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131 General conclusion 13. New directions for research The first twelve chapters of this book have been written and published over a period of thirty years. They exhibit significant shifts in theoretical and methodological paradigms. Those shifts impact upon the internal consistency of the whole volume. The present, concluding, chapter is meant to provide a synthesis and some amount of consistency in the overall historical picture, however provisional it may be. It is also intended to open up new lines of investigation for future research. In this chapter, I propose to turn upside down the chronological hypothesis regarding kingdom formation that I had developed in my 1985 book (Warnier 1985). That is, instead of considering the Grassfields as a peripheral area to the modern world system that took shape in the 16th century, I would hypothesize that the highlands were a secondary, yet somewhat autonomous, centre of wealth and power accumulation. Accordingly, instead of dating kingdom formation in the Grassfields to the impact of the Atlantic slave trade in the hinterland of the Bight of Biafra around the 18th century, I would hypothesize a much earlier process of increasing complexity and concentration of power. This shift calls for a new paradigm as regards the interpretation of Grassfields history and a new chronological framework. It also calls for a shift in the theoretical approach, from social anthropology à la Radcliffe-Brown to a historical and comparative socio-anthropology of politics based on the work of Weber and Foucault. Accordingly, it also calls for new methodological tools to take into account material culture and sensorimotor repertoires in addition to verbalizations in their capacity to provide an access to the subjectivity of the Grassfielders. In a nutshell: I will look at the Grassfields not as a peripheral area in the modern world system, but as a centre of development and accumulation calling for a revised historical chronology, a shift in theoretical paradigm and a change in methodology. This overall shift rests on a different interpretation of the historical data that I shall now unravel, at some cost, since I will have to repeat a few things I have already written in various chapters of the present volume. In the late 1970s, when I expanded on my research interests from the Mankon kingdom to encompass the Bamenda Plateau at large, I soon noticed that a regional approach was required to analyze what Edmund Leach (1954) called a ‘political system’, by overriding cultural, linguistic and kingdom boundaries. This is what my 1985 book was all about. Its first part was devoted to analyzing the regional trading networks in subsistence goods. These were structured around a basic pattern of exchange between two items in universal demand all over the Grassfields, that is: palm oil produced along the western escarpment of the highlands, and iron implements produced on a large scale around the geographical centre of the Grassfields, some 80km away from the palm oil belt (see chapters 3 and 5 in the present volume). Around those two basic items, given local communities specialized in the production of raffia textiles, ceramics, small livestock, grains, root crops and miscellanea. Such productions were specifically designed to meet the regional demand on the marketplace. They were surplus products on top and above the household production for domestic consumption. 132 General conclusion - 13.New directions for research The goods were carried by human porterage from the producing areas all the way to half a dozen regional marketplaces, the meeting days of which were fixed and synchronized with all others within the eight days week. Large trading households in the Mankon kingdom participated in this pattern on a daily basis. Their male staff met trade partners on the various regional marketplaces with whom they established formal friendships and marriage alliances. Long before the colonial conquest, there were local currencies in iron, salt, brass, beads and, when the Hausa trade reached the area in the mid-19th century, cowries. The traders increased their capital and the size of their business thanks to rotating credit associations between peers, from which kinship ties were excluded. This helped the traders to withstand the pressure put on them by their kin groups, which is a major obstacle to capital accumulation in Africa. On top and above this regional trade in subsistence goods, the notables and kings engaged in long distance trading in luxury goods with one another in three major directions: towards the middle Benue valley to the northwest; towards Adamawa to the northeast; and towards the harbours...

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