Authors: David Graeber
56.
Sheridan 1958, Price 1980, 1989, 1991.
57.
A larger variety of beads.
58.
Barbot in Talbot 1926 I: 185–186.
59.
Inkori (1982) demonstrates that in the late eighteenth century, British ships docking in Old Calabar brought on average 400 muskets each, and that between 1757 and 1806, the total number imported into the Calabar-Cameroons region was 22,986. Rum and other liquor was, however, a very minor import.
60.
One common expedient, especially in the early years, was for merchants to arrive at village markets with canoes full of wares, exchange them for slaves, and then, if they didn’t come up to quota, wait until nightfall and simply attack homesteads along the river, carrying off anyone they could find (Clarkson in Northrup 1978:66, also cited in Noah 1990:94.)
61.
The existing scholarly literature is of little help in reconstructing the history of how one form was transformed into the other, since there are only works treating pawnship
either
as a matter of kinship (e.g., Douglas 1964, Fardon 1985, 1986), or of commerce (e.g., Falola & Lovejoy 1994), but never comparing the two. As a result, many basic questions remain unasked. Falola and Lovejoy, for instance, suggest that pawns’ labor functions as interest, but the book contains no
information on whether interest-bearing loans even existed in the parts of Africa where pawnship was practiced.
62.
It’s also clear that this sort of pawnship must have developed from something like the Lele institution. Many of the rules are the same: for instance, much as among the Lele, if a girl was pledged, the creditor often had the option of marrying her when she reached maturity, thus cancelling the debt.
63.
Lovejoy & Richardson 1999:349–51; 2001.
64.
Equiano 1789:6–13.
65.
Others included the Akunakuna, and the Efik, who were based in Calabar itself. The Aro were Igbo-speakers, and the region a patchwork of speakers of Igbo and Ibibio languages.
66.
On the Aro in general, see Jones 1939; Ottenberg 1958; Afigbo 1971; Ekejiuba 1972; Isichei 1976; Northrup 1978; Dike & Ekejiuba 1990; Nwauwa 1991.
67.
Dike and Ekejiuba (1990:150) estimate that 70 percent of the slaves sold to Europeans in the Bight of Biafra came from the Aro. Most of the rest came from the other merchant societies.
68.
One twentieth-century elder recalled, “a woman who commited adultery would be sold by her husband and the husband kept the money. Thieves were sold, and the money went to the elders whose responsibility it was to make the decision.” (Northrup 1978: 69)
69.
Northrup 1978:73
70.
On Ekpe as debt enforcement in Calabar itself: Jones 1968, Latham 1973:35–41, Lovejoy & Richardson 1999:347–49. On the spread of Ekpe to Arochukwe and throughout the region: Ruel 1969:250–258, Northrup 1978:109–110, Nwaka 1978, Ottenberg & Knudson 1985. Nwaka (1978:188) writes: “The Ekpe society, the most widespread in the Cross River area, formed the basis of local government. It performed executive and judicial functions in areas where it operated. Through the agency of its members, punishments were administered to public offenders, customs enforced and the authority of the elders upheld. Ekpe laws to some extent regulated the lives of most members of the community in such matters as the cleaning of towns and streets, collection of debts and other measures of public benefit.”
71.
Latham 1963:38.
72.
Taken from Walker 1875:120
73.
Ottenberg & Ottenberg 1962:124.
74.
Partridge 1905:72.
75.
If one were seeking a pawn, one couldn’t simply take a random child from a neighboring village, as his or her parents would quickly track the child down.
76.
In Lovejoy & Richardson 2001:74. For a parallel case in Ghana, see Getz 2003:85.
77.
Remarkably, Akiga Sai (1939:379–80) insists that, among the Tiv, this was the origin of slavery: the seizing of hostages from the same lineage as someone who refused to pay a debt. Say, he says, the debtor still refuses to pay. They will keep their hostage fettered for a while, then, finally, sell them in another country. “This is the origin of slavery.”
78.
So Harris 1972:128 writing of another Cross River district, Ikom: one of the major suppliers of slaves for Calabar. There, she notes, debtors were often obliged to pawn themselves when maternal and paternal kin intervened to prevent them from selling off any more of their relatives, with the result that they were finally enslaved and sent to Calabar.
79.
We do not know what proportion. King Eyo II told a British missionary that slaves “were sold for different reasons—some as prisoners of war, some for debt, some for breaking their country’s laws and some by great men who hated them” (in Noah 1990:95). This suggests that debt was not insignificant, especially since as Pier Larson (2000:18) notes, all sources at the time would list “war,” since it was considered the most legitimate. Compare Northrup (1978:76–80).
80.
Reid 1983:8
81.
op cit.
82.
Reid 1983:10
83.
Vickers (1996) provides an excellent history of Bali’s image in the North Atlantic imagination, from “savage Bali” to terrestrial paradise.
84.
Geertz & Geertz 1975; Boon 1977:121–24. Belo (1936:26) cites informants in the 1920s that insisted that marriage by capture was a fairly recent innovation, which emerged from gangs of young men stealing women from enemy villages and, often, demanding that their fathers pay money to get them back.
85.
Boon 1977:74
86.
Covarrubias (1937:12) notes that as early as 1619, Balinese women were in great demand in slave markets in Reunion.
87.
Boon 1977:28, van der Kraan 1983, Wiener 1995:27
88.
Vickers 1996:61. I need only remark that the anthropological literature on Bali, most notably Clifford Geertz’s famous essay on the Balinese cockfight as “deep play” (1973), a space where Balinese people can express their inner demons and tell stories about themselves, or his conception of pre-colonial governments as “theater states” (1980) whose politics centered around gathering the resources to create magnificent rituals, might well be rethought in the light of all of this. There is a peculiar blindness in this literature. Even Boon, after the above quote about men hiding their daughters, proceeds on the very next page (1977:75) to refer to that government’s “subjects” as really just a “slightly taxed audience for its rituals,” as if the likely prospect of the rape, murder and enslavement of one’s children didn’t really matter, or, anyway, was not of explicitly political import.
89.
All this is meant in part as a critique of Louis Dumont’s arguments (1992) that the only truly egalitarian societies are modern ones, and even those only by default: since their ultimate value is individualism, and since each individual is valuable above all for the degree to which he or she is unique, there can be no basis for saying that anyone is intrinsically superior to anybody else. One can have the same effect without any doctrine of “Western individualism” at all. The entire concept of “individualism” needs to be seriously rethought.
90.
Beattie 1960: 61.
91.
True, in many traditional societies, penalties are given to men who beat their wives excessively. But again, the assumption is that
some
such behavior is at least par for the course.
92.
On charivari, see for instance Davis 1975, Darnton 1984. Keith Thomas (1972:630), who cites this very Nyoro story in an account of English villages of that time, recounts a whole series of social sanctions, such as dunking the “village scold,” that seem almost entirely aimed at the violent control of women, but oddly, he claims that charivari were directed at
men
who beat their wives, despite the fact that all other sources say the opposite.
93.
Not quite all. Again, one might cite Iroquois society of the same period as an example: it was in many senses a matriarchy, particularly on the everyday household level, and women were not exchanged.
94.
Taken from Trawick 2000:185, figure 11.
95.
The diagram is reproduced from P. Bohannan 1957:87.
96.
Akiga Sai 1939:161.
97.
So too among the Lele, where Mary Douglas (1963:131) remarks that it was considered acceptable to whip a village wife for refusing work or sex, but this was no reflection on her status, since the same was true of Lele wives married to just one man, too.
1.
http.sumerianorg/prot-sum.htm
, from a “Proto-Sumerian dictionary”
2.
Florentius in Justinian’s Institutes (1.5.4.1). It is interesting to note that when attempts are made to justify slavery, starting with Aristotle, they generally focus
not on the institution, which is not in itself justifiable, but on the inferior qualities of some ethnic group being enslaved.
3.
Elwahid 1931. Clarence-Smith (2008:17n56) notes that al-Wahid’s book itself emerged from within lively debates in the Middle East about the role of slavery in Islam that had been going on at least since the mid-nineteenth century.
4.
Elwahid 1931: 101–10, and passim. An analogous list appears in Patterson 1982:105.
5.
The sale of children was always felt to be a sign of economic and moral breakdown; even later Roman emperors like Diocletian, notes al-Wahid, supported charities aimed to provide relief for poor families explicitly so they would not have to resort to things like this (Elwahed 1931: 89–91).
6.
Mitamura 1970.
7.
Debt slavery, he notes, was practiced in early Roman history, but this is because according to the laws of the twelve tablets, insolvent debtors could actually be killed. In most places, where this was not possible, debtors were not fully enslaved by reduced to pawns or peons (see Testart 2000, 2002, for a full explanation of the different possibilities).
8.
Al-Wahid cites examples from Athenaeus of Greek patients who offered themselves as slaves to doctors who had saved their lives (op cit:234)
9.
Ulpian is precise: “In every branch of the law, a person who fails to return from enemy hands is regarded as having died at the moment when he was captured.” (Digest 49.15.18) The Lex Cornelia of 84–81 bc specifies the need for remarriage.
10.
Meillassoux 1996:106
11.
Patterson 1982. “Slavery,” as he defines it, “is the permanent, violent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonored persons.” (1982:13)
12.
He quotes Frederick Douglass here to great effect: “A man without force is without the essential dignity of humanity. Human nature is so constituted that it cannot honor a helpless man, although it can pity him; and even that it cannot do long, if the signs of power do not arise.” (in Patterson 1982:13)
13.
Presumably an honorable woman as well, though in the case of women, as we shall see, the question became inextricably caught up in questions of fidelity and chastity.
14.
Paul Houlm (in Duffy, MacShamhráin and Moynes 2005:431.) True, the balance of trade seems to have shifted back and forth; at some periods Irish ships were raiding English shores, and after 800 ad the Vikings carried off thousands, briefly making Dublin the largest slave market in Europe. Still, by this time, cumals do not appear to any longer have been used as actual currency. There are some parallels here with Africa, where in certain times and places affected by the trade, debts were tallied up in slaves as well (Einzig 1949:153).
15.
St. Patrick, one of the founders of the Irish church, was one of the few of the early Church Fathers who was overtly and unconditionally opposed to slavery.
16.
Doherty 1980:78–83.
17.
Gerriets 1978:128, 1981:171–72, 1985:338. This was in dramatic contrast, incidentally, to Welsh laws from only two or three centuries later, where the prices of all such objects are fastidiously specified (Ellis 1926:379–81). The list of items incidentally is a random selection from the Welsh codes.
18.
Doherty 1980:73–74
19.
This was true in Irish and in Welsh, and apparently, other Celtic languages as well. Charles-Edwards (1978:130, 1993:555) actually translates “honor price” as “face value.”
20.
The one exception being an early ecclesiastical text: Einzig 1949:247–48, Gerriets 1978:71.
21.
The main source on the monetary system is Gerriets (1978), a dissertation that unfortunately was never published as a book. A table of standard rates of exchange between cumal, cows, silver, etc,
are also to be found in Charles-Edwards 1993:478–85.
22.
Gerriets 1978:53.
23.
If you had lent a man your horse or sword and he didn’t return it in time for a battle, causing loss of face, or even if a monk lent his cowl to another monk who didn’t return it in time, causing him not to have proper attire for an important synod, he could demand his honor price (Fergus 1988:118).
24.
The honor price of Welsh kings was far higher (Ellis 1926:144).
25.
Provincial kings, who ranked higher, had an honor price of 14 cumals, and in theory there was a high king at Tara who ruled all Ireland, but the position was often vacant or contested (Byrne 1973).
26.
All of this is a simplification of what’s in fact an endlessly complicated system, and some points, especially concerning marriage, of which there are several varieties, with different integrations of brideprice and dowry, remain obscure. In the case of clients, for example, there were two initial payments by the lord, the honor price being one of them; with “free clients,” however, the honor price was not paid and the client was not reduced to servile status, (See Kelly 1988 for the best general summary.)
27.
Dimetian Code II.24.12 (Howel 2006:559). A similar penalty is specified for the killing of public officials from certain districts (Ellis 1926:362).