ABSTRACT
The chapter examines the formation and collapse of cowrie money in West Africa. It traces the periods, routes and agents for the import of cowrie shells into Africa before and the during the European colonial period, introduces the evolution of the cowrie money zones over time, discusses the denomination systems in local and global contexts and highlights two cases, Whydah at the end of the seventeenth century and Dahomey in the mid-nineteenth century, to illustrate how the cowrie trade and cowrie money penetrated and thus shaped local African societies. Cowrie shells, along long with gold, silver and other local monetary goods, serve to reveal the dynamics of regional economies and their integration before the arrival of the Europeans. The large importation of cowrie shells by the Europeans reshaped the use of cowrie money in many ways and also facilitated the integration of West Africa in the Atlantic trade. As such, cowrie shells symbolised the European creation of a new global trading network that consisted of Asia, Europe, Africa and the New World, from a land-based point of view, or the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean, from a maritime one.
