The Development of the Fanisau Plantation Complex

Bibliographic Data

ID23466208
AuthorsMohammed Bashir Salau (0009-0004-8930-5050, corresponding author)
Year2011
Pages41-76
Publication date2011-01-01
Open AccessYes
TypeCHAPTER
VenueWest African Slave Plantation (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherPalgrave Macmillan US (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1057/9780230120167_3
OpenAlexW2488833382
ISBN9780230120167
LanguageEN
References cited17

Historical sources are not silent on the origin of Fanisau. According to one tradition collected by Yusuf Yunusa, the settlement was founded during Emir Ibrahim Dabo’s reign and was first settled by his “trusted slaves.”1 This view accords well with the assertion of the first European traveler, Clapperton, who visited Fanisau in the early 1820s, and who reported, “[After breakfast I accompanied Hat Salah, the sheikh’s agent, to the sansan, which, since it became a town, is also called Fanisoe.”2 Both of the above accounts, however, confuse the origin of the gandu sarauta and the early settlement of the sansan (fortified settlement/town)3, respectively, with the origin of Fanisau itself. These accounts that attribute a nineteenth-century origin to the settlement are late creations, after Fanisau became a plantation complex as well as a sansan. Such myths must have arisen as a reflection of the loyalty of the slaves (especially those at the gandun sarki) and their descendants to the emir.

Ancient history · Assertion · Economics · Ethnology · Genealogy · Loyalty · Mythology · Political science · Reign · Settlement (finance) · African Studies and Geopolitics · Classics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law

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