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| Title: | Competing Markets for Male and Female Slaves: Prices in the Interior of West Africa, 1780-1850 |
| Authors: | Lovejoy, Paul E. Richardson, David |
| Year: | 1995 |
| Periodical: | International Journal of African Historical Studies |
| Volume: | 28 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Pages: | 261-293 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | West Africa |
| Subjects: | slaves female slaves slave trade History and Exploration Economics and Trade Women's Issues Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Historical/Biographical economics slavery |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/221615 |
| Abstract: | This paper pulls together data on slave prices, as given in published accounts from the period 1780 to 1850 on the interior of West Africa, and interprets their patterns. The interpretation focuses on price differentials by sex and by age, and on price variations over time. The main questions addressed are: 1) Was there any connection between the trans-Atlantic and trans-Saharan slave trades and the internal slave trade in West Africa? 2) Were the market prices of slaves in the West African interior determined primarily by the trans-Atlantic slave trade or by the trans-Saharan slave trade, or were prices primarily a function of the internal slave trade of the western and central Sudan? 3) Were the sex ratios in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the trans-Saharan slave trade, and those of the slave populations in West Africa in the late 18th and first half of the 19th centuries determined by export demand or by domestic demand for slaves? The preliminary conclusions are that interior prices were related to coastal prices and to prices in North Africa, with prices at export points shadowing interior prices. The relative importance of the internal and external trades cannot be determined on the basis of the data at hand. Trans-Atlantic and trans-Saharan demand influenced decisions to export certain categories of slaves from the interior, but it seems unlikely that external factors were the dominant ones in determining the composition of the slave populations in West Africa. Notes, ref. |
