The Kambarin Beriberi: The Formation of a Specialized Group of Hausa Kola Traders in the Nineteenth Century

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Periodical article

Title:	The Kambarin Beriberi: The Formation of a Specialized Group of Hausa Kola Traders in the Nineteenth Century
Author:	Lovejoy, Paul E.
Year:	1973
Periodical:	The Journal of African History
Volume:	14
Issue:	4
Pages:	633-651
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Subsaharan Africa
Subjects:	traders cola History and Exploration Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/180905
Abstract:	For many commercial systems in Africa, particularly in the region stretching from the Senegambia to the Ethiopian highlands, Islam has provided a unifying ideology which has helped overcome the problems of long-distance trade. The origins of the Kambarin Beriberis and their conscious development of a corporate identity provides a valuable insight into the emergence of a Muslim mercantile class in the northern savanna region of Africa. Other authors have observed a relationship between the maintenance of economic and social diasporas and the creation of commercial monopolies, but the explanation that these diasporas have been 'ethnic' organizations has obscured a fundamental feature of their historic development. In the case of the Kambarin Beriberi, many traders identified as Hausa were immigrants from other parts of Africa. Any understanding of the formation of commercial diasporas must, to reach a fuller understanding of the interaction between the different commercial segments, consider the various components of the trading system. Notes, table, summary.