Villes africaines anciennes : une civilisation mercantile pré-négrière dans l'Ouest africain, XVIe et XVIIe siècles - article ; n°6 ; vol.46, pg 1389-1410

Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations - Année 1991 - Volume 46 - Numéro 6 - Pages 1389-1410
Ancient frican cities mercantile pre-slave-trade civilization in West Africa during the 16th and 17th Centuries.
Cities, in black Africa as elsewhere, fostered dynamic social complexes. Contacts with the Islamic world in the North and with Europeans in the South were at the outset more dynamic than destructive. The case of the Ghanaian back-country suggests the development of mercantile autochthonous civilization, both protected from and open to the outside world. A remarkably dense urban network combined regional bartering of food crops with the exploitation of gold and thus encouraged the growth of monetary system. Only later did the destructive force of the slave-trade favor the creation of bureaucratic military capital city by the great agrarian slave-owning families. This model, with variations, is applicable to other societies from the castles and Creole culture of the coast to the Yoruba cities of Nigeria. The mestizo culture, as well as architectural borrowings bear, witness to way of life that succeeded, for time in combining its own roots with elements received from the outside world : but what traces were left by these urban realities and fantasies ?
22 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.