What East Africans Got for Their Ivory and Slaves: The Nature, Working and Circulation of Commodity Currencies in Nineteenth-Century East Africa

Pallaver, Karin

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-20973-5_4

Karin Pallaver⁴

Part of the book series: Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies ((IOWS))

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Abstract

During the nineteenth century, the significant increase in the commercialization and export of ivory and slaves resulted in the commodification of the East African economies through the import of new goods: glass beads, cowrie shells, imported cloth and metal wires started to be invested with new exchange value and emerged as new currencies. The adoption of imported currencies throughout the Zanzibar commercial hinterland facilitated transactions where indigenous and external economies intersected. This chapter argues that the monetary systems of nineteenth-century East Africa were integrated through the external demand for ivory and slaves, the use of imported currencies and a shared value system based on cattle. The chapter contends that the co-existence of regional and imported currencies created opportunities for traders who operated across currency zones.

I am playing here on the title of an article by Stanley Alpern called “What Africans got for their Slaves”, that provides a detailed, but yet not analytical, list of goods used in West Africa to buy slaves. By using the term “got”, I do not imply passivity on the parts of consumers. Rather, as scholars—see, among others, J. Prestholdt, Domesticating the World. African Consumerism and the Genealogies of Globalization (Berkley, University of California Press, 2008)—have stressed in recent years, Africans in fact demanded products, which European and American merchants were forced to supply; see S. Alpern, “What Africans Got for their Slaves: A Master List of European Trade Goods”, History in Africa 22 (1995) 5–43.

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Notes

1.
K. Pallaver, ‘Currencies of the Swahili World,’ in The Swahili World, S. Wynne-Jones and A. La Violette, eds. (London and New York, Routledge, 2018) 447–57; S. Wynne-Jones and J. Fleisher, ‘Coins and other Currencies on the Swahili Coast,’ in The Archaeology of Money, C. Haselkgrove and S. Krmnicek, eds. (Leicester, Leicester University Press, 2016) 115–36.
2.
J. Glassman, Feasts and Riot. Revelry, Rebellion, and Popular Consciousness on the Swahili Coast, 1856–1888 (Portsmouth, Heinemann, 1995) 36.
3.
A. G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (London, Longman, 1973) 67.
4.
P. Lovejoy, ‘Interregional Monetary Flows in the Precolonial Trade of Nigeria,’ Journal of African History 15 (1974) 563.
5.
D. Richardson , ‘West African Consumer Patterns and their Influence on the Eighteenth-Century English Slave Trade,’ in Uncommon Markets: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic World, H.A. Gemery and J.S. Hogendorn, eds. (London, Academic Press, 1979) 304. This is connected to what Philip Curtin defined as the “gewgaw myth”, see P.D. Curtin, Economic Change in Pre-colonial Africa: Senegambia in the Era of the Slave Trade (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1975). With specific reference to beads, there is another myth that it is worth mentioning here, that could be dubbed “the ornament myth”, that is, the idea that the huge amounts of beads imported to Africa were mainly used to produce ornaments. For an example, see S. Alpern, ‘What Africans got for their Slaves.’
6.
See, among others, J. Hogendorn and M. Johnson, The Shell Money of the Slave Trade (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1986); J. Guyer, Marginal Gains. Monetary Transactions in Atlantic Africa (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2004); B. Naanen, ‘Economy Within an Economy: The Manilla Currency, Exchange Rate Instability and Social Conditions in South-Eastern Nigeria 1900–48,’ Journal of African History 34 (1993) 425–46; W.I. Ofonogoro, ‘From Traditional to British Currency in Southern Nigeria: Analysis of a Currency Revolution, 1880–1948,’ Journal of Economic History 39:3 (1979) 623–54.
7.
Very little research has been done on the monetary history of East Africa, especially for the pre-colonial period. There are, however, some works on the colonial period, among which R. Maxon, ‘The Kenya Currency Crisis, 1919–21 and the Imperial Dilemma,’ Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 17 (1989) 323–48; W. Mwangi, ‘Of Coins and Conquest: The East African Currency Board, the Rupee Crisis and the Problem of Colonialism in the East African Protectorate,’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 4:4 (2001) 763–87.
8.
N.T. Hakansson, ‘Socio-ecological Consequences of the Ivory Trade,’ in Ecology and Power: Struggles over Land and Material Resources in the Past, Present and Future, A. Hornborg, B. Clark and K. Hermele, eds. (New York, Routledge, 2014), 124.
9.
On the problems connected to the historical research on pre-colonial currencies, see J. Guyer, ‘Introduction: The Currency Interface and Its Dynamics,’ in Money Matters. Instability, Values and Social Payments in the Modern History of West African Communities, J. Guyer, ed. (Portsmouth, Heinemann, 1995) 35.
10.
From the point of view of currency circulation also some areas of Eastern Congo and Southern Sudan will be occasionally included.
11.
A. Sheriff, Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar: Integration of an east African Commercial Empire into the World Economy, 1770–1783 (London, James Currey, 1987) 156.
12.
C.F. Holmes, ‘Zanzibari Influence at the Southern End of Lake Victoria: The Lake Route,’ African Historical Studies 4:3 (1971) 479.
13.
On ivory prices, see Sheriff, Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar, Appendix B, 250–56.
14.
The obvious exceptions were the populations living in the northern parts of the commercial empire (in the areas bordering with present-day Somalia and Ethiopia), which continued to use Maria Theresa Thalers well into the colonial period, especially in cattle trade. On pice used as ornament see C.J. Sissons, Economic Prosperity in Ugogo, East Africa, 1860–1890. PhD Thesis, University of Toronto (1984) 38–9; F.J. Jackson, Early Days in East Africa (London, E. Arnold, 1930).
15.
J. Tosh, ‘The Northern Interlacustrine Region,’ in Pre-colonial African Trade: Essays on Trade in Eastern and Central Africa, R. Gray and D. Birmingham, eds. (London, Oxford University Press, 1970) 109.
16.
Prestholdt, Domesticating the World, 72.
17.
C.S. Nicholls, The Swahili Coast: Politics, Diplomacy and Trade (London, Allen and Unwin, 1971) 348.
18.
Prestholdt, Domesticating the World, 77.
19.
F.P. Nolan, Christianity in Unyamwezi 1878–1928. PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge (1977) 27.
20.
M.J. Hay, ‘Changes in Clothing and Struggles over Identity in Colonial Western Kenya,’ in Fashioning Africa. Power and the Politics of Dress, J. Alleman, ed. (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2004) 67. On porters’ wages, see S. Rockel, Carriers of Culture. Labor on the Road in Nineteenth-Century East Africa (Portsmouth, Heinemann, 2006).
21.
Owing to transport costs, the value of cloth increased going inland and therefore the standard units of currency changed: The doti merikani measured 4 yards on the coast, three and half in Tabora and 3 in Ujiji; see J. Becker, La Vie en Afrique ou trois ans dans l’Afrique Centrale, Vol. 1 (Paris, J. Lebègue, 1881) 465; E. Hore, Eleven Years in Central Africa (London, Stanford, 1892) 71.
22.
Sheriff, Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar, 434.
23.
For similar standard units of currency in West Africa, see Curtin, Economic Change in Pre-colonial Africa, 249.
24.
Hardinge [quoting a private letter from Colvile] to Kimberley, Zanzibar, 28/7/1894, FO 107/2, The National Archives, London [hereafter NA].
25.
Tosh, ‘The Northern Interlacustrine Region,’ 115; R.F. Burton, The Lake Regions of Central Africa, Vol. 1 (Santa Barbara, The Narrative Press, 2001 reprint of the 1860 edition) 138.
26.
J. Ainsworth, ‘Report on the District,’ Machakos, 1/1/1894, FO 2/73, NA; Jackson, Early Days in East Africa, 175; G.N. Uzoigwe, ‘Pre-colonial Markets in Bunyoro-Kitara,’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 14 (1972) 447.
27.
Johnston ‘Report on Uganda,’ Entebbe, 27/4/1900, FO 2/298, NA.
28.
R.F. Burton, ‘The Lake Regions of Central Equatorial Africa,’ Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 29:139 (1859) 428.
29.
On the use of cowries to buy food for slaves, see R. Beachey, The Slave Trade of Eastern Africa (London, Rex Collings, 1976) 191.
30.
K. Pallaver, ‘From Venice to East Africa: History, Uses and Meanings of Glass Beads,’ in Luxury in Global Perspective: Commodities and Practices, c. 1600–2000, K. Hofmeester and B.S. Grewe, eds. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2016).
31.
C. Hobley, Kenya. From Chartered Company to Crown Colony. Thirty Years of Exploration and Administration in British East Africa, 2nd edition (London, Frank Cass, 1929) 246.
32.
N.R. Bennett (ed.), Stanley’s Despatches to the New York Herald 1871–1872, 1874–1877 (Boston, Boston University Press, 1970), 457.
33.
R.F. Burton, The Lake Regions of Central Africa, 292.
34.
Pére Livinhac, S. Marie près de Roubaga, 9/9/1879, White Fathers Archive, Rome [hereafter WF] C 11–12.
35.
J. Thomson, To the Central Lakes and Back: The Narrative of the Royal Geographical Society’s East Central African Expedition, 1878–80, Vol. 1 (London, Sampson Low, 1881) 353.
36.
K. Pallaver, ‘“A Recognized Currency in Beads”: Glass Beads as Money in 19th-Century East Africa: The Central Caravan Road,’ in Money in Africa, C. Eagleton, H. Fuller and J. Perkins, eds. (London, British Museum Research Publications, 2009) 20–9.
37.
F. Bontnick (ed.), L’Autobiographie de Hamed ben Mohammed el Murjebi Tippo Tip (ca. 1840–1905) (Bruxelles, Académie Royale des Sciences d’Outre-Mer, 1974); J. Jorgensen, Uganda: A Modern History (London, Croom Helm, 1981) 68.
38.
On this see K. Pallaver, ‘“The African Native has no Pocket”: Monetary Practices and Currency Transitions in early Colonial Uganda,’ International Journal of African Historical Studies 48:3 (2015) 471–99.
39.
These are the dates of reign according to Henri Médard, as reported in H.E. Hanson, Landed Obligations. The Practice of Power in Buganda (Portsmouth, Heinemann, 2003) XVII–XVIII.
40.
V.L. Cameron, Across Africa (Daldy, Isbister, 1877) 176; G.A. Schweinfurth et al. (eds.), Emin Pasha in Central Africa, Being a Collection of his Letters and Journals (London, Philip, 1888) 114. According to Burton, cowries were collected in the various places along the coast between Ras Hafun and Mozambique. This trade was in the hands of Muslim hucksters; see Burton, ‘The Lake Regions of Central Equatorial Africa,’ 448.
41.
Some expeditions to the coast are reported, but it was not a direct and systematic connection; see R. Reid, Political Power in Precolonial Buganda: Economy, Society and Warfare in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, James Currey, 2002) 159.
42.
Berkeley to Foreign Office, Port Alice, 21/4/1896, FO/2/112, NA.
43.
Schweinfurth et al., Emin Pasha in Central Africa, 81.
44.
H. Médard, Le Royaume du Buganda au XIXe siècle: mutations politiques et religieuses dans un ancien état d’Afrique (Paris, Khartala, 2007) 133.
45.
Schweinfurth et al. (1888), 114; the evidence is mine.
46.
Curtin, Economic Change in Pre-colonial Africa, 238; Guyer, Marginal Gains, 70.
47.
R. Austen, ‘Patterns of Development in Nineteenth-Century East Africa,’ Journal of African History 4:3 (1971) 654.
48.
Guyer introduced the concept of “interface”, a point of meeting where difference was maintained, albeit on changing terms; see Guyer, ‘Introduction,’ 8.
49.
A. Dodgshun, Journal. From London to Ujiji, 1877–79, 20/1/1879, Central Africa, Box 1, Council for World Mission, London, SOAS; M.A. Quiggin, A Survey of Primitive Money (New York, Barnes & Noble, 1970) 102.
50.
Burton, ‘The Lake Regions of Central Equatorial Africa,’ 189.
51.
E.C. Hore, ‘On the Twelve Tribes of Lake Tanganyika,’ Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 12:9 (1883) 2–21.
52.
H.M. Stanley, Through the Dark Continent (London, Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, 1878), 4; the evidence is mine.
53.
Coastal traders were established in Msene, whereas Omani traders were settled in Tabora. The fact that the first evidence on the use of a currency in beads comes from Msene, suggests that coastal traders introduced sofi beads as currency in the local market; see Burton, ‘The Lake Regions of Central Equatorial Africa,’ 188; H. Leonard, Notes sur Tabora, manuscript, WF.
54.
B. Brown, ‘Muslim Influence in the Lake Tanganyika Region,’ African Historical Studies 4:3 (1971) 621.
55.
B. Brown, Ujiji: History of a Lakeside Town, PhD Thesis, University of Boston (1973) 72.
56.
H.M. Stanley, How I Found Livingstone (Vercelli, White Star, 2006 reprint of the 1872 edition) 421.
57.
Cameron, Across Africa, 176.
58.
Hobley Kenya, 90–1.
59.
Cloth, in fact, circulated in association with glass beads or cowries. I have found very few references in the sources to the concurrent circulation of beads and cowries. One of these is the explorer Jerome Becker, who describes a market in Bunyoro, where: “Every morning after sunrise, men might be heard crying their wares throughout the camp—such as Tobacco, tobacco; two packets for either beads or simbis [cowries]! Milk to sell for beads or salt! Salt to exchange for lance heads”; quoted in Tosh, ‘The Northern Interlacustrine Region,’ 117.
60.
Stanley, How I Found Livingstone, 421.
61.
Pallaver, ‘The African Native has no Pocket.’
62.
Reid, Political Power in Precolonial Buganda, 151–8.
63.
The one exception to this occurred in 1882 when kabaka Mutesa attempted to limit the import of cowries in order to favour the import of cloth and firearms. However, these regulations had little real effect and quickly became a dead letter. Médard, Le Royaume du Buganda au XIXe siècle, 133.
64.
Reid, Political Power in Precolonial Buganda, 158.
65.
MacDonald to Consul General Zanzibar, Port Alice, 21/10/1893, FO 107/18, NA.
66.
A. Roberts, ‘The Nyamwezi,’ in Tanzania before 1900. Seven Area Histories, A.D. Roberts, ed. (Nairobi, East African Publishing House for the Historical Association of Tanzani, 1968) 117–50.
67.
W.T. Brown and B. Brown, ‘East African Towns: A Shared Growth,’ in A Century of Change in Eastern Africa, W. Arens, ed. (The Hague, Mouton, 1976) 189–90; according to Burton, between Zanzibar and Unyanyembe the prices increased five times; Burton, ‘The Lake Regions of Central Equatorial Africa,’ 185; according to Becker, the prices between Zanzibar and Tabora doubled; see Becker, La Vie en Afrique ou trois ans dans l’Afrique Centrale, Vol. 1, 466.
68.
Burton, The Lake Regions, 87–8 and 149.
69.
Guyer, Marginal Gains.
70.
C. Hobley, ‘A general report on Kavirondo’, inclosure in Berkeley to Foreign Office, Port Alice, 12/5/1896, FO 2/112, NA.
71.
Quoted in J. Lamphear, ‘The Kamba and the Northern Mrima Coast,’ in Pre-colonial African Trade, 90.
72.
Thomas N. Hakansson, ‘The Human Ecology of World Systems in East Africa: The Impact of the Ivory Trade,’ Human Ecology 32 (2004) 574 and 586.
73.
L. Mair, An African People in the Twentieth Century (London, Routledge, 1934) 145.
74.
J.A. Rowe, Revolution in Buganda 1856–1900. Part One: Reign of Mukabya Mutesa 1856–1884, PhD Thesis, University of Wisconsin (1966) 47. On the value of cattle, see Médard, Le Royaume du Buganda au XIXe siècle, 134.
75.
Pallaver, ‘The African Native has no Pocket.’
76.
H.K. Schneider, Livestock and Equality in East Africa. The Economic Basis for Social Structure (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1979) 65 and 102.
77.
K. Pallaver, ‘Paying in Rupees, Paying in Cents. Colonial Currencies, Labour Relations and the Payment of Wages in Kenya (1890–1920),’ in Colonialism, Institutional Change and Shifts in Global Labour Relations, K. Hofmeester and P. de Zwart, eds. (Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam Press, 2018) 295–325.
78.
H. Schneider, ‘Livestock as Food and Money,’ in The Future of Pastoral Peoples, J.G. Galaty et al., eds. (Ottawa, International Development Research Center, 1981), 213.
79.
L.S.B. Leakey, The Southern Kikuyu before 1903, Vol. 1 (London, Academic Press, 1977) 503.
80.
Debin Ma, ‘Money and Monetary Systems in China, in the 19th and 20th Century: An Overview,’ Economic History Working Paper, London School of Economics (2012) 5.
81.
A. Appadurai, ‘Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value,’ in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, A. Appadurai, ed. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986) 35; G. Gereffi, M. Korzeniewicz and R.P. Korzeniewicz, ‘Introduction: Global Commodity Chains,’ in Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism, G. Gereffi and M. Korzeniewicz, eds. (Westport, Greenwood Press, 1994) 2.
82.
On cloth, see Prestholdt, Domesticating the World; on glass beads see K. Pallaver, ‘From Venice to East Africa.’
83.
According to Sheriff, the accumulation of capital by Indian merchants was primarily based on the momentous divergence between the price curves of African exports and those of manufactured imports, which constituted a dynamic force for commercial expansion; Sheriff, Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar, 103–4; A. Sheriff, ‘Ivory and Commercial Expansion in East Africa in the Nineteenth Century,’ in Figuring African Trade, 434.
84.
Sissons, Economic Prosperity in Ugogo, East Africa, 1860–1890.
85.
Rapport du Père Guillet, 8/10/1881, WF C 20-62.
86.
Sissons, Economic Prosperity in Ugogo, East Africa, 1860–1890, 55–6.
87.
Gray Dawes and Co. to Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 8/8/1894, FO 107/65, NA.
88.
Hobley to Foreign Office, Mumias, 5/2/1896, FO 2/112, NA.
89.
Johnston to Salisbury, Entebbe, 18/4/1900, FO 2/298, NA; Sadler to Foreigno Office, Entebbe, 14/8/1902, FO 2/956, NA.
90.
Hobley to Foreign Office, Mumias, 5/2/1896, FO 2/112, NA.
91.
Sadler to Foreign Office, Entebbe, 14/8/1902, FO 2/956, NA.
92.
Guyer, Marginal Gains, 53.
93.
J.S. Hogendorn and H.A. Gemery, ‘Continuity in West African Monetary History? An Outline of Monetary Development,’ African Economic History 17 (1988) 127–46.
94.
British-made merikani shrunk and became flimsy when washed. It was considered of bad quality and therefore refused by the African staff in government employment, like the Sudanese troops; see Jackson, Early Days in East Africa; Colvile to Foreign Office, 2/4/1895, FO 107/65, NA; Crown Agents to Foreign Office, 4/9/1899, FO 2/235, NA.
95.
Joseph Inikori, ‘Africa and the Globalization Process: Western Africa, 1450–1850,’ Journal of Global History. 2:1 (2007) 84; P.D. Curtin, ‘Africa and the Wider Monetary World 1350–1850,’ in Precious Metals in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Worlds, J.F. Richards, ed. (Durham, Carolina Academic Press, 1983) 233.
96.
Hogendorn and Johnson, The Shell Money of the Slave Trade.
97.
Mwangi, ‘Of Coins and Conquest,’ 782.
98.
Hakansson, ‘The Human Ecology of World Systems in East Africa,’ 574.
99.
Mwangi, ‘Of Coins and Conquest,’ 782–3.
100.
Brown, Ujiji, 51.
101.
Sheriff, Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar, 109.

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Department of History and Cultures, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
Karin Pallaver

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Martin Luther Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Halle, Germany
Steven Serels
Indian Ocean World Centre, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
Gwyn Campbell

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Pallaver, K. (2019). What East Africans Got for Their Ivory and Slaves: The Nature, Working and Circulation of Commodity Currencies in Nineteenth-Century East Africa. In: Serels, S., Campbell, G. (eds) Currencies of the Indian Ocean World. Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20973-5_4

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