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PAWNSHIP, DEBT, AND ‘FREEDOM’ IN ATLANTIC AFRICA DURING THE ERA OF THE SLAVE TRADE: A REASSESSMENT*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2014

Paul E. Lovejoy
Paul E. Lovejoy*
Affiliation:
York University
*
Author's email: plovejoy@yorku.ca
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Abstract

A reassessment of the institution of pawnship in Africa for the period from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century tightens the reference to situations in which individuals were held as collateral for debts that had been incurred by others, usually relatives. Contrary to the assumptions of some scholars, pawnship was not related to poverty and enslavement for debt but rather to commercial liquidity and the mechanisms by which funds were acquired to promote trade or to cover the expenses of funerals, weddings, and religious obligations. A distinction is made, therefore, between enslavement for debt and pawnship. It is demonstrated that pawnship characterized trade with European and American ships in many parts of Atlantic Africa, but not everywhere. While pawnship was common north of the Congo River, at Gabon, Cameroon, Calabar, the interior of the Bights of Biafra and Benin, the Gold Coast, and the upper Guinea coast, it was illegal in most of Muslim Africa and the Portuguese colony of Angola, while it was not used in commercial dealings with Europeans at Bonny, Ouidah, and other places.

Keywords

Western Africacreditslaverytradeeconomic
Type
Slavery and Indebtedness
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , March 2014 , pp. 55 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

*

I wish to thank Mariana P. Candido, José C. Curto, Yacine Daddi Addoun, Suzanne Schwarz, Vanessa Oliveira, Jennifer Lofkrantz, and Gwyn Campbell for their comments on earlier versions of this article. I owe a special debt to David Richardson and Toyin Falola, whose collaboration underpins the article. The research for this study was done under the auspices of the Canada Research Chair in African Diaspora History.

References

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16 For the pawning of gold, see Lovejoy and Richardson, ‘Business of slaving’, 67–89.

17 Kea, Settlements, Trade, and Polities, 227–8, 237–8, 241–2.

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21 Ibid. 14.

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23 ‘Parfitt's information’, folio 87.

24 Testimony of James Arnold, in Lambert, House of Commons Sessional Papers of the Eighteenth Century, 1789, Part I, Vol. 69, 50.

25 Cited in Brooks, G. E. Jr, Yankee Traders, Old Coasters & African Middlemen: A History of American Legitimate Trade with West Africa in the Nineteenth Century (Boston, 1970), 338Google Scholar.

26 ‘Minutes of evidence taken on the second reading of the bill intituled, “An Act to prohibit the Trading for Slaves on the Coast of Africa, within certain Limits” ’, Torrington, F. W. (ed.), House of Lords Sessional Papers, Session 1798–99, Vol. III (Dobbs Ferry, NY, 1974), 99Google Scholar and 112.

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28 Testimony of Richard Edwards, in Lambert, House of Commons Sessional Papers, Vol. 69, 44.

29 Ibid.

30 Spilsbury reported that the captain of the Trio had a female pawn on board when seized by a French squadron, but the girl was sent on shore so that she would not be taken, which assured that the captain could return to trade; ‘had he not, no Englishman would have been allowed to trade’ (Voyage to the Western Coast, 32).

31 Clarkson, Evidence of Sundry Persons, 133. Clarkson learned of another case in which pawns had been taken to St. Domingue and were brought back to Calabar, although in the end the pawns were not redeemed and subsequently were sent back to St. Domingue and sold.

32 Merseyside Maritime Museum Archives, Liverpool, Earle Papers, Letter book of William Earle, 1760–1.

33 Williams, G., History of the Liverpool Privateers and Letters of Marque, with an Account of the Liverpool Slave Trade (London, 1897), 541Google Scholar.

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35 Williams, Liverpool Privateers, 541–2.

36 The National Archives, Kew (TNA) C 107/12, letter from Duke Ephraim of ‘Old Callabar’ to James Rogers and James Laroach, Liverpool, 16 October 1789. There are three copies of this letter, the first marked Old Callabar 17 November 1789, the second 25 November 1789, and the third 16 October. There are minor variations in spelling and the odd word inserted or left out, but the names of those seized and shipped overseas are the same.

37 Spilsbury, Voyage to the Western Coast, 32, and appended plate.

38 TNA C 107/12, letter from Duke Ephraim to Rogers & LRoach [Laroche], 16 October 1789.

39 Behrendt, S. D., Latham, A. J. H., and Northrup, D. (eds.), The Diary of Antera Duke, an Eighteenth-Century African Slave Trader (Oxford, 2010)Google Scholar.

40 Clarkson, Evidence of Sundry Persons, 36.

41 Ibid. 72.

42 For a discussion of the 1767 massacre at Calabar, see Lovejoy and Richardson, ‘Trust, pawnship, and Atlantic history’, 346, and the sources cited therein; Sparks, R., The Two Princes of Calabar: An Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Odyssey (Cambridge, MA, 2004), 10–32Google Scholar; and Williams, Liverpool Privateers, 529–66.

43 Sparks, Two Princes, 132–4.

44 See the discussion in Lovejoy and Falola, ‘Pawnship in historical perspective’, in Lovejoy and Falola, Pawnship, Slavery, 1–26. Also see Oroge, ‘Slavery in Yorubaland’; Oroge, ‘Iwofa’, 75–106; and Falola, T., ‘Slavery and pawnship in the Yoruba economy of the nineteenth century’, in Lovejoy, P. E. and Rogers, N. (eds.), Unfree Labor in the Development of the Atlantic World (London, 1994), 221–45Google Scholar.

45 A. N. Klein, ‘Inequality in Asante: a study of the forms and meanings of slavery and social servitude in pre- and early colonial Akan-Asante society and culture’ (PhD thesis, University of Michigan, 1980); Austin, G., ‘Indigenous credit institutions in West Africa, c. 1750–c. 1960’, in Austin, G. and Sugihara, K. (eds.), Local Suppliers of Credit in the Third World, 1750–1960 (London, 1993), 117–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There is scattered discussion of pawning in many of the studies on slavery in Africa, particularly in such collections as those by Meillassoux, C. (ed.), L'Esclavage en Afrique précoloniale (Paris, 1975)Google Scholar; Miers and Kopytoff, Slavery in Africa; and Miers and Roberts, The End of Slavery. For other references, see Sundström, L., The Trade of Guinea (Uppsala, 1965), 36–45Google Scholar.

46 See various publications of P. E. Lovejoy and D. Richardson, for example, ‘Trust, pawnship, and Atlantic history’, 332–55; ‘The business in slaving’, 67–89; ‘ “This horrid hole” ’, 363–92; ‘Letters’, 89–115; ‘Anglo-Efik relations’, 101–20; Lovejoy, and Richardson, , ‘From slaves to palm oil: Afro-European commercial relations in the Bight of Biafra, 1741–1841’, in Killingray, D., Lincoln, M., and Rigby, N. (eds.), Maritime Empires: British Maritime Trade in the Nineteenth Century (London, 2004), 13–29Google Scholar; and ‘The slave ports of the Bight of Biafra in the eighteenth century’, in Brown, C. A. and Lovejoy, P. E. (eds.), Repercussions of the Atlantic Slave Trade: The Interior of the Bight of Biafra and the African Diaspora (Trenton, NJ, 2010), 19–56Google Scholar. Also see Lovejoy, P. E., ‘Transformation of the Ékpè masquerade in the African diaspora’, in Innes, C., Rutherford, A., and Bogar, B. (eds.), Carnival: Theory and Practice (Trenton, NJ, 2013), 127–52Google Scholar.

47 Hair, P. E. H., ‘The enslavement of Koelle's informants’, The Journal of African History, 6:2 (1965), 199CrossRefGoogle Scholar. According to Hair's calculation, 7 per cent of the slaves who were interviewed by Koelle had been pawns who were sold into slavery.

48 Röschenthaler, U., Purchasing Culture: The Dissemination of Associations in the Cross River Region of Cameroon and Nigeria (Trenton, NJ, 2011)Google Scholar.

49 Ekpe is referred to in an account dating to 1761, in which an elderly slave was ritually sacrificed with the use of a ceremonial sword by ‘a person called Hagboo [Egbo or Ekpe]’; see Clarkson, Evidence of Sundry Persons, 72–3.

50 Lovejoy and Richardson, ‘Trust, pawnship, and Atlantic history’, 352–3.

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52 Evidence of John Ashley Hall, in Lambert, House of Commons Sessional Papers, 1790, Part 2 Vol. 72, 227.

53 Grandy King George [Robin John Ephraim] to Ambrose Lace, 13 January 1773, in Williams, Liverpool Privateers, 543.

54 Evidence of James Fraser, in Lambert, House of Commons Sessional Papers, 1790, Part 1, Vol. 71, 15.

55 Röschenthaler, Purchasing Culture, 158. For descriptions of the nsibidi (nsibiri) script and a discussion of its history and use, see Dayrell, E., ‘Some “Nsibidi” signs’, Man, 10 (1910), 113–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dayrell, E., ‘Further notes on “Nsibidi” signs with their meanings from the Ikom District, Southern Nigeria’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 41 (1911), 521–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, plates lxv-lxvii; and MacGregor, J. K., ‘Some notes on Nsibidi’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 39 (1909), 209–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 Behrendt, Latham, and Northrup, Diary of Antera Duke, 135.

57 Ibid.

58 Ibid. 188.

59 See the discussion of pawnship at Calabar in Lovejoy and Richardson, ‘Trust, pawnship, and Atlantic history’, 332–55; Lovejoy and Richardson, ‘The business in slaving’, 67–89; Lovejoy and Richardson, ‘Letters’, 89–115; and Lovejoy and Richardson, ‘Anglo-Efik relations’, 101–20. Also see the following entries in the diary of Antera Duke, in Behrendt, Latham and Northrup, Diary of Antera Duke, 24, 72, 79, 90, 92, 112, 156–7, 159, 179, 203, and 207.

60 Account of P. Mateo de Anguiano, in de Carrocera, B. (ed.), Misiones Capuchinas en Africa, Volume 2: Misiones al Reino de la Zinga, Benín, Arda, Guinea y Sierra Leona (Madrid, 1957), 145Google Scholar, as cited in Rodney, W., A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545 to 1800 (Oxford, 1970), 109Google Scholar. Anguiano's account refers to the period before 1688.

61 Lambert, House of Commons Sessional Papers, 1788 and 1789, Vol. 68, 37–8 and 40.

62 Ibid. 37.

63 Miller, J. C., ‘The significance of drought, disease and famine in the agriculturally marginal zones of west-central Africa’, The Journal of African History, 23:1 (1982), 28CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

64 Clarkson, Evidence of Sundry Persons, 19.

65 P. E. Lovejoy, ‘Pawnship and seizure for debt during the era of the slave trade’, in Campbell and Stanziani, Debt and Slavery, 63–76.

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67 See, for example, Curto, J. C., ‘The story of Nbena, 1817–1820: unlawful enslavement and the concept of “original freedom” in Angola’, in Lovejoy, P. E. and Trotman, D. V. (eds.), Trans-Atlantic Dimensions of Ethnicity in the African Diaspora (London, 2003), 43–64Google Scholar; Curto, J. C., ‘Experiences of enslavement in west central Africa’, Histoire Sociale – Social History, 41:82 (2008), 381–415CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Candido, M. P., ‘Trade, slavery, and migration in the interior of Benguela: the case of the Caconda, 1830–1870’, in Heintz, B. and von Oppen, A. (eds.), Angola on the Move: Transport Routes, Communications, and History (Frankfurt, 2008), 63–84Google Scholar; Candido, M. P., ‘The Transatlantic slave trade and the vulnerability of free blacks in Benguela, Angola, 1750–1830’, in Fortin, J. A. and Meuwese, M. (eds.), Atlantic Biographies: Individuals and Peoples in the Atlantic World (Leiden, 2013), 193–209CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Candido, M. P., ‘Merchants and the business of the slave trade at Benguela, 1750–1850’, African Economic History, 35 (2008), 1–30Google Scholar; Oliveira, V. S., ‘The forgotten slave owners: women and slavery in Luanda (1846–1876)’, in Lovejoy, P. E., Oliveira, V. S., and Velázquez, M. E. (eds.), Slavery, Memory, Citizenship (Trenton, NJ, 2014)Google Scholar; and V. S. Oliveira, ‘The donas of Luanda, c. 1773–1866: from Atlantic slave trading to “legitimate commerce” ’ (PhD thesis, York University, forthcoming).

68 The decree of February 1771 denied the right of a father, mother, uncle, or kinsperson to ‘pawn any child or kinsperson, girlfriend [wife], or any other free person’; see Amado Neves, M. T., D. Francisco, Innocêncio de Sousa Coutinho: aspecto moral da sua acção em Angola (Lisboa, 1938 [orig. pub. 1768])Google Scholar, as cited in Vansina, ‘Ambaca society’, 18–19. Vansina also refers to Luis António de Oliveira Mendes's ‘Memoría’, as published in Carreira, A., As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, Comércio e Tráfico de Escravos entre a Costa Africana e o Nordeste Brasileiro (Bissau, 1969), 419–21Google Scholar. Mendes reported that if someone was condemned to slavery, he could substitute a child, wife, or nephew.

69 Vansina, ‘Ambaca society’, 18.

70 M. Alves de Castro Francina, ‘Itinérario de uma jornada de Loanda ao distrito de Ambaca na provincia de Angola’, Annaes, 1st series (February 1854), as cited in Vansina, ‘Ambaca society’, 18.

71 Vansina, ‘Ambaca society’, 16–21.

72 Ferreira, R., Cross-Cultural Exchange in the Atlantic World: Angola and Brazil during the Era of the Slave Trade (New York, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ferreira, R., ‘The suppression of the slave trade and slave departures from Angola, 1830s–1860s’, in Eltis, D. and Richardson, D. (eds.), Extending the Frontiers: Essays on the New Transatlantic Slave Trade Database (New Haven, CT, 2008), 313–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Candido, M. P., An African Slaving Port and the Atlantic World: Benguela and its Hinterland (New York, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Candido, M. P., Fronteras de Esclavización: Esclavitud, Comercio e Identidad en Benguela, 1780–1850 (México, D. F., 2011)Google Scholar.

73 Candido refers to Silva Porto, who traveled in the interior of Benguela in the 1850s and witnessed instances of panyarring, or seizure for debt or alleged crimes; see M. P. Candido, ‘Enslaving frontiers: slavery, trade and identity in Benguela, 1780–1850’ (PhD thesis, York University, 2006). According to Candido, similar cases of panyarring were common in the states of Mbailundu, Bie, and Wambu in the Benguela highlands. Also see Curto, J. C., ‘Struggling against enslavement: the case of José Manuel in Benguela, 1816–20’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 39:1 (2005), 96–122Google Scholar, who recounts the story of enslavement for debt. Also see Curto, ‘Experiences of enslavement’, 381–415.

74 The reference is to ‘[a escrava] lhe foi penhorada por divida’, Arquivo Histórico Nacional de Angola, Avulsos, Caixi 2825. The use of penhora, is confusing, since it could mean ‘pawn’ or simply ‘security’. It appears that the magistrate required Macedo to provide security for a debt that had been incurred with the threat of foreclosure, which is not pawnship. For a discussion, see Oliveira, ‘Donas of Luanda’.

75 Douglas, M., ‘Matriliny and pawnship in central Africa’, Africa, 34:4 (1964), 301–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

76 Marcia Wright has had an important impact on the study of ‘pawnship, especially in relation to the impact of the institution on women’; see ‘Women in peril: a commentary on the life stories of captives in nineteenth-century east-central Africa’, African Social Research, 20 (1975), 800–19, and Strategies of Slaves & Women: Life-Stories from East/Central Africa (New York, 1993). In Bantu-speaking regions of Africa what is often referred to as pawnship appears to have been foreclosure on debts, which involved sale into slavery if exchanged or sold.

77 Alpers, E., ‘Debt, pawnship and slavery in nineteenth-century East Africa’, in Campbell, G. and Stanziani, A., Bonded Labour and Debt in the Indian Ocean World (London, 2013), 31–43Google Scholar.

78 For further discussion of the distinctions among these terms, see Lovejoy, ‘Pawnship and seizure for debt’, 63–75.

79 Hence the argument here builds on the studies in Lovejoy and Falola, Pawnship, Slavery.