Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-tsvsl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-30T18:06:31.472Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Portuguese Adaptation to Trade Patterns Guinea to Angola (1443-1640)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Eugenia W. Herbert
Eugenia W. Herbert*
Affiliation:
Yale University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

As the Portuguese crept cautiously along the western coast of Africa, they met a dizzying multiplicity of African cultures but nowhere did they encounter an economic vacuum. Since their primary interest was trade (pious disclaimers to the contrary), they had to discover and then adapt to local and interregional patterns of exchange before they could hope to exploit them to their advantage.

The two centuries between the discovery of Capo Blanco and adjacent Arguim Island in 1443 and the fall of Elmina to the Dutch in 1640 circumscribe the period of Portuguese hegemony and the opening phase of European-African interaction. Though other Europeans followed close on their heels, it was the Portuguese who pioneered both physically and commercially. Ships might put in almost anywhere along the coast where they could find a safe anchorage, but there were five regions that from the beginning seemed to promise profitable and convenient trading contacts: Arguim, Senegambia and the “Rivers of the South,” the Gold Coast, Benin and the Slave Rivers, and Congo-Angola. Each of these presented a different situation and each demanded a different response.

These regions have been the subject of specialized monographs which have brought out the local characteristics of trade as they evolved, but there has been no attempt at an overview, no attempt to compare and generalize from the data now available to present a larger picture of trading patterns on the West Coast of Africa as a whole.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , September 1974 , pp. 411 - 423
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1974

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Barros, J. da (1937) “Asia” in Crone, G. R. (ed.) The Voyages of Cadamosto and other Documents on Western Africa. London: Haklyut Society.Google Scholar
Birmingham, D. (1966) Trade and Conflict in Angola. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Birmingham, D. (1970) “Early African trade in Angola and its hinterland,” pp. 163–174 in Gray, R. and Birmingham, D. (eds.) Pre-Colonial African Trade. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Blake, J.W. (1942) Europeans in West Africa, 1450-1560, 2 vol. London: Haklyut Society.Google Scholar
Cadamosto, A. de (1937) The Voyages of Cadamosto, Crone, G.R. (ed.) London: Haklyut Society.Google Scholar
Daaku, K.Y. (1970) Trade and Politics on the Gold Coast, 1600-1720. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Fernandes, V. (1938) Description de la Côte d'Afrique de Ceuta au Senegal, Cenival, P. de & Monod, Th. (eds.) Paris: Larose.Google Scholar
Gomes, D. (1937) Voyages in Crone, G.R. (ed.) The Voyages of Cadamosto. London: Haklyut Society.Google Scholar
Hymer, S. (1970) “Economic forms in pre-colonial Ghana,” Journal of Economic History 30 (March): 33–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kunstmann, F. (1850) Die Handelsverbindungen der Portugiesen mit Timbuktu im XV. Jahrhundert. Bayern: Abhandlungen der III. Classe der koniglichen Akademie der Wissenschaft.Google Scholar
Magalhães-Godinho, V. de (1962) A Economia dos Descobrimentos Henriqui-nos. Lisbon: Livraria Sá da Costa.Google Scholar
Martin, P. (1970) “The Trade of Loango in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,” pp. 139–162 in Gray, R. and Birmingham, D. (eds.) Pre-Colonial African Trade. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ozanne, P. (1964) Review of A. Lawrence, Trade Castles. Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 7: 132–133.Google Scholar
Pacheco Pereira, D. (1937) Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis in Crone, G. R. (ed.) The Voyages of Cadamosto. London: Haklyut Society.Google Scholar
Ricard, R. (1936) “Le Commerce en Berberie et l'organisation économique de l'empire portugais.” Annales de l'Institut des Etudes Orientale 2. Alger.Google Scholar
Rodney, W. (1970) A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Ryder, A.F.C. (1969) Benin and the Europeans, 1485-1897. London: Longmans.Google Scholar
Vansina, J. (1962) “Long-distance trade routes in Central Africa.” Journal of African History 3:3: 375–390.Google Scholar
Vansina, J. (1966) Kingdoms of the Savanna. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Wilks, I. (1971) “The Mossi and Akan states, 1500-1800,” pp. 344–386 in Ajayi, J.F.A. and Crowder, M. (eds.) History of West Africa. London: Longmans.Google Scholar