west africa

Manillas are a form of money, usually made of bronze or copper, which were used in West Africa.^[1] They were produced in large numbers in a wide range of designs, sizes, and weights. Originating before the colonial period, perhaps as the result of trade with the Portuguese Empire, Manillas continued to serve as money and decorative objects until the late 1940s and are still sometimes used as decoration. In popular culture, they are particularly associated with the Atlantic slave trade. The name manilla is said to derive from the Spanish^[1] for a 'bracelet' manella, the Portuguese for 'hand-ring' manilha,^[3] or after the Latin manus (hand) or from monilia, plural of 'monile (necklace).^[4] They are usually horseshoe-shaped, with terminations that face each other and are roughly lozenge-shaped. The earliest use of manillas was in West Africa. As a means of exchange they originated in Calabar. Calabar was the chief city of the ancient southeast Nigerian coastal kingdom of that name. It was here in 1505 that a slave could be bought for 8–10 manillas, and an elephant’s tooth for one copper manila^[5]. Manillas bear some resemblance to torcs or torques in being rigid and circular and open-ended at the front.
- Some sources attribute their introduction to the ancient Phoenicians^[7] who traded along the west coast of Africa or even early Carthaginian explorers and traders.^[8] The Egyptians have also been suggested as they used penannular money. One suggestion is that Nigerian fishermen brought them up in their nets from the shipwrecks of European wrecks or made them from the copper 'pins' used in wooden sailing ships wrecked in the Bight of Benin. One theory is that if indigenous, they copied a splayed-end Raffia cloth bracelet worn by women, another that the well-known Yoruba Mondua with its bulbous ends inspired the manilla shape. Copper bracelets and leg bands were the principal 'money' and they were usually worn by women to display their husband's wealth. Early Portuguese traders thus found a preexisting and very convenient willingness to accept unlimited numbers of these 'bracelets', and they are referred to by Duarte Pacheco Pereira who made voyages in the 1490s to buy ivory tusks, slaves, and pepper. He paid 12 to 15 manillas of brass for a slave, fewer if they were of copper.^[8] By 1522 in Benin a female slave 16 years of age cost 50 manillas; the King of Portugal put a limit of 40 manillas per slave to stop this inflation. Earliest report on the use of Manillas in Africa points to its origin in Calabar the capital city of the Cross River State of coastal Southeastern Nigeria. It has been documented that in 1505 at Calabar, (Nigeria) Manillas were being used as a medium of exchange, one manilla being worth a big elephant tooth, and a slave cost between eight and ten manillas.^[6] They were also in use on the Benin river in 1589 and again in Calabar in 1688, where Dutch traders bought slaves against payment in rough grey copper armlets which had to be very well made or they would be quickly rejected. In addition to the earliest report, the origin of Manillas from Calabar for use in Africa and particularly Nigeria is also confirmed by the African and universal other name for Manillas as Òkpòhò, which is an (Efik) word for money which is used throughout this report and in the titles of images in this report.Although gold was the primary and abiding merchandise sought by the Portuguese, by the early 16th century they were participating in the slave trade for bearers to carry manillas to Africa's interior, and gradually manillas became the principal money of this trade. The Portuguese were soon shouldered aside by the British, French, and Dutch, all of whom had labor-intensive plantations in the West Indies, and later by the Americans whose southern states were tied to a cotton economy. A typical voyage took manillas and utilitarian brass objects such as pans and basins to West Africa, then slaves to America, and cotton back to the mills of Europe. The price of a slave, expressed in manillas, varied considerably according to time, place, and the specific type of manilla offered.