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Interregional Monetary Flows in the Precolonial Trade of Nigeria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Paul E. Lovejoy
Paul E. Lovejoy
Affiliation:
Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria
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Extract

Only recently have historians devoted much attention to monetary developments in African history, primarily because the substantivist school of economic anthropology, which has argued that so-called western economic theory does not apply to African situations, has dominated the field. This view has been increasingly under attack in recent years, particularly by a new group of economic historians who have found many aspects of formal economic theory useful in the reconstruction of Africa's past. Marion Johnson's pioneering work on the gold mithqal and cowrie shell, for example, has documented the spread of a common currency over much of West Africa, throughout an area encompassed by Lake Chad in the east, the upper reaches of the Senegambia in the west, the southern Sahara in the north, and the region between the Volta basin and the Niger Delta in the south. The study of other currencies, including the copper rod standard of the Cross River basin in Nigeria and Cameroons, and the cloth money of the Senegambia, has demonstrated the importance of other standards besides cowries and gold, so that it is now known that virtually all of precolonial West Africa had economies sufficiently developed to require the use of circulating mediums of exchange and units of account. This breakthrough raises a number of important questions which seriously challenge, if not completely undermine, the predominant view that Africa's past, down to very recent times, has been subsistence oriented, non-market directed, and basically static.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , October 1974 , pp. 563 - 585
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

1 For a summary of the substantivist approach and some of its critics, see Harold, K. Schneider, Economic Man. The Anthropology of Economics (New York, 1974)Google Scholar, Philip, D. Curtin, Economic Change in Pre-Colonial Africa. Senegambia in the Era of the Slave Trade (Madison, forthcoming)Google Scholar, and Hopkins, A. C., An Economic History of West Africa (London, 1973).Google Scholar

2 Marion, Johnson, ‘The Cowrie Currencies of West Africa’, parts I and II, J. Afr. Hist., XI, 1 (1970), 17–49 and XI, 3 (1970), 33–53Google Scholar (referred to as ‘Cowrie Currencies, I’, and ‘Cowrie Currencies, II’) and ‘The Nineteenth Century Gold “Mithqal” in West and North Africa’, J. Afr. Hist., IX, 4 (1968), 547–70.Google Scholar

3 Latham, A. J. H., ‘Currency, Credit, and Capitalism on the Cross River in the Pre-Colonial Era’, J. Afr. Hist., XII, 4 (1971), 599–605.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also see Hopkins, A. G., ‘The Currency Revolution in South-West Nigeria in the Late Nineteenth century’, J. Hist. Soc. Nigeria, III, 3 (1966), 471–83;Google ScholarHiskett, M., ‘Materials Relating to the Cowry Currency of the Western Sudan’, Bull. SOAS, XXIX, 1 (1966), 122–42; XXX, 3 (1967), 340–66;Google ScholarLars, Sundström, The Trade of Guinea (Lund, 1965), 66–121;Google ScholarNewbury, C. W., The Western Slave Coast and Its Rulers (London, 1961), 40–2, 57–9;Google ScholarJones, G. I., ‘Native and Trade Currencies in Southern Nigeria during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, Africa, XXVIII, 1 (1958), 43–54; and Curtin, Economic Change.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 The research for this paper was carried out in connexion with a study of the history of the Hausa kola trade, which a generous grant from the Fulbright-Hayes Program made possible. I wish to thank Allen Isaacman, Martin Klein, Stephen Baier, Marc Egnal, Jean Hay, Philip Curtin, and Marion Johnson for comments on earlier drafts, which were read at the 15th Annual Convention of the African Studies Association, Philadelphia, 1972, and the African Economic History Workshop, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 3 July 1974.

5 Curtin, Economic Change, ch. VI.

6 Hopkins, , Economic History, 66–71.Google Scholar

7 Curtin, Economic Change, ch. VI; and Hopkins, , Economic History, 70.Google Scholar

8 See Paul, E. Lovejoy, ‘The Hausa Kola Trade, 1700–1900. A Commercial System in the Continental Exchange of West Africa’, Ph.D. thesis (unpublished) University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1973;Google Scholar and Lovejoy, , ‘The Wangara Impact on the Hausa Economy, with Notes on Asl al-Wanqariyin’, paper presented at the Canadian Association of African Studies Conference, Halifax, N.S., 1974, to appear in Kano Studies.Google Scholar

9 Johnson, , ‘Cowrie Currencies, I’, 33 and ‘Cowrie Currencies, II’, 331.Google Scholar The concept of money in the Hausa country may have been imported from the cowrie zone of Songhay and Mali. The Hausa word for money, kurd'i or kud'i, appears to be of Mande origin and probably is a very ancient borrowing. The proto-Mandekan form for money and silver has been reconstructed as *N-kodi, with the ‘N’ representing a slight nasalization which could easily be dropped. The proto-Mandekan form for cowries, on the other hand, was probably *Kodon, which looks somewhat similar to the Hausa term but is probably not related (personal communication from Professor Charles Bird, Indiana University). The word for cowrie in Hausa, which is also the singular for kud'i, is not connected with these forms at all. The word is uri, perhaps wuri in its archaic form. It has been suggested that the term is more closely related to the Nupe word for cowrie, w'ni, and to the Yoruba word, owo, but this has not been confirmed linguistically. Nevertheless, if true, it could have been borrowed at the time in the eighteenth century when large amounts of cowries began to enter the Hausa economy from the south (see Hiskett, , ‘Materials Relating to the Cowry Currency’, 352).Google Scholar

10 For a discussion of Central Sudan droughts, see Paul E. Lovejoy and Stephen Baier, ‘The Desert-Side Economy of the Central Sudan’ (forthcoming).

11 The sources for the eighteenth century are the following: Hiskett, , ‘Materials Relating to the Cowry Currency’, 356;Google ScholarCarsten, Niebuhr, ‘Das Innere von Afrika’, Neues Deutsches Museum (Leipzig), III, Oktober 1790, 1003.Google Scholar Niebuhr learned about the use of cowries in Zamfara from a Hausa slave in North Africa, who had left his home before the destruction of Birnin Zamfara in the mid 1760s. Also see 'Abd al-Qadir, Raudat al-afkar, as translated by Palmer, H. R., in ‘Western Sudan History. The Rauthat' ul Afkari’, J. Afr. Soc., XI, 59 (1916), 269;Google Scholar[Henry, Beaufroy], ‘Mister Lucas's Communications’, Proceedings of the Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa, Robin, Hallett, ed. (London, 1967), I, 184.Google Scholar The region of Adar was also using cowries by 1800, see Seetzen, U. J., ‘Uber die Phellata-Araber südwärts von Fesan, und deren Sprache, nebst einigen Nachrichten von unterschiedlichen umherliegender afrikanischen Lāndern’, Monatliche Correspondenz zur Beförderung der Erd- und Himmels-Kunde, XXIV (1811), 231.Google Scholar For the use of cowries at Katsina around 1800, see Walckenaer, C. A., Recherches géographiques sur l'intérieur de l'Afrique septentrionale (Paris, 1821).Google Scholar For their use in Nupe at about the same time, see Menéres de Drumond, M., ‘Lettres sur l'Afrique ancienne et moderne’, Journal des Voyages, XXXII (1826), 207.Google Scholar In Oyo in 1826, Clapperton learned that ‘the medium of exchange throughout the interior is the cowry shell’; see Clapperton, H., Journal of a Second Expedition into the Interior of Africa (London, 1829), 57.Google Scholar

12 For Gobir, see 'Abd, al-Qadir, Raudat, Palmer translation, 269.Google Scholar The quotation is from Beaufroy, , ‘Communications’, 184.Google Scholar

13 Cowries were used at Benin as early as 1515 (Johnson, , ‘Cowrie Currencies, I’, 18, 21).Google Scholar

14 Johnson, , ‘Cowrie Currencies, I’, 21–2.Google Scholar

15 For a discussion of Oyo involvement in the Atlantic slave trade, see Peter, Morton-Williams, ‘The Oyo Yoruba and the Atlantic Trade, 1670–1830’, J. Hist. Soc. Nigeria, III 1 (1964), 25–45.Google Scholar For the quantities of slaves exported from the Slave Coast in this period, see Philip, D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade. A Census (Madison, 1969), 122, 221, 228.Google Scholar For cowrie imports, see Johnson, , ‘Cowrie Currencies, I’, 21–2.Google Scholar For Hausa traders at the coast, see Colin, W. Newbury, ‘Prices and Profitability in Early Nineteenth-Century West African Trade’, in Claude, Meillassoux (ed.), The Development of Indigenous Trade and Markets in West Africa (London, 1971), 97.Google Scholar For Hausa slaves in the 1790s, see Curtin, , Atlantic Slave Trade, 188.Google Scholar The first mention of potash is in John, Adams, Remarks on the Country Extending from Cape Palmes to the River Congo (London, 1823), 90. The first edition of this book was published in 1821 under the title, Sketches Taken During Ten Voyages to Africa between the Years 1786–1800; hence most of Adams's observations applied to the last fifteen years of the eighteenth century.Google Scholar

16 David, Northrup, ‘The Growth of Trade among the Igbo before 1800’, J. Afr. Hist., XIII, 2 (1972), 221–36;Google Scholar and Kingsley, Oladipo Ogedengbe, ‘The Aboh Kingdom of the Lower Niger, c. 1650–1900’, Ph.D. thesis (unpublished), University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1971, 325.Google Scholar For Igbo slave exports, see Curtin, , Atlantic Slave Trade, 225, 244–5, 260.Google Scholar For the argument that Igbo cowrie use developed independently of the larger zone, see Johnson, , ‘Cowrie Currencies, I’, 45.Google Scholar

17 Lovejoy, ‘Hausa Kola Trade’. Cowries were in use in the Volta basin before 1745; See the mid-eighteenth century Kitab Ghunja, as translated in Jack, Goody, The Ethnography of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast, West of the White Volta (London, 1954), 41.Google ScholarJoseph, Dupuis (Journal of a Residence in Ashantee [London, 1824], xli)Google Scholar reported in 1820 that cowries were used in all the kola markets between Kumasi and the Volta as well as in Gonja and Dagomba. Thomas, Edward Bowdich (Mission from Cape Coast to Ashantee [London, 1819], 330)Google Scholar had learned three years earlier that the ‘currency … of Ashantee is gold dust, that of Inta [Gonja], Dagwumba, Gaman [Abron], and Kong, cowries’. Also see Johnson, , ‘Cowrie Currencies, II’, 338.Google Scholar

18 For Asante and its foreign trade, see Lovejoy, ‘Hausa Kola Trade’, ch. II; Ivor Wilks, ‘Asante Policy Towards the Hausa Trade in the Nineteenth Century’, in Meillassoux, , Trade and Markets in West Africa, 125–41;Google ScholarKwame, Arhin, ‘The Financing of the Ashanti Expansion (1700–1820)’, Africa, XXXVII, 3 (1967), 283–91;Google ScholarArhin, , ‘Aspects of the Ashanti Northern Trade in the Nineteenth Century’, Africa, XL, 4 (1970), 363–73;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Kwame Daaku, ‘Trade and Trading Patterns of the Akan in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, in Meillassoux, , Trade and Markets in West Africa, 168–181.Google Scholar The parallel between Asante and Oyo was first suggested in Peter, Morton-Williams, ‘The Influence of Habitat and Trade on the Polities of Oyo and Ashanti’, in Mary, Douglas and Phyllis, M. Kaberry (eds.), Man in Africa (London, 1969), 79–98.Google Scholar The account here does not agree with many of the arguments in this article, however. Morton-Williams exaggerates the importance of Mande trade to Oyo, does not recognize the importance of cowrie re-exports for Oyo, and underestimates the importance of kola to Asante.

Gold Coast slave exports declined from 60,800 in the period from 1781 to 1790, and 67,700 between 1791 and 1800, to 31,300 between 1801 and 1810. Thereafter exports dropped considerably, so that slaves of Gold Coast origin were not significant in the imports of nineteenth-century Cuba and Brazil, the two major slave receiving areas after 1810; see Philip, D. Curtin, ‘Measuring the Atlantic Slave Trade’, in Engerman, S. (ed.), Race and Slavery (forthcoming).Google Scholar

19 Lovejoy, ‘Hausa Kola Trade’, chs. III, VI.

20 Lovejoy and Baier, ‘Desert-Side Economy’.

21 See Curtin, , Economic Change. This argument does not alter Hopkins's contention that the shift from slaves to other products involved major readjustments in the West African economy (Economic History, 124–35), but it does suggest that changes were already taking place well before slave exports declined.Google Scholar

22 For the decline of Oyo, see Robert, S. Smith, Kingdoms of the Yoruba (London, 1969), 133–54;Google ScholarLaw, R. C. C., ‘The Constitutional Troubles of Oyo in the Eighteenth Century’, J. Afr. Hist., XII, 1, (1971), 25–44;CrossRefGoogle ScholarLaw, , ‘The Chronology of the Yoruba Wars of the Early Nineteenth Century: A Reconsideration’, J. Hist. Soc. Nigeria, V, 2 (1970), 211–22;Google ScholarAtanda, J. A., ‘The Fall of the Old Oyo Empire: A Re-Consideration of its Cause’, J. Hist. Soc. Nigeria, V, 4 (1971), 477–90;Google Scholar and Akinjogbin, I. A., ‘Prelude to the Yoruba Civil Wars of the Nineteenth Century’, Odu, I, 2 (1965), 34–7. Slave exports from the Bight of Benin from 1781 to 1810 were as follows: 1781–1790142,400 1791–1800 64,600 1801–1810 53,800 See Curtin, ‘Measuring the Atlantic Slave Trade’.Google Scholar

23 Lovejoy, , ‘Long-Distance Trade and Islam: The Case of the Nineteenth Century Hausa Kola Trade’, J. Hist. Soc. Nigeria, V, 4 (1971), 537–47;Google Scholar and Michael, Mason, ‘The jihad in the South: An Outline of the Nineteenth Century Nupe Hegemony in NorthEastern Yorubaland and Afenmai’, J. Hist. Soc. Nigeria, V, 2 (1970), 207.Google Scholar

24 Johnson, , ‘Cowrie Currencies, II’, 336.Google Scholar

25 For the expansion of palm exports from the 1820s, see Hopkins, , ‘Currency Revolution’, 478Google Scholar: Johnson, , ‘Cowrie Currencies, II’, 340; Northrup, ‘Igbo Trade’, 232–3;Google ScholarBabatunde, Aremu Agiri, ‘Kola in Western Nigeria, 1850–1950. A History of the Cultivation of Cola Nitida in Egba-Owode, Ijebu-Remo, Iwo, and Ota Areas’ Ph.D. thesis (unpublished), University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1972, 6–42;Google Scholar and Laird, M. and Oldfield, R. A. K., Narrative of an Expedition from the Interior of Africa, by the River Niger … in 1832, 1833, and 1834 (London, 1837), I, 341.Google Scholar

26 Clapperton, , Journal, 57, 59, 133, 135.Google Scholar Also see Richard, and John, Lander, Journal of an Expedition to Explore the Course and Termination of the Niger, with a Narrative of Voyage down that River to its Termination (New York, 1858), II, 22;Google Scholar the account of Imam Imoru of Kete-Krachi, in Adam, Mischlich, Uber die Kulturen im Mittel-Sudan (Berlin, 1942), 182;Google Scholar and Crowther, S. A. and Taylor, J. C., The Gospel on the Banks of the Niger. Journals and Notices of the Native Missionaries Accompanying the Niger Expedition of 1857–1859 (London, 1859), 211.Google Scholar

27 Lovejoy, ‘Hausa Kola Trade’, ch. VI; and Agiri, , ‘Kola in Western Nigeria’, 49–57.Google Scholar

28 Laird, and Oldfield, , Narrative, I, 271; II, 88–91, 180, 276–81, 322–3;Google ScholarWilliam, Balfour Baikie, Narrative of an Exploring Voyage up the Rivers Kwora and Binue, commonly known as the Niger and Tsadda, in 1854 (London, 1856), 269, 286, 288, 291, 455–6;Google ScholarWilliam, Allen and Thomson, T. R. H., A Narrative of the Expedition Sent by Her Majesty's Government to the River Niger in 1841 (London, 1848), 402–407;Google ScholarNorthrup, , ‘Igbo Trade’, 221–4; and Ogedengbe, Aboh Kingdom, 294–327.Google Scholar

29 Laird, and Oldfield, , Narrative, I, 271, II, 181;Google Scholar and Chilver, E. M., ‘Nineteenth Century Trade in the Bamenda Grassfields, Southern Cameroons’, Afrika und Ubersee, XLV, 4 (1961), 238.Google Scholar

30 Agiri, , ‘Kola in Western Nigeria’, 13–16;Google ScholarMichael, Mason, ‘Population Density and “Slave Raiding”—;The Case of the Middle Belt of Nigeria’, J. Afr. Hist., X, 4 (1969), 558;Google ScholarLaird, and Oldfield, , Narrative, II, 87–88, 322;Google ScholarBaikie, , Narrative, 317 and Northrup, ‘Igbo Trade’, 222–3.Google Scholar If the practice of the 1841 expedition to explore the Niger was any indication of later European ventures, many tons of cowries were introduced into the Sokoto Caliphate up the Niger. This seems especially likely, since most commodities shipped into the interior were less bulky than the ivory, potash, and other goods brought down the river. In 1841 fourteen bags of 20,000 K each were given to the Atta of Igala in partial payment for the purchase of land at Lokoja. With the increase in the number and frequency of explorations and commercial ventures after 1845, several tons of cowries could have been shipped inland in a relatively short period. See Allen, and Thomson, , Narrative, 350–1.Google Scholar The implication from the report of the 1854 expedition suggests that cowries were taken as one item, but there is no indication as to how many (Baikie, , Narrative, 133, 406).Google Scholar Merchants also brought slaves from the Bamenda plains into the Igbo and Cross River areas in response to increased demand for labour in palm oil production; see Chilver, , ‘Trade in the Bamenda Grassfields’, 237.Google Scholar

31 For the effects of increased cowrie imports after the 1840s, see Hopkins, , ‘Currency Revolution’, 471–83;Google Scholar and Johnson, , ‘Cowrie Currencies, II’, 335–43.Google Scholar

32 Hopkins, , ‘Currency Revolution’, 474–5, 477.Google Scholar Also see Johnson, , ‘Cowrie Currencies, I’, 23–5; and ‘Cowrie Currencies, II’, 338–42.Google Scholar

33 Hopkins has analysed many other economic factors related to the era of the Scramble, see Economic History, 124–66.Google Scholar

34 For a discussion of these changes in the total Nigerian context, see the forthcoming work of Philip Ehrensaft and Benson Brown, ‘The West African Mode of Production in Colonial Nigeria, 1884–1945’.

35 Denham, D., Clapperton, H., and Oudney, W., Narrative of Travels and Discoveries in Northern and Central Africa in the Years 1822, 1823, and 1824 (London, 1828), I, 195–6; II, 121–2;Google Scholar and Heinrich, Barth, Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa (New York, 1857–1859), I, 535.Google Scholar

36 Johnson, , ‘Cowrie Currencies, I’, 27–32.Google Scholar

37 Crowther, and Taylor, , Gospel, 211.Google Scholar

38 Newbury, , ‘West African Trade’, 97; and Lovejoy, ‘Hausa Kola Trade’, chs. V and VI. It should be noted that the argument here conforms with Newbury's hypothesis that an expansion in trade between Europe and coastal West Africa had important linkages with continental commercial patterns.Google Scholar

39 Hopkins, , ‘Currency Revolution’, 476–7.Google Scholar

40 The established kola traders were the Agalawa, Tokarawa, and Kambarin Beriberi: see Lovejoy, ‘Hausa Kola Trade’, chs. III–V; and Lovejoy, , ‘The Kambarin Beriberi: The Formation of a Specialized Group of Hausa Kola Traders in the Nineteenth Century’, J. Afr. Hist., XIV 4 (1973), 633–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The new merchants included many individuals who identified themselves as Kanawa, or people from Kano, although cattle dealers and other merchants from elsewhere in the Caliphate also traded to the coast; see, for example, Polly, Hill, ‘Notes on the History of the Northern Katsina Tobacco Trade’, J. Hist. Soc. Nigeria, IV, 3 (1968), 477–81.Google Scholar

41 Lovejoy, ‘Hausa Kola Trade’, ch. VI and Appendix I; Agiri, , ‘Kola in Western Nigeria’, 58–9;Google Scholar and Lovejoy, , ‘The Wholesale Kola Trade of Kano’, African Urban Notes V 2 (1970), 129–42.Google Scholar

42 Scattered data do not contradict this hypothesis. During the 1850s in the Sokoto Caliphate, for example, a dish of tuwo, a standard Hausa porridge, cost only 3 K, while 25–30 K were ‘a sum which may keep a poor man from starvation for five days’ (Barth, , Travels, I, 446, 464).Google Scholar Prices were roughly the same earlier in the century (Clapperton, , Journal, 139–40, 193)Google Scholar, and oral data for the end of the century suggest a daily living allowance of only a few times these amounts. For slave prices, see David, Carl Tambo, ‘The Sokoto Caliphate Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century’, M.A. thesis (unpublished) University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1974.Google Scholar For kola prices, see Lovejoy, , ‘Hausa Kola Trade’, 203.Google Scholar

43 Mason, , ‘Middle Belt’, 556;Google ScholarMason, , ‘Nupe Hegemony’, 205;Google ScholarSmith, M. G., Government in Zazzau. A Study of Government in the Hausa Chiefdom of Zaria in Northern Nigeria from 1800 to 1950 (London, 1960), 74, 93–4;Google ScholarJohnston, H. A. S., The Fulani Empire of Sokoto (London, 1967), 176;Google ScholarBarth, , Travels, III, 95, 564;Google Scholar and Clapperton, , Journol, 216.Google Scholar

44 This summaries some of the findings in Paul, Lubeck, ‘The Revenue System of PreColonial Kano Emirate’, unpublished seminar paper, Northwestern University, 11 06 1968.Google Scholar Also see Barth, , Travels, I, 523.Google Scholar

45 The account book is in the Nigerian National Archives, Kaduna. The information here was obtained from a discussion with Professor Abdullahi Smith.

46 Lovejoy, , ‘Hausa Kola Trade’, 97–8;Google Scholar Lovejoy and Baier, ‘Desert-Side Economy’; and Stephen, Brock Baier, ‘African Merchants in the Colonial Period: A History of Commerce in Damagarain (Central Niger), 1880–1960’, Ph.D. thesis (unpublished), University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1974.Google Scholar

47 Curtin, Economic Change; and Atlantic Slave Trade. Allen Howard is currently working on the Sierra Leone–Guinea area, and B. A. Agiri and Patrick Manning are engaged in separate studies of the Dahomey–Yoruba region.