”The sparrow loves millet, but labors not”: Energy use and infrastructure in the Senegal Valley, 1450-1760

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the history of precolonial energy use in the Senegal Valley from 1450–1760, showing how the Wolof kingdoms developed technologically sophisticated systems of energy use to construct an infrastructure of what I call ‘organic refineries’. As co-constructed sites of energy use, technological innovation, and material production, the organic refineries of the Senegal Valley relied on the expertise of peasant farmers, the labor of enslaved workers, and the fertility of arable land to endure long periods of drought and political instability during the era of the transatlantic slave trade. In centering the history of premodern energy use within an African context, this study demonstrates how energy use was not solely confined to the factories, blast furnaces, and coal refineries associated with the proto-industrial economies of the West. The precolonial populations of the Senegal Valley, I argue, developed and deployed a wide range of technical skills, expertise, and systems of labor that coalesced into a resilient infrastructure of agrarian energy systems. These energy regimes enabled them to withstand ecological instability – droughts, locust plagues, and food scarcity – and to compete for control over networks of commercial exchange.