In Jihad in West Africa during the Age of Revolutions Paul Lovejoy argues provocatively that the West African jihads were a crucial part of the revolutions that altered world history in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and he criticizes Atlantic and world historians for not recognizing their role. The book is most persuasive, however, in its discussion of Sokoto and Bornu in northern Nigeria. Lovejoy argues convincingly in favor of a point that I made forty-five years ago; that the jihads were to a large degree a response to disruptions caused by the Atlantic slave trade. He also argues correctly that ethnicity was fluid.

The core argument of the book is that jihad leaders were opposed to the sale of Muslims, that many regimes banned the sale of Muslims to Christians, and that as a result the export of slaves from Muslim areas declined after the jihads. This argument—also made recently by Rudolf Ware III (The Walking Qu’ran: Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge, and History in West Africa, University of North Carolina Press, 2014)—is supported by data indicating that after the Sokoto jihad (1804–1808), most of the slaves exported from Africa were from Central Africa and the Bight of Biafra, and thus were not Muslim. Lovejoy concedes, however, that while the major jihad leaders tried to stop the sale to Europeans, they were not always successful, and their successors were not always resolute. In the Fuuta Tooro, for example, there was a decline in revolutionary zeal after the death of founder Abdul Kader Kan in 1807. Lovejoy also discounts the importance of European diplomacy and naval action in shaping slave exports. The British navy did not at first act south of the equator, which allowed the continuation of a large slave trade from Central Africa to Brazil. Nevertheless, the French slave trade from Muslim Senegambia declined because of French policy in the 1820s and ended completely in 1831.

Lovejoy also argues that though Muslims influenced by jihad ideology were not numerous, they were nonetheless an important factor in slave revolts in the Americas. His argument here is less than convincing. Though he makes admirable use of slave biographies, it seems clear that the probability of sustaining an Islamic commitment in the Americas was difficult and passing it on was almost impossible. Lovejoy also picks up on Dale Tomich’s argument (in The Politics of the Second Slavery, SUNY Press, 2016) that there was a “second slavery” in the Americas—that is, an increased use of slaves after British abolition of the slave trade—and argues that there was also a parallel development in West Africa. The capacity of the jihad regimes to enslave people was clearly a variable in this growth. Lovejoy also shows that economic growth in the Sokoto Caliphate created the potential for exploitation of slave labor, although his argument would have been strengthened if he had looked at other poles of economic growth—for example, areas where slave labor produced goods for European markets or the desert-side cities where trade between pastoralists and farmers created a market for slave labor.

Less cogent is his argument that the jihads were one of the revolutions that shaped the modern world. The West African, French, and American Revolutions were in many ways parallel phenomena that took place in the same period—but there were no causal connections. Opposition to slavery also had a different face in Africa and in the West. Anglo-American and European abolitionists were hostile to slavery; African jihad leaders were only concerned that slaves not be sold to Christians. He is more persuasive in his discussion of the industrial revolution of the late eighteenth century and the economic linkages it forged. Industrialization in Europe, like the earlier development of plantation systems, had ripple effects in all parts of the world. The jihad regimes, though hostile to the sale of slaves to Christians, were eager to trade with Christians, and Lovejoy includes a fascinating discussion of negotiations that took place between the British envoy Hugh Clapperton and Muhammed Bello. Others, like Al Hajj Umar Tal, Ma Ba Jaxu, and various Almamies from Futa Jallon, sought commercial arrangements with Europeans and were often dependent on the arms trade.

Unfortunately, the book contains a number of errors. The Wolof and Poular languages were not mutually intelligible. Al Hajj Umar Tal did not attack Hamdullahi in 1837. The Fulbe and the “Mandingos” were not all Muslims. Nevertheless, this is an important work. Many of its arguments persuasively challenge a number of accepted ideas. Just as Lovejoy has been important in asserting that African Americans were Africans in America, so too this book will hopefully provoke a reevaluation of the Muslim jihads.