Felicia and Rémi at the XIX World Economic History Congress in Paris
After being postponed because of the COVID crisis, the 19th World Congress was finally held in the new Campus Condorcet, in Aubervilliers, just outside Paris. The Congress theme this year was “resources”, that is natural, material, immaterial and human (work and skill): water, air, energy, food products, raw materials, labour, capital, patents etc., as one of the main challenges of the contemporary world.
During three intense and exciting days, Felicia and Rémi had the opportunity to discuss the project with colleagues from across the whole world, including Catiá Antunes (Leiden University), Cheikh Sené (Villa i-Tatti), and Koji Yamamoto (The University of Tokyo).
While Felicia combined the conference with a visit to the French National Archives in Pierrefite, Rémi Dewière presented a paper on the panel “Trans-Saharan and Saharan Trade: new approaches and new sources to a global economic system (800-1850)”, organised by Hadrien Collet (IFAO-Cairo) and Ingrid Houssaye Michienzi (CNRS). The session explored the renewal of economic history in the Saharan space, from the early Middle Ages to the Age of Exploration. It discussed long distance trade, the relation between politics and economy, and local actors in regional and continental trade. In his communication, “Gift Exchanges and State Economies in trans-Saharan relations (16th-17th c.)” Rémi Dewière demonstrated that the gifts were a part of a normalized practice of trans-Saharan diplomacy. Beyond the message carried by the gifts themselves, the Borno sultans mixed economic and political interests by integrating the exchanges of gifts into the wider trans-Saharan trade. Migration, skills, and innovation were central here: the most prestigious gifts sent by the Pacha of Tripoli to the sultan of Borno, a precolonial Islamic State in Northern Nigeria, were European slaves. These slaves were praised as experts in the use of firearms, and integrated the sultan’s armies, alongside the voluntary migrants coming from the Ottoman empire, who were known as trainers of the Borno musketeers.
Links:
Special Issue of L’Histoire, in partnership with the WEHC:
