Intensive Slave Raiding in the Colonial Interstice: Hamman Yaji and the Mandara Mountains (North Cameroon and North-Eastern Nigeria)

Abstract

A rare document, the diary of a slave raider, offers a unique view into the sociopolitical situation at the turn of the nineteenth century in the colonial backwater of North Cameroon. The Fulbe chief in question, Hamman Yaji, not only kept a diary, but was by far the most notorious slave raider of the Mandara Mountains. This article supplements the data from his diary with oral histories and archival sources to follow the dynamics of the intense slave raiding he engaged in. This frenzy of slaving occurred in a ‘colonial interstice’ characterized by competition between three colonial powers – the British, the Germans and the French, resilient governing structures in a region poorly controlled by colonial powers, and the unclear boundaries of the Mandara Mountains. The dynamics of military technology and the economics of this ‘uncommon market’ in slaves form additional factors in this episode in the history of slavery in Africa. These factors account for the general situation of insecurity due to slave raiding in the area, to which Hamman Yaji was an exceptionally atrocious contributor. In the end a religious movement, Mahdism, stimulated the consolidation of colonial power, ending Yaji's regime, which in all its brutality provides surprising insight in the early colonial situation in this border region between Nigeria and Cameroon.

Tsangaya System of Education and its Positive Effects on Almajiri and Society in Potiskum, Yobe State Nigeria

“…They also serve as a revivalist that revive and salvage the society from practicing the barbaric customs such as superstition and fortune telling, to the practice of sound authentic religion of Islam. 33 Based on interviews, participants reiterated that:…”

Patterns of Slaving and Prey–predator Interfaces in and Around the Mandara Mountains (Nigeria and Cameroon)

“…A multiplicity of languages and local religions that tied groups to spirits attached to particular places also inhibited political integration within the Mountain zone. Instead, there were shifting patterns of alliances and enmities, liable at any time to erupt into small-scale internecine warfare (Otterbein 1968; van Beek 2012: 313). A united montagnard front against common enemies was an impossibility.…”

“…This describes, inter alia, its author's raids on the montagnards, demonstrating in the process that depopulation of the Madagali border area was palpably untrue, as were most of the montagnard depredations reported by Fulani to their European masters (Midel 1990: 318–28). The diary's editors, Vaughan and Kirk-Greene (1995), focus on the broader historical context and the British view of the events that led to Yaji's eventual deposition, but neither they nor van Beek (2012) have exhausted its informational potential.…”

“…These authors set Hamman Yaji and his actions in their regional and political settings, and Fisher (2001) places them within the context of slavery in Muslim Black Africa. Van Beek (2012) has also described Yaji's slaving and eventual downfall in its interstitial colonial context. My aim here is to compare Yaji's and two other, very different, forms of late slaving in this region, one little treated in syntheses of slavery in Africa (see, for example, Manning 1990; Lovejoy 2012).…”