Kingdoms & polities · documented 15th–17th centuries
The Sapi peoples
The collective name Portuguese sources gave the coastal peoples between the Nunez and Cape Mount — makers of the Sapi-Portuguese ivories.
Biography
'Sapi' was a Portuguese label for a cluster of related coastal societies — ancestors of today's Bullom, Temne, Baga and their neighbours — encountered from the 1460s onward. They were skilled iron-workers, salt-makers and above all carvers.
From about 1490 Sapi craftsmen produced ivory saltcellars, spoons and oliphants to European order: the first African export art, carved to Portuguese iconographic programmes in an unmistakably African idiom. In the sixteenth century Mane invasions from the east broke up the Sapi polities and the workshops fell silent.
Historical significance
Proof of a coastal society with a luxury craft economy trading with Europe on commissioned terms in the fifteenth century — three hundred years before the settlers.
Timeline
- 1460sFirst Portuguese contact with the Sapi coast
- c. 1490–1550Sapi-Portuguese ivories carved for European patrons
- c. 1545–1600Mane invasions disperse the Sapi polities
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, 1545–1800.
Suggested reading
- Rodney (1970), chs. 1–2.