Wangara, Akan, and Portuguese in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

Abstract

The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were ones of momentous change in Europe. Out of the crises of feudalism arose the new nation-states. By the end of the period labor had taken precedence over bullion in the market, and the capitalist “world-system” had been born. In the fifteenth century the two subcontinents were inextricably linked within the Mediterranean economy, by virtue of the gold trade. The association of those called the Wangara with the interior gold trade of West Africa was one known in medieval times. The Wangara, then, were Malians who specialized in the management of long-distance commerce, and the growth of the West African gold trade was closely linked with the extension of the range of their activities. The commercial situation at Elmina in the late fifteenth century clearly presupposes the existence in its hinterland, first, of a well-developed gold extractive industry and, second, of a well-organized distributive trade.