ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the historical processes that molded the exercise of power, and the emergence and reproduction of regulative authorities in the Sahel in connection to practices of connectivity. It aims to provide an overview of people, places, and histories in the transnational micro-region of Lake Chad, focusing on the ideas of boundaries, predation, and circulation with references to secondary literature as well as archival source. Discussing the notions of Belief and Disbelief, and the political consequences of the boundary between the two, the chapter reconstructs the exercise of power and the extraction of wealth, as well as the interaction between Power, Mobility, and Landscape, in the Sahel from the early states until the 20th century.