Willing Migrants: Soninke Labor Diasporas, 1848-1960.

By Francois Manchuelle (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1997. xvii plus 371pp.).

Francois Manchuelle (1953-1996) died tragically in the crash of TWA flight 800 to Paris. At the time of his death, Manchuelle had already made significant contributions to the study of Africa and the African diaspora. Among these one must add Willing Migrants: Soninke Labor Diasporas, 1848-1960, a welcome addition to the growing literature on migration, based upon extensive reading in precolonial and colonial archival sources in both France and Senegal, as well as oral interviews and printed government sources. Exceptionally well grounded in the work of European and American migration historians, Manchuelle sought to understand the internal dynamics of the labor migration process itself. By locating the origins of Soninke migration history during the precolonial period, Manchuelle convincingly challenges the prevailing notion that "precolonial African societies were self-contained and resistant to change" (p. 7). Even more, Manchuelle's approach calls into question older studies which viewed African labor migrations negatively - as a function of colonial taxation and coercion.

The possibility that a fundamental connection existed between precolonial trade migrations and recent labor migrations among the Soninke presented itself to Manchuelle in the astonishing fact that 85 percent of all Black African migrants to France since the 1950s came from this one ethnic group, all natives of one particular region of West Africa. As Manchuelle explains, since at least the thirteenth century, grain producing Soninke communities occupied a pivotal location in the dynamic Western Sudan commercial system. Early periodic return migration among the Soninke was rooted in the activities of seasonal itinerant trading expeditions, from which, in order to expand grain production, the Soninke nearly always reinvested profits in the purchase of slaves. Thus, Soninke migrations, from an early date, stemmed from a kind of "traditional" entrepreneurial spirit. By the nineteenth century, as patterns of return migration expanded, many slaves, as well as free Soninke, "became labor migrants in the Gambia or in French colonial centers for periods of two or three years or became sailors on French boats" (p. 34). By the early twentieth century, this well-established migration became increasingly regular and seasonal. Like the French Auvergnats studied by Abel Chatelain, to which Manchuelle repeatedly compares the Soninke throughout his study, Soninke migrants used seasonal migration as a way to maximize their productivity during periods of agricultural inactivity.

As a migration study, Manchuelle's use of evidence is both impressive and problematic. One marvels at the way Manchuelle pieces together a wide range of fragmentary data: colonial administrative reports and correspondence, occasional lists and other samples of convenience. But these are far from the kind of systematic data, such as marriage contracts or census records, typically used by migration historians. In order to bridge the inevitable gaps in his data, Manchuelle often makes inferences or speculations that some specialists may find questionable. One example: crucial to the history of Soninke migrations during the nineteenth century was the expansion of navetane employment, the hiring of seasonal migrant labor in the peanut fields of Senegambia. According to Manchuelle, this migration originated in the older commercial grain production and trade networks along the Gambia river that provisioned the slave trade. At this point in the narrative, in the absence of hard evidence, the author speculates upon Philip Curtin's discussion of late eighteenth century grain production in the Gambia: "Although Curtin makes no mention of other regions other than Bandu [from which migrants came in order to grow grain, which they then sold to buy trade goods that could be sold inland at substantial profit], it seems obvious that the young migrants must have come also from neighboring [Soninke areas] Gajaaga and Gidimaxa" (p. 54). At other times Manchuelle uses data from the late nineteenth century to bolster his speculations about developments at mid-century or earlier. Nonetheless, Manchuelle's main point here seems clear. Throughout the nineteenth century Soninke families could profit substantially by sending a son for a season of labor in the Gambia. Again, Manchuelle stresses the "pull" of profits to be made through periodic return migration.

In stressing the lure of profits as a prime impetus for Soninke migrations, Manchuelle wishes to point out the fundamental connection between temporary migration and the role of wealth and clientage in what were essentially "semistateless" societies. "Royal migrants" or aristocrats working as laptots (employees on commercial river transports) are a case in point. Laptot occupations, since the eighteenth century, were highly prestigious, relatively well-paid wage occupations. During the nineteenth century, Soninke migrants dominated laptot occupations. Royal families kept a kind of monopoly on laptot positions, for they provided the wealth necessary to maintain clientage networks, an essential factor in Soninke political life. Manchuelle demonstrates particularly well how this desire to earn cash through migration during one's early adulthood in order to fulfill "traditional" goals back home later in life carried through the migrations of the 1960s. Although Soninke migrations in the post-WWII period shifted from "pluriannual" (several year) migrations to "lifelong" migrations, most Soninke migrants still returned to their native villages at retirement. These "reluctant urbanites," according to Manchuelle, "were not protesting the traditional society; they hoped to achieve promotion within it" (pp. 84, 210).

Despite its shortcomings (the chapter on migration networks is woefully underdeveloped), this study of Soninke labor diasporas ought to cause historians to re-think the relationship between colonization and West African labor migration. As presented by Manchuelle, the long history of Soninke migration does not appear exceptional, but largely resembles European and American migration patterns that have prevailed over the past two centuries. In the twentieth century, for example, Soninke labor migrations expanded both numerically and geographically. Since World War II, migrations to Dakar (and, since the 1960s, migrations to France) increasingly comprised whole families, leading Manchuelle to conclude that Black African migrations to France will in future become increasingly permanent. Africanists, migration historians, and scholars interested in recent French immigration, will want to become familiar with this provocative and wide-ranging book.

Carnegie Mellon University