Jihad in West Africa during the Age of Revolutions

The importance of Islam in the history of West Africa is highlighted by the jihad movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with ramifications through the twentieth century to the present. The jihad propagated during the Age of Revolutions between the 1770s and the 1850s transformed the political economy of West Africa in ways that shaped the Atlantic world and restricted the movement of enslaved Africans to the Americas during the era of the "second slavery," while at the same time intensifying the economic exploitation of slave labor in West Africa on a scale comparable to the "second slavery" of the Americas. A study of Islamic West Africa corrects a Euro-centric view of the Atlantic world and indeed of the Age of Revolutions by demonstrating how West Africa influenced the course of modern history. Understanding the perspective of Muslims in West Africa during the era of jihad of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries provides context for an analysis of Boko Haram and other contemporary jihad movements today.