Keller 3 Edits

Rough Draft #3 Holmes Project 2015 Podcast Transcript Hello and welcome to the third episode of this podcast series! My name is Harlee Keller, and in this segment I am going to be discussing the institution of diplomacy in pre-colonial West Africa. In the first episode, I discussed the relationship between written and oral history in this region, paying specific attention to role of the griot. In the second episode, I examined storytelling as a vehicle for cultural identity particularly in Senegal and surrounding areas. If you are interested in either of those topics, those podcasts are available for listening and reading through Humboldt State University’s International Studies website. This third podcast will place the griot in a wider context of diplomacy in precolonial West Africa, more specifically the Mali Empire, long predating what is often considered the beginning of modern diplomacy. It will then discuss the griot—a position with many names and forms—in that system. Understanding this background will demonstrate that, despite the fact that the Mali Empire’s system of diplomatic relations came before the treaties of Westphalia in 1648, the Mali Empire can and should be viewed as a functioning state system in pre-colonial Africa. This episode’s topic is like a set of Chinese nesting boxes—able to nestle snugly inside each other. It is critical that each piece be unpacked one by one and laid out in succession in order to give its audience a clear, easy to follow representation of what exactly was going on on the diplomatic front in West Africa before national boundaries were drawn on maps and modern state systems were created. 1 The first question—or box to be unpacked—is what exactly is diplomacy? That depends on your definition. The Merriam Webster dictionary keeps it very general, saying it is “the work of maintaining good relations between the governments of different countries.”1 The U.S. State Department says diplomacy is “…a complex and often challenging practice of fostering relations around the world in order to resolve issues and advance interests.”2 Ragnar Numelin gets right to the root of it when he says “diplomacy, if by this word we mean the maintenance of official relations between tribes and peoples, may probably be traced back to primitive beginnings.”3 Simply put, groups of people have formed communities since the dawn of the human era and interacted with one another, whether in a cooperative or aggressive fashion. Thus the need for a messenger became necessary as “…a mechanism to convey messages between societies safely and reliably.”4 This is diplomacy in its crudest form. Choosing to coexist with your neighbor or choosing to go to battle with them are diplomatic choices. Of course, diplomacy as we have come to know it, is much more complicated than that. It is negotiation. It is accords. It is signed treaties. It is alliances. The Westphalian Peace Accords are generally accepted as a major milestone in the development of the present state system. Several imperial states existed within the relatively compact region of Europe, and tensions mounted due to territorial issues and religious conflict. When it finally came to a head, a congress consisting of representatives from a total of 109 parties convened to discuss the development of sovereignty.5 With the signing of these treaties in 1648, the several imperial states that existed within and around central Europe formed a view and specific idea of sovereign existence. This meant that each leader, and the territory that they 1 Merriam-Webster Dictionary, s.v. “diplomacy.” 2 U.S. Department of State. “Diplomacy Dictionary,” s.v. “Diplomacy.” diplomacy.state.gov. 3 Numelin, Ragnar. The Beginnings of Diplomacy: a Sociological Study of Intertribal and International Relations. (Oxford University Press, 1950), pp. 124. 4 Langhorne, Richard. “History and the Evolution of Diplomacy.” Diplo.edu. (1998) 5 Gross, Leo (1948). "The Peace of Westphalia, 1648–1948". American Journal of International Law 42 (1): 20–41 pp. 25. 2 were in control of, should determine their system of governance without external interference. This, in turn, created a balance of power that maintained and prevented neighboring nations intruding in domestic issues. It is at this point in history that the “state,” or at least a closer cousin to what we have today, was recognized. In many scholarly discussions on international relations, diplomacy is not a timeless, evolving institution. It is one augmented by pre- and post- peace of Westphalia, the argument being that statecraft only earned its sophistication upon the signing of these treaties. This is not to say that inter-state relations were not happening before Westphalia. Quite the contrary. Sophisticated diplomatic relations were going on in several different areas of the world predating the common era—including our subject here: the Mali Empire. The Mali Empire was not the first or only empire in Africa (or the world) to utilize diplomatic tools in order to interact with others. Though rich in oral tradition, the ancient empires of Africa did not keep extensive written records. This is an interesting topic of discussion, because documentation has become the defining element in a peoples’ history—it is how laws and governments are maintained, education is transmitted and international communication is made possible. This is one of the factors that made colonization of West Africa possible—a people who could not provide written records of their society’s progression were deemed in need of civilizing. In the words of Christopher Prior, who I mentioned in the first episode of this podcast series, “officials merely studied what went on in front of them and worked out what was good about it,” there was little to no interest in what society looked like before they arrived.6 It is only in modern times, through oral-retelling and extensive corroborative, archaeological research that a clearer picture of pre-colonial African history is coming into focus. 6 Prior, Christopher. “Writing Another Continent’s History: The British and Pre-colonial Africa, 1880-1939.” Durham University. 2007. 3 If you have listened to, or read either of the other two episodes of this podcast series, or have a general knowledge about West Africa, you are probably aware of the multi-faceted role of the griot in West African history and culture. For those without prior knowledge, let me take a moment to explain the griot. I choose to use “griot” (instead of other terms associated with this role such as gewel, jali, gawlo, jeli and several other variations depending on the West African region in question) because this is the term that is widely recognized in academia, the media and cultural identity.7 The role is widespread but differs from region to region in Africa, and has evolved over the last thousand years. The term griot has many alleged origins, though the most widely accepted is a derivative of the French word guiriot. The earliest known written record of griots comes from within the Mali Empire in 1352, when Ibn Battuta (a Moroccan scholar and traveler) visited the kingdom’s capital of Niani for the first time and documented everything he saw. His description of the griot was as a herald: “Dugha, the herald, stood at the door, wearing zerdkhanan clothes: on his head a fringed turban, typical of the country; he alone had the privilege of wearing boots on this day; he had a sword in a gold scabbard on his side; and he wore spurs, two gold and silver javelins with iron tips.”8 (This is an interesting parallel to the heralds of the European empires of the same time period: the Byzantine Empire had ‘imperial messengers’ that held a staff and had a certain wardrobe.)9 Griots are most remembered for their roles as musicians and oral historians, but to reduce their existence to these specific roles is to deny the preponderance of evidence that places them at kings’ sides as messengers and heralds. Nyama, a term meaning the intangible power that words are laced with, was believed to live inside a griot. Nyama is similar to a soul, though it is a singular transcendental soul, one that is 7 Hale, Thomas A. Griots and Griottes: Masters of Words and Music. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), pp. 2-10. 8 Diop, Chiekh Anta. Precolonial Black Africa. (Brooklyn: Lawrence Hill Books, 1987), pp. 84-85. 9 Numelin, Ragnar. The Beginnings of Diplomacy: a Sociological Study of Intertribal and International Relations. (Oxford University Press, 1950). 4 the power that people exercise and the clarity that comes from expression; it is this intangible idea that makes the griot’s role so complex, but that best exemplifies their power as diplomats within the Mali Empire and beyond. They were trusted more than anyone else to carry truth and reasoning. Something interesting to consider in regards to statehood is the idea of whether or not the systems that functioned throughout Africa were indigenous to the continent or were transplanted from surrounding regions. Chiekh Anta Diop, an anthropologist native to Senegal, writes that statehood as it exists in Sub-Saharan Africa, is most distinctly related to the state system of Pharaonic Egypt.10 There is definitive evidence that Sub-Saharan ancient empires, such as Ghana, Mali and Songhai, all have nearly identical models to that of their Egyptian predecessor. One case in which similarities are exemplified best is that of etymology. In Wolof (the dominant indigenous language of modern day Senegal and Gambia), the term for king is bur. Similarly, in Egyptian, the term for “the house of the Pharaoh” (the king was often identified as his house’s name) is the phonetically identical word per.11 Diop offers the etymological correlation as a means of shifting one’s understanding of ancient African empires from that of a “new beginning” to “a continuation following emigration.”12 Structurally, Pharaonic Egypt’s governance is very similar to that of the Mali Empire—a Pharaoh was the supreme ruler of the kingdom, usually succeeded by his eldest son, and each geographical region had its own local ruler—a nome— who was responsible for their peoples’ grievances.

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