¹ For contrasting statements, see Paul, Bohannan and Philip, Curtin, Africa and Africans (Garden City, New York, revised ed., 1971), 261;–;Google ScholarMarion, Kilson, ‘West African Society and the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1441–1865’, inKey Issues in the Afro American Experience, I (New York, 1971, edited by Huggins, , Kilson, and Fox, ), 39;Google Scholar and Fage, J. D., ‘Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Context of West African History’, J. Afr. Hist., x (1969), 397.Google Scholar

² Philip, Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison, 1969).Google Scholar

³ Daaku, K. Y., Trade and Politics on the Gold Coast 1600–1720, (Oxford, 1970), 8;Google Scholar and Blake, J. W., European Beginnings in West Africa, 1454–1578 (New York,1937), 83.Google Scholar Both cite Duarte Pacheco Pereira, Esmeraldo de situ orbis (edited by Kimble, G. H., Hakluyt Society, 2nd ser., no. 69: New York, 1937 but written about 1507), in estimating 170,000 dobras of gold per year moving from West Africa to Portugal after 1481.Google Scholar This amounts to 3,400 marks of gold or £108,000 sterling (1601 standard) if we use the rate of 50 dobras per mark found in Shaw, W. A., The History of Currency, 1252 to 1894 (New York, 1895),323ff.Google Scholar However, a careful reading of Pereira indicates that the 170,000 dobras figure was probably for Elmina alone, while Axim produced another 30,000 to 40,000 dobras per year (p. 117) and the Sierra Leone area yielded about 9,000 dobras per year (p. 107). These additions would add another £30,000 sterling to the total of West African exports. This is confirmed by Vitorino, Magalhães-Godinho, L'économie de l'empire Portugais aux XV^e et XVI^e siÈcle: (Paris, 1969), 219.Google Scholar

⁴ Ibid. 216, documents the decline of the Portuguese gold traflic. The dimensions of the leakage are indicated by Thomas, Astley, ed., A New General Collection of Voyages and Travels… (London, 1968, first published 1745), 1, 142, 147, 169;Google Scholar and SirJames, A.Williamson, John Hawkins, The Time and the Man (Westport, Conn., 1970), 41ff.Google Scholar

⁵ Daaku, K. K., Trade and Politics on the Gold Coast 1600–1720, (Oxford, 1970), II,40,461 marks of gold in thirteen years is reported.Google Scholar

⁶ Porter, R., ‘The Crispe Family and the African Trade in the Seventeenth Century’, J.Afr. Hist., ix (1968), 64.Google Scholar

⁷ Great, Britain. Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, VI, 226.Google Scholar

⁸ Davies, K. G., The Royal African Company (London, 1957), 360. He has annual data, 1673–1713, for the number of guineas coined by the Mint for the Royal African Company which includes nearly all the gold imported by the Royal African Company.Google Scholar

⁹ Bosman, W., A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea (New York,1967), 89, says that in peacetime the Gold Coast should supply a total of 7,000 marks (£224,000).Google Scholar It seems unlikely that this flow could have been sustained over a long period of peace as the previously accumulated stocks declined. Bosman considerably overestimated the size of the annual Royal African Company exports as 1,200 marks (£38,400) while we know that the Royal African Company actually only reached this level in two years, 1685 and 1688. To balance against Bosman's probable overstatements for the Gold Coast, one must add in the relatively small exports of the Senegambia which he presumably was not including. Fage, J. D., A History of West Africa: An Introductory Survey (Cambridge, 1969), 74, guesses the total for West Africa at this time to have been £250,000 per year.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Ryder, A. F. C., ‘The Re-establishment of Portuguese Factories on the Costa de Mina to the Mid-eighteenth Century’, journal of the Historicai Society of Nigeria, I, no. 3 (1958), 158.Google Scholar

¹¹ Two modern estimates based on the same data are Bovill, E. W., The Golden Trade of the Moors (London, 2nd ed., 1968), 118;Google Scholar and Ryder, A. F. C., ‘Portuguese and Dutch in West Africa before 1800’, in A Thousand Years of West African History (Ibadan, 1969, edited by Ajayi, J. F. Ade and Ian, Espie), 222.Google Scholar

¹² Raymond Mauny's estimate of nine tons per year, inclusive of the gold going north over the Sahara, is almost certainly two or three times too large. Raymond, Mauny, Tableau Géographique de L'Quest Africain au Moyen Age. (Mémoires de L'Institut Francais d'Afrique Noire, no. 61, Dakar, 1961), 300.Google Scholar

¹³ Marion, Johnson, ‘The Ounce in Eighteenth-Century West African Trade’, j. Afr.Hist., vii (1966), 204.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Fage, J. D.. A History of West Africa: An Introductory Survey (Cambridge, 1969), 74;Google ScholarRodney, W., ‘Gold and Slaves on the Gold Coast’, Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana, X (1969), 17.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Davies, , The Royal African Company, 364.Google Scholar For a more complete time series of slave prices, see Bean, R. N., ‘The British Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, 1650–1775’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, 1971, Appendix B.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Curtin, , The Atlantic Slave Trade, 119.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Britain, Great. Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, vi, 1662–1668, 226.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Davies, , The Royal African Company, 179–80.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Bean, ‘The British Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade’, Appendices A and B.

²⁰ An ounce of gold dust (containing substantial adulteration or impurities) usually brought in trade 40 shillings or a little less, worth of European goods at ‘prime’ cost. Karl, Polanyi, ‘Sortings and “Ounce Trade” in the West African Slave Trade.’ J. Afr. Mist., v (1964), 381 ff.;Google ScholarJohnson, , ‘The Ounce in Eighteenth-Century West African Trade’, 197–214.Google Scholar

²¹ Curtin, , The Atlantic Slave Trade, 119.Google Scholar

²² Ibid. 216, for the number of slaves. Bean, , ‘The British Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade’, 158,Google Scholar for slave prices in Africa up to 1775. Later prices are shown in Archibald, Dalzcl, The History of Dahomy (London, 1967: reprint of 1793 ed.), 191 n.;Google ScholarJohn, R.Spears, The American Slave Trade (New York, 1900), 51;Google ScholarKarl, Polanyi, Dahomey and the Slave Trade(Seattle, 1966), 167;Google Scholar and Claridge, W. W., A History of the Gold Coast and Ashanti (New York, 1964, 2nd ed.), 261.Google Scholar

²³ At least 6,000 slaves per year were exported through the Gold Coast in that decade.The Europeans paid for them an average of a little less than £20 in goods. Curtin, , The Atlantic Slave Trade, 221;Google Scholar and Bean, , ‘The British Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade’, p. 158.Google Scholar

²⁴ Ibid. 234 and 258 for the volume of the nineteenth-century slave trade. For nineteenth- century slave prices in Africa, see Philip, E. LeVeen, ‘British Slave Trade Suppression Policies, 1821–1865, Impact and Implications’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1971, 15.Google Scholar

²⁵ Thomas, DeGregori, Technology and the Economic Development of the Tropical Arican Frontier (Cleveland, 1969), 341;Google Scholar and Le, Veen, ‘British Slave Trade Suppression Policies’, 95, give prices and quantities for the palm oil trade.Google Scholar