Cloth in West African History (review)

At first, the title of this book seems to have too much sweep. Much of the literature on textiles and clothing in Africa has actually been about a few English-speaking, sub-Saharan countries like Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa (a good example of this is Judith Perani and Norma H. Wolff's Cloth, Dress, and Art Patronage in Africa [1999], which, despite its title, is primarily about Nigeria). Only in the last ten years has a body of literature on other countries like Senegal, Mali, Zambia, and Madagascar begun to coalesce. In some ways, Colleen Kriger's book fits the old pattern. In each chapter, she builds her analysis around a single textile from Nigeria—a Bida woman's wrapper made of supplementary-weft "brocade" on a vertical loom, a pair of elaborately embroidered Muslim-style trousers from northern Nigeria, and a Yoruba woman's olokun wrapper made by resist-dyeing with indigo on factory-made cloth. So why not call this book "Cloth in Nigerian History"?

What Kriger does differently, however—and extremely well—is to connect these textiles to a larger history of technology and trade in West Africa, examining issues such as cotton production, indigo-dye recipes, and the transfer of consumer preferences and skills in weaving and embroidery. Her review of the literature is quite thorough (especially on Nigeria), but she also gathered new data from a wide variety of sources: archaeological textiles from Mali and Nigeria that had hardly been studied, collections from museums in Europe and North America (the British Museum and the Fowler Museum of Cultural History at the University of California, Los Angeles, as well as the Royal Ontario Museum, Wisbech and Fenland Museum in the United Kingdom, and the Ulmer Museum in Germany). She also reexamined linguistic evidence and motifs and even conducted her own experiments with indigo resist-dyeing techniques. As a historian with a degree in fine arts, Kriger was able to use her firsthand knowledge of spinning, weaving, dyeing, and sewing to take a fresh look at both textiles and written records. As she notes in the first chapter:

Describing the fibers, how they were processed, and what dye was used to color them, can reveal information about raw-material production, technology, and trade. Carefully noting thread measurements, fabric densities, tailoring methods, and embroidery stitches can suggest the skills of the artisans, whether the artisans were specialized, and if they had adopted laborsaving strategies. . . . But in order to gain access to this information, one must know the specific technology as well as the historical circumstances and conditions that give a textile its particular character.

(p. 14)

This book will definitely satisfy historians of technology; it offers a state-of-the-art view of what we know about the history of cloth in West Africa, always explained in outstanding technical detail. In her third chapter, for example, Kriger compares sak'i (yarn-dyed strip-cloth) collected between 1841 and 1962 by a number of travelers and scholars. Along with examining the styles and names given to these textiles in different Nigerian languages, she also notes the width of the strips, ends per inch in the warp and weft, total thread count per square inch, and the number of white-to-indigo threads in the warp and weft that were used to create repeating geometric patterns. This allows Kriger to conclude that artisans were producing "incremental differences in quality that could be reflected in a broad range of prices" (p. 88), but also that the highest levels were equal to or better than the finest textiles coming from India and thus were not threatened by imports.

At the same time, Kriger is careful to note where there are still gaps in the body of knowledge and where debates have yet to be settled. Ultimately, I think that Cloth in West African History sets a new and very high standard for the study of textiles in Africa—or really for any part of the world...