ABSTRACT
This chapter examines two theories of migration in pre-colonial Africa, which derive contrasting conclusions from a common starting point: that sub-Saharan Africa was generally land-abundant and labor-scarce before the 20th century. Kopytoff’s “internal African frontier” evokes a multitude of local open frontiers, across which groups moved voluntarily to establish new settlements. The Nieboer-Domar hypothesis identifies the same resource conditions as making labor coercion profitable, thus providing the economic logic for forced migration within the region. This chapter argues that voluntary re-settlement had become rare before the 19th century, whereas slave trading within the region expanded in the context of the gradual abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, the growth of “legitimate” exports, and the jihadist creation of the Sokoto Caliphate, which became the largest state in West Africa. Other significant forms of migration in the period were displacement by war, and, on the other hand, trading caravans. The further expansion of export agriculture under European colonial rule eventually provided conditions for the transformation of the intra-regional labor market, with voluntary, seasonal migration becoming its predominant form.
