Interregional monetary flows in the precolonial trade of Nigeria

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Periodical article

Title:	Interregional monetary flows in the precolonial trade of Nigeria
Author:	Lovejoy, Paul E.
Year:	1974
Periodical:	The Journal of African History
Volume:	15
Issue:	4
Pages:	563-585
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	Nigeria West Africa
Subjects:	capital movements economic history
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/180991
Abstract:	The view of the followers of the substantivist school of economic anthropology that so-called western economic theory does not apply to African situations has been challenged in recent years by economic historians who have found many aspects of formal economic theory useful in the reconstruction of Africa's past. They showed that virtually all of pre-colonial West Africa had economies sufficiently developed to require the use of circulating mediums of exchange and units of account. This raises a number of questions which challenge, if not undermine, the view that Africa's past, down to very recent times, has been subsistence oriented, non-market directed, and basically static. This article focuses on the Central Sudan, the roost easterly part of the cowrie-gold zone, in an attempt to explore some of the implications of a common currency, and to provide the foundation of a more detailed economic history of the region. Notes, figure, map, appendices.