Nourishing a Stateless Society During the Slave Trade: The Rise of Balanta Paddy-Rice Production in Guinea-Bissau

Abstract

This essay examines the impact of the Atlantic slave trade on stateless societies, focusing on Balanta populations of present-day Guinea-Bissau. It demonstrates that some decentralized groups located on the ‘slaving frontiers’ of states managed not only to survive but also to thrive. In so doing, it shows how Balanta changed their settlement patterns and crop production techniques in response to threats posed by the slave raiding armies of Kaabu. From the mid-seventeenth century, Balanta produced and traded large quantities of paddy rice by organizing workers into age grades.

Resources, techniques, and strategies south of the Sahara: revising the factor endowments perspective on African economic development, 1500–20001

“…23 23 See, respectively, Hopkins, Economic history , pp. 35–6; Hawthorne, ‘Nourishing a stateless society’; idem, Planting rice ; also Klein, ‘Slave trade’, p. 55. …”

“…141 141 Hawthorne, ‘Nourishing a stateless society’; idem, Planting rice ; Harms, River of wealth , pp. 52–4. …”

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

“…The interface was the context of trade and of the transfer of slaves from montagnard to Wandala custody, and also of the return of captured montagnards, whether by ransom or by the taking of hostages (Kosack 1992: 183). Montagnard society within the interface zone was as permeated by the practices and consequences of slaving as was Balanta society in Guinea-Bissau (Hawthorne 2001) or the American antebellum South. For the Wandala, the system was clearly beneficial as it transferred much of the risk involved in slaving from themselves to montagnard slave-handlers and dealers.…”

The Pen and the Plough: Balanta Young Men in Guinea‐Bissau

“…During the fifteenth century, when the Balanta were located in the north of the country, they practised upland, freshwater swamp and mangrove swamp rice cultivation (Hawthorne, ). At the beginning of the twentieth century, many Balanta started to migrate to the south, driven by land scarcity and a desire to escape colonial forced labour.…”