Roads and wheeled transport in African history.
Roads and wheeled transport in African history.
Why the kingdoms of Kush and Dahomey used wheels while Asante did not.
The wheel is often regarded as one of humanity's greatest inventions, yet its historical significance remains a subject of considerable debate. Vehicles with wheels require good roads, but in most parts of the world, road construction could only be undertaken by large hegemonic states whose primary interest in building those roads was improving the mobility of their armies, rather than increasing civilian transport.
Road building and maintainence in Africa appears to have been more extensive than has been previously understood. The list of Africa's road-building states wasn't just confined to the 'great road system' of Asante and the paved roads of the Aksumite kingdom and Gondarine Ethiopia, it also includes the roads of the Bokoni in southern Africa used for transporting people and their cattle, the road system of Buganda which has drawn parallels with Asante, as well as the less extensive road networks in Dahomey.
Yet in all these African road-building societies, there was a noted absence of wheeled transport. The stone blocks used in constructing the great obelisks of Aksum were not moved in wagons, nor were Aksumite armies campaigning along the kingdom's paved roads in chariots, even though Aksum was familiar with societies that had both wagons and chariots such as the kingdom of Kush. Similary, the Asante did not utilize wheeled transport, despite being in contact with Dahomey where wheeled vehicles were relatively common, and with the Europeans at the coast, for whom wheel technology was becoming increasingly important.
an ancient paved road at Aksum and a gondarine-era bridge on the blue Nile, built by emperor Fsilides in 1660 but blown up during the Italian invasion of 1935.
The history of wheeled transport in the African kingdoms of Kush and Dahomey, as well as the absence of wheels in the road-building kingdom of Asante shows that the historical significance of the wheel in pre-industrial transport and technology is far more complex than is often averred.
In this two-part article, I outline the history of the wheel in Kush and Dahomey by placing it in the global context of wheeled transport from its invention around 4,000BC to the industrial era. Using recent research that shows how the wheel was first spread across the ancient world, before it was abandoned for over a millennia, only to later re-emerge in the 17th century, I argue that Africa wasn't exempt to these trends. The kingdom of Kush adopted wheeled transport just like the rest of the ancient world, and that its sucessors (such as the Aksumites, the Arabs, and even post-Roman Europe) largely abandoned the wheel just as it was disappearing everywhere else, before early modern kingdoms like Dahomey re-discovered wheeled transport as a consequence of the wheel’s re-popularization in western Europe.
The second half the article, which is included below, explains why the Asante kingdom did not adopt wheeled transport despite posessing an extensive road system. Using comparisons with the road system of the kingdom of Burma which had wheeled transport in the 19th century, its shown that Asante's road users would not have seen any significant improvements in travel speed had they adopted wheeled transport. I also include a section of the colonial governor Lord Lugard's failed ox-cart project in nothern Nigeria, showing that the non-adoption of wheeled transport wasn't due to Africans’ ignorance of its benefits —as colonialists often claimed— but because the cost of wheeled transport greatly outweighed the returns.
PART I; on wheeled transport in Kush and Dahomey:
PART II
Built roads but absent wheels: why wheeled transport wasn't fully adopted in precolonial Asante, comparisons with Burma and lord Lugard's failed ox-cart project in northern Nigeria
The absence of wheeled transportation in sub-Saharan Africa is a topic most Africanists tend to avoid despite it being frequently mentioned as an example of Africa's technological backwardness. This has created an asymmetry between non-specialists on African history who exaggerate the wheel's centrality In pre-modern technology (especially in transport), versus Africanists who either; avoid it the "wheel question" altogether or downplay the wheel's importance without offering convincing explanations.
It's important to note that the wheel was present in sub-saharan Africa, especially in ancient Nubia; from the Kerma era's representations of wheeled chariots in lower Nubia; to the extensive use and depictions of chariots in Kushite warfare; to the medieval era where the saqia water-wheel was used in agriculture. However, this extensive use of the wheel was mostly confined to the region of Sudan, even though many parts of Africa were familiar with the wheel since antiquity.
One particulary notable society that was familiar with the wheel was the kingdom of Asante in what is now Ghana. Considering Asante's extensive road network and the kingdom's contacts with europeans in coastal forts, it may on first sight appear to be rather surprising that Asante didn't adopt the use of wheeled transport. However, a comparison of Asante with the 18th century kingdom of Burma (Myanmar) which also had a road system but used wheeled transport, reveals that using wheels offered no significant advantages in logistics.
This article explores the history of transportation in Asante, comparing it with the Konbaung dynasty of Burma to explain why wheeled transportation was absent in most of Africa, and why colonialists like lord Lugard failed to implement wheeled transport in northern Nigeria.
19th century Asante treasure box made of brass mounted on a 4-wheeled stand, Pitt rivers museum
A summary of Antony Hopkins' and Robin Law's arguments on the absence of wheeled transport in precolonial Africa:
Atleast two west Africanists have studied the history of wheel in west Africa; the first was a brief comment on the wheeled transport in Antony G. Hopkins’ Economic history of west Africa, the second is a monograph on wheeled transport in pre-colonial west Africa by Robin Law.
Hopkins argues that besides the tsetse infested areas where the value of wheeled vehicles was reduced by the high mortality of draught animals, even in places where draught animals were available and used in transportation, wheeled vehicles were considered uneconomic because its greater cost was not justified by the proportionately greater returns because the poor quality of the roads would have greatly reduced the efficiency of wheeled vehicles and the cost of improving the system would have been prohibitive, he concludes that pack animals predominated because they were cheap to buy, inexpensive to operate and well suited for the terrain.1
Robin law on the other hand, argued that wheeled transport could not be adopted without improved roads, but the roads would not be improved as long as there was no wheeled transport to use them, he observed that improving roads solely to accommodate wheeled vehicles would be a speculative gamble on the future profits to be realized from such improvements, the kind of gamble the Asante were in no position to make, but one that colonial governments with a more aggressive ideology of economic progress (or exploitation) could undertake.2
He goes over the history of the wheel in Africa, particularly the disappearance of the horse drawn chariot in the Sahara that was replaced by the camel, and thus ushering in the caravan trade which rendered wheeled transportation all but obsolete, he then covers the ceremonial wheeled carriages in the coastal kingdoms of Asante and Dahomey from the 17th to the 19th centuries, and the practice of rolling barrels down roads rather than using carts which one west African trader found would be too expensive to maintain due to the poor quality of the roads that were built for foot travel rather than wheeled carriages, he also covers the use of the wheeled gun carriages in much of west Africa.3
This article follows both Antony Hopkins and Robin law's argument that the Asante government appreciated the necessity of good roads and undertook their construction to such an extent that they were central to its administration, but the cost of building roads good enough for wheeled transport was prohibitive because of the speculative nature of such an infrastructure investment. Using a recent study by Michael Charney comparing the kingdom of Asante with the kingdom of Burma, I advance the argument that the adoption of the wheel by itself wouldn't greatly improve the speed or robustness of Asante's road system since its presence in the fairly similar kingdom of Burma didn't result in a better or faster overland transportation system there, and that discourses on the history of wheeled transportation overestimate its importance in pre-modern transport, instead, the real transportation revolution happened with the internal combustion engine of trains and cars, both of which would be adopted much faster under the colonial and post-independence era governments.
Locations of the Asante kingdom in Ghana and the kingdom of Burma (Myanmar)
The Asante kingdom's great roads system
The Asante kingdom was a precolonial state near the southern Atlantic coast of west Africa that was established in 1701 until its fall to the British in 1900 after which its territory was ruled under the gold coast colony, and at independence became the modern country of Ghana.
The great roads of the Asante were "conduits of authority" beginning at the capital and ending at the frontier, the road system radiated out of Kumasi - the Asante capital, and was central to Asante expansion, the empire followed the road rather than the road system following the empire's expansion, but also importantly, these roads augmented the old established trade routes connecting the Asante capital Kumasi to the commercial cities of the west Africa, ie: Bonduku, Daboya, Yendi to its north -which would then meet the caravan routes to Jenne, Timbuktu and Katsina; and to its south, the great roads linked Kumasi to the coastal ports such as Accra and Elmina thus joining the maritime routes terminating in Europe and the Americas.4
Before this road system was built in the early 18th century, travel in the interior of the gold coast was virtually impossible, the road systems were thus built to make overland travel less arduous, the road building process followed the imperial expansion of the Asante, and their salience in Asante's administration was such that opposition to road building in conquered states (eg the closure of existing roads) was the earliest indication of rebellion
Asante roads were constructed by clearing the vegetation, leveling the soil, lining the sides with trees and for a few in the metropolitan Kumasi, the roads were paved with stones. Bridges were also built along the major highways, using posts that are sunk into the centers of the river, on these posts are placed strong beams that are fasted onto the posts, poles are then placed on top of the beams and covered with earth 6 inches thick.5
The road building process involved negotiations of agreements between local chiefs where these roads passed and control posts manned by highway police were set up at strategic points along these roads, usually at the halting places , these halting places, were central to the administration of the empire, not only serving to provision and accommodate passing travelers but also as centers for local authority to which reference could be made whenever cases of banditry were reported on these highways. The majority of these halting places would then grew into sizable towns and it was the authorities in these towns that were tasked with repair work along the highways; all were paid a significant sum in gold to carry out these works.6
Map of Asante’s great roads system by Ivor Wilks
Illustration of Road Travel in Ashanti published in the 'Illustrated London News', 28 February 1874, photo from M. Charney’s collection
The state official in charge of maintaining highways was the akwanmofohene, this roads "minister" was authorized to make payments to laborers who cleared the roads and to fine those committing nuisances (such as highway robberies) revenues from such amounted to 6,750 ounces of gold. Another state official was the nkwansrafo, who headed the highway police, garrisoned control points on the routes close to the frontiers of the kingdom, monitored the flow of commodities and taking custom duties.7
One such repair of a highway was undertaken by Asante king Osei Bonsu in 1816, the roads were straightened, cut to a standard width of 30-40 feet and roots dug up, this repair work was complete by 1817 , one traveler named Huydecoper who used this road said of it "the highway is fairly good, despite the roots and tree stumps that still remain" As a result of these improvements, the roughly 210 km long journey between cape coast and kumasi was reported to have been accomplished by William Hutton in 6 days, at an average speed of 35 km per day in 1820.8 However, records from the 1840s indicate that travel speeds had greatly improved.
Summary of two detailed itineraries for Asante, recorded in the 1840s, the journey speeds shown here vary anywhere between 107km per day to for the Manso-Foso road to 45km per day for the Moase-Ankase road.9
The rate of repairing these roads however couldn't be maintained to the same degree of the modern state as environmental factors made the cost of maintain them quite heavy, Ghana experiences heavy seasonal rains such that the cost benefit of regularly clearing such roads was untenable (save for the annual repair of the highways) an example of this limitation can be seen in Bowdich's account of one of the Kumase-Bosompora river road one of the main highways in the system; Bowdich had found the road to be well cleared and it was in many places about 8 feet wide, this he observed in May of 1817, but on his return journey using the same road in September of that year, the rainy season had set in violently and the pristine road had been reduced to "a continued bog" so much that Bowdich's Asante escort was reluctant to travel on it.10
Throughout their interactions with European travelers and missionaries, the Asante got to learn of ways of improving their transportation, the four wheeled carriage that had been gifted to him and transported by the missionary Freeman in 1840s was just one of the items that aroused the Asante king's curiosity , even more so when he was told of the transportation system that was in England "the rapidity with which travelling is performed by railroads and steam-packets, very much interested and astonished him"11
As Wilks writes "the Asante government begun to explore the possibilities of utilizing European capital ad skills to create a railroad system in Asante". But the defeat of 1874 and the disintegration of the kingdom in the 1890s forced them to abandon these plans. Fortunately, the Asante's road building legacy continued into the colonial and independent era; two thirds of the Asante road network would become motor roads under the later governments.12
Asante vs Burma : wheeled transportation in a tropical kingdom
Michael Charney's study offers an excellent comparison of transportation systems the Asante and the Konbaung kingdom of Burma. While Burma lies on a much higher latitude than Asante (at 21° N vs 7° N), and is us capable of supporting draught animals, it has a fairly similar climate with heavy seasonal rainfall. Burma adopted wheeled transportation and had a similar road system as the Asante although it was markedly less robust since the Burmese state was more focused on restricting the mobility of its agriculturalist population than the on exporting gold, kola and slaves like the Asante, for whom good mobility was paramount.13
Perhaps the most enabling feature of Burma's adoption of wheeled transportation was the terrain, thin vegetation and the dry climate of much of its northern heartland
As charney writes "Much of the Burmese heartland was flat and dry and easily traversable on buffalo carts, even off of the tracks and roads. In wetter areas of the kingdom, such as the Lower Burma delta, the overgrowth was not nearly as impenetrable as the West African jungle and any road controls in the former would have been easily circumvented"
Pre-colonial Burmese cart with one type of slab-wheel, published in the 'Illustrated London News', 22 June 1889, photo from M. Charney’s collection.
These conditions also existed in Asante's northern tributaries but were absent in much of its central and southern regions, which only 200 years before Asante's ascendance were covered in dense tropical rainforests that required the importation of slave labor from west-central Africa to clear the forests and transform the land into terrain more suitable for agriculture.
But more importantly, Burma had extensive contacts with the Chinese empires and various western Asian empires among whom, wheeled transportation was known unlike the Asante who northern contacts were the Hausa and Juula traders from the Sahel who only used pack animals.
Charney writes that highway robbery in Burma was a significant problem for overland transport unlike in Asante, in part because the Burmese government was less focused on policing and maintaining its road system primarily because the traffic couldn't be restricted to these roads unlike in Asante, this meant less customs revenues could be collected by the Burmese state from roads thus obviating the need to maintain them. with no central infrastructure for road repair nor any highway police focus was instead placed on the irrawaddy river whose traffic was much easier to control and thus collect customs from traders.14
While Charney doesn't provide figures for the speed of road transportation in precolonial Burma, the speed of its road travel can be derived from the neighboring Chinese province of Yunnan where ox-drawn carts are used, in the 19th century the distance between the cities of Xundian and Weining averaged 17km and 12.3km per day, which is roughly half the travelling speed in Asante of 35 km a day.15
In both states , transportation and communication systems can be seen to be fairly sufficient relative to each state's capacity to control trade traffic. The adoption and use of wheeled transport in Burma didn't by itself result in a more robust or even faster overland transportation system than in Asante, and its therefore unlikely that Asante's transportation would be significantly improved by a wide scale adoption of animal powered or human-powered wheeled vehicles.
Location of the Xundian to Weining route relative to the Burma kingdom capital. while relatively more mountainous, the region’s road system shared many similarities with Burma’s and even allowing for thrice the speed would still barely match the best of Asante’s travel time. It should be noted that the travel time estimates provided use ‘day-stages’ similar to the Asante itineraries, they are not the exact distance that could be travelled without stopping for a day.
Lugard's failed ox-cart project in northern Nigeria: a counter-factual on the adoption of the wheel in pre-colonial Africa
While the significance of the internal combustion engine in revolutionizing transport in western Europe during the industrial period is beyond the scope of this article, it's important to note that before its introduction in west Africa, early colonial administrators complained about the prohibitive cost required to maintain roads in the gold coast colony. as Robin law writes; "Even the British colonial government in the Gold Coast baulked at the gamble in 1870, concluding that roads suitable for wheeled traffic would be too expensive to build and were in any case undesirable since 'even if good roads were built, there would be no vehicles to travel on them", or as As the Reverend C. C. Reindorf succinctly put it in the 1880s: “We have the wheel-wrights but where are the roads?".16
Additionally, the Europeans in their various forts and small coastal protectorates made little use of wheeled transportation either, and made little effort in building roads in their nascent colonies. It should be noted that it was the Asante who built the best roads in the gold coast region, not the British colony of the Fante.
An example of what would have happen if wheeled transport in the form of ox-drawn or human-drawn carts had been introduced in Asante could be seen in lord Lugard's failed attempt to use such vehicles in northern Nigeria where transport was dominated by mules and other pack animals. Frustrated with the labor costs for pack animals and head porterage, which the colonial government and state monopolies such as the Niger company primarily relied upon in transport, Lugard purchased 1538 oxen and 100 carts in 1904-05 and brought drivers and mechanics from India to operate a transport service, the acting commissioner Wallace also promoted Lugard's transport scheme by quoting rates of 1/9d per ton mile for ox carts vs double for carriers.
However, the Niger company deemed the scheme unworkable knowing that the oxcarts could only operate for 9 months being useless in the wet season, something which Lugard had ignored. In reality, the Ox-cart transport in fact ended up costing slightly more per ton mile than other carriers, the cart road being operational only 5 months a year afterwhich the carts wore out and the animals died of pleuropneumonia. By the end of the decade , the scheme was abandoned, and the government reverted back to using pack animals and head porterage by 1908, having failed at using a quick fix of wheeled carts.17
It's important to note that Lugard's scheme involved no significant investment in road infrastructure particularly bridges which would have vindicated Wallace's estimates, but the advantages Wallace claimed in his estimates hinged on improving the methods of transport without significant improvement in roads; the later improvements would no doubt cancel out whatever advantages would have been realized.
conclusion: the (in) effeciency of wheeled transport.
It was therefore not the absence of the wheel that placed a constraint on transportation in Asante, nor the lack of draught animals or wheeled vehicles themselves (as we have seen that the regions which had these still fared no better in robustness of transportation) but as with all pre-industrial technologies, it was the discovery of new sources of power (in this case, the fuel used in the internal combustion engine) that would result in significant improvement in transportation.
As Hopkins concluded: before the industrial revolution, the use of wheeled vehicles in western Europe was just as constrained as it was in Africa, and often due to the same causes. (I go into greater detail on how wheeled transport was rare in pre-17th century Europe in the first part of my article)
Hopkins provides the example of 18th century Spain, where pack animals like donkeys were the most important means of transport, and that even though oxcarts were widely available, they were used in short haul work. He adds that the same century in England, a writer commented on the use of pack animals in the country: "Long trains of these faithful animals, furnished with a great variety of equipment … wended their way along the narrow roads of the time, and provided the chief means by which the exchange of commodities could be carried on’."18
It can therefore be concluded that Africa's transportation systems were fairly robust and were best suited for African conditions, and that the wheel's non-adoption was solely because it wouldn't offer significant advantages to offset its costs, it was due to this inefficiency that other means of transportation such as pack animals and head porterage proved more efficient for both pre-colonial and colonial governments before the widespread use of the trains and cars.
Nubians bringing tribute, Tomb of Huy, Viceroy of Kush under Tutankhamen (ca 1341- 1323 BC)
An Economic History of West Africa By A. G. Hopkins pg 117-120 )
Wheeled Transport in Pre-Colonial West Africa by Robin Law pg 258)
Wheeled Transport in Pre-Colonial West Africa by Robin Law pg 255)
Asante in the Nineteenth Century by Ivor Wilks, pg 1-3)
Journal of Various Visits to the Kingdoms of Ashanti, Aku, and Dahomi, in Western Africa by Freeman pg 57, pg 118
Asante in the Nineteenth Century by Ivor Wilks pg 34)
Asante in the Nineteenth Century by Ivor Wilks pg 35)
Asante in the Nineteenth Century by Ivor Wilks pg 37)
Asante in the Nineteenth Century: By Ivor Wilks pg 9
Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee by T. Bowdich, pgs 29, 30, 152 and 150-5)
Journal of Various Visits to the Kingdoms of Ashanti, Aku, and Dahomi, in Western Africa by Freeman pg 132)
Asante in the Nineteenth Century by Ivor Wilks pg 41, 13)
Before and after the wheel : Precolonial and colonial states and transportation in West Africa and mainland Southeast Asia by Michael W. Charney 2016, pg 14-16)
Before and after the wheel : Precolonial and colonial states and transportation in West Africa and mainland Southeast Asia by Michael W. Charney pg 16)
Mountain Rivers, Mountain Roads: Transport in Southwest China, 1700‐1850 By Nanny Kim pg 379)
Wheeled Transport in Pre-Colonial West Africa by Robin Law pg 257)
The Struggle for Transport Labor in Northern Nigeria, 1900-1912 by Ken Swindell pg 149-152)
An Economic History of West Africa By A. G. Hopkins pg pg 121)