Precolonial Africa used diverse currencies where money was above all a social institution
Evidence
During the pre-colonial period, different types of currencies circulated on the African continent. Rubber balls, iron and copper bars, shells, zinc fragments, cotton wool, brass wires, glass beads and porcelain grains were just a few of the materials used as means of transaction. Money was certainly a medium of exchange and payment but it was, above all, an institution that helped reconfigure social relations. For this reason, it was entrusted ‘to the elderly, to the village leaders, who were responsible for protecting the binds between the community and its founders’. The cowries, a shell found in the Indian Ocean, called timekla by the Tuareg and oudà in Timbuktu, and particularly widespread among the Yoruba, a people of Nigeria, was long used in West Africa, which in fact was known as the ‘cowrie zone’. It was at the centre of the construction of powerful pan-African trade networks, particularly in the western Volta region, located in present-day Burkina Faso, and in Sudan in present-day Mali. In the first half of the eighteenth century, cowries even had an official exchange rate vis-à-vis the livre tournois, the prevailing unit of account in France from the Middle Ages until 1795, when the franc became the only currency in the country. In 1724, 1,000 cowries were worth 960 deniers tournois, a sub-multiple of the livre tournois. However, like the other African currencies, the cowrie gradually lost its influence. — Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa’s Last Colonial Currency, 53
Categorization
- QUESTION: The cowrie/deniers exchange rate of 1724 suggests deep commercial integration — worth chasing the history of the ‘cowrie zone’ as a trade network.
- XREF: connects to: Pre-colonial Africa had diverse currencies including an official cowrie exchange rate; The single pegged currency structure drained African resources toward the metropole.; Controlling currency was essential to the colonial appropriation of African riches — Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa’s Last Colonial Currency, 54 (+2 more)
Related
- Pre-colonial Africa had diverse currencies including an official cowrie exchange rate (similarity 0.97)
- The single pegged currency structure drained African resources toward the metropole. (similarity 0.95)
- Controlling currency was essential to the colonial appropriation of African riches (similarity 0.83)
- Currency arrangements can function as wealth-transfer mechanisms between societies. (similarity 0.81)
- Monetary dependence underlies all other forms of African dependence (similarity 0.80)
- Currency arrangements can transfer wealth from colonies to metropolis (similarity 0.79)
- Pouemi classified African currencies into four levels of monetary sovereignty. (similarity 0.79)
- Pouemi classified African monetary regimes into four types along a sovereignty continuum (similarity 0.78)
- Former African colonies adopted national currencies upon independence. (similarity 0.78)
- The colonial currency’s association with taxes drove local resistance to it (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- Controlling currency was essential to the colonial appropriation of African riches
#contradicts(0.55) — Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa’s Last Colonial Currency, 54 - Colonial-era monetary system survived into independence as four interlocked principles
#complicates(0.50) — Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa’s Last Colonial Currency, 96 - Pouemi ranked African monetary sovereignty into four categories ending with colonial currencies
#responds-to(0.40) — Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa’s Last Colonial Currency, 191