Quote:
Originally Posted by Pertinax
Changdao provided a brilliant overview of the region from the 12th to the 18th centuries. But as we know, all empires have phases of rise and decline: some disappear, and new ones arise.
We have surviving examples of sabers called "Mandinka," dating from the late 19th to early 20th centuries. During this period, the Mandinka region and related tribes were in decline. According to 19th-century travelers, they practiced primitive agriculture and had primitive industry, including metalworking.
As I wrote above, in 1904 these territories became a French colony. The year 1897 proved fateful for the neighboring region, the Sokoto Caliphate. In January and February, a small, well-armed force, equipped by the British Royal Nigerian Company, invaded and destroyed the strategic southwestern emirates of Nupe and Ilorin, Adamawa and Kano in 1901, and Sokoto in 1903. However, after the Berlin Conference of 1884, the entire continent was colonized, leaving Liberia and Ethiopia as the only sovereign states in sub-Saharan Africa.
I've selected sabers that were freely available from the internet and offer them for discussion.
All the presented specimens date from the late 19th to early 20th centuries. The overall length ranges from 74 to 82 cm, and the blade length from 60 to 76 cm.
Almost all the blades are from European cavalry and infantry sabers. Judging by their overall length, these are blades with broken hilts. Based on this, one can conclude that these are not commercial trade supplies, but blades that accidentally ended up in the hands of good craftsmen for reworking.
The brass pommels of each specimen are different, but executed with great skill and taste. The same can be said for the leather work. The high-quality leather handles and scabbards are truly works of art. All this testifies to the presence of well-established handicraft industries, rather than isolated artisans.
I have no data on the existence of such industries in Malinke, but my neighbors did. Read J.P. Smaldone's "Warfare in the Sokoto Caliphate":
Page 139
This centralizing effect of war is clearly shown also in the organization of the various craft industries in the nineteenth century. In each emirate the craft industries operated under direct state control, each craft being organized under a chief responsible for quality and price control, tax collection, and production for the needs of the emir. The leather industry provided saddles, shields, sheaths, quivers, horse trappings, and baggage cases. Blacksmiths made swords, spearheads and arrowheads, horse trappings, flintlocks and shot for the gunmen; brass workers produced more exquisite and expensive varieties of these items. The weaving industry prepared "uniforms," blankets, tents, baggage, and suits of lifidi. As Nadel has written of Nupe, this organization of the craft industries amounts to a full control of the political system over all the more important industries
. . . this control was dictated by the needs of the state: based on constant warfare, committed to uphold the splendour of a huge court, the political system has to guarantee a dependable, uninterrupted supply of all that is needed - arms, tools, clothes, saddles, as well as the many symbols of wealth and status.
Looking at these specimens, one might speculate that these are not combat sabers. Ceremonial, status symbols, merchandise for tourists?
As always, questions, questions, questions...
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The disintegration of the great states of the Western Sahel during the late 16th and 17th centuries was definitely important in the history of these sabers. However, the collective use in this expansive and politically fragmented region nods to the earlier shared traditions of warfare. In the wake of the fall of Songhay, Mali and Djolof, chaos engulfed the Senegal and Niger regions. The states in modern Senegal, Wolof, Serer, Mandinka and Fula, became increasingly decentralized and broken up, with the Fula state of Denianke becoming an hegemon for the 1500's and 1600's before falling itself.
The fall of Songhay left the Middle Niger in utter chaos, with the Arma entrenched on the major cities (Gao, Timbuktu), the Tuareg ruling the deserts, Walata, and occassionally Timbuktu, and the Bambara forming warbands that ransacked the land and eventually coalesced in small chiefdoms led by warrior-chiefs. The Bambara eventually formed a state centered on Segou with the Fulbe of Massina as vassals, until they became independent in the late 18th century.
On the side of Mali, there was a total disintegration after their defeat at Djenne and the death of Mansa Mahmud IV. Kaniaga, which was the traditionally important faran-sura and had been functionally independent (and under Songhay suzerainty for a time), reasserted its independence. Concho, the most powerful state of the southwest ruling over Futa Djallon and the Susu states, and the sankara-zuma, also became independent. Kaabu, on the Gambia, was free of Malian rule and started a frenzied expansion in its region, surviving until the late 19th century. On the south, three Malian successor states splintered and divided between themselves the new Mandinka core. The trading outposts linking Mali with the Gold Coast also became independent, and eventually Kong rose up.
Functionally, this period affected the interior of West Africa in some similar ways as the fall of the Western Roman Empire did in Europe.
Regarding opinions of industrial era Europeans, one must be careful because they offer them in strong contraposition to their own capabilities. This was an era of machined tools and Bessemer steel, with machine guns, smokeless powder and self-loading rifles. Their own swords would have been made industrially. In that light, the techniques they encountered were primitive, but so would have been those used to forge a longsword in 15th century France. In a similar light, it is usual to see European spectator comment on how the natives "don't know how to fence" and how their swords are "poorly balanced". Of course, what they mean is that they are not very good to fence military saber style, which is rather obvious. Also, there's the point of the enormous regional diversity in crafting prowess, much like everywhere in the pre-modern world. Some African tools and weapons are very crudely made, but you also find Samory Ture's artisans being able to manufacture small amounts of functional Kropatschek-like rifles without machining tools.
Regarding the antique examples posted, I would say that all the top row look like they have European saber blades, and the second from the left on the bottom obviously has a machete blades. The others I'd say are of local manufacture. As to their use, neither of those is mutually exclusive. Swords are multidimensional objects, that have a use in combat but also a social and aesthetic value and symbolism. But they were used in war, even in very late dates when most West African soldiers would have been using a gun of some kind.
As an illustration, here is an engraving from 1868 depicting a battle between Bambara and Umar Tall's Fulani