The business of barter on the pre-colonial Gold Coast

Klas Rönnbäck

Economic History of Developing Regions, 2020, vol. 35, issue 2, 123-142

Abstract: Trade on the Gold Coast in the eighteenth century was dominated by non-monetized barter trade. In this paper, a large dataset of barter transactions are used to study the social embeddedness of the trade. The data shows that prestige goods such as alcohol to a disproportionate degree were exchanged for other prestige goods such as gold. Guns – but also cheaper types of textiles – were to a disproportionate degree exchanged for slaves in particular. The evidence thus helps to shed light on the social valuation of various imported commodities on the Gold Coast at this time.

Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1080/20780389.2019.1694408

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