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² Leo, Africanus, Description d'Afrique (Paris, 1956), 469. It is possible that Leo's ‘ducat’ may be a smaller coin than the gold mithqal. Caillié in the nineteenth century found a silver ‘mithqal’ at El Arouan one-third of the value of the gold mithqal. If Leo's coin was of a similar value, not only would his exchange rate be the same as Ibn Battuta's; his salt prices would also be similar.Google Scholar

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⁷ Atkins, J., Voyage to Guinea (London, 1735), 112.Google Scholar Atkins's figures are confirmed by Houston (1825), quoted in Donnan, E., Documents Relating to the Slave Trade of America, II (Washington 1930–1931), 290: ‘…cowries which were always formerly current money at five ackies of gold for a grand cabess of bougies…’.Google Scholar

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¹³ Wilks, I., ‘A note on the chronology, and origins, of the Gonja Kings’, Ghana Notes and Queries, 8 01. 1966, 28. If there had been an interruption in the flow of gold from the southern goldfields, both the Songhai bid to control the source of their salt supplies (normally obtained in return for gold) and the Moroccan invasion of 159 I would be understandable.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Johnson, M., ‘The ounce in eighteenth-century West African trade’, J. Afr. Hist. VII, part 2 (1966), 202–3. The decline in real value of cowries parallels the small decline in the real value (as distinct from the gold value) of the trade ounce.Google Scholar

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²⁰ Kano ChronicleGoogle Scholar (amended translation of this passage in Hiskett, M., ‘Materials relating to the cowry currency of the Western Sudan: II’, Bull S.O.A.S., XXIX, part 2 (1966), 355.)Google Scholar

²¹ El Haj Shabeeny in Jackson, J. G., An Account of Timbuctoo and Houssa (London, 1820), 2.Google Scholar Recent work by Ivor Wilks suggests that Shabeeny's journey must be dated to the late 1750S and 1760s, and that his ‘Houssa’ is to be found in the interior delta of the Niger; see African Perspectives, ed. Allen, and Johnson, (Cambridge), forthcoming.Google Scholar

²² Winterbottom, T., An Account of the Native Africans in… Sierra Leone, I (London, 1803), 175.Google Scholar

²³ Monrad, , Gemälde der Küste, 263.Google Scholar

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³¹ Tartar, Wargee, Royal Gazette and Sierra Leone Advertiser, 15 03. 1823;Google ScholarClapperton, and Lander, , Records, 173. Clapperton quotes 1,00 to the dollar as ‘just one half’, presumably of the rate he should have had; he also explains 250,000 cowries as less than 300 dollars. Lander, on the return journey, twice refers to 4,000 cowries as ‘little more than a dollar’, perhaps working from the same value. I am grateful to Mr Robin Law for drawing my attention to these values.Google Scholar

³² Dupuis, J., Journal of a Residence in Ashantee (London, 1824), CXIV.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁴⁶ Dos Santos letters, in Verger, P., ‘Influence du Brésil au Golfe de Benin’, in Les Afro-Américains, IFAN Mémoire, no. 27 (Dakar, 1953), 74. The values deduced by Newbury from the Dos Santos papers appear to be incorrect; these papers are very hard to interpret—it seems possible that the printed version may include misreadings or misprints.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Forbes, , Dahomey, I, 36.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Newbury, C. W., Tile Western Slave Coast and its Rulers (Oxford, 1961), 42.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Burton, R. F., Mission to Gelele, I (London, 1864), 143. Burton also quotes fourfold rises in the price of kenke balls (and in the remuneration of state prostitutes), 316.Google Scholar

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⁵¹ Albeica, A. L., ‘L'avenir du Dahomey’, Annales de Géographie (1895), 185;Google Scholaribid, établissements français au Golfe de Benin (Paris, 1889), 149; Foa, E., Le Daho mey (Paris, 1895), 148;Google ScholarSchneider, O. (ed. Ribbe, C.), Muschelgeldstudien (1905), quoting d'Albeica.Google Scholar

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⁵⁴ Newbury, , Western Slave Coast (1961), 58;Google ScholarHutchinson, T. J., Impressions of Western Africa (London, 1858), 7: ‘cowries are the chief currency (at Lagos), varying in value as Government con/s or Railway Shares do at home, but generally averaging 2,000—which is called a head—for a dollar’.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Newbury, , Western Slave Coast (1961), 58.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Burton, R. F., Wanderings in West Africa (London, 1863), 234 n.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Burton, R. F., Mission to Gelele, I (London, 1864), 143: ‘Cowries, it must be remembered, are merchandise, and the price varies accordingly. At the present they are abundant, and therefore cheap. The dollar (4/6d) now buys 2½ heads at Whydah and Agbome, heads and 20 strings at Lagos and Abeokuta’.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Hopkins, , ‘The currency revolution’, 476–8, 479;Google ScholarBouche, P., Côte des esclaves et Dahomey (Paris, 1885), 198 ff.Google Scholar

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⁷⁸ Jaime, , De Koulikoro, 223 n. I;Google ScholarCaron, , Au port de Timbuctu, 287.Google Scholar

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⁸² Binger, , Du Niger, 1, 27; 1, 54; 1, 191; 1, 206; 1, 162. The apparently ‘round’ numbers of the exchange rate of Tenetou, Tiong-i, Fourou and Benkhobougoula are for the actual number of shells; these were locally expressed in ‘Bambara’ hundreds of 80 shells each, and in the case of the last, in ‘Mandingo’ hundreds of 60 each.Google Scholar

⁸³ Binger, , Du Niger, 1, 308: ‘it is impossible to make comparison with silver, as there is none in circulation…when, in the course of my narrative, r speak of an object which costs 3, 4, francs, that means that, with the number of cowries asked, I could have procured 3, 4, francs in gold dust at the rate of francs per gram’.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ Binger, , Du Niger, I, 375; II, 103. For the weight of the barifiri,Google Scholar see also Menzel, B., Goldgewichte aus Ghana (Berlin, 1968), which gives the actual weights of specimens collected at Salaga within a few years of Binger's visit.Google Scholar

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⁹⁸ The rapid expansion of West African external trade in the thirty years before 1850, followed by a period of stagnation, has been noted by Dr. Newbury in a paper on prices and profitability in West African trade in the early nineteenth century, read at the Tenth International African Seminar of the International African Institute, Sierra Leone, 1969. There is no obvious explanation of this change, which extends far beyond the cowrie zone, and cannot be due to monetary causes connected with cowries, though these may vell have been of importance in the Niger Delta and on the Gold and Slave Coasts.

⁹⁹ Calculated from figures in the Annual Statement of the Trade and Navigation of the United Kingdom, 1852–66, under ‘British Possessions on the Gold Coast’.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁰ Calculated from data in Newbury (1961), The Western Slave Coast,Google Scholar and Burton, (1862), Mission to Gelele.Google Scholar

¹⁰¹ Calculated from table in Hieke, E., Zur Geschichte des deutschen Handels mit Ostafrika, I. Oswald und Sohn (Hamburg, 1939), 283.Google Scholar

¹⁰² Calculated from Annual Statement of the Trade and Navigation of the United Kingdom, 1852–66, ‘West Coast of Africa’.Google Scholar

¹⁰³ Calculated from table in Hopkins, , ‘The currency revolution’, 405.Google Scholar

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¹⁰⁶ Myint, H., The Economics of Developing Countries (London, 1964), 75.Google Scholar Myint's model is as follows: ‘In the first stage, the peasants produced the export crop only on a part-time basis while continuing to produce their subsistence requirements. Since they were self- sufficient in respect to locally-produced foodstuffs and other goods, they had no need to hold cash for local transactions. Since their /e reason for producing the export crop was to obtain purchasing power over imports, we may assume that they spent the whole of their cash earnings on imported goods. At this stage, the money which flowed into the country to pay for the peasants' exports would flow out again immediately to pay for their imports. No “localized” currency would be retained for long within the country. The function of money was merely to facilitate the barter between the exports and imports at agreed rates, and a separate local currency was hardly needed. As a matter of fact, in the earlier phases of trade in West Africa, British silver coins were extensively used for this purpose’. The circulation of cowries in the Lagos hinterland and elsewhere before the 1880s, and of other local currencies such as manilas, is the measure of how far Myint's model (which he evidently regarded as applicable to West Africa) fails to fit the West African facts. For the increasing use of British silver coin, see Hopkins, A. G., ‘Creating a colonial monetary system: the origins of the Vest African currency Board’, African Historical Studies, III (1970), 101–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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¹¹⁴ Dougah, J. L., Wa and Its People (Institute of African Studies, Legon, 1966): 20 to Id.; other Ghanaian informants said: 1950, 140–150 to Is.; 1965, 120 to Is. at Wa; at Lawra, 5–10 to Id.; at Wechau, Mrs M. E. Humphreys found cowries at 120 to Is. in 1965. I must thank these informants, and many others who have taken the trouble to bring or send me information about cowries during the past five years.Google Scholar