The business of slaving: Pawnship in Western Africa, c. 1600 1810

The use of people as pawns to underpin credit was widespread in western Afr ica during the era of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. This study examines w here and when pawns were used in commercial transactions involving European slave merchants in the period c. 1600-1810. It is shown that European merc hants relied on pawnship as an instrument of credit protection in many plac es, though not everywhere. Europeans apparently did not hold pawns at Ouida h (after 1727), at Bonny or on the Angolan coast. Nonetheless, the reliance on pawnship elsewhere highlights the influence of African institutions on the development of the slave trade.