Early Modern Sub-Saharan African Clothing

West African Textile Kingdoms

Follow the weaving process, individual cloths, and pattern names in kente cloth history.

The Asante Empire of present-day Ghana elevated kente cloth into one of the world's most recognizable textile traditions. Woven on narrow strip looms by male weavers, kente consisted of long, thin bands of silk or cotton stitched together into a large wrapper.¹ Many patterns carried specific names and meanings — some were reserved exclusively for royalty.^1,2 The Asante sourced silk for their finest kente by unraveling costly imported silks (in 1817 the British envoy Thomas Bowdich singled out red taffetas) and re-weaving the threads into distinctly African patterns, demonstrating how global trade was absorbed and transformed by local artistic traditions.¹² Kente was not only an Asante art: Ewe weavers to the east developed their own tradition, often in a blend of cotton and silk, and with figurative motifs such as animals, people and letters.¹

Further east, the Kingdom of Benin (in present-day Nigeria) developed a court dress tradition of extraordinary elaboration. The Oba (king) wore regalia of coral beads — crowns, high collars, necklaces, beaded shirts, and aprons.^3,4,14 The oba controlled precious materials such as coral, and his coral regalia expressed his divine right to rule.³ Beyond coral, Benin's weavers produced cotton cloth that Portuguese merchants bought by the thousand, while the kingdom's famous brass plaques depict the oba or war chiefs with attendants in ceremonial attire — coral crowns and collars, leopard-face tunics, and leopard-tooth necklaces — a visual language of rank and power.^5,4

For the earlier history of strip-woven cotton and court dress in the region, see medieval West African clothing in the Mali Empire.

Trade, Transformation, and Textile Exchange

The early modern period brought transformative new materials into sub-Saharan African dress through expanding trade networks. Indian cotton textiles had for centuries been shipped across the Indian Ocean to the East African coast,¹³ and in West-Central Africa Indian cloth, brought by European traders, entered the markets of the Kongo kingdom, where its colors and designs resembled Kongo's own.¹⁰ Along the West African coast, European traders — the Portuguese from the fifteenth century, followed by the Dutch and English — brought trade cloth, much of it Indian cotton re-exported through Europe alongside European fabrics, which African consumers adopted selectively, according to consistent preferences for particular colors and patterns.⁵

Despite these imports, indigenous textile production remained vibrant. In present-day Mali, Fulani (Fulbe) communities became known for khasa (kaasa) blankets — wool blankets, sometimes incorporating handspun cotton, with geometric patterns; museum examples such as these date from the early 20th century, so how far back the form goes is uncertain.^6,15 The Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria developed aso oke cloth, a prestige fabric woven by men in narrow strips on double-heddle looms (Yoruba women wove on upright single-heddle looms) and worn at ceremonies and festivals.⁷ In the Kongo Kingdom, raffia cloth woven from palm fiber was produced in large quantities, serving as both garment material and currency.^10,9 Europeans were already collecting finely made raffia cloths from the Congo region in the sixteenth century.^8,10 The bark cloth of the Buganda kingdom in present-day Uganda — made by beating the inner bark of the mutuba fig tree into a soft, even cloth — rested on a technique older than weaving itself, and its production declined only after Arab caravan traders brought cotton cloth in the nineteenth century.¹¹

Sources

1. Kente textile — Victoria and Albert Museum.
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2. Kenten (kente cloth), HC.1999.280 — Horniman Museum and Gardens.Reference 1
3. The Oba: Leopard of the House (Ekpen N'Owa) — Benin—Kings and Rituals: Court Arts from Nigeria, Art Institute of Chicago.
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4. Plaque of an Oba or Warrior with Attendants — Benin—Kings and Rituals: Court Arts from Nigeria, Art Institute of Chicago.
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5. 'Guinea Cloth': Production and Consumption of Cotton Textiles in West Africa before and during the Atlantic Slave Trade — Colleen E. Kriger, Global Economic History Network paper (LSE).
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6. Kaasa blanket — Princeton University Art Museum.Reference 1
7. Nigerian Men's Weaving — Adire African Textiles.Reference 1
8. African Textiles: History — Adire African Textiles.Reference 1
9. Royal Hat (Mpu) — High Museum of Art.Reference 1
10. Textile trade and industry in the kingdom of Kongo (1483-1914) — Isaac Samuel, African History Extra.
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11. Barkcloth making in Uganda — UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, 2008.Reference 1
12. Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee — T. Edward Bowdich, John Murray, 1819 (Project Gutenberg edition).Reference 1
13. Medieval Indian textiles from Quseir al-Qadim in Egypt — Textile Travels, Textile Research Centre, Leiden.Reference 1
14. Ancestral Commemorative Head (uhunmwun-elao) — Cleveland Museum of Art.Reference 1
15. Blanket or Cover (Kaasa) — Cleveland Museum of Art.Reference 1