chapter � Introduction Ethnicity does not matter in the long-term perspective. Such was the conclu- sion formulated by a new generation of ‘Africanists’ in the 1970s and 1980s, and it was a kind of scientific revolution. Its defenders held that in sub-Saharan Africa, ethnicity had mainly been created through European colonial rule, and was, therefore, an entirely artificial concept.1 For a period that roughly coin- cides with the 15 years between 1975 and 1990, the attack against the well- established idea of primordial ethnic groups in Africa – which had dominated anthropological thought from the colonial period onwards – seemed to win the day.2 In spite of Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger’s initiative to under- stand the ‘invention of tradition’ with a view to identifying the creation of group sentiment in a comparative and global approach, however, reflections of historians working on group identity in the African continent have rarely entered the debates on global history.3 While migration and connection – for example, over the Atlantic or the Indian Ocean – are essential themes in global historical studies, they do not yet interact with the analysis of ethnicity that 1 This is neatly summarised in Amselle, Jean-Loup, ‘Ethnies et espaces: pour une anthropolo- gie topologique’, in Jean-Loup Amselle and Elikia M’Bokolo (eds.), Au cœur de l’ethnie: ethnies, tribalisme et État en Afrique (Paris: La Découverte, 1985), 11–48, 23 (‘La cause paraît donc entendue: il n’existait rien qui ressemblât à une ethnie pendant la période précoloniale’). 2 Key texts of this trend are the following: Amselle and M’Bokolo (eds.), Cœur; Amselle, Jean- Loup, Mestizo Logics: Anthropology of Identity in Africa and elsewhere (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 11–8; Ranger, Terence, ‘The invention of tradition in colonial Africa’, in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 211–62, 247–50; Ranger, Terence, ‘The invention of tradition revisited: the case of colonial Africa’, in Terence Ranger and Olufemi Vaughan (eds.), Legitimacy and the State in Twentieth-Century Africa (London: Macmillan, 1993), 62–111; Vail, Leroy, ‘Introduction: Ethnicity in Southern African History’, in Leroy Vail (ed.), The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (Berkeley – Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991 [reprint of James Currey, 1989]), 1–19, 6–7; Ranger, Terence, ‘Missionaries, migrants and the Manyika: the invention of ethnicity in Zimbabwe’, in ibid., 122–3; Jewsiewicki, Bogumil, ‘The Formation of the Political Culture of Ethnicity in the Belgian Congo, 1920–1959’, in ibid., 324–49, 326–30. 3 Sachsenmaier, Dominic, Global Perspectives on Global History: Theories and Approaches in a Connected World (Cambridge etc.: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 57. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi �0.��63/9789004307353_00� Alexander Keese - 9789004307353 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the prevailingDownloaded cc-by-nc fromLicense. Brill.com09/30/2021 05:20:58PM via free access <UN> � chapter � has been at the heart of debates in African history.4 This book hopes to make a contribution to finding the connection. In the public debate about ethnicity, the new interpretations from social anthropology and historical research on sub-Saharan Africa have had very lit- tle impact from the outset.5 Even the ‘subjects of analysis’, including elites that would eventually read such studies, do not at all seem to feel that they live according to roles constructed by others. Among the local populations, we encounter a general feeling of certainty that ethnic criteria explain group affili- ation and group hostilities.6 One might even argue that while ethnicity was deconstructed as a guiding principle by historians and anthropologists, the concept has become increasingly important for political and social relations in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Not only is it employed by political analysts and journalists from outside, who wish to simplify African topics for their read- ers or audience,7 but African populations seem to embrace it, without being manipulated to do so: categories of ethnicity appear to play an essential role in their life. A good example of the reappearance of ethnic solidarity after periods of rup- ture is the effect of the 2007 elections in civil-war-torn Sierra Leone. In this small West African country, ethnic categories had been eclipsed in many areas during the 1990s, as a consequence of the Revolutionary United Front (ruf) rebellion.8 The civil war dramatically destabilised the existing patron-client networks based on ethnic labels.9 However, ethnic categories had not disap- peared from national politics, as exemplified by the surprise win in the electoral 4 Manning, Patrick, ‘African and World Historiography’, Journal of African History 54(2), 2013, 319–30, 325–6. 5 MacGaffey, Wyatt, ‘Changing Representations in Central African History’, Journal of African History 46(2), 2006, 189–207, 189–91. 6 Chabal, Patrick, and Jean-Pascal Daloz, Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument (Oxford: James Currey – Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 61–2. 7 See the critical discussion in MacEachern, Scott, ‘Genes, Tribes, and African History’, Current Anthropology 41(3), 2000, 357–84, 361–3. 8 Gershoni, Yekutiel, ‘War without End and an End to a War: The Prolonged Wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone’, African Studies Review 40(3), 1997, 55–76, 60; Richards, Paul, Fighting for the Rainforest: War, Youth and Resources in Sierra Leone (Oxford: The International African Institute – James Currey, 1996), 90–5, Keen, David, Conflict & collusion in Sierra Leone (Oxford: James Currey – New York: Palgrave, 2001), 13–4, 82–92; others challenge the complete break- down of ethnic solidarity, see Bangura, Yusuf, ‘Strategic Policy Failure and Governance in Sierra Leone’, Journal of Modern African Studies 38(4), 2000, 551–77, 543. 9 Van Gog, Janneke, Coming back from the bush: Gender, youth and reintegration in northern Sierra Leone (Leiden: African Studies Centre, 2008), 79–84. Alexander Keese - 9789004307353 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 05:20:58PM via free access <UN> Introduction 3 contest of 2007 on an ethnic ticket of the All People’s Congress (apc) candidate Ernest Bai Koroma. The apc victory seemed to indicate a return to the experi- ences of the late 1950s and 1960s, when the Sierra Leone People’s Party (slpp) and the apc had fought for electoral victory, before the country had become a one-party state in 1978.10 Bai Koroma was supposed to have won the presidency as the candidate of the Temne, one of the two largest ethnic groups in Sierra Leone (together with allied groups from the north of the country).11 It seemed that ethnic thinking had (again) taken the lead in this West African country, and had not been destroyed through the destabilising experience of wide- spread banditry, warlordism, and gang wars. However, other examples from West Africa appear to show the opposite trend, at least at first glance. In Senegal, electoral behaviour and ethnicity do not seem to be at all linked: it has been held that ethnicity has lost its role and that the independent Republic of Senegal has been remarkably free from eth- nic dispute as a consequence of successful social management.12 The obvious exception has been the separatist rebellion in Senegal’s southern province of Casamance, where the Mouvement des Forces Démocratiques de Casamance (mfdc) is undoubtedly dominated by Jola-speakers. Nevertheless, the move- ment’s leaders often describe their goals as ‘regionalist’ and not as ‘ethnic’ (while Wolof-speakers in the region indeed fear the ‘Jola’ as dangerous ‘autochthons’).13 In other Senegalese regions, it is far more difficult to find signs of tensions arising around ethnic labels. It would, however, be worthwhile investigating 10 Fisher, Humphrey J., ‘Elections and Coups in Sierra Leone, 1967’, Journal of Modern African Studies 7(4), 1969, 611–36. 11 Fridy, Kevin S., and Fredline A.O. M’Cormack-Hale, ‘Sierra Leone’s 2007 elections: monu- mental and more of the same’, African Studies Quarterly 12(4), 2010/11, 39–57. 12 Diouf, Makhtar, Sénégal: Les Ethnies et la Nation (Dakar: Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines du Sénégal, 1998), 233. 13 Diouf, Mamadou, ‘Between Ethnic Memories & Colonial History in Senegal: The mfdc & the Struggle for Independence in Casamance’, in Bruce Berman, Dickson Eyoh, and Will Kymlicka (eds.), Ethnicity and Democracy in Africa (Oxford: James Currey – Athens/oh: Ohio University Press, 2004), 218–39, 218–9; Toliver-Diallo, Wilmetta J., ‘The Woman Who Was More than a Man’: Making Aline Sitoe Diatta into a National Heroine in Senegal’, Canadian Journal of African Studies 39(2), 2005, 338–60, 346; Foucher, Vincent, ‘Les ‘évolués’, la migration, l’école: pour une nouvelle interprétation de la naissance du nation- alisme casamançais’, in Momar Coumba Diop (ed.), Le Sénégal contemporain (Paris: Karthala, 2002), 375–424, 388; Evans, Martin, ‘Insecurity or Isolation? Natural Resources and Livelihoods in Lower Casamance’, Canadian Journal of African Studies 39(2), 2005, 282–312, 302; Interview with ‘I. Sow’, Kabrousse, 28 Jan. 2006. Alexander Keese - 9789004307353 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 05:20:58PM via free access <UN> 4 chapter � whether hostilities of an ethnic nature existed in earlier phases, i.e. during periods of the nineteenth and twentieth century. Wolof-speakers and Sereer- speakers seem to have been hostile to each other, and the ‘Pëls’ (Fulbe), as cattle owners, were an obvious target of negative stereotyping.14 As we will see, closer analysis of available archival documentation helps to recover narratives that were for a long time obscured, simplified, and standardised, in local mem- ory and ‘traditional’ accounts.15 In the present-day Trans-Volta Region of Ghana and in south-west Togo,16 ethnic allegiance is presented as irrelevant by central authorities.