Carrots, Sticks, and Cocoa Pods: African and Administrative Initiatives in the Spread of Cocoa Cultivation in Assikasso, Ivory Coast, 1908-1920

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Carrots, Sticks, and Cocoa Pods: African and Administrative Initiatives in the Spread of CocoaCultivation in Assikasso, Ivory Coast, 1908-1920Author(s): David H. GroffSource: The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3 (1987), pp. 401-416Published by: Boston University African Studies CenterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/219686 .

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CARROTS, STICKS, AND COCOA PODS: AFRICAN AND ADMINISTRATIVE INITIATIVES IN THE SPREAD OF COCOA CULTIVATION IN ASSIKASSO, IVORY COAST, 1908-1920*

By David H. Groff

At the crossroads near the marketplace of the Ivorian border town of

Agnibilekrou, there stands a small but prominently displayed statue. Since it lacks any inscription, this statue, a bust of a bald middle-aged man with a massive forehead, inevitably becomes an object of curiosity for the inquisitive visitor. If one asks the local residents about the identity of the man portrayed in the bust, one soon hears the name "Clerc" and receives the explanation that Clerc was the French colonial commandant who "forced us to grow cocoa," and that the region around Agnibilekrou is now a major producer of this cash crop. Further inquiries yield the information that the statue was erected in 1957 by order of the king of the Anyi-Juablin, the autochthonous ethnic group of the region. For the historian of West African commercial agriculture, this odd statue and the sentiment surrounding it inevitably raise certain questions about the relationship between African and administrative initiatives in the spread of cash-crop cultivation in colonial West Africa, questions that the dominant Africanist literature on the subject has largely ignored.

Africanist scholarship over the past twenty-five years has strongly emphasized the role of African initiatives in bringing about economic change in colonial Africa. Nowhere is this emphasis more pronounced than in the literature on the spread of cash-crop production in West Africa in the early years of the twentieth century. The ground-breaking work of Polly Hill on the migrant cocoa farmers of the Gold Coast has made us all aware of the innovative capacities of West African peasant producers.1 Hill's basic argument was that cocoa became the leading cash crop in the Gold Coast not because of the promotional efforts of the colonial state or of European missionaries, as was sometimes argued, but rather because of the initiatives taken by hundreds of economically rational African smallholders who manipulated their traditional social institutions to support their entrepreneurial efforts. Following Hill's lead, other scholars have produced a series of well documented case studies of African cash-cropping

*I have based this paper on a study I conducted in the Ivory Coast in 1974-1975 under a grant from the

Foreign Area Fellowship Program. Earlier versions were presented at the Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association in Boston in December 1983, and to the African Social History Workshop at Stanford in March 1985. I have greatly benefited from the astute comments and criticisms of Richard Roberts and Robert Hecht. Naturally the various conclusions, opinions, and other statements presented herein reflect my own views and not necessarily those of either the FAFP or my colleagues. The map included with this article was

prepared by Laurie Levich, art director in Reed College's Information Services Office. Her assistance is

gratefully acknowledged.

1Polly Hill, Migrant Cocoa Farmers of Southern Ghana (Cambridge, 1963).

The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 20, 3 (1987) 401



402 DAVID H. GROFF

IVORY

COAST

ATLANTIC OCEAN



CARROTS, STICKS, AND COCOA PODS 403

initiatives drawn from many areas of West Africa.2 These writers have portrayed the West African "cash crop revolution" as primarily, if not exclusively, the result of African initiatives, and this view has become central to our understanding of the history of commercial agriculture in the region.

Yet one notable case of intensive cash-crop development has remained largely resistant to the kind of approach represented by Hill and her followers. This is the case of the southeastern Ivory Coast, where smallholder cocoa farming spread rapidly in the years 1912-1920. Both the literature on the origins of cocoa cultivation in this region and, to a large extent, local popular consciousness, as preserved in oral history, strongly emphasize the role of colonial administrative initiatives in diffusing cocoa as a cash crop. Thus it would appear that the Ivorian case contrasts sharply with the cases analyzed by Hill and her followers.

Yet in certain important respects, the contrast is not as sharp as it appears at first blush. The questions raised by Hill and the others regarding the role of African initiatives can be posed fruitfully in the case of the Agnibilekrou region, or Assikasso, as it was called during the early colonial period. Close examination of this case reveals that African smallholder innovation contributed significantly to the diffusion of cocoa cultivation in the region. Nevertheless, the beginnings of cocoa production in Assikasso are not simply another story of African initiatives long denied by myopic colonial writers. Here, as in the rest of the southeastern Ivory Coast, the French colonial regime did, in fact, intervene massively in the local economy to promote the adoption of cocoa as a cash crop; and it is arguable that this intervention proved decisive. An examination of this case, then, leads to a reassessment not only of the received view of the origins of the cocoa industry in the Ivory Coast, but also calls into question the adequacy of Hill's approach as a comprehensive guide to the study of smallholder cash- crop development in West Africa.

What seems lacking in Hill's study and those of writers who follow her general approach is any strong sense of the colonial context of "the cash crop revolution" in West Africa. In particular, the colonial state does not loom large in Hill's study or in those of her followers. At most its actions appear as minor impediments to the exercise of African entrepreneurship, as in the case of Hogendorn's study of the origins of export-oriented groundnut production in northern Nigeria where the British colonial administration's efforts to promote commercial cotton cultivation merely served as a distraction from what ultimately proved to be the main line of development.3 This lack of emphasis on

2See, for example, Sara S. Berry, Cocoa, Custom, and Socio-economic Change in Rural Western

Nigeria (Oxford, 1975); Jan S. Hogendorn, "The Origins of the Groundnut Trade in Northern Nigeria" (Ph.D. thesis, London University, 1966), "The Origins of the Groundnut Trade in Northern Nigeria," in C. Eicher and C. Liedholm, eds., Growth and Development of the Nigerian Economy (Lansing, 1970), 30-51, and "Economic Initiative and Cash Farming: Pre-colonial Origins and Colonial Developments," in P. Duignan and L. H. Gann, eds., Colonialism in Africa 1870-1960 (Cambridge, 1975), IV, 282-328; A. G. Hopkins, "Innovation in a Colonial Context: African Origins of the Nigerian Cocoa-farming Industry, 1880-1920," in C.

Dewey and A. G. Hopkins, eds., The Imperial Impact: Studies in the Economic History of Africa and India (London, 1978), 83-96. For a critical review of this literature, see John Tosh, "The Cash-Crop Revolution in Tropical Africa: An Agricultural Reappraisal," African Affairs, 79, 314 (1980), 79-94.

3Hogendorn, "Origins of the Groundnut Trade," 35-36.



404 DAVID H. GROFF

the role of the colonial state in the spread of cash crops may be warranted in the cases analyzed by Hill, Hogendorn, and the others. But it clearly cannot be elevated to the status of a general theoretical principle. If one assumes that African entrepreneurship is the only truly significant factor behind the "cash crop revolution," one runs the risk of understating or overlooking entirely the complexities inherent in cases such as that of the southeastern Ivory Coast.

Nevertheless, the Hill approach, whatever its deficiencies, at least had the virtue of demonstrating the ways in which Africans made their own economic history. In contrast, most of the existing literature on cash cropping in the southeastern Ivory Coast implicitly or explicitly denies any innovative role to African smallholders.4 Until very recently most accounts of the development of cocoa production in this region have attributed the introduction and spread of cocoa cultivation exclusively to the effects of the French colonial administration's forced cultivation campaign of 1912 and 1913. The peoples of the region, we are told, became cocoa producers because the French forced them to do so.

A typical example of this view may be found in Les paysans d'Afrique occidentale by the French colonial sociologist, Henri Labouret:

Until 1913 the natives of the Ivory Coast, although related to the inhabitants of the Gold Coast and in regular contact with them, were not interested in cocoa. But in that year competition from the rubber of the Far East put an end to gathering of latex whose product was one of the principal resources of the colony.... To ward off the effects of this fall in earnings, the Governor, C. Angoulvant, imposed upon the natives a veritable program of forced cocoa cultivation. At first they showed little enthusiasm for the new crop. But by the third year they had realized that this tree would provide them with an appreciable income, and from that time on they extended their plantations ....5

Accounts like this one follow closely the view presented in the official French documents, especially those emanating from the governor's office.6 But, as I

4This literature generally reflects the old colonialist view of Africans as economically passive and of colonial economic change as the result of European initiatives. For a listing of other examples of this

approach, see C. C. Wrigley, Crops and Wealth in Uganda (Kampala, 1959), 16, 20, 47.

5H. Labouret, Les paysans d'Afrique occidentale (Paris, 1941), 243. Other examples of this view may be found in C. Pescay, Etude regionale du sud-est: La sociologie (Paris, 1967), 50-51; G. Rougerie, "Les

paysans agni du sud-est de la C6te d'lvoire forestiere," Etudes Eburneennes, 6 (Abidjan, 1957), 92, 94-96. At least one researcher has asserted the primacy of African initiatives in diffusing cocoa cash cropping in the southeastern Ivory Coast. See Joseph Lauer, "Economic Innovation among the Idoo of Western Ivory Coast, 1900-1960" (Ph.D. thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1973), 131.

6Lt. Governor Angoulvant was quite active in promoting the view that his program of forced cultivation was the primary impetus for the development of cocoa production in the Ivory Coast. See his

preface to the article, "Developpement de la culture du cacaoyer au 31 decembre 1915: essai, resultats, perspectives," Journel Officiel de la Cbte d'lvoire (3 March 1916), 25-26. See also Cote d'lvoire, Rapport de

l'Ensemble, 1912, Archives Nationales du SenEgal - Afrique Occidentale Francaise [hereafter ANS-AOF], 2G-12-16.



CARROTS, STICKS, AND COCOA PODS

suggested earlier, they also receive support from oral evidence gathered throughout the southeastern Ivory Coast over the past thirty years.7 Indeed, the view that cocoa production was forced upon a resistant African population by a brutal but far-seeing colonial administration continues to have wide popular as well as scholarly currency in the Ivory Coast today. It has become, in effect, a pervasive national myth.

Like all myths, this view of the origins of cocoa production in the Ivory Coast contains significant elements of truth. The rise of cocoa production must, as Labouret notes in the quotation cited above, be seen against the background of the crisis created by the sharp decline of the natural rubber industry. Moreover, the colonial administration's program of forced cultivation did indeed provide much of the impetus for the rapid spread of cocoa, a fact that differentiates the Ivorian case from the cases of cash crop innovation analyzed by Hill and her followers. What the myth denies, or at least obscures, is the significant role played by individual African innovators in introducing cocoa cultivation in Assikasso and other areas of the southeastern Ivory Coast several years before the colonizers undertook their promotional campaign. The importance of such innovators is born out not only in the oral history I collected in Assikasso, but also in the reports of the local colonial administration. An analysis of data drawn from these sources can provide an understanding of how African and colonialist initiatives interacted with one another and with more general political and economic conditions to create the cocoa industry of the southeastern Ivory Coast.

The Decline of the Rubber Industry and Early African Cocoa Initiatives

Assikasso, an area of some 1,600 square kilometers, is located in the northern half of the southeastern quadrant of the Ivory Coast. It is adjacent to the border with Ghana, a fact of some significance for our study. It is also the home of the Anyi- Juablin, one of the six groups of Anyi inhabiting the region. In 1904 the first colonial census listed Assikasso's population as 3,200, nearly all of whom were Anyi-Juablin.8 Today, reorganized as the sous-prkfecture of Agnibilekrou, it has a population of over 25,000 drawn from all over West Africa. The Juablin, like other autochthonous peoples of the Ivorian forest belt, have become a minority in their own homeland, due primarily to the pattern of economic growth created by the emergence of the cocoa industry in the years 1912-1920. As one of the earliest and most important cocoa-producing regions of the Ivory Coast,

7The ethnographic literature on the southeastern Ivory Coast contains many references to forced cultivation and local resistance to it. Many informants have told researchers how they or their forebears

surreptitiously poured hot water on the young cocoa plants in an effort to persuade the commandant that cocoa could not grow well the the region. References to this story may be found in Pescay, Etude regionale, 50-51; Rougerie, "Les paysans agni," 96; A. Kobben, "Le planteur noir: essai d'une ethnographie d'aspect," Etudes Eburneennes, 5 (1956); D. Boni, Le pays akye (Cbte d'lvoire): Etude de l'economie agricole (Abidjan, 1970), 126. Several of my informants mentioned forced cultivation and resistance to it, but none volunteered the story about the attempts to kill the young cocoa plants.

8Cercle de l'Indenie, Poste d'Assikasso, monthly report, August 1904, Archives Nationales de la C6te d'Ivoire [hereafter ANCI], 1EE 43 (4).

405



406 DAVID H. GROFF

Assikasso provides a good basis for studying the origins of cocoa farming in the

country. As noted above, the crisis of the rubber industry formed the backdrop

against which the development of cocoa production in Assikasso took place. By 1913 when the crisis entered its most acute phase, the Juablin had been processing and selling natural rubber for nearly two decades and had become one of the

Ivory Coast's main sources of this export commodity, as the figures in Table 1 indicate.9 In the process they had become heavily dependent on this industry for the cash they needed to buy the imported goods that had become part of their basic subsistence and to pay the head taxes imposed upon them by their colonial masters. The decline of the international market for their rubber, which had

begun in 1908 and accelerated in 1912-13,10 was a major shock for the Juablin, a shock that made at least some of them eager to experiment with alternative commodities.

When rubber prices dropped precipitously in 1908 as the result of a

conjunctural downturn in world demand, some Juablin producers reacted by seeking alternative export commodities. In that year, the French chef de poste of Assikasso noted the following incident in his monthly report:

Numerous natives have come to the post asking advice about what can replace rubber if the crisis persists. A man named

Maraud, a compound chief from Yarrakrou who had gone to the Gold Coast to collect a debt, has certified that the Ashantis situated within two to five days journey from the border were actively engaged in planting cocoa trees and were all assured of profiting from them. He also wanted to give it, cocoa, a trial.11

The chef de poste encouraged the man to go ahead with his experiment but

provided him with no material assistance, since administration policy at the time remained wedded to the ill-fated notion that the rubber industry could be rehabilitated and developed.12 Given Assikasso's geographic and cultural links

9For an account of the rubber industry in Assikasso, see Chapters 4 and 6 of my dissertation, 'The

Development of Capitalism in the Ivory Coast: The Case of Assikasso, 1880-1940" (Ph.D. thesis, Stanford

University, 1980).

10During the period 1900-1913, the prices paid at Aboisso for "lumps" of natural rubber, the type produced in Assikasso, generally fluctuated between four and six francs per kilogram, with an average of 4.2. Prices fell off sharply in 1907-1908, regained strength for several years thereafter only to decline precipitously in 1913 when the influx of southeast Asian plantation rubber began to make itself felt in the world market. Information on rubber prices in Aboisso, the market frequented by the Juablin in this period, can be found scattered throughout the administrative reports and correspondence for the Poste of Assikasso, the Cercle of Ind6ni6 and the upper reaches of the colonial government. See, for example, Poste d'Assikasso, Rapport Economique d'Ensemble, 1909, ANCI, XI-43-426; Administrator of Ind6ni6 to the Lt. Governor, 1 December 1913, ANCI, XI-11-84; and Graphique des prix du terme de caoutchouc de plantations a Anvers, compar6s aux cours du Para a Londres pendant l'ann6e 1913, ANCI, XI-11-84.

11poste d'Assikasso, Rapport Mensuel (March, 1908), ANCI, 1EE 45 (1).

1A detailed account of these efforts and the problems they created may be found in Chapter 6 of my dissertation.




Table 1

RUBBER EXPORTS FROM ASSIKASSO, 1903-1908

Year Total Rubber Assinie Indeni6 Assikasso Assikasso Ivorian Exports Exports Rubber Rubber Output as Rubber from as % of Outputc Outputd % of the

Exports Assinieb Total Ivorian in Metric Total

Tonsa

1903 1167 580.4 49.7 290.2 96.7 8.3 1904 1536 837.6 61.0 418.8 139.6 9.1 1905 1180 654.6 55.0 327.3 109.1 9.2 1906 1518 736.9 48.5 368.5 122.8 8.1 1907 1372 780.6 56.9 390.3 130.1 9.5 1908 916 607.3 48.0 303.7 101.2 11.0

Notes

a. Lauer, "Economic Innovations," 55.

b. Notice sur les Quantit6s en kilogrames de caoutchouc export6 a Assinie, 10 juillet 1909, ANCI XI-38-282.

c. Ind6ni6 was the cercle that included Assikasso. According to an administrative report of 1912, Ind6ni6 was the source of approximately one-half of all rubber exported from the

port of Assinie. The figures in the fifth column are based on the assumption that this

estimate was correct. The report in question is Cercle de l'Ind6nie, Situation G6enrale du

Cercle a la fin du deuxieme semester 1912, ANCI XI-43-426.

d. According to the Monographie de Cercle of 1911, Assikasso produced one-third of all

the rubber exported from the cercle of Ind6nie. The figures in column six are based on

this estimate. See Cheruy, Monographie du Cercle de l'Indenie, 1911, pp. 68-69, ANCI,

3Mi, No. 1.

407



408 DAVID H. GROFF

with Asante and the Gold Coast, well established areas of cocoa production, Maraud's interest in cocoa should not surprise us. Moreover, other Juablin shared this interest.

What is most noteworthy about the individual Juablin innovators that

emerge from local administrative reports and oral testimony by present-day informants is that all of them were heads of aulo mo (sing.: aulo), the matrilineally based extended residential groups that had formed the social basis for the

production and exchange of rubber.13 The organizational role played by aulo heads in the rubber industry made them acutely aware of the problems posed by the fall in rubber prices and placed them in a position to observe cocoa cultivation in the neighboring Gold Coast. Each aulo head was in the words of one of my informants "a kind of company director."14 He coordinated the

production process, collected the latex from the direct producers, arranged for its

marketing, and appropriated the proceeds, some of which he then redistributed

among his subjects, after paying their taxes.15 As the individual most responsible for insuring the economic well being of his aulo, he had to be acutely aware of the threat posed by the rubber crisis. Moreover, as the principal organizer of

commodity production in Assikasso, he was the person who had to find an effective way of dealing with this crisis.

The power and prestige of the aulo head rested in large part on his ability to control the labor of the junior males, women, slaves and children of his aulo. The rubber crisis threatened this ability in at least two significant ways. First, it lowered cash earnings and reduced the flow of imported consumer goods, thereby undermining the aulo head's redistributional role within the aulo. An aulo head's failure to perform this role adequately could create discontent among his subordinates and weaken the unity of the aulo. Second, loss of cash income combined with the necessity of paying the annual head tax could drain an aulo's

treasury and weaken the aulo head's capacity to pay judicial fines incurred by his

subjects. The levying of such fines was a frequent occurrence within the Anyi judicial system and failure to pay them in gold or currency left an aulo head no alternative but to pawn one or more of his subjects. Thus if the crisis persisted and no new sources of income were found, the aulo heads would face growing

13The extended residential unit or aulo consisted of several kin or fictive kin-related domestic groups united under the authority of a male elder called an aulo kpagne. Because the Juablin, like other Akan

peoples, combine matrilineal descent with patrilocal residence, aulo membership could be based on either maternal or paternal ties. The core of every aulo consisted of an aulo kpagne and several of his matrilineal kinsmen including his uterine brothers, his unmarried, widowed, or divorced sisters, and the latters' infant children. It also sometimes included his nephews by uterine sisters living in other residential units. To this core group were added the wives of the aulo kpagne and his brothers, their unmarried daughters, their sons who had not yet received an inheritance, their sons' wives and dependents, and their own slaves and pawns. This corporate group was bound together not only by common residence and allegiance to an aulo kpagne, but also by common ritual observance and participation in certain collective economic activities, most notably gold mining, rubber processing, and long distance trade. How large these units were in the early years of the

century is impossible to say with precision. But on the basis of what my informants told me, I would estimate that they varied in size between a few dozen and a hundred or more members.

14Interview with Tangui Koakan, headman of the village of Akobouassue, 26 January 1975.

15Information on the relations of production in the rubber industry may be found in the report of A.

Solichon, Adjoint des Affaires Indigenes, 'La C6te d'Ivoire et ses produits," 30 April 1905, ANCI Mi 98 R8. This information coincides with that provided by my informants.




threats to the integrity of their aulo mo. At a time when many aulo mo were

already losing people as a result of the abolition of slavery, Juablin aulo heads had a strong incentive to do whatever they could to prevent further losses. Under these circumstances, finding an export commodity to substitute for rubber must have been a pressing concern for many aulo heads.

At the same time, aulo heads were more likely than other Juablin to pay close attention to what was going on in the neighboring Gold Coast and hence more likely to learn about the potential of cocoa as a cash crop. Prior to the French conquest in the late 1890s, most of Assikasso's trade with the Europeans had been directed to the British factories in the Gold Coast, especially those in

Cape Coast.16 Although the French had succeeded in rerouting most of this commerce to their posts in Aboisso by 1900, there is evidence that at least some Juablin persisted in trading with the Gold Coast after that date.17 As the

principal Juablin traders, aulo heads had an obvious interest in what went on in the neighboring colony. This interest along with simple physical proximity and the Juablin's cultural and historical links with the Akan of the Gold Coast make it understandable why the Juablin in general and aulo heads in particular would have had some knowledge of the spread of cocoa in the British colony.

Another aspect of the aulo heads' involvement in the rubber industry provides a further explanation of why they were in a good position to learn about cocoa cultivation. Rubber processing had been introduced into Assikasso in the late 1880s or early 1890s by Fanti and Nzima migrants from the Gold Coast.18 Called poyofwe, or "people of rubber," by the Juablin, these migrants had entered into clientage relations with Juablin aulo heads in order to gain access to funtumia trees, the main source of latex in the region. In exchange for such

access, the poyofwe had to promise to turn over to the aulo head one-third of the latex produced.19 Needless to say, this kind of relationship sometimes gave rise to

disputes which in turn led some poyofwe to try to escape their obligations by absconding to the Gold Coast. When this occurred, the aggrieved aulo head or his

agents often pursued their erstwhile clients in the hope of making them pay their debts. The man mentioned in the administrative report quoted above may well have been on this type of mission when he encountered Asante engaged in cocoa cultivation. Several of the oral testimonies I collected mentioned such expeditions

16Two of my informants claimed to have actually participated in trading expeditions to Cape Coast or

"Goua," as they called it, employing the general Anyi term for market. Interviews with N'Da Kouao Djedou, N'Djorekrou, 4 August 1975, and Kouassi Mia, Dame, 30 August 1975. Many other informants also cited Cape Coast as the principal destination of pre-colonial Juablin trading expeditions. Confirmation of this information may be found in the report of Bricard, a French official who visited Assikasso in 1895 prior to the imposition of French rule. See Bricard to the Governor, 12 October 1895, Archives Nationales Frangaise -

Section Outre Mer [hereafter ANF-OM], C6te d'Ivoire IV-46.

7Complaints about "smuggling" are scattered throughout the monthly political and economic reports of the post of Assikasso between 1900 and 1915.

18The standard works on the rubber trade in the Gold Coast and its hinterland are Raymond Dumett, "The Rubber Trade of the Gold Coast and Asante in the Nineteenth Century," Journal of African History, 12 (1971), 79-101; and Kwame Arhin, "The Ashanti Rubber Trade with the Gold Coast in the Eighteen- nineties," Africa, 62 (1972), 36-37.

19Solichon, "La C6te d'Ivoire et ses produits," ANCI Mi 98 R8.



410 DAVID H. GROFF

as the context within which Juablin aulo heads first learned about cocoa cultivation.20

The case of Kouao Cokore of Tenguelan offers a good example of an aulo head who helped diffuse cocoa production techniques in Assikasso.21 According to my informants, Kouao was the first man to create a full-scale cocoa plantation in Assikasso.22 He, like Maraud, the man cited in the above quotation, was a

wealthy aulo head and major rubber producer who first encountered cocoa in the Gold Coast, where he had gone to collect on a debt owed him by an Asante rubber processor. Impressed by the cocoa plantations he saw in the English colony, Kouao purchased several seed pods and brought them back and planted them in one of his fields. This event probably occurred sometime in 1909 or 1910.

By January 1913, when his efforts came to the attention of Dellabonin, the French agricultural agent in Assikasso, he had already created a plantation of at least 1800 trees whose age Dellabonin estimated at twenty-eight months.23 He had also created a nursery containing more than 500 seedlings which he intended to

plant as soon as the rainy season began. Dellabonin was greatly impressed by Kouao's plantation which he discovered while on one of his initial tours

promoting cocoa production among the Juablin. He was so impressed, in fact, that he suggested to his superiors that Kouao be given some form of

compensation for his innovative efforts efforts.24 But Kouao Cokore was not the only pioneering cocoa planter in

Assikasso in 1913. In the same report in which he mentions his encounter with Kouao, Dellabonin further remarks:

During the tour I made at the beginning of January, I noticed that in several villages the natives are attempting to make an effort to grow cocoa. In almost all the villages I passed through, I encountered cocoa seed-plots.... In certain villages such as Gaisancrou [N'Guessankrou], Tanokrou, Tenguelan and Duinebo I found that some village notables had cleared

20Several of my informants stated that such debt-collecting forays into the Gold Coast in pursuit of

absconding poyofwe were quite common during the rubber era.

21I found information on six individual innovators. Besides Kouao Cokord and Maraud, they were:

Angini Cokord, headman of Kotocosso; Koffie Akomoa, an aulo kpagne of Kotocosso; N'Da Kouadio, headman of Nianda; and an Nzima poyofwe named Ahua, resident at Yebouakrou. The extent of Anyi experimentation in the cercle as a whole is suggested by the following quotation from the commandant's economic and agricultural report of 15 April 1913: "There are seventeen cocoa plantations in production in Indenie. They belong to individuals who this year sold their pods to the agricultural service or to other natives wishing to establish nurseries. The yield is not yet important enough to permit sales to commercial houses." Such plantations would have had to have been created in 1910 or earlier, well before the French launched their program. This report may be found in ANCI XI-43-426.

22Interviews with Kpagne Kouakou, Tenguelan, 2 May 1975; Tigori Kouao, Manzanoua, 9 March 1975; and Tangui Koakan, Akobouassud, 9 March 1975. See also Dellabonin, Circonscription Agricole de l'Est, Rapport Mensuel pour janvier 1913, 2 February 1913, ANCI, XI-43-426.

23Dellabonin's report, cited in footnote 12.

24Ibid. One of my informants, Kpagne Kouakou, the headman of the village of Tenguelan, told me that the French eventually gave Kouao a rifle as a reward for his efforts, but I could find no corroborating evidence for this.




plots in the forest where they planned to establish plantations of cocoa trees at the beginning of the rainy season. For the constitution of these plantations they use young cocoa plants coming from seeds that they themselves purchased at .50, .75, or one franc per pod.25

We have only to remember that this remark was written at the beginning of the French campaign to promote cocoa cultivation in Assikasso to appreciate what it suggests about the role of African initiatives in the diffusion of cocoa in the region. It seems clear from the evidence that Kouao Cokore and other Juablin innovators had already established cocoa cultivation in at least some parts of Assikasso before the French launched their program of compulsory production.

The Administration's Promotion of Cocoa Cultivation: Innovation a la chicotte

But to leave the story here would create as many problems as it solves. For we still must account for the long-standing emphasis on forced cultivation in the literature. As I noted earlier, evidence for this view comes not only from administrative reports, especially those by the lieutenant governor, but also from African oral testimony collected throughout the southeastern Ivory Coast. If the administrative sources can be discounted somewhat as expressions of a certain amount of self-promoting bureaucratic hyperbole, the same cannot be said of the oral sources. How can we best interpret this evidence in light of our findings concerning the pioneering efforts of local African innovators like Kouao Cokord? In other words, what was the actual historical significance of the administration's promotional efforts?

The answer to these questions has two aspects. First, while it is clear that the French program cannot be said to have introduced cocoa cultivation to Assikasso, as the older view assumes, it can be said to have greatly accelerated its diffusion by compelling all Juablin households to take it up. Second, it is clear from the evidence that not all Juablin were hastening to follow the innovators' lead and take up cocoa as a cash crop. For the more hesitant smallholders, French blandishments provided the major initial impetus for their adoption of cocoa. Thus the effect of the colonizers' program was to insure that all Juablin became involved in cocoa cultivation and maintained their involvement until such time as market incentives became more attractive.

The administration's cocoa campaign began in 1912 with the creation of an experimental nursery and plantation at the post of Assikasso.26 The following year Dellabonin and Louis Clerc, the celebrated commandant de cercle, toured the


26Information on this program may be found in "Le Developpement de la culture du cacaoyer," Journel Officiel de la C6te d'Ivoire [hereafter JOCI], 15 March 1916; Poste d'Assikasso, Rapport sur la situation

agricole, fourth trimester, 1914; Cercle de l'Inddnid, Service de l'Agriculture, Rapport de l'Ensemble, 1917, 31 December 1917; Cercle de l'Indenie, Recensement des plantations de cacaoyers, 1916, 11 January 1917; and Cercle de 1'Indenid, Situation des plantations de cacaoyers, 1915, 6 January 1916. The last four documents are in ANCI XI-43-426. See also Rapport du Sous-Inspecteur de 1'Agriculture a l'Administrateur du Cercle de

'Inddnie, 1 April 1913; and Circonscription Agricole de l'Est, monthly reports for May and June 1913, ANCI XI-43-426.



412 DAVID H. GROFF

region exhorting the population to grow cocoa and compelling all village headmen to create collective village nurseries and plantations. In that year some 29,000 cocoa trees were planted in Assikasso, most of them in these collective plantations which quickly became known as "the commandant's fields."27 In creating these early plantations, the administration enlisted the support of Juablin innovators such as Kouao Cokor6 both as sources of seeds and as auxiliary extension agents.28 By the end of 1914, over 100,000 trees had been planted in the region.29

The Juablin greeted the administration's effort with varying degrees of enthusiasm. In northern Assikasso, the area in which most of the early African initiatives had occurred, villagers cooperated freely with the French and moved promptly to create model nurseries and plantations and maintain them according to government specifications.30 Elsewhere the response was considerably less wholehearted, and in some villages people actually resisted the administration's efforts. In Kongodia, N'Djor6krou, Akobouassu6, and Brindoukrou, villages in southern Assikasso, headmen simply did not take the steps necessary to insure that the new plantations were properly cleared and watered. In December 1913, Dellabonin reported with some exasperation: "Among the chiefs of these villages, there are a certain number who are rather negligent and lazy about caring for their plantations. What is most deplorable for us in this affair is that sometimes village nurseries germinate well only to perish for lack of a simple watering every three or four days."31

Occasionally, such resistance assumed a more active form with villagers actually destroying the young cocoa trees, apparently in the vain hope of making the French think that local soil conditions were inhospitable. How widespread such active resistance was cannot be determined, but the fact that so many researchers working in the southeastern Ivory Coast have recorded stories of people pouring scalding water over cocoa seedlings in an effort to sabotage the "commandant's field" suggests that active resistance must have been fairly common.32

How can this differential response to the French cocoa program be explained? It is tempting to seek an answer to this question in the differing capacities for innovation exhibited by the Juablin aulo mo. Although detailed evidence of social differentiation among the Juablin in the pre-cocoa era is scanty, it seems clear enough that aulo mo differed considerably in their labor resources and accumulated wealth. Obviously, the more labor power an aulo possessed, the more of its social labor time it could devote to experimenting with new types of productive activity. Likewise, the more money it had accumulated

27Poste d'Assikasso, Rapport sur la Situations Agricole, fourth trimester, 1914, ANCI XI-43-426.


29Cercle de l'Ind6ni6, Situation des plantations de cacaoyers, 1915, 6 January 1916, ANCI XI-43-426.

30Circonscription Agricole de 1'Est, monthly reports for May and June 1913, ANCI XI-43-426.

31Circonscription Agricole de l'Est, monthly report for November 1913, ANCI XI-43-426.

32Nana Kouao Bile, the Juablin king, included this story in the speech he wrote and had delivered for him by Kangah Malan, the first African administrator of the sous-prefecture of Agnibilekrou, on 12 January 1957, at the ceremony dedicating the Clerc statue. Kangah Malan, personal communication, May 1975.




from the rubber trade, the better chance it stood of meeting its tax obligations and consumption needs during the period before the new activity began yielding a remunerative return. Since cocoa trees of the variety available at the time took between three and seven years to come into full production, this waiting period presented a rather formidable obstacle to the adoption of cocoa as a cash crop, especially for the poorer aulo 2mo whose resources did not provide them with much of a margin for experimentation. It seems reasonable to hypothesize that an aulo's propensity to accept or resist the French initiative was in large part a function of its resource base.

Unfortunately, the available evidence is not sufficient to support such an hypothesis, at least not with the strength one might wish. To be sure, what we know about Kouao Cokor6 and the other individual innovators suggests that they were among the wealthier aulo heads; and the villagers cited in the French documents for their cooperative response to the cocoa initiative were some of the largest and wealthiest of the region.33 The correlation in these cases between wealth, past experimentation with cocoa, and cooperation with the French program seems high.

However, when one turns to the resisters identified in the administrative reports, it is by no means clear that they were significantly poorer than the more cooperative Juablin. The village of Akobouassu6, for example, was one of the larger Juablin villages according to the 1909 census,34 and had been heavily involved in rubber processing.35 The available data simply does not provide a basis for concluding that the resisters were appreciably worse off than other Juablin. Thus, at present a structural explanation of resistance cannot be sustained, whatever its attractiveness from the point of view of theory.

What does seem clear is that the Juablin had ample political reasons for being wary of the French initiative. Almost from its outset in the late 1890s the Juablin had experienced colonial rule largely as a series of defeats and impositions. They had been shocked by the French conquest and the executions and indemnities that followed in its wake; and this sense of shock had been compounded by the imposition of the head tax and forced labor and the abolition of domestic slavery. It should not be surprising, then, that many Juablin were less than enthusiastic about the French effort to get them to grow cocoa. As the head of the agricultural service in Assikasso observed in early 1913: "The painful truth that must be recognized is that the native has very little confidence in us, especially with regard to his immediate and pecuniary interests. This is the origin and cause of many of the difficulties we encounter each time we want to obtain his effective cooperation."36

33According to my informants, these villages were well-known for their high levels of rubber

production. In three of them, Agnibilekrou, Tenguelan and Yebouakrou, prominent notables had constructed modern two-story houses with their rubber profits. The aulo mo of these villages also exploited their location along the major trade routes of the region by selling food to passing caravans.

34According to the census of 1909, Akobouassue had 232 inhabitants, the fourth-largest Juablin village. ANCI 1EE 45(2).

35Interview with Nana Tangui Koakan, headman of Akobouassu6, 9 March 1975.

36M. Farrenc, Circonscription Agricole de l'Est, monthly report, January 1913, ANCI XI-43-426.

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414 DAVID H. GROFF

Their general suspiciousness of colonialist motives led many Juablin to regard the French cocoa program as simply one more scheme for exploiting them. Thus in July 1913, when a rumor arose that the French were promoting cocoa planting in order to be able to levy a tax of 1.25 F on every mature cocoa tree, it was widely believed in Assikasso.37 Such rumors and the history that made them plausible make it readily understandable why some Juablin resisted the French cocoa program.

From the French point of view, all Juablin resistance represented a troublesome manifestation of infantile irrationality requiring firm and resolute countermeasures. As Lt. Governor Angoulvant put it, "Vis-A-vis the native we must act in the role of firm and voluntary parents. It is by authority that we can obtain what would be refused us if we used only persuasion"38 Accordingly, Commandant Clerc and his colleagues in the local administration reacted to Juablin resistance with force. Any village showing the least sign of noncompliance with the directives of the agricultural service received a visit from the cercle guards who knew how to use strong-arm methods - Angoulvant's infamous methode forte - to maximum effect. Headmen and aulo heads deemed unenthusiastic about cocoa cultivation were subjected to beatings and imprisonment under the provisions of the indigenat, the French system of administrative law empowering local colonial administrators to take summary action against individual "natives" perceived as threats to public order. Clerc was determined to use what he blandly referred to as "disciplinary penalties copiously distributed" to push the Juablin and other peoples of the cercle along the economic path he and Angoulvant had traced for them.39

Whatever its morality, Clerc's methode forte got results. By the end of 1914, over 110,000 cocoa trees had been planted in Assikasso, most of them in administration-sponsored collective village plantations.40 The French program clearly had the effect of accelerating the diffusion of cocoa in Assikasso for it insured that virtually all Juablin aulo mo, rich and poor alike, would continue to cultivate cocoa trees long enough to begin harvesting and marketing their output. In this sense, the French program represented a kind of "holding action" until such time as nature and the market place would combine to convince the Juablin of cocoa's economic benefits.

37Cercle de l'Inddnid, Rapport de 3eme Trimestre, 1913, ANCI XI43-426.

38Circular of 26 October 1909, JOCI, November 1909.

39Clerc, Cercle de l'Inddnie, Rapport dconomique et agricole du premier trimestre, 15 April 1913, ANCI XI43-426.

40Cercle de l'Indinid, Service de l'Agriculture, Rapport de l'Ensemble, 1917, ANCI XI43-426.




Table 2

THE NUMBER OF COCOA TREES PLANTED IN ASSIKASSO BY ADMINISTRATIVE ORDER, 1913-1917

Year Number of Trees Planted

1913 29,189 1914 81,803 1915 35,751 1916 88,497 1917 219,796

Sources: Poste d'Assikasso, Rapport sur la Situation Agricole, fourth trimester, 1914; Cercle de l'Indenie, Service de l'Agriculture, Rapport de l'Ensemble, 1917, 31 December

1917; Cercle de l'Indenie, Recensement des Plantations de Cacaoyers, 1916, 11 January

1917; and Cercle de 1'Indenie, Situation des Plantations de Cacaoyers, 1915, 6 January 1916.

In 1913 the market posed a greater threat to the French program than nature, since the commercial houses in the Ivory Coast had not yet seen fit to offer attractive prices for cocoa beans. Prices in the Aboisso market that year averaged between 1 and 1.30 F per kilogram.41 Such paltry prices were not even as attractive as the prices still being offered for rubber. By the beginning of 1914, however, the market for Ivorian rubber had collapsed; and early the following year, prices for cocoa had begin to rise in Aboisso, as the French merchants became more interested in making cocoa a major export commodity.42 This conjuncture of events seems to have put an end to most remaining resistance to cocoa cultivation. Indeed, such resistance appears to have disappeared by the middle of 1914 in most of Assikasso. In August of that year, the head of the colonial agricultural service in the Ivory Coast could report with evident satisfaction:

From the third to the twenty-sixth of June, the Chief of the Agricultural Service toured the cercles of Lagunes Ind6ni6, and N'Zi Como6 principally for the purpose of inspecting the agricultural station at Assikasso and studying the development of cocoa cultivation on family plantations .... He reported that the circonscription of Assikasso and the northern part of the circonscription of Zaranou the natives had truly adopted cocoa cultivation. Everyone, chiefs, notables, "boys" and even

4C6te d'Ivoire, Rapport de l'Ensemble, 1913, ANS-AOF 2G 13-29.

42Cte d'Ivoire, Rapport Agricole Annuel, 1915, ANS-AOF 2G 15-21.

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416 DAVID H. GROFF

women were planting with such an ardor that the reduced staff of the agricultural station can no longer supervise their work.43

Even when discounted for the self-serving exaggeration it undoubtedly contains, this statement indicates how widespread Juablin acceptance of cocoa had become by mid-1914. Most histories of the Ivory Coast have portrayed this outcome as the result of the single-minded efforts of the French colonizers. As we have seen, such efforts did indeed have a significant impact, but they do not constitute the whole story. The French had not introduced cocoa as a cash crop in Assikasso; that was the achievement of the Juablin innovators such as Kouao Cokor6. Cocoa cultivation might very well have spread throughout Assikasso through the example set by these innovators, even if the French had never launched their program of forced cultivation. But the French intervention did, in fact, insure that this process of diffusion took place at an accelerated pace. Market forces were clearly operating in colonial Assikasso, but were not moving fast enough to suit the French. Like other colonizers, they wished to force the pace in the interest of making the market serve their needs and reinforce their domination. And they succeeded because they possessed the power to make their will prevail.

What is perhaps most significant about the case of Assikasso is that it reminds us of something that both colonial writers such as Labouret and more recent analysts like Polly Hill have all too often forgotten - namely, that economic change in colonial Africa can be best understood as the product of the interaction of African and European initiatives within the context of the profoundly unequal power relationship that marked the colonial situation.

43Cote d'Ivoire, Service de l'Agriculture, Rapport du deuxieme trimestre, 1914, ANS-AOF 2G 15-21.



Documents

Carrots, Sticks, and Cocoa Pods: African and Administrative Initiatives in the Spread of Cocoa Cultivation in Assikasso, Ivory Coast, 1908-1920