A Trade Currency: Cowry Shells

Certain types of seashells have been used by natives as currency on every continent of the world except Antarctica. This Kikuyu woman is in traditional dress showing hundreds of Cowrie shells. (Photo: Flickr user wayfaring stranger.)

According to Ingrid Van Damme, a Member of the Museum staff of the National Bank of Belgium, "Cowry Shells, a trade currency": The Museum of the National Bank is probably not the first thing that crosses your mind when you are talking about shells. And yet, apart from a large number of coins and banknotes it also possesses a nice collection of primitive means of payments. Within this category of traditional money the cowry shell is one the most renowned representatives.

Cowrie shells, African ring money and ancient gold money

Long before our era the cowry shell was known as an instrument of payment and a symbol of wealth and power. This monetary usage continued until the 20th century. If we look a bit closer into these shells it is absolutely not astonishing that varieties as the cypraea moneta or cypraea annulus were beloved means of payments and eventually became in some cases huge competitors of metal currencies. All characteristics of money, i.e. durability, handiness or convenience, recognizability and divisibility are embodied in these small shells. In comparison with foodstuff or feathers which can fall prey to vermin, shells withstand easily frequent handling. They are small and very easy to transport and their alluring form and looks offer them a perfect protection against forgery. Besides, counting was not always absolutely necessary. As the shells almost all had the same shape and size weighing often sufficed to determine the value of a payment.

Cypraea moneta (cowrie).

According to local preferences and agreements, cowry shells could also been packed or stringed to larger unities. On the Bengalese market e.g. large payments were made in baskets full of cowries, each one containing approx. 12.000 shells. Due to it’s peculiar form the cowry was also considered to be a fertility symbol, which made it extremely popular with a number of peoples.

Gourd Ornament with Cowrie Shells

The cowry which is indigenious in the warm waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans travelled by land and by sea and gradually spread out its realm. It became the most commonly used means of payment of the trading nations of the Old World. The cowry was accepted in large parts of Asia, Africa, Oceania and in some scattered places in Europe. Chinese bronze objects, the oldest dating back to the 13th century B.C., inform us about this monetary usage. This tradition has also left its traces in the written Chinese language. Simplified representations of the cowry are part of the characters for words with a strongly economic meaning, as e.g. money, coin, buy, value…

Cowry shell collecting and trading became a real industry on the Maldives. Both men and women were involved and had their own responsibilities. Women wove mats of the leaves of the coconut trees which were put on the watersurface. Little molluscs covered these mats but before they could be harvested the mats were left on the beaches to dry. Once completely dried out the shells were ready to start their lives as currencies.

1200 B.C.: COWRIE SHELLS: The first use of cowries, the shells of a mollusk that was widely available in the shallow waters of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, was in China. Historically, many societies have used cowries as money, and even as recently as the middle of this century, cowries have been used in some parts of Africa. The cowrie is the most widely and longest used currency in history.

The largest part of this Maldive production was exported by local seamen to the main distribution centre of Bengal. Important question: what was the value of this commodity? The law of supply and demand, one of the basic laws of economics, played a dominant rôle. In areas far away from production or trade centers, a few cowries would buy a cow whereas in the Maldives itself a few hundred thousands equalled a gold dinar. Along the northeast trade route caravans of Arab traders introduced the cowry in the African inland but it were the Portugese, English, French and Dutch who promoted the cowry to the currency for commercial transactions, as e.g. trading in slaves, gold and other goods. The massive import of cowries along the African Westcoast however caused a few disruptions both sides of the trade route: whereas India had to deal with serious shortages in the 17th century local African currencies lost their values or even disappeared completely in favour of the cowries. The cowry continued to play its monetary rôle until the 20th century but the financial world has not completely turned its back on this popular currency. Its memory is, amongst others, kept alive in the façade of the Central Bank of West African Countries in Bamako, Mali or… in museums dedicated to money. (source: the National Bank of Belgium)

Cypraea moneta (cowrie)

Cowrie shells were the longest and most widely used currency of all times. In China they were circulating as money from the 2nd millennium BC. From there they spread over Thailand and Vietnam to the Indian subcontinent; finally they came into use also on the Philippines, the Maldives, in New Guinea, the South Seas and in Africa. On the African continent, cowrie money remained in circulation until the mid-20th century. Many cowries found on archeological sites are pierced like the specimen shown here, as they were also used for decorating clothes or tied together in strings for the payment of larger sums.

Shell Traders

Shell Traders from Willy Millard on Vimeo.

Roots of Voudun and Slavery's Legacy in Ouidah

From the 17th to 19th centuries, millions of African people were sold into slavery, transported on ships to the Americas. With them came spiritual traditions including Voudun, which we now know as voodoo. Its roots are in the Dahomey kingdom on the West Coast of Africa, now the country of Benin.

The python temple in Ouidah, Benin, where voodooists invoke the "sacred"

We visit the Temple of Pythons and learn about Voudun religious practices, and witness some of the most important sites in the history of the slave trade.

We walk along a beach that was the single most highly-trafficked embarkation point for West African slaves headed over the Atlantic to the Americas. One million people were forced on to ships here, many transported to Haiti and Brazil, where Voudun transmuted into voodoo and Candombla.

Outsiders called this region the Slave Coast. Ouidah’s residents today call the former boarding platform on this otherwise idyllic beach the Gate of No Return.

Roots of Voudun and Slavery's Legacy in Ouidah

Benin's Dark Past of Slavery

BBC News, Benin, "Benin's Dark past of slavery," by Sue Branford: Few tourists reach Benin yet this West African nation has a remarkable story to tell about one of the most shameful episodes in history.

A massive, arched gateway, some 50 feet high, stands alone on the edge of one of the loveliest beaches in West Africa.

It is a striking - and in many ways a beautiful - structure, facing out across the Atlantic Ocean towards South America.

Yet it is also bleak beyond words.

Etched across the top of the arch are two long lines of naked, chained men disappearing into the sea.

Called the Gateway of No Return, it is a monument to the hundreds of thousands of Africans who were forced into slave boats on this beach, never to return.

I arrived at this gateway with a group of local historians. By the time I got there, I was choking back tears.

Not surprising really, as the monument comes at the end of a harrowing two-mile (3.2 km) trek from Ouidah.

Today Ouidah is an attractive town, the spiritual capital of Benin, with a thriving culture centred on the voodoo religion.

But once the very mention of Ouidah invoked fear among the local population.



Tree of Forgetfulness

The Portuguese, the Dutch, the British and the French all had forts near this town, built to defend their trading interests.

And for more than 200 years, the main commodity they traded was people.

Slave traders rounded up men, women and children, at times trapping them with nets.

Their catchment area stretched deep into Africa, even as far as Ethiopia and Sudan.

Once caught the slaves were forced to walk in chains, hundreds of miles to Ouidah.

Once there, they were subjected to a brutal process of brainwashing.

Taken down the slave route that I followed, they were made to walk around a supposedly magical tree called the Tree of Forgetfulness.

Men had to go round it nine times, women and children seven.

This experience, they were told, would make them forget everything - their names, their family, and the life they had once had.

As if this was not enough, the slaves were then locked into a dark room, built to resemble the hulk of a ship.

In the local language this room was called Zomai, meaning literally: "There, where the light is not allowed."

Its foundations are still visible and the place still seems to exude evil spirits and terror.

Brazil's role

Old Portugese Slave Fort - Ouidah. Old Portugese Slave Fort. The Slave Route

After several weeks - or even months - in this hell hole, the slaves were packed in ships for the long crossing to the Americas.

One of the historians told me that most of the slaves went to Brazil, at the time still ruled by Portugal and that some Brazilians played an important role in the trade.

Benin, Oyo, Asante And Dahomey Were Slave Trading Tribes

The most infamous was Don Francisco de Souza, an extraordinary wheeler-dealer who, arriving penniless from Brazil, made a fortune out of slave-trading while living in Benin.

He was a colourful figure, allegedly having 99 wives and hundreds of children.

He inspired one of Bruce Chatwin's most famous novels, The Viceroy of Ouidah.

In all, Brazil received some four million slaves from Africa - though not all, of course, from Ouidah.

This was many more than were sent to the United States.

Cultural impact

Economically, the slaves did not prosper, for blacks remain by far the poorest ethnic group in Brazil.

But culturally their impact was huge.

I lived in Brazil for many years and almost everything that makes Brazil that vibrant, warm country that so many of us love seems to be linked to Africa.

Carnival, samba, Candomble, capoeira - all were created by the descendants of former slaves.

I have always known this, but it was not until my recent trip to Benin that I became aware of just how tenaciously the slaves must have clung to their culture.

Huge efforts were made to cut them off from their past but they failed.

The "tree of forgetfulness" did not work.

Future tourism

Today there is a new twist to the tale.

As yet, Ouidah is unspoilt. Few tourists reach this relatively remote area of West Africa.

But tour operators have spotted the strong combination of wonderful beaches, hot climate, historical sites and, for Europeans, no jet lag.

Moreover, Benin is a relatively safe country with low levels of violence. The people are friendly.

Tourism is just the kind of industry that President Yayi Boni, who came to office earlier this year, is keen to promote.

He was a development banker before entering politics and wants to modernise the country.

Ouidah has a remarkable story to tell and local people need jobs.

But let us hope that Benin does not repeat the mistakes of other developing countries.

Too often tourism has had harmful effects.

Local communities have been evicted from their land. Water resources have been squandered on golf courses.

The local culture has been turned into a vulgar tourist attraction.

It would be ironic indeed if Benin's extraordinary heritage was to open the way for another cycle of exploitation by outsiders.

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Thursday, 7 September, 2006 at 1100 BST on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times

(source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/5321484.stm)


Tree of Forgetfulness

Esmeralda Santiago: 'Conquistadora'

From the New York Times, "Tale of a Puerto Rican Plantation Mistress," Book Review by Gaiutra Bahadur: If the American South had Scarlett O’Hara as its Civil War antiheroine, the English-speaking Caribbean of the 1800s had Annie Palmer. The real-life mistress of a Jamaican sugar estate during the final days of slavery, Palmer was the subject of legend and many lurid novels, most enduringly 1929’s “White Witch of Rosehall.” Lore says (most likely inaccurately) that Palmer practiced obeah, or sorcery; bedded slaves, then killed them; and murdered three husbands. She set the standard for cruelty and debauchery in a woman presiding over a plantation.

In fiction, plantation mistresses have tended to be either unbridled despots (often with a touch of the “madwoman in the attic” à la “Jane Eyre”) or demure creatures who stay in the Great House, civilizing everyone in and around it. Esmeralda Santiago plays with, then capsizes, these caricatures in “Conquistadora,” which she has set in mid-19th-century Puerto Rico. Like Palmer, the novel’s heroine, Ana Cubillas, ends up a widow running a sugar plantation who becomes romantically involved with an overseer. Ana doesn't literally kill her husband, Ramón, though her mother-in-law makes her feel responsible for his death. Ana did, however, flatter him into leaving their pampered life in Spain for empire’s fatal edges. She married him because his family owned a plantation on the very island where, three centuries earlier, her illustrious colonizing ancestor had landed with Ponce de León. Ana believes it’s her destiny to seek her own greatness in Puerto Rico. Later, her husband claims she “bewitched” him into going. The “white witch” stereotype sticks to the hem of Ana’s skirt like cane-field mud. When she extols the healing powers of herbs, learned from her slaves, another character charges, “That sounds like witchcraft.”

But Santiago’s plantation mistress isn’t a shrew who derives sadistic pleasure from flogging her slaves. Nor is she their ministering angel, although she tends to the sick and oversees baptisms and prayers. Ana is something much more elusive and contradictory. She delegates the flogging, but flinches when the slaves scream.

Santiago, who was born in Puerto Rico, chronicled her personal struggle with a controlling partner in the memoir “The Turkish Lover” and has written before about strong-willed women trying to break free from machismo’s grip. In her previous novel, “América’s Dream,” a housekeeper flees an abusive relationship by emigrating. The Ana of “Conquistadora” is a feminist before her time. She is resented by her parents for not being the male heir they desired. Their private succession crisis overlaps with a bloody, public one — Spain’s Carlist wars, fought to allow a woman to inherit the throne. As that conflict unfolds, Ana makes furtive love to her friend Elena at their convent school. (Santiago, fancying symbolic if unsubtle names, calls it the Convent of Good Mothers.)

Esmeralda Santiago

A side benefit to Ana’s marrying Ramón is that she and Elena can continue with their affair, as Elena has long been promised to Ramón’s twin, Inocente. But that plan goes awry as the twins, who finish each other’s sentences and enjoy watching each other have sex with the same woman, both fall for Ana. They follow her to the plantation, and when Ana gives birth, it’s unclear who the father is. The plot turns, sometimes improbably, sometimes predictably. There’s a good deal of soap-operatic excess in “Conquistadora,” including some sensational fights between Ana and her mother-in-law.

The book’s strength is its Rubik’s Cube portrait of Ana, an unconventional, ambitious woman whose attitudes toward children, slaves and lovers perplex and engross. She isn’t much of a mother, but she takes in a humpbacked baby girl abandoned on her doorstep the same day she trades her own son away in order to keep running the plantation. She’s a liberal mistress, expressing interest in the African songs her maid sings and allowing the slaves’ midwife to deliver her son. (“We all look and function pretty much the same down there,” she declares.) Yet she achieves freedom by exploiting those who, starkly, lack it. Noting that none of her slaves have challenged her, Ana reflects: “But of course, they could. . . . She would, if she were one of them.”

Is Ana believable? Santiago herself has asked that question. “I worried that I was creating a character who would have been impossible in that time and that place,” she said in an interview on her publisher’s Web site. In fact, a small percentage of women did own or control plantations in the Caribbean. Whether the obstacles they faced in a world dominated by white men sensitized them to the oppression of slaves is another question entirely. White women in the 19th-century Caribbean were largely silent on the subject of slavery. Most who spoke publicly, defended it. With her tough portrait of a female planter, Santiago speculates, charitably but unromantically, about those who didn’t speak. Ana is emotionally intelligent enough to imagine how slaves might feel, to understand their longing for freedom, yet ruthless enough to use and punish them in order to flourish herself. Neither white witch nor angel, she is convincing despite her contradictions — indeed, because of them.

Annie Palmer’s Rose Hall plantation is now a vacation resort, offering a chance to tee off on the White Witch Golf Course or exchange vows in front of the Great House. Many historical novels function this way, too, mingling levity with solemnity, turning fact into entertainment. “Conquistadora,” for one, presents a guided tour of the history of sugar and empire. Santiago takes us through events of the past as if they were rooms, narrating the cholera epidemic that ravaged Puerto Rico in the 1850s here, depicting the secret abolitionist societies active in San Juan there, and, over all, divertingly evoking a place that was one of the last holdouts for slavery in the Americas. (source: New York Times, 15 July 2011)

Conversation: Esmeralda Santiago, Author of 'Conquistadora'

Slave Route in Nigeria

From Africa Travel Magazine, "Discover the Slave Route in Nigeria," by Dr. Beryl Dorsett: A darker historical era saw many people of West Africa leave their shores for plantations in Europe, North and South America and the Caribbean. The infamous slave trade in Nigeria is not known to many people like the slave trade in Ghana, Senegal, Togo and Benin. Nigeria and Ghana were former British colonies. Senegal, Togo and Benin were former French colonies.

In December 2000, I attended the Fourth Eco-tourism Symposium in Nigeria as a delegate of the Africa Travel Association. The Lagos State Waterfront and Tourism Development Corporation invited conference delegates to a two-day pre-symposium tour of Lagos States. On the first day, we toured the city of Lagos. On the second day, we toured the town of Badagry and learned that Badagry was an important slave route in West Africa. Badagry is one of five divisions created in Lagos State in l968.

This ancient town of Badagry was founded around l425 A.D. Before its existence, people lived along the Coast of Gberefu and this area later gave birth to the town of Badagry. It is the second largest commercial town in Lagos State, located an hour from Lagos and half hour from the Republic du Benin. The Town of Badgry is bordered on the south by the Gulf of Guinea and surrounded by creeks, islands and a lake. The ancient town served mainly the Oyo Empire which was comprised of Yoruba and Ogu people. Today, the Aworis and Egun are mainly the people who reside in the town of Badagry as well as in Ogun State in Nigeria and in the neighboring Republic du Benin.

Slave Trade Route

In the early 1500's, slaves were transported from West Africa to America through Badagry. It is reported that Badagry exported no fewer than 550,000 African slaves to America during the period of the American Independence in l787. In addition, slaves were transported to Europe, South America and the Caribbean. The slaves came mainly from West Africa and the neighboring countries of Benin and Togo as well as others parts of Nigeria. The slave trade became the major source of income for the Europeans in Badagry.

Today, Badagry is an historic site because of the significant role it played as a major slave port in Nigeria. The town of Badagry is promoting an African Heritage Festival in May, 2001 to enlighten the world to its historic sites, landscapes, cultural artifacts and relics of human slavery. Badagry wants to share this world heritage site with others. They are preserving buildings, sites and memories of this iniquitous period so those tourists can unearth the dark impact of this era. Places of interest include the Palace of the Akran of Badagry and its mini ethnographic museum, the early missionaries cemetery, the District Officer's Office and Residence, the First Storey Building in Nigeria constructed by the Anglican missionaries, relics of slave chains in the mini museum of slave trade, cannons of war, the Vlekte slave Market, and the Slave Port established for the shipment of slaves before the l6th century.

The Lagos State Waterfront and Tourism Development Corporation is sponsoring the African Heritage Festival, May 2001, in collaboration with Nigerian Tourist Development Corporation, Badagry Local Government and some NGOs. Chief Moses Hungbo Owolabani is the Executive Chairman of Badagry Local Government Council. The tentative program of events encompasses initiation into Nigerian tribes, boat regatta, educational and economic forums, music and dance festivals, and numerous recreational activities and picnicking on miles of beach front property. (source: Africa Travel Magazine)

Thumbscrew Torture Device

Thumbscrew

Now, people know what this contraption is? These are thumb screws. Thumbscrews are basically an instrument of torture.

They would be used on a slave ship in the aftermath, especially of an uprising, and insurrection in which the ring leaders would have their thumbs placed under the metal loops, the key turned producing a kind of pain that is almost indescribable from what I can learn of it.

Leaving a man in that condition for hours if not days and after which the thumb might have to be amputated. In his parliamentary testimony, John Newton said, “I have known slave ship captains to use thumbscrews that produce the most excruciating pain among the enslaved”.

I dare say he did know it because he himself had used them as he describes in his journal, and moreover folks, he used them on children on one occasion because he thought they had passed tools to the men through the gratings which they then used to get out of their irons and to try to rise up and capture the ship. (Talk given by Marcus Rediker in November 2007 at Merseyside Maritime Museum, Liverpool Museum)

The thumbscrews or pilliwinks is a torture instrument which was first used in medieval Europe. It is a simple vice, sometimes with protruding studs on the interior surfaces. The victim's thumbs or fingers were placed in the vice and slowly crushed. The thumbscrew was also applied to crush prisoners' big toes. The crushing bars were sometimes lined with sharp metal points to puncture the nails and inflict greater pain in the nail beds. Larger, heavier devices based on the same design principle were applied to crush knees and elbows.

Lloyds of London Insurance for the Slave Trade

Because in all of the whole human race

Mrs Lovett, there are two kinds of men and only two

There's the one they put in his proper place

And the one with his foot in the other one's face

Look at me, Mrs Lovett, look at you. (Sweeney Todd lyrics)

A history of insurance starting with Lloyd’s of London

Lloyd’s of London is neither a company nor a corporation. It is basically a British insurance market. It serves as a meeting place where multiple financial backers or “members”, whether individuals, who are known as “Names” or corporations, come together to pool and spread risk. Their main business is in the reinsurance market.

The market began in Edward Lloyd’s coffeehouse around 1688 in Tower Street, London. His establishment was a popular place for sailors, merchants, and ship owners. Lloyd’s main business with his customers was to provide reliable shipping news, which he gleaned from all his different customers and then fed back to them. The shipping industry community frequented the place to discuss insurance deals among themselves.

Soon after Christmas in 1691, the coffee shop moved to Lombard Street, where today a blue plaque commemorates its location. Long after Lloyd’s death in 1713 the arrangement continued until 1774 when the participating members of the insurance arrangement formed a committee and moved to the Royal Exchange, and called itself The Society of Lloyd’s.

Between 1688 and 1807, slave trading became one of the primary constituents of all British trade, and the dangers in the slave trade meant that insurance of the ships was of major concern. The insurance of ships engaged in slave trading became one of the primary sources of Lloyd’s business as Britain established itself as the chief slave trading power in the Atlantic. With slave-trading forming such a prominent part of Lloyd’s business, the organization was one of the chief opponents to the abolition of the slave trade.

In 1838 the Exchange burned down and, although rebuilt, many of Lloyd’s early records were lost. In 1871, the first Lloyd’s Act was passed in Parliament which elevated the business to a legal footing. The Lloyd’s Act of 1911 set out the Society’s objectives, which include the promotion of its members’ interests and the collection and dissemination of information.

It soon became apparent that the membership of the Society, which was largely made up of market participants, was too small in relation to the risks that it was underwriting and the small market capitalization. Lloyd’s commissioned a secret internal inquiry, known as the Cromer Report, which reported in 1968. This report advocated the widening of membership to non-market participants, including non-British subjects and women, and to reduce the onerous capitalization requirements, which created a minor investor known as a ‘mini-Name’. (source: Health Insurance Net)

There's a hole in the world like a great black pit

and the vermin of the world inhabit it

and its morals aren't worth what a pig can spit

and it goes by the name of London...

At the top of the hole sit the privileged few

Making mock of the vermin in the lonely zoo

turning beauty to filth and greed...

I too have sailed the world and seen its wonders,

for the cruelty of men is as wondrous as Peru

but there's no place like London! (lyrics: "No Place Like London" from Sweeney Todd)

Richard Oswald: Slave trader, merchant

Richard Oswald: Slave trader, merchant and diplomat

Richard Oswald was the son of a Presbyterian minister. He was apprenticed to his cousins in Glasgow who had a successful trade in tobacco and he traveled to the Caribbean and the southern colonies of British North America on their behalf. In 1746 he moved to London and began his own business, initially supplying the army and Royal Navy as well as trading tobacco, but moving quickly into slaves and sugar. He augmented his business interests by marrying Mary Ramsay, the daughter of a wealthy Jamaican merchant. In 1747, he and several associates bought Bance (also Bunce or Bence) Island in the Sierra Leone river, one of the most active slave trading posts on the West African coast. Oswald built a golf course there for the benefit of white slave traders.

Bance (also Bunce or Bence) Island in the Sierra Leone river, one of the most active slave trading posts on the West African coast.

Oswald also acquired shares in slave ships, and plantations in the Caribbean, Florida and South Carolina. His ships could then carry slaves from Bance Island to plantations in the Americas and return to England with cargoes of sugar and tobacco. He was part of a group of Scottish merchants based in London who assisted each other financially, sharing their investments to spread the risk and ensure more reliable and consistent profits. Capital gained from investments in slavery financed investments in related products, such as tobacco and sugar production.

On July 25, 1782, official negotiations began. The preliminary articles were signed by Oswald for Great Britain, and John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, and Henry Laurens for the United States on November 30, 1782. With almost no alterations, these articles were made into a treaty on September 3, 1783.

Most of the slaves Oswald traded were shipped to the southern colonies of British North America. One of his most important business associates there was the South Carolina planter and slave owner Henry Laurens. In 1781, Oswald lobbied successfully for Laurens' release after he was captured by the Royal Navy when he was returning from negotiating Dutch support for the American War of Independence. The following year, Oswald became an adviser to the British prime minister, Lord Shelburne. His knowledge of North America resulted in his appointment as one of the British negotiators at the 1783 Paris peace conference with the American colonies. Laurens was on the American team. The two sides agreed that the British should not take 'Negroes or other Property' from Americans when they withdrew from the American colonies.

Auchincruive House. Richard Oswald (a merchant from London, and a commissioner in Paris for peace negotiations with the Americans) bought the estate in 1764.

Oswald's London base was at Philpot Lane in the City of London, but his vast fortune enabled him to buy Auchincruive - an estate in Scotland where the Adam brothers built him a large house - as well as an extensive library and art collection. (BBC Business of Enslavement)

Slave market at Pernambuco, Brazil

Gate and Slave market at Pernambuco, after Earle; view down street crowded with slaves, guarded by soldiers to right

Slave market at Pernambuco, Brazil. Includes black slaves sitting on the street while an auction is going on. Includes scene of beating, dwellings, sword, horse about to trample a baby, dog, and woman carrying a burden on her head.

Source creator: Callcott, Maria, Lady, 1785-1842
Source Title: Journal of a voyage to Brazil, and residence there, during part of the years 1821, 1822, 1823. By Maria Graham.
Source place of publication: London

The Slave market at Rio

The Slave market at Rio; street where buyers examine slaves, one of whom sits on ground in left foreground, child slaves being inspected by man wearing hat and striped trousers, dog to right, soldiers in distance. 1813

Slave Market House: Louisville, Georgia

Journey to Louisville (pronounced Lewis-ville), Georgia and you are in for a history lesson. Site of the Georgia state capital during the Yazoo Land Fraud the city was near the center of the antebellum cotton industry. Completely rebuilt in the center of downtown Louisville is a market house where people would sell just about anything, including slaves. It is the only remaining slave-trading site in the state of Georgia, and was the largest slave market in the state for many years.

Originally built between 1795 and 1798, the market used by sheriffs and other officials as well as local folk to sell land and goods. But the dark side of this market is the African-American slave trade that fueled the local economy. When importation of slaves became illegal in 1808 the market in Savannah closed. Smugglers had to move their goods inland for sale, and the market at Louisville was very active in the illegal trade.

The market survived General Sherman's March to the Sea. A bell inside the market was cast for a New Orleans Convent, but never made it there. A pirate ship took it as booty and through an unknown series of events the bell ended up at Louisville. (source: Roadside Georgia)

Map of Louisville--First Planned Capital and Capitol

The commission appointed to choose the location of a new permanent capital city directed that it be built within 20 miles of the trading post called "Galphin’s Old Town" (or "Galphinton"), which was located in present day Jefferson County. The site finally selected was by a slave market located at the intersection of three roads leading to Augusta, Savannah, and Georgetown respectively. The slave market, built in 1758, is still standing. The Legislature directed that the name of the new capital be Louisville in honor of King Louis XVI of France as an expression of thanks for French aid during the Revolutionary War.

Louisville was Georgia’s first planned capital, and the city was to contain the state’s first capitol building built expressly for that purpose. The new state house was completed in 1796. Although there are no known paintings or drawings of this building, it is known that it was a two-story structure of 18th century Georgian architecture, and was made of red brick. Even before moving to the new capital, the Legislature designated Louisville the "permanent seat" of Georgia government. But by the early 1800s, further western expansion caused the Legislature to convene in yet another new "permanent" state capital. (source: Georgia Government State Archives)