JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Boston University African Studies Center and Board of Trustees, Boston University are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The International Journal of African Historical Studies. Historians have long appreciated the role of the desert edge in WestAfrica, but the recent sahelian drought and the tragedy it has entailed for so many people have accentuated the need to understand the relationship between desert and savanna.1 The drought, which began in some places in 1968 and continued in many areas until 1973 or 1974, has been the worst in over two centuries, but its economic impact on the savanna, although severe, has nonetheless been minimized because of a reorientation of the savanna economy toward the coast, a shift which dates to the beginning of the colonial period. With the end of the trans-Saharan trade, the redirection of overseas trade toward the Atlantic, and the development of peanuts as an agricultural export, much of the savanna gained new independence from the economy of the desert and sahel. Nevertheless, the area along the southern edge of the Sahara was extremely significant historically in the development of adjacent savanna regions before the colonial period, and it seems likely that the decline of the desert-edge sector was one of the most underestimated impacts of colonialism. The region offered an extensive market for grain, manufactures, and other products imported from the savanna, was a source of livestock, several types of mineral salts and transport services, and provided access to North African markets. In addition, it was the original home of many immigrant merchants, craftsmen, and farmers who contributed greatly to the development of the savanna. An examination of the desert edge therefore reveals the dynamics of economic change in the precolonial era and provides a comprehensive perspective on the recent crisis. lWe wish to thank

Consular trade returns from Tripoli show a dramatic increase in the proportion of legitimate trade in trans-Saharan exports from the central Sudan in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. This article focuses on Damergu, a Sahelian region located on the Tripoli–Kano route, and traces the reactions of North African merchants, local Tuareg rulers, and ordinary villagers to an increase and then an abrupt decline in trans-Saharan trade. North African merchants, who migrated to Damergu from Ghadames or from diaspora communities in Hausa towns, moved south after the decline of trans-Saharan trade in response to commercial opportunities in the savanna. A sharp rise in the importance of legitimate commerce in the Sahel upset the balance of power between two Tuareg groups, but the arrival of the French and the end of trans-Saharan trade eroded the power base of all Tuareg. The third group, villagers, responded to demand for new products by exchanging tanned goat skins and ostrich feathers for cheap European-made cloth and other imports. As trans-Saharan trade ended, they turned their full attention to exports of grain and animals, two forms of production and trade which had existed for some time before the boom in trans-Saharan trade. After 1900 the major change in trade patterns in these staple products was an about-face in the direction of exports corresponding to a secular decline in the desert-side economy. Whereas villagers had once taken millet primarily to Agadez, after 1900 they took progressively greater amounts south to Nigeria.

S. Baier — Le commerce à fondement écologique et l'État en Afrique précoloniale. Commentaire critique des articles de Lovejoy et Roberts publiés dans ce numéro, avec référence aux travaux, français notamment, influencés par le structuralisme et le marxisme.

No abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. African Studies Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Regents of the University of Wisconsin Systemare collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to African Economic History.