Technology, Tradition and the State in Africa by Jack Goody

Author:Jack Goody [Goody, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, General, Cultural & Social
ISBN: 9780521298926
Google: 3D84AAAAIAAJ
Publisher: CUP Archive
Published: 1980-07-31T03:39:49+00:00

Harness in possession of the Chief of Kpembe, Gonja, Northern Ghana, in 1964; drawn by Anna Craven.

With technologies of the bow and stone-tipped arrow, any kind of centralization is almost impossible. But with the introduction of metals, kingdoms are on the cards. First, because the distribution of the raw materials is uneven and involves systems of exchange (often long-distance trade) which can be brought under control. Many of the states of the savannah zone lived off the dues that trade provided, while at the same time offering some services to the trader in return, especially the maintenance of law and order.

Secondly, the processes of manufacture are relatively complicated. In some areas of West Africa we find special kin-guilds of blacksmiths who hand down their traditions among their members; and in centralized groups such as Mossi the members of these guilds often have a special relationship with royalty, who are often their major patrons. But elsewhere (among the acephalous LoDagaa, for example) smiths are not so restricted. Even here, however, such individuals have a special role to play in the maintenance of peace, perhaps to counter-balance their role as manufacturers of arms, though arms are instruments of production as well as destruction, killing animals (which one eats) as well as men (whom one does not—except in a ‘ritual’ fashion).

But quite apart from the increase in productivity which the use of metals offers (and hence the possibility of maintaining a more complex administrative system), it is possible to supervise the technology itself, the weapons and the trade in weapons; some effective central control of force becomes feasible for the first time.

That it does not become inevitable is obvious; one factor militating against central control of weaponry is the very widespread distribution in Africa of a low-grade iron ore known as latente. Other metals are not so widely spread, but then other metals did not have this kind of military importance since Africa south of the Sahara had no real Bronze or Copper age.

As we have noted, iron first spread from North Africa aro und 500 B.C. and evidence of the vigour with which it was later developed can be seen in the massive slag heaps of Meroë in the Sudan. On the western side, the techniques of iron-working crossed the Sahara at approximately the same time. Iron provided blades for the hoe, points for the arrow and tips for the spear. Productivity was raised; so too was the potential for domination. State systems appear to have proliferated. But even so both productivity and domination were of a limited kind. Productivity, because of an extensive agriculture and the absence of basic technological inventions such as the plough and the wheel. Domination, because the infantry that was the basis of war was specialized neither in its formations (there were no professional soldiers, though the Zulu later approached such a system), nor in its weaponry, which was also the weaponry of the chase. Some iron throwing-knives were used but the sword was never of great

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