Les crises de subsistances dans les villages soninke du cercle de Bakel, de 1858 à 1945: Problèmes méthodologiques et perspectives de recherches

Subsistence crises in the Soninke villages of Bakel district, 1858-1945. Problems of method and research prospects.- This paper offers a method for the analysis of subsistence crises in Black Africa during the colonial period. Lacking the long homogeneous statistical series generally used for the location and description of the European famines of the Ancien Régime, we have established a chronology based upon district reports and retrospective enquiries in the Soninke villages. In view of the strong correlation between the length of a crisis and its seriousness, we have set up a typology of crises and distinguished, according to their duration, between "scarcity", "famine" and "serious famine". This chronology reveals sequential crises inscribing the production system and social life within a pluri-annual cycle with food shortages appearing as a structural trait. This chronological series is but a step in the analysis of subsistence crises which must eventually be correlated with ecological, socio-economic and political data in order to understand the conditions of their outbreak, their impact and the social dynamics during the colonial period.