Trade centres · 15th–19th centuries
The ivory trade
Elephant tusks from the forest interior, and the carved ivories that made the Upper Guinea coast famous in Renaissance Europe.
Biography
Raw tusks moved to the coast through the same networks that carried kola and iron, and were bought by Portuguese, Dutch, English and French traders. But the Upper Guinea coast also exported worked ivory: the Sapi-Portuguese saltcellars and oliphants of c. 1490–1550, and later Vai and Mende carving.
Ivory was equally a domestic good: side-blown horns as instruments of state, bracelets and regalia, and the fine combs and spoons that marked rank.
Historical significance
The one African export whose finished form entered European royal collections — and therefore the hardest to dismiss as raw-material extraction.
Timeline
- 1460sPortuguese begin buying tusks on the Upper Guinea coast
- c. 1490–1550Sapi-Portuguese carved ivories made to European order
- 18th–19th c.Interior ivory reaches the coast via the Condo road
Related entries
References
- Bassani, Ezio & Fagg, William (1988). Africa and the Renaissance: Art in Ivory.
- Rodney, Walter (1970). A History of the Upper Guinea Coast.
Suggested reading
- Bassani & Fagg (1988).