post in Senegal supplied the Moors with arms so that they could attack the damel (4), who refused the passage of slave caravans. It is therefore the external solicitation that caused a great extension and the proliferation of slavery in black Africa.

Initially, the kings only delivered those condemned to death. But the Portuguese wanted large numbers, which they took themselves by attacking for no other reason. From 1575-1580, Dias Novais, first governor of Angola, sent captives at the rate of twelve thousand per year on average (5). This is twice as much, from Angola alone, as all the trans-Saharan slave trade at the same time if we refer, for example, to the figures given by the American historian Ralph Austen.

In the 17th century and especially in the 18th century, most European shipowners devoted themselves to this trade which brought in big profits, mainly the Dutch, the English and the French. In the second half of the 18th century, huge numbers were reached (read “A global approach to triangular trade”): except in the years of the Franco-English wars, hundreds and hundreds of ships embarked one hundred and fifty thousand to one hundred and four- ninety thousand captives per year according to the years (6). The growing and generalized insecurity in most regions multiplied food shortages, famines, local diseases and even more imported diseases, particularly smallpox. Endemics took hold and epidemics flourished.

Raids and internal wars

It is therefore necessary to add up all those who died during the attacks, during the transfers from the interior to the starting points and in the warehouses; suicides and rebels killed while boarding; the deaths attributable to the multiplication of raids and internal wars generated by the dislocation of political entities, by the flight of populations, by the increased desire to take prisoners; the dead of starvation (crops and reserves having been looted) and of diseases of all kinds; the deaths due to the introduction of firearms and adulterated alcohol, the regression of hygiene and acquired knowledge..., all these deaths to which must be added the captives torn from the subcontinent. We can see that this demographic deficit greatly exceeds the number of viable births, which is itself necessarily decreasing. And it would still be necessary to take into account the “shortcomings to be born”. As during the Hundred Years War, which caused France to lose half of its population, the reduction took place irregularly and differently depending on the region. It became strongly accentuated from the end of the 17th century. From the middle of the 18th century, the overall decrease was massive and rapid.

Is it possible to assess this decrease? To measure the demographic effects of the Hundred Years' War in France, we compared the number of “lighting fires” (that is to say of inhabited houses) existing before this war with the number of those counted after. Certainly, no more than in India, we have here no register of baptisms, but we know, according to the travelers and explorers of the XIXth century, that in West Africa the largest agglomerations had no more than thirty thousand to forty thousand inhabitants. They were therefore about four times less important than the largest cities of the 16th century.

From the same testimonies, one can observe that the difference was even greater for the rural population or for the number of combatants that a prince or warlord could field. Is the approximate ratio of four to one, observed in West Africa, representative of the decrease in the whole population of black Africa between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries? From Cap des Palmes (7) to the south of Angola, the losses were even higher. Gwato, the port of the Kingdom of Benin (now Nigeria), had two thousand fires when the Portuguese arrived and had only twenty to thirty left when the explorers of the 19th century appeared there (8). The American historian William G. Randles shows that the population of Angola had also been reduced in very large proportions (9). On the other hand, the regions of Chad remained fairly well populated until around 1890 (villages of three thousand inhabitants in 1878).

In present-day Sudan, depopulation began with the slave domination of the Pasha of Egypt Mehemet-Ali in 1820. In East Africa, the highlands, as in Rwanda and Burundi, remained densely populated, around one hundred inhabitants per square kilometer, contrary to what was the case in the region of Lake Malawi (ex-Lake Nyassa). In South Africa, from the first half of the 19th century, the action of the English was added to that of the Boers (10) to decimate the indigenous peoples. Overall, it seems reasonable to consider that the population of black Africa was, in the nineteenth century, three to four times less than in the sixteenth.

But can we know the size of the population of black Africa around the middle of the 19th century? The colonial conquest (artillery against guns of trade), the multiform and generalized forced work, the repression of the many revolts, the malnutrition, the various local diseases and, again, the imported diseases and the continuation of the oriental trade still reduced the remaining population by about a third, until 1930. At that time, administrative and sanitary measures began the demographic recovery which was carried out very gradually.

This evaluation was possible because, with the European presence inside the territories, certain statistical indications were added to the narrative sources (11). In 1948-1949, a general and coordinated census was carried out throughout sub-Saharan Africa. After correction for non-declaration, the population was estimated between one hundred and forty and one hundred and forty-five million people, approximately. Taking into account the increase recorded between 1930 and 1948-1949, it can be estimated that in 1930 the population amounted to between one hundred and thirty and one hundred and thirty-five million individuals, who therefore represent two thirds of the approximate population of the years 1870-1890, thus valued at around two hundred million. We conclude that the population in the sixteenth century was around six hundred million at least (ie an average of about thirty inhabitants per square kilometer) according to the results of my research. The old figures of thirty to one hundred million were totally imaginary, as shown by Daniel Noin, ex-president of the population commission of the International Geographical Union (12).

Permanent and growing insecurity

Between the middle of the 16th century and the middle of the 19th century, the sub-Saharan population was therefore reduced by some four hundred million. Of this total, the percentage of those who were deported, from the coasts and the Sahel, is impossible to specify because of the importance of fraud and the very high number of illegal immigrants, before and after the prohibition of the slave trade. . Various sources and research lead to an increase of more than 50% in the official figures for the European slave trade (13). Evaluations of the Arab slave trade are also random. To give an order of magnitude, let's say that the figure, for the two drafts added together, must be between twenty-five and forty million. It's still highly debated, but certainly the low ratings don't take into account the enormity of the cover-ups. Nine tenths of the total losses, at least, occurred in Africa itself, which is explained by the extraordinary duration of a serious permanent and growing insecurity throughout the territory, due to the accumulation of the destructive effects, direct and indirect, of the two increasingly intensive simultaneous milkings.

A Hundred Years War which lasted three hundred years, with the weapons of the Thirty Years War and then of the following centuries. The conquest and colonial occupation, thus facilitated, have entrenched extroversion, both cultural and economic, and made the restructuring of the whole of sub-Saharan Africa and of each of its regions particularly problematic. Only about ten years ago black Africa recovered the population level it had in the 16th century, but in a very unbalanced way due to the congestion of the capitals.

The consequences of the drafts are heavy and pernicious, but many do not measure their importance.

LOUISE MARIE DIOP-MAES

Doctor of State in human geography, author of Black Africa, demography, soil and history, African Presence-Khepera, Dakar-Paris, 1996.