Computing Domestic Prices in Precolonial West Africa: A Methodological Exercise from the Slave Coast

Abstract

The present paper is a by-product of a recently completed study of the impact of the Atlantic slave trade in the West African ‘Slave Coast’ (roughly, the modern Republic of Bénin). One of the most striking features of the operation of the European trade in this region was the prominence among the commodities imported of cowry shells (brought ultimately from the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean), which were used locally as a currency. Assessment of the impact of the European trade obviously requires detailed empirical study of the operation of this cowry currency, and in particular of the question of whether the massive importation of cowries which it involved led to significant depreciation of their local value. A more extended treatment of this subject is in preparation. Although there is a great deal of contemporary documentation of the prices of various commodities in local markets between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, this evidence presents considerable problems of interpretation and evaluation. This paper deals with these methodological issues, in the belief that they may be potentially illuminating for the study of other areas than the Slave Coast.