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| Title: | Wangara, Akan and Portuguese in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. I. The Matter of Bitu |
| Author: | Wilks, Ivor |
| Year: | 1982 |
| Periodical: | The Journal of African History |
| Volume: | 23 |
| Issue: | 3 |
| Pages: | 333-350 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | West Africa |
| Subjects: | colonial conquest long-distance trade Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) History and Exploration Economics and Trade |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/182099 |
| Abstract: | The 15th and 16th centuries which in Europe saw an ancient Mediterranean economy giving way to a modern Atlantic one in a capitalistic 'world-system' were also ones of momentous change in West Africa. The political economy began to change: everything - even people - acquires a transitional value, and the slave trade becomes the commercial triumph and the moral shame of Europe and West Africa alike. The two sub-continents, inextricably linked within the Mediterranean economy at the beginning of the 15th century by virtue of the gold trade, emerged inextricably linked within the Atlantic economy by the beginning of the 17th by virtue of the slave trade. There is, in all of this, a Great Debate to be pursued. The first contribution to this debate, 'The matter of Bitu reviews the gold trade at Bitu which was controlled by the Wangara, organisers of the trade between the Akan goldfields and the towns of the Western Sudan. The second part, 'The struggle for trade', deals with the struggle for the Akan trade in the 16th century between Portuguese and Malian interests. Fig., notes, sum. |
