The Business of Slaving: Pawnship in Western Africa, c.1600-1810
Author(s)
Lovejoy, Paul E.; Richardson, David
Abstract
The use of people as pawns to underpin credit was widespread in western Africa during the era of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. This study examines where and when pawns were used in commercial transactions involving European slave merchants in the period c. 1600-1810. It is shown that European merchants relied on pawnship as an instrument of credit protection in many places, though not everywhere. Europeans apparently did not hold pawns at Ouidah (after 1727), at Bonny or on the Angolan coast. Nonetheless, the reliance on pawnship elsewhere highlights the influence of African institutions on the development of the slave trade.
