² An early expression of this view may be found in the Hon. Wyndham, H. A., The Atlantic and Slavery (London, 1935), particularly at pp. 221–2Google Scholar. Wyndham's book was one of the few scholarly works available on the subject when I was writing An Introduction to the History of West Africa (Cambridge, 1955)Google Scholar, where I took the same line on pp. 77–9.Google Scholar

³ Rodney's, research, originally for a 1966 London Ph.D., was published as A History of the Upper Guinea coast, 1545–1800 (Oxford, 1970)Google Scholar. The clearest expression of his view on the slavery issue, however, is to be found in his article, ‘African slavery and other forms of social oppression on the Upper Guinea coast in the context of the Atlantic slave trade’, J. Afr. Hist, vii, iii (1966)Google Scholar. He subsequently enlarged on it in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London and Dar es Salaam, 1972)Google Scholar, especially ch. 4.

⁴ My views have been expressed in Fage, J. D., States and Subjects in sub-Saharan Africa, the tenth Raymond Dart Lecture (Johannesburg, 1974)Google Scholar, and in A History of Africa (London and New York, 1978)Google Scholar, especially chs. 3–5 and 11. On the question of the land/labour relationship, a recent reference is Patterson, Orlando, ‘The structural origins of slavery: a critique of the Nieboer-Domar hypothesis…’, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, ccxcii (1977), 12–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which should be read with the comments of Engerman, Stanley in the same volume at pp. 65–7.Google Scholar

⁵ This, of course, is essentially a geographical enlargement of the method of enquiry pioneered by Dr Rodney.

⁶ Published works explored which are not specifically mentioned in the text or notes of this paper include: Fernandes, Martin de Enciso, Suma de Geographia…(1519)Google Scholar, Fonteneau, Jean, La cosmographie…(c. 1545)Google Scholar, and Les voyages avanturaux du Capitaine Jean Alfonce (1559)Google Scholar - the relevant texts of which are most usefully compared, with considerable and valuable commentary, in Hair, P. E. H., ‘Some minor sources for Guinea, 1519–59’, History in Africa, iii (1976), 19–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Broecke, Pieter vander, Reizennaar West AfricaGoogle Scholar (1605; modern ed. by Ratelband, K., The Hague, 1950)Google Scholar; The Strange Adventures of Andrew Battellin AngolaGoogle Scholar (1610; modern ed. by Ravenstein, E. G., London, 1901)Google Scholar; Carvalho, Francisco Pirez de, Roteiro da Costa da GuinéGoogle Scholar (1635; ed. with parallel French translation by Thilmans, G. and de Moraes, N. I., Bull. IFAN, B xxxii (1970), 343–69)Google Scholar; Giovanni Francesco Romano (or da Roma), Breve Relatione…Regno del Congo…(1648; modern ed. in French translation by Bontinck, Francois, Louvain, 1965)Google Scholar; Müller, Wilhelm Johann, Die Afrikänische auf der Guineischen Gold-Cust Landschaft Fetu…Google Scholar (1675; facsimile ed. Graz, , 1968)Google Scholar; Maire, Jacques Joseph le, Les voyages du Sieur Le Maire… (Paris, 1695Google Scholar; English trans., London, 1696); Premier voyage du Sieur de la Courbe fait à la coste d'Afrique…Google Scholar (1685; ed. Cultru, P., Paris, 1913)Google Scholar; Ducasse, Jean-Baptiste (or du Casse), Relation…sur son voyage de Guynée (1687–1688)Google Scholar, Tibièrge, Le Sieur, Journal…en 1692Google Scholar, Damon, Le Chevalier (or d'Amon), Deux relations des voyages… (1698 and 1702)Google Scholar, and Loyer, Godefroy, Relation du voyage… (1702)Google Scholar -all of which may be found in Roussier, Paul, L'établissement d'Issigny, 1687–1702 (Paris, 1935)Google Scholar; Phillips, Thomas, Journal of a Voyage…to Africa (1693–1694Google Scholar; in Awnsham, and Churchill, John, A Collection of Voyages and Travels, vi, London, 1732)Google Scholar; and Relations sur le Congo du Père Laurent de Lucques (i.e. Lorenzo da Lucca, 1700–1717Google Scholar; ed. Brussels, Jean Cuvelier, 1953).Google Scholar

⁷ [Cadamosto, Alvise da], The Voyages of Cadamosto… trans, and ed. Crone, G. R. (London, 1937)Google Scholar; De la première decouverte de la Guinée, récit par Diogo Gomes, Latin text and French translation, ed. by Monod, Th., Mauny, R. and Duval, G. (Bissau, 1959).Google Scholar

⁸ Description de la C^te occidentale de l'Afrique…par Valentim Fernandes, Portuguese text and French translation, in two parts (1) de Ceuta au Sénégal, ed de Cenival, P. and Monod, Th. (Paris, 1938)Google Scholar, and (2) Sénégal au Cap de Monte, ed. Monod, Th., Teixeira da Mota, A., and Mauny, R. (Bissau, 1951)Google Scholar. The relevant part is the second (and is hereafter referred to simply as ‘Fernandes’), but see the Introduction to part 1 for information about Fernandes and his manuscripts. The ‘History of the Congo’ is largely published in French translation as document 18 in Cuvelier, Jean and Jadin, Louis, L'ancien Congo d'après les archives romaines, 1518–1640 (Brussels, 1954), 108–60Google Scholar; see the editors' Introduction for Confalonieri and the authorship of the ‘History’; also, for Confalonieri, Gray, Richard and Chambers, David, Materials for West African History in Italian Archives (London, 1965), at p. 37.Google Scholar

⁹ The best modern edition, in French translation, is by Bal, Willy, Description du Royaume de Congo…par Filippo Pigafetta et Duarte Lopes (Louvain and Paris, 2nd rev. ed. 1965).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Dapper, Olfert, Naukeurige Beschrijvinge der Afrikaensche Gewesten… (Amsterdam, 1668)Google Scholar; this is now rare, so that reference is now often to the second Dutch edition (Amsterdam, 1676) and, especially, the German translation (Amsterdam, 1670), which is available in modern facsimile. The French translation (Amsterdam, 1686) and the English version (Ogilby, John, Africa, being an Accurate Description… London, 1670)Google Scholar often depart considerably from the original. Barbot, Jean, A Description of the Coasts of North and South GuineaGoogle Scholar, was published as vol. v of the Churchills', A Collection of Voyages and Travels (London, 1732).Google Scholar

¹¹ The major exception is the section on the Kquoja.

¹² Many of the problems involved in using Dapper and Barbot are graphically demonstrated by Hair, P. E. H., ‘Barbot, Dapper, Davity: a critique of sources on Sierra Leone and Cape Mount’, Africa in History, 1 (1974), 25–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹³ Measured in terms of estimates for African slaves successfully imported by Europeans into the Americas or elsewhere, the volume of the Atlantic slave trade would seem roughly to have doubled each half century from 1451–1500 to 1601–1650. But in the latter half century the annual average was still only about 7,400. For the second half of the seventeenth century the annual average was about 19,400; for the eighteenth century, it was about 55,000. See Philip Curtin, D., The Atlantic Slave Trade; a Census (Madison, 1969), tables 33Google Scholar, 34 and 65.

¹⁴ However, in a later article, ‘Gold and slaves on the Gold Coast’, Trans. Hist. Soc. Ghana, x (1969), 13–28Google Scholar, Rodney considered some of the evidence for the Gold Coast.

¹⁵ Rodney, , ‘African slavery…’, 442.Google Scholar

¹⁶ My own views on this argument are given below, pp. 289–90.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Villault, Nicolas, Bellefond, Sieur de, Relation des Costes d'Afrique appellées Guinée (Paris, 1669)Google Scholar; Marees, Pieter de, Beschryvinghe ende historische Verhael van het Gout Koninckryck van Guinee…Google Scholar (first pub. Amsterdam, 1602; modem ed. by l'Honoré Naber, S. P., The Hague, 1912Google Scholar; incomplete and not always accurate English translation in Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas his Pilgrimes (1625–1626), at pp. 247–366Google Scholar in Vol. 6 of the Maclehose, ed. of 1905–1906)Google Scholar. Villault, who sailed on a chartered Dutch vessel to prospect the opportunities for an expansion of French trade in Guinea, may be presumed to have done his homework. If he had not actually read de Marees's book (a French translation of which was published at Amsterdam, in 1605)Google Scholar, he must clearly have talked with Dutchmen with a comparable understanding of Guinea. However, he himself says that the part of his information on the Gold Coast which was not gained from personal observation came from his discussions with resident Danish officials and merchants. His book does not appear to be a plagiarization of de Marees's work as, for example, Smith's, WilliamA New Voyage to Guinea… (London, 1744)Google Scholar is largely a plagiarization of Bosman's, WilliamA New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea (English trans, from the 1704 Dutch, London, 1705Google Scholar; facsimile, and annotated, ed., London, 1967).Google Scholar

¹⁸ André Donelha's work was one of the sources which Dr Rodney read in manuscript (and he read his name as ‘Dornelas’). It has since been published in a scholarly edition by A. Teixeira da Mota, with a parallel English translation and additional notes by Hair, P. E. H., Descriçào da Serra Leoa e dos Rios de Guiné do Cabo Verde (Lisbon, 1977).Google Scholar

¹⁹ Cf. below, p. 309.

²⁰ A similar observation might equally apply to the early Arabic-speaking observers of the western Sudan, such as Ibn Battuta.

²¹ In the Bakongo kingdom, though they themselves may not always have fully appreciated it, the missionaries seem to have been accepted because they were useful to the king and/or to the various provincial ‘counts’, and they were therefore to a considerable degree incorporated into their systems of social control.

²² Jobson, Richard, The Golden Trade… (London, 1623Google Scholar; facsimile, reprints 1904 and 1968Google Scholar, the latter with an introduction by Rodney, Walter), has much to say about the bixirinGoogle Scholar (whom he calls ‘Marybuckes’, i.e. marabouts, ) and their role, in pp. 78–101.Google Scholar

²³ As has often been quoted, when, as late as 1620, slaves were offered to Richard Jobson on the Gambia, he could say that the English ‘were a people who did not deal in any such commodities, neither did we buy and sell one another, or any that had our own shapes’ (The Golden Trade, 112)Google Scholar. See also above, n. 13.

²⁴ Gomes, , 24–5.Google Scholar

²⁵ Pereira, Duarte Pacheco, Esmeraldo de Situ OrbisGoogle Scholar, Portuguese text and parallel French translation, ed. Mauny, Raymond (Bissau, 1956), 52–3.Google Scholar

²⁶ Cadamosto, , 61.Google Scholar

²⁷ Pacheco, , 72–3Google Scholar; Fernandes, , 74–7.Google Scholar

²⁸ Pacheco, , 80–1Google Scholar, 130–1, 134–5, 138–9. Mauny's, edition of the EsmeraldoGoogle Scholar does not extend as far as the Congo; the Bakongo, reference may be found on p. 144Google Scholar of the English translation by Kimble, G. H. T. (London, 1937).Google Scholar

²⁹ [Eustache de la Fosse], ‘Voyage à la côte occidentale d'Afrique’, ed. Foulché Delbosc, R., Rév. Hisp. iv (1897), 174–201, at p. 181Google Scholar. On women being offered for sale, see below p. 306 and n. 76.

³⁰ Fosse, De la, 184.Google Scholar

³¹ See, for example, Marees, de (ed. Naber), 182Google Scholar, in the course of an important discussion on slavery on the Gold Coast.

³² Cf. below, pp. 302–3.

³³ Villault, , 163–83.Google Scholar

³⁴ ‘Geographers in Africk maps With savage pictures fill their gaps, And o'er unhabitable downs Place elephants for want of towns.’

³⁵ Pacheco, , 128–9Google Scholar. Cf. his treatment of the Ivory Coast; although he says he has little knowledge of it, he twice says that it is thickly peopled (114–15, 116–17).

³⁶ Marees, De (ed. Naber), 230–1.Google Scholar

³⁷ See, for example, the account of James Welsh's voyage of 1590–1 printed by Richard Hakluyt. Hakluyt's, The Principall Navigations of the English Nation was first published in London in 1589Google Scholar; a second and enlarged edition in three volumes, with some editing of the original material, appeared in 1598–9. The first edition is most accessible in the facsimile edition (in two volumes) published at Cambridge for the Hakluyt Society in 1965; the second probably in the Everyman edition in eight volumes (1907). In the latter, Welsh's voyage is at pp. 302–30 of vol. IV. The best edition of Hakluyt's material up to 1560 that is relevant to this paper is to be found, together with other relevant matter, in Blake, John W. (ed.), Europeans in West Africa, 1450–1560 (2 vols London, 1942).Google Scholar

³⁸ Cadamosto, , 29–30.Google Scholar

³⁹ Cadamosto, , 38.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Cadamosto, , 38–9.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Cadamosto, , 42.Google Scholar

⁴² Almada, André Alvares de, Tratado Breve dos Rios de Guiné (c. 1594)Google Scholar, as printed in Brasio, Antònio Duarte (ed.), Monumenta Missionaria Africana; Africa Ocidental, 2nd series, vol. iii (Lisbon, 1964), at p. 234Google Scholar. There are two texts of this work; that printed by Brasio is somewhat shorter than the other, which is being edited by A. Teixeira da Mota and P. E. H. Hair for publication at Lisbon with a parallel English translation. My references to Almada are always to Brasio's publication, which includes some variant readings.

⁴³ Pacheco, , 134–5.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Hakluyt, , in Blake 11, 317–8.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ For example Marees, de (ed. Naber), 232–42Google Scholar; Nyendael, David van, letter 21 (dated 1702)Google Scholar, in Bosman, (1705), 423–48.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Fernandes, , 70–1Google Scholar. My observations about the king ‘stemming from a nobility’ is based on the fact that Fernandes says the Banyun king was called ‘Jagara’ and his editors' statement (n. 133, p. 164)Google Scholar that ‘the word Jagra is used by various tribes [in modern No man has his own land that he may hoe and use for himself, for the king has all woods, fields and lands under him, so that they may not plant or sow without his consent. 33 Guinea-Bissau] to designate the superior social class from which kings and chiefs are normally drawn. Early Portuguese writers often refer to the Jagras as the “fidalgos” (nobles) of the region.'

⁴⁷ Pacheco, , 72–3.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Fernandes, , 94–5Google Scholar. Fernandes's particularly detailed knowledge of the Sierra Leone region derives from the eight-year residence there of Velho, Alvaro (see his text, pp. 84–5Google Scholar and 102–3, and his editors' n. 197 on pp. 175–7).

⁴⁹ The various kinds of cloth woven from raphia fibre in the Congo-Angola region were equally marks of social distinction. The best cloth, said to resemble velvet, was the prerogative of kings and nobles. See Pigafetta, and Lopes, , 36–7Google Scholar, 118–19.

⁵⁰ Almada, Alvares de (ed. Brasio), 311–12.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Alvares, Manuel, Ethiopia Menor e Descriçào Geogr´frica da Provincia da Serra Leòa (c. 1616), ch. 8Google Scholar. This is another of the sources which Dr Rodney read in manuscript; a modern edition is now being prepared by Teixeira da Mota, A.. See also the graphic description of the arrival on the beach of the king of Cape Mount and his retinue in Villault, 101–3.Google Scholar

⁵² Fernandes, , 78–9Google Scholar; cf. Donelha's, description of the burial of a Mane king, 116–17Google Scholar; Marees's, de of a Gold Coast king, 190–1Google Scholar, as also Villault's, , 344–6Google Scholar; and the description by an anonymous Portuguese pilot of the burial of a Benin king, first published by Ramusio, G. B., Delia navigationi e viaggi (Venice, 1550)Google Scholar, and available in English translation in Blake, , ii, 150–1.Google Scholar

⁵³ Marees, De (ed. Naber), 116.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Ruiters, Dierick, Toortse der Zee-vaert (1623), ed. l'Honoré Naber, S. P. (The Hague, 1913)Google Scholar. The relevant passage occurs when Ruiters is dealing with Sierra Leone, and so is available in English translation by Hair, P. E. H., Africana Research Bulletin (Sierra Leone), v, iii (1975). 63–5.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ See n. 52 above. The Mane, of course, never conquered as far as the Biafada.

⁵⁶ Alvares de Almada (ed. Brasio, , 234–5)Google Scholar savs that the territory of the Wolof king used to be large; he had tributary kings under him, and used to send his captains to govern the coastal trading places. But one of these turned against him and created the independent kingdom of Cayor.

⁵⁷ Fosse, De la, 182.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Hakluyt, , in Blake, 11Google Scholar, 378–9, 383, 404–7.

⁵⁹ Marees, De (ed. Naber), 58–9.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Villault, , 218, 296.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Villault, , 350–1, 352–3.Google Scholar

⁶² De Marees, (ed. Naber), 175–6.Google Scholar

⁶³ De Marees, (ed. Naber), 177.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Cadamosto, , 30–1Google Scholar; cf. Fernandes, , 10–11Google Scholar. The king would move around his territory, staying at these wifely estates.

⁶⁵ Almada, Alvares de (ed. Brasio), 263.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Almada, Alvares de (ed. Brasio), 317.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ S.J., Father Baltazar Barreira, worked in Sierra Leone from 1606 to 1609Google Scholar. His letters were published in the various volumes of Guerreiro, Fernào, Relaçam amial das causas que fizeram os Padres da Companhia de Jesus… (Lisbon, 1603–1611)Google Scholar, of which there is a modern edition by Viegas, A. (Coimbra and Lisbon, 1930–1942)Google Scholar. There were contemporary translations into other European languages, e.g. Jarric, Pierre du, Histoire des choses les plus mémorables… (Bordeaux, 108–14)Google Scholar. Barreira's letters are reprinted by Brasio, in his MonumentaGoogle Scholar, and some of them have been translated into English by Hair, P. E. H. in various numbers of Africana Research Bulletin (Sierra Leone) from 1975Google Scholar onwards. The first quotation here is from Barreira's, letter of 1 08 1606Google Scholar, which is less a letter than a general description of Guinea and of Sierra Leone in particular; the quotation may be found in Brasio, , 2nd series, iv, 172Google Scholar, and in Hair's, translation in A.R.B. vii, i, 66Google Scholar. The second is from Barreira's, letter of 9 03 1607Google Scholar; Brasio, , 2nd series, iv, 237Google Scholar, and Hair, , A.R.B. vi, ii, 62.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Fernandes, , 92–3.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Villault, , 231–2.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ ‘History of the Congo’, in Cuvelier, and Jadin, , 121–3.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Brun, Samuel (or Braun, ), Schiffarten…in etliche newe Länder und Instden (Basel, 1624Google Scholar; facsimile, ed. Graz, 1969), 14Google Scholar. (There is also a modern ed. by l'Honoré Naber, S. P., The Hague, 1913.)Google Scholar Denis de Carli went so far as to say (A Curious and Exact Account of a Voyage to Congo in the Years 1666 and 1667, in the Churchills', Voyages, vol. 1, at p. 662)Google Scholar that women hoeing with a child on their backs might ‘very often carry another in their belly’. But this seems an exaggeration if, as is likely, the child on the back was not yet weaned. At the end of ch. 6 of the first book of Cavazzi da Montecuccolo, G. A., Istorica Descrizioni dè treè Regni Congo, Matamba e Angola… (first pub. Bologna, 1687), at vol. 1, p. 39Google Scholar, of the modern Portuguese ed. by de Leguzzano, G. M. (Lisbon, 1969)Google Scholar, there is a piquant little picture of a Mukongo woman hoeing with a child on her back.

⁷² ‘History of the Congo’, in Cuvelier, and Jadin, , 123.Google Scholar

⁷³ For example, Jobson, , 67.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Marees, De (ed. Naber), 183.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ ‘History of the Congo’, in Cuvelier, and Jadin, , 135.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ In this context, it seems odd that the King of Benin should have placed restrictions on the export of male slaves in 1516, restrictions which developed ‘within a few years into a total embargo which persisted until the close of the seventeenth century’ (Ryder, A. F. C., Benin and the Europeans, 1485–1897, London, 1969, 45)Google Scholar, while at the same time allowing a virtually unrestricted trade in female slaves. Perhaps it is possible to go further than Dr Ryder, who says this was ‘striking evidence of Benin's general indifference’ to the opportunities offered by European trade, and suggest that Benin was an autarkic state, as well as an autarchic one, in which political and military demands-which would include a desire to lose neither potential soldiers nor ancestral sacrifices-might prevail over economic reasoning. On the other hand, the early Grain Coast example, given by de la Fosse, of women being offered for sale, might indicate a society in which economic reasoning was little developed.

⁷⁷ M.D., Thomas Masterman Winterbottom, An account of the native Africans in the neighbourhood of Sierra Leone (2 vols London, 1803), i, 148Google Scholar. In other respects, Winter-bottom's account of the place of women in society is on all fours with that of earlier observers.

⁷⁸ Almada, Alvares de (ed. Brasio), 274Google Scholar; cf. also 263.

⁷⁹ ‘History of the Congo’, in Cuvelier, and Jadin, , 119.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Marees, De (ed. Naber), 183.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Jobson, , 66Google Scholar. Hence, perhaps, some of the importance of Jobson's dealings with the up-river bixirin.

⁸² Fernandes, , 30–1, 82–3.Google Scholar

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⁸⁴ Barreira, , as n. 83Google Scholar, Brasio, , 194Google Scholar; Hair, , 66.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ Barreira, , as n. 83Google Scholar, Brasio, , 194Google Scholar; Hair, , 66–7.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ Barreira, , as n. 83Google Scholar, Brasio, , 194Google Scholar; Hair, , 67.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ Almada, Alvares de (ed. Brasio), 270 and 332.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ Almada, Alvares de (ed. Brasio), 263 and 332.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ Ruiters, (trans. Hair), 57–8.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ Marees, De (ed. Naber), 182.Google Scholar

⁹¹ Villault, , 297–8.Google Scholar

⁹² Sorrento, Girolamo Merolla da (first pub., Relazione nel Regno do Congo, Naples, 1692)Google Scholar, Voyage to Congo…in…1682, Churchills', Voyages, vol. 1, at p. 687.Google Scholar

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⁹⁵ Marees, De (ed. Naber), 183.Google Scholar

⁹⁶ The question of the extent to which Villault may have borrowed from de Marees has already been discussed in n. 17 above. It might here be added that, although his observations on slavery on the Gold Coast are similar to those of de Marees, they are not identical.

⁹⁷ Pigafetta, and Lopes, , 81.Google Scholar

⁹⁸ Document no. 8 in Cuvelier, Jean (ed.), Documents sur une mission française au Kakongo (B, 1953), at p. 48Google Scholar. Jean-Joseph Descourvières was a leading member of the French Catholic mission to Kakongo in 1768–70. The contemporary published account of this mission was by the Abbé Liévain Proyart, Bonaventure, Histoire de Loango, Kakongo et autres royaumes d'Afrique (Paris and Lyons, 1776Google Scholar; facsimile, ed. Farnborough, 1968)Google Scholar, but Mgr Cuvelier published many of the original documents upon which this was based.

⁹⁹ Dalzel, Archibald, The History of Dahomey (London, 1793Google Scholar; facsimile, ed. London, 1967), 124Google Scholar. Cf. Villault, , 334Google Scholar: the king's ‘authority is such that he can do as he likes’.

¹⁰⁰ Cadamosto, , 37.Google Scholar

¹⁰¹ Winterbottom, Thomas Dr seems to have been one of the earliest observers to realize that average population densities in West Africa were low compared with those in western Europe (Winterbottom, i, 149).Google Scholar

¹⁰² An early statement of this is by Lt R.N., John Matthews, who was a trader in Sierra Leone in 1785–1787Google Scholar. In his A Voyage to the River Sierra Leone… (London, 1788), he wrote, at p. 175Google Scholar: ‘Slaves are the medium, instead of coin, for the purchase of every necessary, and the supplying of every want; and every article is estimated, by its proportion, to the value of a slave.’ This may be compared with the views of Professor Grierson, Philip in his Creighton Lecture (London, 1977), pp. 19–28Google Scholar, that the concept of money derives from such institutions as wergeld, bridewealth and slavery.

¹⁰³ Rev. Johnson, James to Church Missionary Society, 01 1880Google Scholar (C.M.S. Archives, CA2/056). I owe this reference to Oroge, E. A. Dr and his 1970Google Scholar University of Birmingham Ph.D. thesis, ‘The institution of slavery in Yorubaland, with particular reference to the nineteenth century’.