Ransoming, collateral, and protective captivity on the Upper Guinea Coast before 1650 : colonial continuities, contemporary echoes / Peter Mark
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Ransoming, collateral, and protective captivity on the Upper Guinea Coast before 1650
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1663039984
URN
urn:nbn:de:gbv:3:2-107901
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Publication history
Halle/Saale : Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, 2018
Content
1 Online-Ressource (16 Seiten, 0,71 MB)
Edition
Language
eng
Comment
Literaturverzeichnis Seite 14-16
Abstract
This paper investigates the origins of pawning in European-African interaction along the Upper Guinea Coast. Pawning in this context refers to the holding of human beings as security for debt or to ensure that treaty obligations be fulfilled. While pawning was an indigenous practice in Upper Guinea, it is proposed here that when the Portuguese arrived in West Africa, they were already familiar with systems of ransoming, especially of members of the nobility. The adoption of pawning and the associated practice of not enslaving members of social elites may be explained by the fact that these customs were already familiar to both the Portuguese and their West African hosts. Vestiges of these social institutions may be found well into the colonial period on the Upper Guinea Coast.
Series
Working papers ; No. 193 ppn:371276853