The Political Economy of the Sokoto Caliphate after the 1850s: The Triple System and Its Dynamics

Three salient political-economic patterns – (1) agriculture and craft production with trade, (2) war economy, (3) economy of exploitation – in the Sokoto Caliphate have been inquired under the triple system by scrutinizing their similar and dissimilar features, their autonomous and interdependent characters, and their connected and disconnected specificities. In doing so, the complex dynamics and functions of the Caliphate’s decentral political economy were analyzed within its intricate form, and the research perspective attentively oscillated between the global and local scale by traversing various disciplines. Thus, it was tried to combine all different case studies concerning the political economy of the various parts of the Caliphate into a political-economic model not by reductionism and generalization but by following the overlapped patterns. Besides, this model was further tested and improved with the deep analysis of the primary sources, such as archival reports and letters, traveler accounts, oral collections, and juristical texts.