Gold, Assortments and the Trade Ounce: Fante Merchants and the Problem of Supply and Demand in the 1770s

Abstract

Between 1772 and 1780 Richard Miles, a servant of the Company of Merchants, kept detailed records of some 1,308 barters for slaves he made on the Gold Coast, along with a much smaller number of barters for gold and ivory. The lists provide indirect information about the Fante brokers with whom he dealt, and how they conducted their trade. The names that appear show that the Fante dealers at the waterside were numbered in the hundreds, and indicate that many of them operated on a small scale or sold slaves to supplement other forms of income. The fact that many of the élite, though friendly to Miles, preferred not to deal with him indicates a fear amongst them of becoming over-dependent on the Company of Merchants. The lists, with their daily records of prices and price changes in trade ounces in all of the goods in Miles's assortments, illustrate how the Fante dealt with rapid changes in supply and demand by price alterations, by manipulating the content of assortments and by changing the value of the ounce of trade as against the ounce of gold.