Herbst Chapter 2. Power and Space in Precolonial Africa

Jeffrey Herbst

States and Power in Africa

Chapter 2. Power and Space in Precolonial Africa

(review by Hoang Tran and Stepan Verkhovets)

When we study Africa, we tend to look at its current political structure, sometimes referring to its colonial legacy, but mostly ignore the precolonial period of the continent. Yet, this is a significantly long period, which can be counted up until the late nineteenth century, when the competition between European colonists for African territories reached its culmination. So, how did precolonial Africa look like? Specifically, what can we learn about political power in the continent these years? There is no doubt that as everywhere else in the world, rulers in precolonial Africa aimed to establish control over people, to expand their power. At the same time, the local rulers understood the extension of their power and control differently from leaders in, let’s say, Europe. It might be surprising for us; such an understanding had a non territorial nature. There was an entirely different system of power extension, therefore, a different system of state’s building and power consolidation.

In this chapter, Herbst emphasizes the gap in the literature studying the political system in precolonial Africa. This system seems too exotic for many scholars. Generally, the modern understanding of states is based on the control of the territory, this is the indicator of power. Truly, in Europe, it was the case in conditions of a huge population coupled with scarce land. But simply applying such an understanding of power to precolonial Africa, many authors conclude there were no states and no international system in the region. Such an understanding of how power can be projected lacks imagination. In fact, in precolonial Africa, the power was not based on the control over land. We should not equate states with territorial control. Even in Europe for a long time, states borders did not have significant importance. Why then do we apply the understanding of the nineteenth-century European system to Africa? Precolonial African leaders indeed extended their power, understood the concept of power consolidation, and there was an interstate system. Why then has it been developed differently?

To begin, in precolonial Africa the land was not a scarce resource, there were plenty of free lands, but the population was relatively small. Therefore, there was almost no competition over territories. Importantly, precolonial African societies did not develop agricultural technologies. In other words, farming was mostly primitive, extensive, with a little investment in a particular piece of land. The fact that free lands were plentiful, had a huge impact on such an outcome. Indeed, as a farmer, you are not forced to develop your small piece of land because, unlike in Europe or Asia, there are a lot of unoccupied territories. Hence, in Europe and Asia states were interested in controlling the territories with intensive agriculture, collecting taxes from these crowded territories. In contrast, in Africa, political leaders did not see the territories that valuable. In precolonial Africa, with some exceptions, the importance of control over the territory was little compared to other regions. An interesting fact is that because of such a different understanding of power, initially, African leaders did not observe a threat from the European colonists.

That being said, how was political control established in precolonial Africa? And, if not the land, what was the resource that states were fighting for? Answering the first question, we may underline that political control was ensured through the creation of loyalty, use of force, and building of infrastructure. African leaders were able to maintain control over a small-size territory; the ability to extend their power was dependent on the ability to develop the infrastructure, particularly, roads. Roads allowed troops to move fast and stimulated trade between settlements. Political control over the far territories was weak. In conditions of a little outside threat, political centers were not interested in affairs of its territories as long as those paid tributes. All in all, since there was little control over territories, people often migrated, and precolonial African societies were extremely dynamic. As for the second question, what was the most valuable resource in Africa, the answer is slaves. Slave trade was relatively developed in precolonial Africa; in wars, states preferred to capture people rather than establish control over the territory.

The African state forms varied. In the savannah belt of West Africa, there were large states because horses and camels helped to speed up the army and trade. In some other areas, the central authority could not broadcast its power beyond a village size. The expansion of some African states in the nineteenth century was due to the strength of the forces and two other external factors such as international trade and the introduction of guns. They traded natural resources, like gold, for the unfree labors, and these unfree labors could create cultivatable lands from which the African polities were born. The introduction of guns made it easier to conquer low-value territory. It also had an impact on the centralization of power as only the central state could buy guns from the Europeans. The rise and fail of African states, like other states elsewhere, is also related to the amount of coercion the central government could reinforce over a territory. 

The absence of the buffer mechanism and the ambiguity of central state power in the outlining areas led to the vagueness of borders. The hard territories were largely unknown in Africa. As a result, the African states did not exercise much of the control over the movement of people and money across the boundaries. The states tended to be tolerant of “strangers” and there was also social acceptance of migrants.

Many African states did not have their official currency. They adopted the popular currency throughout the trading region. As the state could not regulate their money supply, sudden inflation sometimes occurred because the entrance of new technology or trade could increase the supply of the currency.

The ambiguity of state power reflected in the interstate relations. There were almost no offices to handle the foreign affairs. The vagueness of borders made it hard to tell where the end of domestic politics and the beginning of the foreign affairs was.

Finally, the pre-colonial Africa was a state system with three significant features.  First, a variety of economic and physical settings in Africa led to a variety of pre-colonial African state forms. Second, there was a possibility of shared sovereignties because of the limited power of the central state in the outlining areas. Third, the distinction between domestic politics and foreign affairs was not a clear cut. At this point, the chapter is finished, I would like to thank you for your attention.