Journal ArticleDOI
A Microcosm of Why Africans sold Slaves: Akan Consumption Patterns in the 1770s.
TLDR
Miles's documents also make it clear that generalizations drawn from the Gold Coast in this period cannot be extended automatically to other areas; Akan history tells us that neither can they be extended on the gold coast into a different era as discussed by the authors.Abstract:
The European goods which Africans consumed in the slave trade era tell us much about the African societies which imported them. However the study of the subject has involved much confusion through the application of fragmentary evidence from different societies in different stages of development towards the fashioning of broad hypotheses about the impact of the trade on West Africa as a whole. It is important therefore, when the evidence is available, to study each society and each group of African middlemen individually as well as within the wider context.The papers (especially the barter records) of Richard Miles throw a good deal of light on one such microcosm: the Akan people of the Gold Coast in the second half of the eighteenth century. The Fante middlemen with whom Miles dealt required, for virtually every barter, an assortment of goods from five major categories: hardware, currencies, textiles, luxury items, arms and ammunition. Though all these categories were necessary for the trade, it is notable that textiles were far and away the dominant commodity desired by the Akan. Guns were in surprisingly low demand during this period which suggests that the Akan slave producers (principally the Asante) had no difficulty raising slaves through tribute in peacetime and were not forced to rely on wars and slave-raids.Miles's documents also make it clear that generalizations drawn from the Gold Coast in this period cannot be extended automatically to other areas; Akan history tells us that neither can they be extended on the Gold Coast into a different era.read more
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The archaeology of African‐European interaction: Investigating the social roles of trade, traders, and the use of space in the seventeenth‐ and eighteenth‐century Hueda Kingdom, Republic of Bénin
TL;DR: The role of trade and intercultural contact in the development and transformation of Hueda society during the course of Savi's transition into a major trans-Atlantic trading centre is discussed in this paper.
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Ocean of Trade: South Asian Merchants, Africa and the Indian Ocean, c.1750-1850
TL;DR: Ocean of Trade as mentioned in this paper explores the region's entangled histories of exchange, including the African demand for large-scale textile production among weavers in Gujarat, the distribution of ivory to consumers in Western India, and the African slave trade in the Mozambique channel that took captives to the French islands of the Mascarenes, Brazil and the Rio de la Plata.
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The Middle Passage and the Material Culture of Captive Africans
TL;DR: The authors reviewed the evidence for clothing, metal, bead, and other jewelry, amulets, tobacco pipes, musical instruments, and gaming materials, and provided an empirical foundation for the severe limitations placed upon enslaved Africans in transporting their material culture to the New World.
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Using historically informed archaeology: Seventeenth and eighteenth century Hueda/European interaction on the coast of Bénin
TL;DR: In this paper, a methodology influenced by Annales history for critically analyzing documentary sources in conjunction with a critical interpretation of archaeological remains is presented. But this documentation necessarily presents a perspective distilled through European eyes.
References
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Book
An economic history of West Africa
TL;DR: This is the standard account of the economic history of the vast area conventionally known as West Africa as mentioned in this paper, ranging from prehistoric time to independence, covering the former French as well as British colonies.
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A Historical Geography of Ghana
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the peopling of the land and the crystallization of tribes and states, and the determinants of urban growth in the Ashanti region.
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Accumulation, wealth and belief in Asante history: I. To the close of the nineteenth century
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present two contributions to the economic and social, but above all to the intellectual history of the West African forest kingdom of Asante or Ashanti (now located in the Republic of Ghana).
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Iron is iron 'til it is rust: Trade and Ecology in the Decline of West African Iron-Smelting*
TL;DR: In this article, the impact of trade and ecology on the decline of West African iron industries was examined and the only viable long-term response and adaptation to the ecological devastation became the increased reliance on imported supplies of iron.