Wangara, Akan, and Portuguese in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

Bibliographic Data

ID20040822
AuthorsIvor Wilks (corresponding author)
Year2020
Pages1-39
Publication date2020-02-13
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueMines of Silver and Gold in the Americas (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.4324/9781315248875-1
OpenAlexW3016198058
ISBN9781315248875
LanguageEN
Citations received6

The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were ones of momentous change in Europe. Out of the crises of feudalism arose the new nation-states. By the end of the period labor had taken precedence over bullion in the market, and the capitalist “world-system” had been born. In the fifteenth century the two subcontinents were inextricably linked within the Mediterranean economy, by virtue of the gold trade. The association of those called the Wangara with the interior gold trade of West Africa was one known in medieval times. The Wangara, then, were Malians who specialized in the management of long-distance commerce, and the growth of the West African gold trade was closely linked with the extension of the range of their activities. The commercial situation at Elmina in the late fifteenth century clearly presupposes the existence in its hinterland, first, of a well-developed gold extractive industry and, second, of a well-organized distributive trade

Ancient history · Archaeology · Bullion · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Feudalism · Fifteenth · Geography · Political science · Portuguese · Virtue · African Studies and Geopolitics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law · Philosophy

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