Trade and trading patterns of the Akan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 1

The trade in gold, guns, and slaves, the principal items in the transatlantic trade with the Gold Coast from the late sixteenth to the nineteenth century had long been preceded by the trans-Saharan trade in gold, kola nuts, and salt. In spite of the importance which was attached to the coastal trade by the Akan, there is no evidence to suggest that the chiefs and their elders exercised any monopoly over it in the same way as the Aja kings established complete and absolute control over all aspects of trade in Dahomey. In the organization of trade the evidence suggests that no Akan state monopolized it to the exclusion of its subjects. On the contrary all subjects were encouraged to take a hand in it. What was required by the rulers and what they always did was to provide a peaceful atmosphere within which trading could be transacted

Economic history · Fur trade · Geography · African history and culture studies · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History

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