The Golden Trade of the Moors
Trans-Saharan gold and salt trade; the medieval West African economy
Summary
Bovill wrote a history of trans-Saharan trade from antiquity through the nineteenth century, centred on the exchange of West African gold for Saharan salt and North African goods, and on the empires of Ghana, Mali and Songhai that the trade supported.
The economic mechanics are the substance. Gold was abundant in West Africa and salt was scarce; salt was abundant in the Sahara and gold was not. The exchange ratio at times approached one for one by weight. The trade required camel caravans crossing the desert on established routes with fixed wells, which meant control of a few oases and of the caravan cities, principally Timbuktu, Gao and Sijilmasa, was control of the trade. Bovill covers the silent trade convention by which gold was exchanged without the parties meeting, the Islamic legal and commercial institutions that made long-distance credit possible, the pilgrimage of Mansa Musa and its effect on Mediterranean gold prices, and the Moroccan invasion of Songhai in 1591.
He also covers the trade's later decline as Portuguese maritime routes bypassed the Sahara entirely, which is a case of a technology change destroying an intermediary position rather than a competitor doing so.
The book is from 1958 and its scholarship reflects that period, including a colonial-era framing that later Africanist historians have substantially revised. It remains readable and the economic geography is well handled. Specific claims should be checked against more recent scholarship.
Key takeaways 7
- Trans-Saharan trade rested on the exchange of West African gold for Saharan salt, and the exchange ratio at times approached parity by weight.
- Control of the desert's fixed wells and caravan cities was control of the trade, which is why political power concentrated in a few locations far from the goods themselves.
- Islamic legal and commercial institutions made long-distance credit and agency possible across the desert, which is what allowed the trade to scale.
- Mansa Musa's pilgrimage spending measurably depressed gold prices in Egypt and the Mediterranean, which shows the scale of the West African supply.
- Portuguese maritime routes destroyed the trans-Saharan intermediary position by bypassing it entirely, rather than by competing on the same route.
- The empires of Ghana, Mali and Songhai were built on taxing trade passing through rather than on producing the goods traded.
- An intermediary whose position rests on a physical route is destroyed by a technology that creates a different route, not by a better competitor on the same one.
Who should read it
Readers interested in the economics of chokepoint control and in how a route-based intermediary position is destroyed by a new technology.
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“Bovill, The Golden Trade of the Moors”
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