Households and the Political Economy of Small-Scale Cash Crop Production in South-Western Nigeria

International African Institute

Households and the Political Economy of Small-Scale Cash Crop Production in South-WesternNigeriaAuthor(s): Julian ClarkeSource: Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 51, No. 4 (1981), pp. 807-823Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International African InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1159355 .

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Africa 51(4) 1981

HOUSEHOLDS AND THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF SMALL-SCALE CASH CROP PRODUCTION IN

SOUTH-WESTERN NIGERIA

Julian Clarke

The emergence of small-scale cash crop producers throughout West Africa is of central importance to those historians, anthropologists and sociologists who are working on

change in the political economies of various parts of West Africa.'

My own concern with the problem arose out of field research in western Nigeria in 1973/4. The research in question took as its principal historical focus the emergence of small-scale cash crop producing farming enterprises in a particular Yoruba

community. At the time Anthony Hopkins' Economic History of West Africa (1973) appeared to provide a theoretically guided account of the processes of change which had affected West Africa generally during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, an account adequate to the particular material which I was collecting. But when I came to examine my own material and Hopkins' general interpretation more closely, I decided that a substantial part of his position, arguably the central part, was

questionable both factually and analytically. The present paper consists of two parts. The first part briefly reviews and criticises

Hopkins' analysis of the emergence of a category of small-scale cash crop producers. The second describes the relationship between changing household structure and the development of small-scale farming enterprises within the context of a particular community in the Yoruba-speaking area; it is intended both to reinforce the criticisms made of Hopkins' position in the first part and to provide an alternative interpretation of the developments as they took place in the community in question.

THE ECONOMIC REVOLUTION IN WEST AFRICA: HOPKINS' VERSION

Hopkins' analysis of the emergence of independent small-scale cash crop producers begins with the following positional statements:

First it will be argued that the structure of legitimate commerce marked an important break with the past and signified a new phase in the growth of the market, a phase which can be seen as the start of the modern economic history of West Africa. This argument contrasts with the traditional view, which stresses continuities with the past and the ease of transfer to legitimate trade. Second, it will be suggested that the strains involved in creating this economy, combined with the fluctuations in its performance, are central to the understanding of the partition of West Africa in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. (Hopkins, 1973: 124)

There is a third proposition, a corollary of the two quoted, which is not explicitly stated. This proposition is that although colonisation (the 'partition') marked a

significant break politically with what had gone before, the establishment of direct

political control was, in fact, a logical extension of both the expansion of legitimate commerce and increasing pre-invasion political involvement and did not constitute any fundamental economic break with the pre-colonial period. Hopkins' argument runs as



POLITICAL ECONOMY OF SMALL-SCALE FARMING

follows: the abolition of the slave trade and the abolition of slavery in British possessions triggered or forced a reorientation and restructuring of the internal

political economy of the various West African societies. Subsequently, there was a move away from exporting slaves into exporting agricultural goods, these having been marketed in small quantities before the effective abolition of the slave trade.

The switch from human to vegetable exports brought about a structural transformation. Slave acquisition and the various aspects of slave trading were activities whose capital and labour requirements could only be met by enterprises organised on a relatively large scale and 'encouraged the rise of a relatively small group of large entrepreneurs' (Hopkins, 1973: 125). These entrepreneurs were often political heads as well. Agricultural commodities did not have the same capital or labour requirements. Producing and trading in agricultural commodities were:

occupations in which there were few barriers to entry. Legitimate commerce, therefore, enabled small-scale farmers and traders to play an important part in the overseas exchange economy for the first time. In so far as firms of this type and size are the basis of the export economies of most West African states today, it can be said that modernity dates not from the imposition of colonial rule, as used to be thought, but from the early nineteenth century. (Hopkins 1973: 125-6)

It would be foolish to argue that the ending of the slave trade and the initiation of trade in agricultural commodities entailed no changes in structure and organisation of West African political economies. I want to argue, however, that the most significant changes in the structure and organisation of production and trade did occur during the colonial period and that if the problem is to be discussed in terms of disjunction or discontinuities then the establishment of the colonial regimes constitutes the

significant break not only from a political but also, in Hopkins' terms, from an economic point of view.

Hopkins cites very little direct evidence to support his assertions about structural and organisational changes. The evidence that he does provide suggests that, at least in the area of the production of agricultural commodities, the value of slaves was realised

indirectly through labour rather than directly through sale. As far as trade in agricultural commodities is concerned, Hopkins provides no reason for thinking that there were essentially lower capital and labour thresholds as compared with slave trading or that larger enterprises were less 'efficient' and 'competitive' than smaller ones.

The logic of Hopkins' position is also rather shaky. He argues that the production of commodities like palm oil is technically different from the production of slaves and that the shift in trade from the second to the first created one condition for the emergence of a category of small-scale commodity producers directly in competition with the existing powers. It is not clear from Hopkins' text if he sees this argument as explaining the emergence of small-scale commodity production or if he thinks that the change in the technical character of production, including alterations in the nature of capital and labour constraints, is just one of the conditions for its emergence. Only if he argues the latter would he be justified. It will be shown in the second section of the paper that in Ibadan the production of palm oil for export was undertaken primarily by the slaves of household heads. There is nothing to indicate that the shift from slaves to palm oil encouraged the development of small-scale producers and traders. There is no

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reason to suppose that the change in commodity type had, by itself, any particular implications for a change in the organisation of production and the size and structure of commodity producing units. Even if it was possible to demonstrate that the small- scale unit could produce and market palm oil more cheaply than the larger unit in some abstract sense, there would still be no reason to suppose that greater efficiency alone would cause the replacement of the larger unit by the smaller. The second section of the paper will show that there are quite specific reasons for the

disappearance of large units which have nothing to do with alleged comparative efficiency.

Hopkins charts four possible 'responses' to the change in the conditions of trade on the part of the traditional political and economic powers: (i) to continue to export slaves despite the barriers, (ii) to engage in plunder and the exacting of tribute from

neighbours, (iii) to become employers rather than exporters of slaves, (iv) to recognise the new class of entrepreneurs and give them a stake in a reformed political system (Hopkins 1973: 143-4). Responses (i)-(iii) refer to alterations in the conditions of trade, and nothing in the description of these responses implies that a new category of

producers and traders has emerged. Response (iv) asserts that conditions of external trade have changed, that as a consequence a new category of producers and traders has

appeared and that the traditional powers have been forced to respond to it. So only in one of the four scenarios laid out by Hopkins does this new category appear at all.

Presumably in the other three adaptation took place without any major upheaval. Hopkins does say that the big slave producers-response (iii)-faced competition from 'a

multiplicity of small efficient farmers' (Hopkins 1973: 141), but the only major example he adduces is of type (iv): that of the kingdom of Kayor in what is now

Senegal. This example falls under what Hopkins refers to as 'the crisis of the

aristocracy in nineteenth century West Africa', which was 'a social and political crisis

stemming from a contradiction between past and present relations of production'. (Hopkins, 1973: 143) Hopkins does not explore any further this Marxist-sounding notion of contradiction between two social forms of production, so it is very difficult to know what theoretical assumptions he is bringing to bear on his analysis.

There is very little in Hopkins' factual presentation to suggest that a new class or

category of producers and traders emerged in the middle of the nineteenth century. The only empirical situation he cites is that of Kayor. Yet Hopkins' approach suggests that he is operating with a king, nobles and commoners model. The changes in external trade allowed the commoners to become petite bourgeoisie who then sought political representation and economic freedom. This model is inappropriate to the Yoruba case and this will be demonstrated in the second section of the paper. 2

My own contention is that it was, particularly in the Yoruba-speaking area, the colonial invasion and the surrounding circumstances which generated the conditions for the emergence of small-scale producing and trading units. It is not just a case of arguing that the transition which Hopkins describes took place fifty years or so later than he says. The transition that I am going to describe was from production for export controlled within the context of large households primarily by chiefs or household heads, to the dominance, on the production side at least, of independent small-scale

commodity producing units. The growth of a category of small-scale traders also occurred, but it cannot be argued that they became the prime movers in colonial trade, displacing large entrepreneurs; the large entrepreneurial role was taken over by the

809




European merchant companies. Hence there is no direct parallel between production and trade in transition to smaller units. Colonialisation destroyed the conditions in which the large household could exist as a political/military and production/trading unit. It disappeared in the early years of the colonial period along with associated forms of production organisation, control over distribution of cash income and control over the associated consumption of imports. From their ruins emerged smaller units. This

development was possible because of the internal structure of the large units. It was not a case of removal of political barriers to production and trade releasing an imprisoned class of producers and traders.

In the second section an attempt will be made to describe the conditions in which changes came about in the organisation of production in a particular Yoruba

community during the colonial period. At this point, it is worth noting that the colonial period in both Ghana and Nigeria was marked by the widespread adoption of cocoa cultivation, an activity which did mark a technical break with the past. Ironically, cocoa was initially cultivated in Nigeria close to Lagos by merchants using paid labour and was taken up by small farmers afterwards.3

FARMING ENTERPRISES, HOUSEHOLDS AND AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION

The core development which I want to describe is the emergence of small-scale farming enterprises during the colonial period. Changes in production organisation will be approached through an examination of changes in household structure, more general changes in relations within the community, and changes in the community's external relations. The major change to take place in the area was of course the establishment of a colonial administration, and one of the aims of this section of the

paper is to chart both the direct and indirect effects of colonial rule on the organisation of agricultural production. I will argue not that the colonial administration caused or was completely responsible for changes in productive structure, but that it did provide essential conditions for the development which took place.

The section will begin with a description of the control over and organisation of agricultural production in the pre-colonial community. This will be followed by a very brief account of the establishment of colonial rule. Changes in household structure during the early colonial period will then be examined and finally I will look at parallel changes in production organisation, appropriation of product and consumption. Before launching on this account, however, it is necessary to make two explanatory comments: the first about the notion of small-scale farming enterprises and the second about the notion of their development.

The term 'small-scale farming enterprise' is used to refer to a unit which undertakes the production of a particular commodity or commodities for sale in a market or series of markets. Farming enterprises are taken to be formally independent loci of decisions concerning production and marketing. With regard to production they take decisions which are not regulated by any other agency. With regard to appropriation of product and entry into markets, they are independent in the same sense that no agency has the direct capacity or rights to appropriate their product and they are free to dispose of any or all of it in various markets. Enterprises are not necessarily coterminous with either production units or households. Enterprises depend, however, on specific relations

810




with (usually) one household (but sometimes more), and organise at least one (but usually more) production unit.

The notion of their 'development' causes problems because in this case the characteristics of enterprises changed significantly during the twentieth century within the terms of the specification given above. It cannot, therefore, be stated that farming enterprises had emerged in their current (1970s) form by say, 1920, important changes having taken place since that date, although by that date most farming units would have fitted the above specification in most of its aspects. I will, however, proceed on the assumption that it can be demonstrated that the changes which were initiated at the beginning of the colonial period exhibit a continuity or set of continuities which

separate the colonial and pre-colonial periods.

The pre-colonial period

The particular community to be described here is called Okeigbo and is situated in the south-eastern part of the Yoruba-speaking area about ten miles from the town of Ondo. It was founded in the mid-nineteenth century, probably in the late 1840s. Okeigbo was founded in circumstances very similar to those surrounding the establishment of Ibadan in the western part of the Yoruba area. Like Ibadan, Okeigbo was initially constituted out of an army which had detached itself from its parent settlement. Both communities were based around large households headed by powerful men who co- operated for the defence of the community and in slave-raiding campaigns. Okeigbo, however, was much smaller than Ibadan and made much less military and political impact on the Yoruba speaking area than Ibadan.

The historical material available for Okeigbo is very limited.4 For this reason certain features of the social organisation of Ibadan will be examined in order to aid the reconstruction of a schematic account of the political economy of Okeigbo. It will be assumed that Okeigbo and Ibadan are both examples of a type of polity which emerged in the Yoruba-speaking area in the mid-nineteenth century. Although direct parallels are to be made between Okeigbo and Ibadan in terms of the size and structure of household units and the degree of control held by major household heads and chiefs over export products and export product income, the social structure of the two communities does not seem to have been atypical of the Yoruba area in the nineteenth century.5

In his thesis on nineteenth-century Yoruba slavery Oroge (1971) uses the term ologun (which translates roughly as 'war lord') both to describe household heads who organised private armies based on their households for slave raiding, inter-community disputes, and maintenance of power and position within the community, and to describe a large, hierarchically structured household. Not surprisingly then, the feature which is striking about both communities is the large number of slaves which were inducted into them. Slaves were for the most part war captives and were neither purchased nor obtained by the reduction of community members to slavery. The ologun household as it was initially constituted required a regular input of slaves or tribute in order to acquire the military resources necessary to maintain its status. It might have been possible for such households to exist without slave raiding if importing capacity could be generated either through engaging in production and trade or, as happened at Okeigbo, tolls were extracted from traders. (Akintoye, 1968.)

811




Although it seems that slaves were put to work to produce palm oil on farms established by Ibadan households (Awe, 1973), there is no evidence to suggest that Okeigbo households obtained a significant income from this source in the period before the British invasion. Income came from tolls on traders passing up the trade route across which the community's territory was situated and from the taking and sale of slaves, both of which required the maintenance of military capability.

The foregoing comments, however, provide very little information about the internal structure of the ologun household and, among other things, no information about the relation between slaves and free-born. In both Ibadan and Okeigbo it seems that the ologun household may only have functioned as a single unit for certain purposes. Individuals and groups may have been incorporated into a single household for the purposes of military activity and for the maintenance of the fighting force (production of certain specific goods for sale or exchange for weapons). For the purposes of agricultural production for self maintenance the organisation was probably much looser, involving the organisation of production and distribution of foodstuffs on a small scale. Although Awe says that war chiefs were responsible for provisioning their followers, there is no indication that there was any general central mechanism for appropriating and redistributing foodstuffs (Awe, 1973).

A household head who owned a large number of slaves had at once the basis of his own military force, a labour force which could produce palm oil for sale, and a large following within the community which could produce its own means of subsistence. Such a household, however, it is not immediately distinguishable from a household composed of only free-born members, or one composed of a mixture of free-born members and slaves. The formal status of slaves which makes them possessions of their owners is certainly different from that of the owner's free-born, who are also household members, but such a formal distinction does not necessarily have uniform effects. The descriptions of households show that there was no simple differentiation between the two categories. It seems that Ibadan regulated slave status, enforcing it in relation to a single owner.6 Thus slaves had to stay with their captor, whereas it seems that the free- born might move around the community looking for the best opportunities. It does not, however, seem that the free-born had any special privileges in the household such as consistent exemption from agricultural labour or greater access to imported goods. The fact of slave incorporation probably reduced the bargaining position of junior kin: a threat of departure in a household containing several hundred slaves would not carry much weight. The main privilege enjoyed by the free-born was immunity from sale. As suggested, though, many slaves incorporated into a household enjoyed an equally effective immunity.

Individuals seem to have performed farm labour irrespective of slave or free status. The distribution of income from the sale of palm oil, or the distribution of slaves captured in battle or slave raids, seems not to have been affected in any particular way by the formal status of the individuals engaged in the production of either. For instance, Johnson refers to two categories of fighting slaves. The first was provided for in every way by the household head and formed the permanent core of the household military force. A second category of slaves was only required in time of war, and during periods of peace these slaves 'followed their own avocation and provided for themselves'. If a slave took captives in battle he might be able to keep some of them and even use them to redeem himself(Johnson, 1921: 325).

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Detail about the organisation of agricultural production and appropriation of

product in both Okeigbo and Ibadan is hard to come by. Speaking about Ibadan in

general terms, Awe mentions two kinds of farms, those close to the town, oko etile, worked by people who commuted daily from the town, and oko ?gan, which were sited some distance away and had villages attached to them where those who worked such farms lived semi-permanently (Awe, 1973: 69).7 The basis for Awe's distinction is one of location. Implicit in her description, however, is an additional distinction based on size and organization. (It also emerges that the farms she refers to were in some way controlled by one or other of the big households.) The oko fgan were larger than the oko etile. Awe gives the following account:

This . . type of farm was colonised by a labour force made up of women, children and slaves. The average size of the farm is not known, but the fact that some oko fgan could boast of as many as six hundred or more slaves indicates that each of these distant farms must have covered a fairly large area. (Awe, 1973: 69-70)

Awe does not provide detailed information about the way production decisions were taken, about how labour was organised, nor about the appropriation and distribution of foodstuffs. There is no detail available about the division of tasks but there is a suggestion that certain categories of slaves and women and children provided the subsistence for the household's fighting force, at least while it was resident in the city.

There are similar problems of detail when it comes to describing the production of and trade in palm oil. Ibadan had two means of obtaining the palm oil. One was by taking it from conquered communities, large tributes particularly being taken in palm oil from the Ekiti (Akintoye, 1968: 45). The second was by home production and it is clear that individuals who could control the production of large quantities of palm oil could acquire imported weapons. Production required a labour force and so the war chief with hundreds of slaves was almost automatically a big producer. Oroge says that a war chief had to be a good trader, but it appears that such chiefs did not always trade directly with those who transported palm oil to the coast, full-time traders often performing this function (Oroge, 1971: 158). It seems that slaves who produced palm oil were also sometimes responsible for trading it, returning the proceeds to their owners (Oroge, 1971: 283). Palm oil taken in tribute went to the household head (war chief) to whom the town or area giving the oil was tributary. It seems unlikely from these accounts that income from palm oil was widely distributed and there is certainly no evidence of competition between large and small producers and between large and small traders. In addition, Awe says that Ijebu traders purchased corn, beans and yams from Ibadan people. There is, unfortunately, no information about how the proceeds of such sales were distributed. In fact there are very few details at all about the trade in primary foodstuffs, especially in the crucial area of its value relative to the exports of palm oil.

A Travelling Commission sent out in 1886 from Lagos by the British to negotiate an end to the Kiriji war noted the following when they were travelling between Okeigbo and Ondo:

The road by which we travelled during the day lay through farms and I was surprised to see the extent of land under cultivation. It is a curious fact that while Okeigbo people go ir so extensively for farming, the Ode Ondo people do very little in that way, and are almost entirely dependent on Okeigbo for supplies of corn and yams.8

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Although the Commissioner probably exaggerated the Ondo disinclination to produce food the description is reminiscent of Ibadan trade relations with Ijebu. Trade routes to the Atlantic coast for Ibadan and Okeigbo lay through Ijebu and Ondo respectively. The Commissioners had visited the senior chief in Okeigbo, Aderin Ologbenla (Ologbenla= possessor of a mighty sword) because of the strategic position of Okeigbo (across a trade route) in the Kiriji conflict. A grandson of one of Aderin's principal fighters made the following comments:

These men [the household heads and their followers] were warriors and hunters. Slaves and pawns did the farm work. Those that were captured in war were treated well so that they might not think of their own place. They were mingled with their captor's children and adopted.9

Another respondent added that Aderin's household farmed land on the north side of the town, probably not more than a mile from the edge of the settlement. Aderin's slaves worked together with his children, the work being supervised by his senior slaves. Everyone returned to Aderin's compound at night; all categories of compound members lived within the compound walls.10

Today there is no obvious physical evidence of the original compound. A well defined area, however, is still recognised as having been occupied by the original structure. The area now fronts on to one of Okeigbo's main streets. The frontage is well over two hundred feet and extends for about a hundred yards to the rear. The compound is said to have had a single main gate which was kept open all day and closed after dark.

Although detail about the political economy of Okeigbo, in particular its agricultural organisation, is scant, inferences can be made from contemporary descriptions of Ibadan. There is no indication of large scale palm oil production and trade, but as noted already it seems that Okeigbo was supplying the nearby city of Ondo with foodstuffs. There is no indication, however, of how the foodstuff trade was organised, nor the manner of the appropriation of its proceeds. The income of Okeigbo chiefs appears mainly to have come, even in the 1880s, from the sale of slaves and the taking of tolls from traders who passed through the area controlled by the community. In addition, Johnson (1921: 458) says that Aderin received slaves and other gifts from communities seeking his goodwill. In the absence of other sources of income, revenue from the above mentioned sources may have been sufficient to provide the imported materials necessary to keep household fighting forces and consequently the community fighting force intact.

I have made no mention of political conflict within either Ibadan or Okeigbo. From its foundation until shortly before the colonial invasion Okeigbo appears to have been controlled by Aderin. Several other leaders figure in the oral history of the town but never as competitors or in conflict with Aderin. There was no emerging peasant or petite bourgeoisie class economically or politically separated from the war chiefs. All members of the community were either incorporated into one of the large households or were dependent on one. There is nothing to suggest economic and political polarisation on class lines.

Ibadan was a community riven by internal conflict from its early days. These

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conflicts are documented by Johnson (1921) and by Akinyele (1971). There were conflicts between the ethnically diverse components of the community (Akinyele, 1971, vol. 1: 55-67), conflicts between war chiefs for dominance within the

community (Johnson, 1921: 289-91). The conflict between senior and junior males over access to wives will be referred to below; there is no direct evidence for it in either Ibadan or Okeigbo in the pre-colonial period. There may have been many political crises in both communities in the second half of the nineteenth century but none of them can legitimately be described as a crisis of an aristocracy. l

The establishment of the colonial administration

The internal structure of the Yoruba economy around the turn of the century does not seem to have been greatly affected by the formal imposition of British rule. (Berry, 1975: 36)

In a very immediate sense Berry's statement may be true. The establishment of the colonial state, however, had far-reaching implications for the organisation of agricultural production in Okeigbo. For this reason a brief examination of the effects of incorporation into the colonial state is necessary. My basic contention is that the establishment of the colonial state destroyed the conditions which had enabled the ologun household to exist. In addition, it reconstituted Okeigbo as a community within a novel administrative context. The most important consequence of this for agricultural production was the constitution of political-legal mechanisms for the establishment of private property in land. The drawing of internal colonial boundaries and the establishment of administrative hierarchies had consequences not only for the form of land holding but also for the actual distribution of land among communities.'2

The end of internal warring within the Yoruba area and the subsequent 'demobilisation' brought about a reorganisation of activity at all levels. The end of slave raiding and the military activity which it presupposed was the first significant blow to the ologun households and the political-economic control of the war chiefs. The removal of the right (and ability) of chiefs to levy tolls and duties on trade soon followed. The disappearance of the conditions of slave capture, although it removed one of the conditions necessary for the existence of slavery, did not bring about an end to slavery immediately (Atanda, 1973: 238). It does appear, however, that slaves who had not been fully incorporated into the Okeigbo community decamped very quickly. More will be said about this below.

The Pax Britannica allowed the replacement of the cowrie with a standardised metal currency, the use of which spread rapidly in the hinterland in the new conditions of trade which followed the 'opening up' of the territory (Hopkins, 1966). It can also be argued that the imposition of a standard currency was a principal condition for opening up trade to a wider range of actors. A system of roads and the railway followed the imposition of colonial rule fairly quickly. More generally, the peace allowed more freedom of movement both to traders and to others who wished to move about unhindered. It also provided secure conditions for the cultivation of much wider tracts of land than had been possible during the period of warfare. Such a possibility was an essential condition for the cultivation of cocoa.

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Changes in household structure

The establishment of colonial rule removed the political and military conditions for the existence of ologun households. The effects, however, reached much further. The

ologun household ceased also to exist as a productive and distributive unit. The ologun household disappeared for quite specific reasons which I shall describe. It did not

disappear because economic logic was running against it or because it had lost

comparative advantage against other organisational forms. Information for the colonial

period is much more detailed than for the pre-colonial and it is possible to develop a much clearer picture, both of the way in which household heads controlled dependants and the way in which dependent household members set up independent households. There are fuller descriptions for the period 1895-1920 than for the pre-colonial period because the oldest surviving age group in the community at the time of fieldwork, those over seventy-five years, had direct memories of conditions in the early part of this

century. The most striking feature about the accounts given by the old men is the absence of

any details of the position of slaves. Slaves were mentioned in only two accounts out of a total of more than a dozen, and in both cases the reference was to slaves in households other than the one to which the speaker belonged.'3 Pawns (iwgfa) are mentioned in most of the accounts, although there is no way of telling whether pawning became more frequent with the decline of slavery (Johnson, 1921: 126-31; Fadipe, 1970:

189-93). The absence of slaves may be accounted for in two ways. First, it was noted above that there was an exodus of slaves from Okeigbo at the beginning of the colonial

period-several hundred are said to have left the compound of Aderin Ologbenla on one day in 1894. Second, there is an absence of detailed information about the adoption of slaves and the methods of incorporating second-generation slaves into the

community. For this reason it can be supposed that may people who were either of slave origin or still of slave status were either not considered or treated as such and with the establishment of colonial rule lost their slave status altogether.

It is certain that, because of the exit of slaves, the large households declined in size. How much of a decline there was, or how quickly it happened remains a matter for speculation. With the end of military activity, however, one of the reasons for the existence of the large household disappeared. It was no longer possible to put a household force into the field and with the demise of the household force the necessity of controlling the resources for obtaining the materials of war also disappeared. In addition, the possibility of becoming a powerful member of the community through being close to a war chief or through exploits in battle also vanished; the structure of opportunities for the dependants of a war chief changed completely.

It seems that in the first years of colonial rule there was no immediate change in the physical appearance of the large compound of the ologun households. Their internal social arrangements, however, did change as the focus on military activity disappeared. What had been for many purposes a single household fragmented into several effectively independent households. To illustrate this point I shall examine the fate of one particular ologun household. The respondent, a man of about seventy-five in 1973, remembered living in his grandfather's akodi as a child. The akodi had been built to accommodate more than twenty wives and their children as well as slaves and other dependants. The speaker's father was not the senior man out of those resident in the

816




akodi so he did not have the final control in matters of access to living quarters, but he was head of his own household in so far as he was married with children and was an

independent farmer.'4 The conditions in which the original household came into being must be understood

if the conditions of its dissolution into smaller units are to be made clear. The builder of the original akodi had been one of the ologun grouped around Aderin. This man still had eighteen wives living with him when he died in the late 1890s and also about

seventy of his children were there. The respondent could actually name twenty-three of those children. On the death of his grandfather, his father became head of one of the sections into which the household was divided.

In the absence of slave raiding it was clearly impossible for any of the sections of the

ologun household to grow into a facsimile of its parent. There were, for instance, no more slave wives to be incorporated free of bridewealth.'5 Although it cannot be assumed that an ologun household remained intact on the death of its head and it cannot be assumed that the fragmentation just described was a unique product of the colonial period, it can be argued that an ologun household could not survive the death of its head after the beginning of the colonial period. (Neither could the fragments of such a household be absorbed into another.) The net result was the existence for

varying durations at the beginning of the colonial period of linked households which were the remains of the pre-colonial ologun households.

The respondent's father built his own house in Okeigbo in about 1912. It was a

single-storey structure big enough to contain the following people: five or six junior 'brothers' to the household head (the speaker did not specify the relationships more

precisely), four wives and their children (including the speaker), a number of pawns who varied between two and four in the period before the building of the house. The

membership of the household varied between seventeen and twenty. In addition to the full household members there were also four or five of what the speaker described as

'sojourners' living in the house.'6 These were men who were not dependants of the household head but who had attached themselves to the house and lived there

periodically. The sojourners had gathered around the speaker's father because of his

reputation as a hunter and farmer. It is not clear how the household head benefited from their presence, although it is clear that they were no burden on him, being farmers producing their own subsistence. It seems that they may have been an additional source of labour at certain times of the year. Sojourner status was associated with affinal ties and often when they built houses of their own they did not build them in or near their natal compounds but close to the house where they stayed. The labour

obligations of an affine or potential affine towards the household head has been described by other writers (Fadipe, 1970: 150; Ojo, 1966: 60-1).

One of the major conditions for male productive independence within the

community was marriage, and, as marriage required resources controlled by the head of the household, the dependent producer relied on him for the provision of these resources. There were, however, other problems. It seems that the conjugal fate of women was settled very early at this time; one of the problems facing a young man was to find a girl who was not already spoken for by an older man. The accumulation of wives by men who were already married created access problems for younger men. In the absence of slaves the only way for a young man to generate an agricultural labour force was to accumulate wives who would work, who would produce children to work

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and who would bring affines who might work also. Control over a large labour force, as has already been seen, was one of the conditions for the generation of a saleable

agricultural surplus. In turn marriage resources could be acquired. In this situation it is likely that a senior man would have to choose between marrying an additional wife and providing one for one of his dependants. One of the controls on senior males was the possibility of temporary migration to the area around Lagos where there were a number of wage labour possibilities. The extent and nature of the controls over the senior male's authority, such as the transfer by a dependant from one household to another, is unknown but the presence of sojourners in the household discussed suggests that it may have been fairly common. The pattern of marriage payments during this period was complicated and protracted; suffice it to say here that the items

(cloth, alcohol and money) needed to complete a marriage could only be obtained by those who had access to cash incomes which allowed them to purchase imports.

The control of the labour of dependent males through the control of marriage was a source of considerable tension and conflict during this period and informants who were young at the time, and who subsequently left the town for considerable periods in search of what they saw as better opportunities, described their situation in extreme terms. Several of them refer to their condition being no better than that of slaves. To make matters worse, it appears that it was young men who were often pawned to meet

expenses incurred by their seniors. During this period the conditions for the maintenance of a household containing

even a small number of dependent adult males began to disappear. It seems, however, that the process was not a uniform one, as some households with four or five

dependent males remained up until the late 1940s. Earlier it was argued that the decline in household size was partially due to the exodus of slaves and the removal of the possibilities of incorporating more slaves. The household described above, however, still contained four or five adult male independent kin quite apart from the household head's own children. By the mid-1920s these dependent kin had left the household and had been replaced in the production units organised by the household head by his children and by migrant paid labour17 (this was made possible by growing cash income from cocoa production).

It can be inferred from a number of cases of temporary migration by young male

community members from Okeigbo during the period 1905-20 that the retention of even sons as household dependants and potential agricultural workers was becoming more difficult. It is impossible to attribute to this pattern of migration to a single or even a primary cause. One partial explanation which is tempting is that young men saw an increasing proportion of their labour going into the production of cash crops and into the purchase of imports which went to obtain an extra wife for their father, rather than into the production of items which were consumed directly by the whole household. Any of these considerations combined with the possibility of earning cash as a wage labourer may have encouraged young men to leave. Whatever the causes, the effects were important. The change in household size and structure had a critical effect on the way in which cash crop production developed.18

Changes in production, income distribution and consumption There are two important aspects of change which have to be considered. The first is the adoption of new export crops, principally cocoa, but also kola (Cola nitida) with

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different labour requirements from palm products. The second is alterations in how the means of production were distributed, how production was organised and how income was distributed and used. It is the second group of changes which are our concern here.

The end of slave raiding and of the levying of tolls and duties simultaneously destroyed one of the sources of importing capacity and the necessity for importing a range of military goods. It has been argued that in the pre-colonial period income from exports was largely in the hands of the heads of households and used primarily for maintaining their military establishments. With the breakdown of the large household, access to income generated by the sale of agricultural exports became available to a wider range of people, and with this, access to non-military imports became more widespread. How did the broadening of access take place? The disintegration of the conditions in which the ologun households existed altered the conditions in which it was possible to produce export crops and the way in which access to income thus generated was controlled. Households became smaller and household heads were only able to control the cash income generated by the labour of a much smaller number of people. Consumption was reorientated away from military expenditure towards

personal consumption, including such activities as marriage exchanges, funeral ceremonies and title-taking.

Berry argues that the new crop, cocoa, was adopted in response to a search for new economic opportunities. This is true but it must be recognised that in Okeigbo and the Yoruba area more generally cocoa production emerged within a new structure of

production. The form in which cocoa production did emerge, that is, as the activity of

many small-scale farming units, it is to be seen both as the result of the breakdown of the large households and as one of the primary conditions of the immense growth of production levels during the colonial period. The patterns of expenditure which developed parallel with the contraction of household size and the increase in the number of discrete households were qualitatively different from pre-colonial ones.

They were also quantitatively different because of the increase in the number of independent loci of production and consumption decisions.

The immense growth in export production which took place during the early part of the colonial period (Nigeria produced over 25,000 tons of cocoa in 1919 in addition to

palm oil exports, almost all the cocoa being produced in the forest belt of the Yoruba

area) lies in the reorientation of production away from subsistence items (a necessary focus of the ologun household with fighters to support). The reorientation of the farming unit involved expansion of cash crop cultivation at the expense of food crop production and in turn generated a trade in foodstuffs between the savannah and forest belt sections of the Yoruba area. In his study carried out during World War II Forde

says:

... in Oyo Province as a whole one quarter of the farmers are now primarily dependent on cocoa production and grow practically no foodcrops at all once their trees are in full bearing ... Similarly in south-western parts, where cocoa has been grown for twenty-five years, the farmers buy the bulk of their food and no longer trouble to grow it. Yams are imported in increasing quantity from the northern part of the Province. (Forde and Scott, 1946: 86-7)

Up to now women had only been represented as marriage objects transferred from one subordinate position (daughter) to another (wife). In the early part of the colonial

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period women engaged in what may be described as their traditional portion of agricultural labour: weeding, harvesting food crops, providing labour for transporting farm products and the processing of raw food crops. As cocoa production developed they became increasingly involved in the various labour processes associated with it. This happened at least partially because of the increasing unavailability of dependent male labour. For this reason the locus of negotiations about the provision of farm labour shifted from the relation between households heads and their sons and other males dependent on them to the relation between household heads and their wives. Thus the labour structure characteristic of cocoa producing farming units is very much a feature of the colonial period.

Despite their increasingly impressive contribution to agricultural production and to cash crop production in particular, the most noticeable alteration in the position of women was a massive move into small and medium scale trading operations.19 Although Yoruba women have a traditional reputation for trading, the real growth in their involvement in trade, in Okeigbo at least, took place in the colonial period. Evidence about their pre-colonial involvement is scarce, but it seems that with some important exceptions external trade was carried on by men. In the very early years of the colonial period when transport was still confined to the headloading of goods and to canoes, it was primarily men who organised the export of palm products and cocoa and the import of manufactures. Women, it seems, worked as porters for male traders.20 As roads were built and transport improved and as the number of consumption units and individual consumers grew the numbers of women involved in trade grew very fast. A large and complex credit network grew up composed of a myriad of small transactions, a network largely organised by women traders. The growth of the number of women in trade was promoted not only by an increase in the number of consumers and the multiplication of small transactions in manufactured items. The existence of many small-scale farming units created a problem of the bulking of crops for export. Again women stepped in and by the early 1930s there was a large group of female 'pan' buyers purchasing small quantities of cocoa on the farms and transporting it to bulking centres. The growth of a category of small scale traders handling both exports and imports is directly attributable to the way in which agricultural production developed during the colonial period.

CONCLUSION

In the second section of this paper I have tried to describe how the small-scale farming enterprises which most writers, including Hopkins and myself, agree have been and still are the basis of West African export economies developed within a particular Yoruba community. I have also argued that the timing and nature of this development were typical of the forest Yoruba area as a whole. My account, which takes the colonial invasion as the main point of discontinuity and the initiator of the changes ensuring that export production would be dominated by small-scale enterprises, diverges substantially from that of Hopkins. I have not argued that the transition from the slave trade to legitimate trade was not a major factor promoting dislocations and conflict within West Africa, including the Yoruba area. What I have argued is that, in the Yoruba area at least, the dislocations and conflict cannot be described in terms of the opposition between an emerging class of small producers (petite bourgeoisie) and a

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politically and economically dominant aristocracy. The inadequacy of Hopkins' general account of political-economic transition in the Yoruba-speaking area is thrown into sharp relief by the sensitivity of his own brief account of the Agege cocoa pioneers (Hopkins, 1978). In that account Hopkins avoids inference from 'economic logic' replacing it with detailed local analysis linked to a wider context.

I do not regard this paper as having disproved Hopkins in a definitive manner. Nor do I think that the most important feature of the argument is the retiming of the transition from large to small units in the Yoruba area. My main intention is to redirect efforts to the examination of the range of social relationships which are characterised by the term 'household'. The focus has thus been on alterations in household structure and related production organisation. It has not been argued, however, that the past eighty years or so in the Yoruba area can be characterised in terms of changes in something called 'the household economy'. Such a formulation would obscure more than it revealed. The ologun household and the small farming household which emerged in the first two decades of this century are not the same kind of object. It would be misleading to conceptualise either as a 'basic social unit' articulating as a concrete and bounded whole with other bounded social institutions. Rather both are to be seen as significant arenas of social action which intersect with other such arenas; the boundaries of these arenas being subject to continual revision and modification. The ologun household disintegrated very quickly after the colonial invasion for reasons which have been given. Small-scale farming enterprises and the households on which they depend have changed much more gradually since their emergence and a swift collapse is very unlikely. The terminology of a 'large scale entrepreneur' and a 'small peasant farmer' and the replacement of one by the other does not begin to be adequate to the analysis of the relationships involved.

NOTES

I have used the term 'political economies' rather than 'economies' to suggest the illegitimacy of separating two domains of analysis: 'politics' and 'economies'.

2 Hopkins refers to a paper by Martin Klein (1971) to support his case. Klein's paper does not deal with Kayor-reference to Kayor can be found in Klein's earlier book (1968). In the paper Klein is certainly interested to document the change to legitimate commerce, but ironically his main conclusions (1971: 28) do not really confirm Hopkins' arguments. In addition, Klein shows that the emergence of large military- based households was a widespread phenomenon in Africa and that their emergence (and presumably decline) was due to much more complex structural factors than 'economies of trade'. It is a further irony that Klein's principal source for the Yoruba area was a paper written by Hopkins (1968) in whch Hopkins first appears to have categorised the four 'responses' of the traditional African powers in relation only to Yoruba rulers and not, as in his book, in relation to West African rulers in general. In the Yoruba-speaking area, conflicts between small producers and 'the powers that be' are characteristic of the colonial and post- colonial periods, not the pre-colonial.

3 That cocoa production started in this way is clearly recognised by Berry (1968, 1975) and by Hopkins himself(1978).

4 Historical material on Okeigbo consists of(l) published materials, for instance Johnson (1921), (2) a short history in Yoruba written in 1956 by a grandson of Aderin Obogbenla, (3) a range of colonial files to be found in the National Archives, Ibadan, (4) Interviews with senior men and women in Okeigbo and its twin town Ifetedo. Full details of these sources, together with qualifying remarks, can be found in Clarke (1979: 567-8). 5 For example, John Peel has told me that nineteenth-century Ilesha possessed many of the same features. My own research suggests that the same is true of nineteenth-century Ife (during those times at which it was actually populated!).

6 Some regulation is suggested both by Johnson (1921: 324-7) and Oroge (1971: 91-3, 137-8).

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7 Both terms were used in Okeigbo (Clarke, 1979: 132) but oko ?gan appears to have referred to bush cleared at some considerable distance from the main settlement. It did not suggest the existence of a subordinate village, but appears to have referred to a substantial tract of land (over five acres) cleared at one time by a large labour force.

8 The quotation is an extract from the report of the Commission (Parliamentary Papers, Irish University Press edition, Vol. 63: 375). 9 The Yoruba term for pawns is iwqfa-for a definition of the term see Johnson (1921: 126-30) and Fadipe (1970: 189-93).

10 It is virtually impossible to estimate the numbers of economically active people in Aderin's compound during the period. I was told by one old man that when Aderin died (c. 1892) there were in the region of four hundred slaves living in his compound. 11 The absence of internal power conflicts in Okeigbo may be explained in terms of its relative ethnic heterogeneity (the dominance of people of Ife origin) and Aderin's royal origins; he was elected, in his absence, as Ooni of Ife in the 1880s but declined to take up office.

12 For an account of these effects in the case of Okeigbo, see Clarke (1980). 13 The question of slaves was raised many times with older respondents, but on all except two

occasions respondents said that they had only heard about slaves and knew none themselves. 14 In the Ife area the term akodi refers to a compound meeting house, which sometimes also

accommodates the compound'head (bale). In Okeigbo the term is used both to refer to a compound meeting house and a residential structure with an internal courtyard and impluvium.

15 In the pre-colonial period it appears that young men in particular made marriage 'payments' in the form of protracted labour service.

16 The term 'sojourner' was used by the respondent in English and has no direct Yoruba equivalent. 17 After World War I migrants from immediately north of the Yoruba area and from some of the

northern Yoruba areas (Ekiti, for instance) came to work as farm labourers in the areas where cocoa was established.

18 The rest of the colonial period saw a continuing decline in the size of households and the size of production units organised by household heads. The situation was aggravated by the number of sons who were sent to school by their fathers. With one son at school it became no easier to keep the rest as dependent labourers.

19 In Okeigbo, at least, women's craft production declined severely. Skills common in the period before 1914 such as making pottery and weaving were relatively rare in 1973-74.

20 Women were extensively engaged in work as porters for the traders. My own evidence relates to the period 1900-14. Deji Ogunremi (1975) provides a much fuller account of human porterage in Nigeria.

REFERENCES

Akintoye, S. A. 1968. 'The economic background of the Ekitiparapo 1878-1893', Odu 4:30- 52 Akinyele, I. B. 1971. The Outlines of Ibadan History, (ed. Kemi Morgan) Ibadan n.d. (2 vols). Atanda, J. A. 1973. The New Oyo Empire: a Study in British Indirect Rule in Western Nigeria

1894-1934. London: Longman Awe, B. 1973. 'Militarism and economic development in nineteenth century Yoruba country:

the Ibadan example', Journal of African History 14: 65- 77. Berry, S. S. 1968. 'Christianity and the rise of cocoa growing in Ibadan and Ondo', Journal of

the Historical Society of Nigeria 4:439-451. -1975. Cocoa, Custom and Socio-economic change in Rural Western Nigeria, Oxford: Clarendon

Press. Clarke, J. 1979. 'Agricultural Production in a Rural Yoruba Community', unpublished Ph.D.

thesis, University of London. - 1980. 'Peasantization and land-holding', in Peasants in Africa, ed. M. Klein, Beverley Hills:

Sage. Fadipe, N. A. 1940. 'The Sociology of the Yoruba', unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of

London. - 1970. The Sociology of the Yoruba (F. 0. and 0. O. Okediji, eds.), Ibadan: University Press. Forde, D., and Scott, R. 1946. The Native Economies of Nigeria, London: Faber. Hopkins, A. G. 1966. 'The currency revolution in south-western Nigeria in the late nineteenth

century', Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, 3:471-483

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- 1968. 'Economic imperialism in West Africa: Lagos, 1880-92', Economic History Review 21:580-606.

- 1973. An Economic History of West Africa. London: Longman. - 1978. 'Innovation in a colonial context: African origins of the Nigerian cocoa-farming

industry 1880-1920', in C. Dewey and A.G. Hopkins (eds.), The Imperial Impact: Studies in the Economic History of Africa and India. London: University of London for the Institute of Commonwealth Studies (Commonwealth Papers, 21).

Johnson, S. 1921. The History of the Yoruba from the Earliest Times to the Beginnings of the British Protectorate, Lagos: CMS Bookshops.

Klein, M. 1969. Islam and Imperialism in Senegal: Sine-Saloum 1847-1914, Edinburgh: University Press.

- 1971. 'Slavery, the slave trade, and legitimate commerce in late nineteenth century Africa', Etudes d'Histoire Africaines, II, 1971, 5-28.

Ojo, G. J. A. 1966. Yoruba Culture: a Geographical Analysis, London: University Press. Parliamentary Papers. 1973. Irish University Press edition, Vol. 63. Ogunremi, D. 1975. 'Human porterage in Nigeria in the nineteenth century', Journal of the

Historical Society of Nigeria VIII, No. I (1975) 37. Oroge, 0. 1971. 'The Institution of Slavery in Yorubaland with particular reference to the

Nineteenth Century', unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham.

Resume

Les maisons et l'economie politique des petits cultivateurs et du marche au comptant dans le sud-ouest du Nigeria

Une analyse des consequences precises de la colonisation en ce qui concerne les economies politiques locales de l'Afrique de l'ouest est indispensable si l'on veut bien comprendre les changements qui ont ete effectues a la structure et a l'organisation de l'agriculture et du commerce.

Au cours de la decennie passee une des theses principales avancees au sujet de ces changements est celle de Hopkins (1973). Il pretend que l'effondrement de la traite des noirs et la croissance du commerce "legitime" des produits agricoles ont opere un changement fondamental aux economies politiques de l'Afrique de l'ouest. Dans la societe yoruba, en particulier, la reorientation des occupations productives et commerciales a precipite une lutte entre une categorie de petits cultivateurs ou de capitalistes peu importants qui avait surgi nouvellement et une categorie de chefs et de leaders militaires qui existait deja et qui etait politiquement dominante.

Dans cet article on soutient que l'enonce de la these de Hopkins et la chronologie qu'il propose pour le changement aux economies politiques locales yoruba sont tous les deux faux. C'est l'invasion coloniale qui a cree les conditions dans lesquelles les structures politiques et economiques yoruba du dix-neuvieme siecle se sont effondrees. A l'appui de cette these on examine un peuple yoruba specifique-celui d'Okeigbo oiu l'institution dominante etait la grande maison militaire dont les membres faisaient le commerce des esclaves. D'autres institutions etaient importantes mais la maison militaire etait le cadre dans lequel les occupations productives et commerciales ont ete faites jusqu'a l'invasion coloniale. La colonisation a detruit les conditions dans lesquelles une telle maison pouvait exister et a rendu possible le developpement d'une categorie de marchands cultivateurs independants et dont les transactions etaient au comptant.

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Households and the Political Economy of Small-Scale Cash Crop Production in South-Western Nigeria

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