Wednesday, 30 October 2024

HISTORY LESSON

The so-called silent trade is a time of commercial exchange between participants who had no verbal way of communicating, practiced by various peoples around the world and of course in Africa.

In both the classical, medieval and modern periods, from West Africa, through Egypt and the Horn and East Africa, ways have been sought to trade and carry out economic exchanges without linguistic differences being an impediment.

An example can be seen in Book IV, Melpomène, 196 by Herodotus, where he describes how Phoenicians/Carthaginians could trade with peoples from North Africa and south of the Sahara and West Africa.

"The Carthaginians also tell us that they trade with a race of men who live in a part of Libya beyond the Pillars of Hercules. On reaching this country, they unload their goods, arrange them neatly along the beach, and then, returning to their ships, raise a cloud of smoke. Seeing the smoke, the natives go down to the beach, place on the ground a certain quantity of gold in exchange for the goods, and sail away again. The Carthaginians then land and look at the gold; and if they think it represents a fair price for their goods, they pick it up and go away; if, on the other hand, it seems too little, they return on board and wait, and the natives come and add gold until they are satisfied. There is perfect honesty on both sides; the Carthaginians never touch the gold until it equals in value what they have offered for sale, and the natives never touch the goods until the gold has been taken away."

An interesting fact is that Islamic writers from the medieval period described a similar practice in which they mentioned that Amazigh (Berber) merchants traded with the Soninke and Mandinga peoples, the difference being that instead of smoke signals, the sound of drums was used.

Authors such as Al-Masudi, Yaqub, and Alvise Cadamosto left their impressions regarding the silent trade in West Africa.

Now, the establishment of commercial lingua francas in certain areas, further simplified and improved communications, languages   such as Dyula, Arabic, Hausa, Swahili, among others, meant that more communities could have better communication and understanding.

It is accepted that silent trade or silent barter was practiced by people who even came to understand each other, but this form of trade was chosen, which did not include, for the most part, a currency in common use and subject to state controls.

Text by Oumar Xavier.

Source.

- Personal research Oumar Xavier.

- Book Religion and Trade

Cross-cultural Exchanges in World History, 1000-1900 by Francesca Trivellato,  Leor Halevi,  Cátia Antunes.

- Book Economic Anthropology

Cultures of Commerce, exploring the heart of economic anthropology

By Fouad Sabry.

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