The underdevelopment of an African economy – the socio-

economic impact of the transatlantic slave trade on the Gold

Coast

Klas Rönnbäck, University of Gothenburg

klas.ronnback@econhist.gu.se

VERY PRELIMINARY DRAFT – PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE!

Introduction

Was African modern-day poverty caused by historical European interventions on the African

continent? Many scholars have argued that this was the case, emphasizing the devastating

socio-economic effects of the transatlantic slave trade, and the economic exploitation that

continued by various means under formal colonialism. The impact of the transatlantic slave

trade on African societies has, in particular, been the topic of much previous research, with

many scholars arguing that the slave trade indeed did have very serious negative

repercussions on African societies and socio-economic development. Very rarely has however

any scholar attempted to quantify how large any such negative impact from this trade might

have been, at the time it occurred. There have certainly been some attempts to model the slave

trade’s impact on African demography, arguing that the slave trade contributed to a

depopulation of the continent. As for other contemporary impacts, there have so far been no

attempts to measure any of these more concretely. This paper is an attempt to contribute to

this topic, by focusing on two specific aspects of the socio-economic impact of the slave

trade: the impact on living standards for the population (for several different social classes),

and the impact on rural agriculture. The paper studies the case of the Gold Coast, and the

changes it went through during the 17th and 18th centuries. In the paper, it is argued that, while

a small elite on the Gold Coast certainly did gain from participating in the slave trade, the vast

majority of people experienced decreasing living standards, primarily as a consequence of the

social disruptions that followed in the wake of the trade.

Previous research

The economic history of Africa has in recent years come into focus again, after having been

sidelined for a long period of time (Hopkins 2009). A set of well-cited contributions have for

example studied the importance of institutions for long-term development on the continent

(Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson 2001; Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson 2002; Austin

2008a; Bayly 2008; Hopkins 2009; Acemoglu and Robinson 2010). Another recently revived

field of research is concerned with the impact of the slave trade upon African development,

often returning to the claim by Walter Rodney that the slave trade ‘underdeveloped’ Africa

(Rodney 1972). This paper will be concerned with this topic in particular. The previous

literature in the field indicate several factors contributing to how the slave trade impacted

negatively upon African societies.

Firstly, one of the impacts of the transatlantic slave trade was its impact on African

demography. Patrick Manning has estimated the demographic impact, arguing that the slave

trade at its peak was so large, relative to domestic population growth in Western Africa, that

population levels actually must have declined during the 18th century (Manning 1990:63-72).

It is also well known that it was primarily young men, in the prime of their lives, that was in

high demand from the European buyers of the slaves (Lovejoy 2000:62-65), further

contributing to the economic impact of the slave trade by removing a large segment of a

particularly productive segment of the labour force from African societies. The decrease in

population did even, according to some scholars, lead to an “underpopulation” of Africa,

where the resulting low population density created a situation with a very low degree of

division of labour and low investments in infrastructure (thus inhibiting internal

communications and trade) (Inikori 1981:288).

Secondly, scholars today generally agree, wars and slave raids constituted the two main

means of acquiring slaves (see for example Thornton 1998:98-116; Lovejoy 2000:80-90).

There has certainly been a longstanding discussion between scholars as to what extent these

conflicts actually were driven by the slave trade, or to what extent they developed according

to other logics, independent of the slave trade. Many scholars do however seem to agree that

the slave trade, if not caused, then at least increased the prevalence of violent conflicts and

social disruptions within and between many African polities (see for example Agbodeka

1992:35-36; Inikori 2003 or M’baye 2006 for some contributions drawing heavily on much

previous research). It is well-known that the many polities on the Gold Coast in particular

often came in conflict with each other during the period studied in this paper. Many of these

conflicts were also connected to the external slave trade. During the first half of the 18th

century, when the slave trade grew rapidly, the Gold Coast was ravaged by numerous

conflicts and internal instability, perhaps most importantly between the Fante and the

expanding Asante kingdom (Dickson 1971:57-59; Feinberg 1989:15; Agbodeka 1992:35-36;

Shumway 2011). As a consequence, there was a great risk involved in many economic

activities, not the least farming in rural areas, and many communities tried in different ways to

respond to and counter these risks (Diouf 2003). Recent research by Rebecca Shumway has

also argued that the slave trade was considerably more disruptive than many previous scholars

seems to have believed. Shumway then argued that the “rapid expansion of slave trading

shocked the social order [in Fante] and sparked a reconfiguration of relationships of

dependency in the eighteenth century” (Shumway 2011:50). The slave trade also drove many

people in the region to become refugees, having a great impact on migratory patterns

(Shumway 2011:58, 148-152).

Thirdly, the slave trade contributed to a process of increased social stratification in many

African societies, where a small elite became richer, while the poor segments of the

population became poorer (see for example Rodney 1966:435-436; Fage 1989:108-109). Ray

Kea has likewise recently claimed that many sea-towns in West Africa experienced a period

of “sustained good times” thanks to the slave trade during the early modern period contributed

to mercantile accumulation. As Kea also noted, however, the “good times” were accompanied

by “new forms of inequality and differentiation”, as only a small group of privileged

individuals were able to prosper from the trade (Kea 2012:2) Much previous research has

studied how African elites participated in, and gained from, participation in the transatlantic

slave trade, using qualitative sources (see for example Daaku 1970:96-114; Kea 1982:288-

320; Behrendt et al 2010; Kea 2012). At the other end of the social spectrum, there was also a

the development of domestic slavery in Africa. Some scholars would argue that the

transatlantic slave trade to a large extent initiated the practice of domestic slavery in Africa

(see Inikori 2000:400-405 for an overview of some of this research). Many would however

argue that there rather was a transformation – including an expansion and intensification – of

the domestic slavery in Africa, in the wake of the transatlantic slave trade. In tandem with an

increase in the transatlantic slave trade during the 17th and 18th centuries seems also to have

followed a very substantial expansion and intensification of domestic slavery in many parts of

Africa (Lovejoy 2000:65-67). This was not the least true in the case of the Gold Coast

(Metcalf 1987:391-2; Perbi 2004:20-27).

All scholars do however not agree that the slave trade had any important impact upon African

socities. David Eltis, for example has argued that “the slave trade for most regions and most

periods was not a critically important influence over the course of African history.” (Eltis

1987:77). The reason, according to Eltis, was that the trade was so limited, for example if

measured in terms of its value, that its contribution to per capita income in coastal Africa also

must have been low. The barter terms of trade did furthermore move in Africa’s favour during

the 18th century (Eltis & Jennings 1988: table 1 and p. 957-958). Other scholars have similarly

argued that the slave trade had quite limited effects on the Gold Coast in particular (Metcalf

1987:391-2). According to some scholars, other factors – not the least the quite inhospitable

climate in many parts of Africa – might have hindered economic development on the

continent much more than the slave trade did. Joseph Miller, studying the case of West-

Central Africa, has for example argued that at least in this region, “the slave trade appears in

some ways less a cause of depopulation than a consequence of it when viewed in terms of

drought and demographic changes” (Miller 1982:30).

Some scholars even argue that some aspects of the slave trade, while truly horrible for its

victims, might have created positive linkages for the aggregated economy, affecting positively

those in the region who manage to avoid being enslaved. One factor that is claimed to have

been positive, according to these scholars, was by increasing demand for staple goods and

services to support the trade. Harvey Feinberg for example explicitly argued that “In sum, the

internal economy of the Gold Coast received a boost from the Europeans residing along that

coast” (Feinberg 1989:71). On a similar note, Per Hernaes has argued that the provisioning of

ships for the slave trade “served as an important stimulus to agricultural production” (Hernaes

1992:ch. 4, p. 38). Robin Law has argued similarly in the case of the slave trade on the Slave

Coast (Law 1991:220), and Toby Green in the case of the Cabo Verde islands and the Upper

Guinea Coast (Green 2013). The argument has also been revived recently by David Eltis, who

has estimated the value of the produce exports, relative to slave exports during the period of

the transatlantic slave trade. According to these estimates, the value of the provisions trade

was most substantial, but has been missed out in much previous research. This demand was

however crucial for African economic development, Eltis argues, since it was produced by “a

commercial agriculture that would not have existed without the slave trade” (Eltis 2013:37).

Another supposedly positive effect was that the slave trade contributed to the spread of a lot

of European consumer goods, and thereby also a process of commercialization of West

African societies (see for example Law 1991:219-220). Whereas there has been quite some

research into what European goods were imported into the region in exchange for the African

slaves (see for example Eltis & Jennings 1988; van den Boogart 1992; Alpern 1995), much

less is known about the actual consumption of these goods.

The debate about the ‘underdevelopment’ of Africa as a consequence of the transatlantic slave

trade has recently been revived with new contributions attempting to quantify the very long-

term impact of the slave trade, using econometric methods to argue that the slave trade seem

to have had such a major and lasting negative effect on African societies that its impact on

economic development is discernible even in modern-day levels of development (Nunn 2008;

Nunn and Wantchekon 2009; Whatley and Gillezeau 2011). These econometric studies on the

impact of the slave trade do however suffer from a problem emphasized by Gareth Austin,

namely a ‘compression of history’ (Austin 2008), i.e. attempting to find statistically

significant relationships between modern-day economic development and historical

phenomena such as the slave trade or colonialism, while ignoring long periods of history in

between. Such a compression of history, Austin argues, leads to an over-simplified analysis of

causal relationships.

In a recent contribution, which avoids what Austin called ‘compression of history’, Klas

Rönnbäck tries to estimate econometrically whether the slave trade had any discernible

impact upon contemporary local markets for staple foods on the Gold Coast. The author finds

that wars in the region had a substantial impact upon the price of staple foods (driving up the

price). There was however no independent effect from the slave trade. The author interprets

these findings as contradicting the hypothesis that the demand for provisions to the slave trade

boosted demand on the local markets (Rönnbäck 2014a). Yet another recent contribution tried

to estimate quantitatively the living standards of the non-slave common population in towns

on the Gold Coast around the middle of the 18th century. In the article, it is argued that living

standards on the Gold Coast might have been on par with the living standards of the common

population in many other parts of the world (Rönnbäck 2014b). The study is however only

based on one benchmark period, so it is not really possible to tell from this study alone if the

transatlantic slave trade had any impact (negative or positive) upon living standards in the

region at the time.

Aim of this paper

The aim of this paper is to estimate quantitatively the contemporary impact that the

transatlantic slave trade had upon development of the local economy. As is clear from the

previous research, the socio-economic impact of the slave trade was probably not

homogenous across African societies. Albert van Dantzig has suggested that it is necessary to

separate between societies that mainly were the object of slave-raids, societies mainly

engaged in enslaving others, and societies mainly engaged in the selling of slaves, and that

“we may assume that the first, doubtlessly the largest group, was most negatively affected,

whilst the two other groups made at least material gains” (van Dantzig 1975:253). If we apply

such a differentiation, the societies on the Gold Coast would surely have to be classified as

primarily belonging to the third group, of societies selling slaves.

Joseph Inikori has further suggested that it also is necessary to separate between private and

social costs and benefits of the slave trade (Inikori 1982:51). While some strata of society lost

out on the process (most evidently the people enslaved and sold to be transported across the

Atlantic), other agents (for example agents directly participating in the enslavement and sale

of the slaves) might have gained from the trade. It therefore becomes crucial to analyse the

impact of the slave trade on different strata in society. The article will for that reason analyse

three different strata: the rural population, urban commoners and the urban elite.

Firstly, the rural population. While the rural population might have been victims of much

enslavement, it has in some previous literature been argued that the agricultural sector at the

same time experienced a positive boost from the incremental demand for provisions to the

slave ships. In this paper, this incremental demand will be estimated, in order to analyse to

what extent it might have contributed to a boost to the agricultural sector.

Secondly, the urban commoners. Whereas some coastal towns might have prospered on the

slave trade, as has been suggested in previous literature, it is unclear what groups in these

towns were able to participate in the mercantile accumulation of wealth. Most importantly,

urban commoners might have felt increasing competition both from an increasing domestic

use of slaves, and from refugees from the countryside migrating to towns seeking what

protection towns could provide against enslavement. In this paper, this group will be

represented by studying the living standards of free canoemen, working for wages for

European companies on the coast.

Thirdly, the urban elites. Many of the urban elites might have gained from direct or indirect

participation in the slave trade. In this paper, this group will be represented by studying the

living standards of two categories of employees: on the one hand, the local “linguists” or

“interpreters”, men in quite highly elevated positions in many African societies, and on the

other hand free, skilled local craftsmen who were in great demand on the coast.

The present paper contributes to the previous research in three ways: First, by trying to study

the contemporary socio-economic impact of the slave trade, as it developed over time. The

article thereby avoids the problem of “compressing” history, as some recent studies have done

when they have tried to find a statistical relationship between the historical slave trade and

modern-day economic development in Africa. Second, by extending the period under study

compared to previous benchmarks of living standards in the region. In this paper, Rönnbäck’s

previous research on the living standards of unskilled labourers in the middle of the 18th

century is thus, on the one hand, extended over a longer period of time by adding an estimate

of the living standards in the region from before the slave trade took off on the Gold Coast.

This enables inferences about the impact that the slave trade might have had upon living

standards in the region. Third, the previous research is also augmented by disaggregating the

impact by class. Whereas the previous article by Rönnbäck primarily focused upon the living

standards of the non-skilled labourers, exemplified by canoemen working for the British

company, this paper will also look at representatives of two complementary categories of

people – on the one hand, the rural farmers, and on the other hand more highly skilled

employees working the European companies. It has been argued that the latter group, to some

extent, were able to participate in the mercantile accumulation of riches that arguably was

taking place in some coastal towns, and therefore experienced a rather different impact of the

slave trade than the non-skilled labourers did. The paper will attempt to estimate

quantitatively if this had any impact upon the living standards for people from these strata in

society.

Method and sources

In the first empirical part of the paper, concerned with the impact upon the rural population,

the impact will be estimated by calculating the demand for provisions from the slave ships,

relative to how large demand for foodstuffs from the local population might have been. This

part of the paper will therefore draw heavily on previous demographic research, both on the

magnitude of the transatlantic slave trade, and on the size of the local population. The

magnitude of the transatlantic slave trade has been a major issue of debate for several

decades. The debate has spawned a lot of empirical research, which has amounted to the

publication of the transatlantic slave trade database (TSTD2 2010). Based on this data, the

scholars responsible for assembling the database has produced a set of estimates of how large

the slave trade might have been in total (TSTD2 2010 Estimates). On the one hand, the

estimates for the Gold Coast will be made use of in this paper, as a lower bound estimates of

provisions necessary. David Eltis has however suggested that the Gold Coast was dominating

the provisioning of slave ships not just from this region, but from a much wider area reaching

from the Gold Coast in the west, all the way to the river Congo (Eltis 2013:44). A second set

of estimates will therefore be based on the assumption that the Gold Coast had to supply all

provisions for all slave ships leaving from the Gold Coast, the Bight of Benin and the Bight of

Biafra. While these assumptions most certainly are unrealistic per se, they will provide us

with a possible upper bound for the demand. It is furthermore necessary to make some

assumptions about how much provisions the slave ships might have purchased on the local

markets. The median voyage time for the Middle Passage for ships leaving from the Gold

Coast was approximately 70 days, but Eltis argues that the ships often provisioned for three

months’ needs. The median waiting time off the Gold Coast for the ships included in the

Transatlantic Slave Trade Database was 109 days (estimates based on TSTD2 2010). In order

to at least not underestimate the demand, it is here assumed that each slave exported in total

required provisions for 200 days. This can then be combined with data from the TSTD2 on

how many slaves were exported from the region, in order to arrive at an estimate of how

much provisions the slave trade must have demanded in order to feed the enslaved people. To

the demand from the slave ships must also be added the provisions needed to feed the

Europeans stationed at the Company forts and castles on the Gold Coast. So far, there is no

comprehensive overview of the size of the European population on the coast over the period

in question. K.G. Davies has shown that the British presence on the coast increased from less

than 50 people in the 1670s to more than 100 in the first decades of the 18th century (Davies

1975:247-248). This might have continued to increase, to about 200 people in the middle of

the 18th century (St Clair 2007:139). It is here assumed that the population of Europeans (of

all nationalities) on the Gold Coast amounted to some 500 people in total until the 1650s,

when it started to grow slowly, reaching a level of 1,000 by the end of the 18th century. It is

furthermore assumed that this population had to be fed throughout the year. Finally, there was

a certain demand from the crews on the slave ships. By the late 18th century, there might have

been around 10,000 crewmen annually employed on the slave trading ships along the African

coast. Eltis also argues that most of their provisions were supplied from Europe, but that ships

in general were instructed to lengthen their supplies with local provisions while waiting in

port on the African coast (Eltis 2013:37). It is here assumed that the crewmen were supplied

for two months with local provisions.

Population estimates from the pre-colonial Gold Coast are based on very patchy data – for

example witness accounts from European observers of how many huts or fishing canoes a

town or city had, or the number of armed men a town could muster. Ray Kea has assembled

such observations and estimates from a number of different sources from the middle of the

17th century, in order to try to give at least a rough estimate of how large the population in the

region might have been at this time. As for later periods, there have been attempts at

backcasting population figures from the 20th century in order to arrive at rough estimates of

the population on the Gold Coast in the 19th century (Manning 2009; Frankema and Jerven

2014). Using these benchmarks, we can arrive at estimates, admittedly extremely crude, of the

population throughout the period under study in this period. The details of these estimates are

reported in the appendix to the paper. It then becomes possible to calculate the amount of food

necessary to feed the local population (assuming for simplicity that they needed to be fed

every day of the year, i.e. ignoring any births or sudden deaths during the year etc). In order to

at least not underestimate any potential impact of the demand for provisions from the slave

trade, estimated minimum figures for the local population have been used.

In the second and third empirical part of the paper, the paper will estimate what has been

called the ‘subsistence ratio’ of free labourers. This is a measure pioneered by Robert Allen

(see for example Allen 2001; Allen 2009), and since then used in a number of studies from

various geographic locations and historical periods. Simply put, the method entails estimating

the real wage of employed labourers by putting nominal wages earned relative to the local

cost of subsistence. The cost of subsistence is estimated by calculating the cost of a

‘subsistence basket’ of goods necessary for the sheer survival. While the net nutritional value

of such a ‘subsistence basket’ of goods is to be kept constant across studies, the exact contents

of the basket are modified according to the local setting of each study, to reflect the fact that

different staple goods could provide the main contribution of calories and proteins in different

localities. So far, the models used have for comparative reasons assumed a single, male

breadwinner family, with four children. A subsistence ratio of one (1) would thus mean that

the wages paid to a worker only would suffice for him to provide for him and such a model

family. A subsistence ratio below one would mean either that the male breadwinner was

unable to support so large a family, so that family either had to be smaller or that

supplementary income contributed to household income (most importantly female earnings).

A subsistence ratio above one would on the other hand imply that the family could buy not

just what was necessary for sheer survival, but could also afford to purchase luxury goods, or,

for that matter, provide for an even larger family than what was assumed in the model

calculations (for example if this was a way of acquiring social status).

As was noted previously, a recent article by Klas Rönnbäck has attempted to estimate the

living standards of free, urban laborers (in practice focusing upon canoemen in particular) on

the Gold Coast in the 1730s to 1750s. That article used the same method of calculating

‘subsistence ratios’ as will be used in this paper. In the present paper, the ‘subsistence basket’

used, and the cost of this basket, is therefore based on the estimates of this previous study

(Rönnbäck 2014b: table 1 and graph 1). Data that can be used for a comparison of living

standards over time has been assembled many years ago by Ray Kea in the archives of the

Dutch West African Company (Kea 1982:307-313), but was at that time never used by him to

quantify the living standards. Unfortunately, Kea does not report how large sample the data is

based on, so this data must be interpreted with some caution.

A caveat is necessary from the beginning: the aim of this paper is to study what socio-

economic impact the transatlantic slave trade had upon societies on the Gold Coast in the 17th

and 18th centuries. This was however not the only process happening on the Gold Coast at the

time. On the contrary, previous research has shown that there were many historical processes

taking place at this time in West Africa, such as for example a number of important state

formations and expansions (Shumway 2011). Another important factor for the socio-

economic development was the climate – where climate-induced droughts and famines could

impact economic performance in a region substantially (Rönnbäck 2014a). So far, little is

known in detail about whether there were any changes in climate during the period under

study in this paper, the 17th and the 18th centuries. The sources used in the paper do

furthermore not allow for constructing long-term series for all factors studied, but in some

cases only benchmarks at certain periods of time. All this makes it very hard to prove

conclusively any causal relationships between the transatlantic slave trade in particular, and

the socio-economic development in the region. The current paper should from that perspective

rather be read in view of the literature inferring causal relationships between the historical

slave trade and modern-day development (Nunn 2008; Nunn and Wantchekon 2009; Whatley

and Gillezeau 2011): if these results are not just spurious, then we ought to be able to find that

there were negative contemporary socio-economic impacts from the slave trade. This case

study should therefore be read as a first attempt at quantifying some of the potential aspects of

the contemporary impact that the slave trade might have had. Future studies, from other

regions and/or periods of time, would however be desirable to corroborate any conclusions

drawn from this study.

Historical context: the growth of the slave trade from the Gold Coast

The Gold Coast has had a long period of contact with European traders. The first European

forts were established on the coast soon after the Europeans set foot on the coast, already in

the late 15th century, and there has been a continuous European presence on the coast ever

since. The contact was initiated by Portuguese explorers, but soon agents from many

European nations would be involved in trading on the Gold Coast. From the 17th century, both

the Dutch and the English were firmly established on the coast. For a long period of time,

however, the Gold Coast was privileged compared to many other parts of Western Africa in

the sense that exports primarily were centred on what the European name of the region

implies: gold. Gold was extracted in several polities inland, and was in ubiquitous use as a

means of payment on the coast. With the arrival of the Europeans, gold was also increasingly

exported from the coast in exchange for a variety of European goods (Daaku 1970:21-47;

Agbodeka 1992:9-24).

During the 17th and and 18th century, the Gold Coast experienced many drastic changes, not

the least the emergence and expansion of several important polities. The 17th century was

particularly marked by the expansion of the two polities of Akwamu and Denkyira (Daaku

1970:144-181), whereas the 18th century in particular saw the marked expansion of the Asante

empire, and the reaction this caused in many other polities, such as the development of the

Fante Federation (Fynn 1971; Shumway 2011).

During the early period of contact with the Europeans, there were therefore no exports of

slaves from the Gold Coast. On the contrary, slaves were probably imported into the region,

to work the gold mines (Perbi 2004:23-24). This would however change in the late 17th

century, when rising prices for slaves led to a demand for slaves from this region as well. In

the 1660s, the external slave trade begun from the Gold Coast, increasing drastically from the

1690s. In the 1730s, the slave trade reached a first peak, as can be seen in graph 4. The slave

trade would then continue to be an important feature for Gold Coast societies throughout the

18th century.

Graph 1. Number of slaves exported, by decade, from the Gold Coast, 1600s to 1800s.

Source: TSTD2 2010 Estimates

The pre-colonial Gold Coast was also a highly stratified society, as Ray Kea has shown in

great detail, already prior to the take-off of the slave trade. European observers seem to

classify people into two very broad categories: the nobles (local term ahenfo, but a number of

synonyms, such as the “affluent”, were used in the sources) and the common people (local

term anihumanifo, and adwumafo for the most precarious groups among them) (Kea

1982:288-320).

The impact on the rural population

As the slave trade increased drastically during the late 17th and early 18th century, there was a

growing demand for provisions for the slave trade, both in order to supply the slaves with

while the ship was waiting off the coast, and for provisions during the Middle Passage. As

was noted previously, some previous scholars have argued that this demand contributed to a

0

20000

40000

60000

80000

100000

120000

140000

160000

substantial boost in demand for foodstuffs from local producers. Table 1 attempts to quantify

the size of this demand in absolute volumes.

Table 1. Slaves exported and demand for provisions

Slaves exported from the Gold

Coast only

Slaves exported from the Gold Coat,

Bight of Benin and Bight of Biafra

Total slave

exports (n)

Provisions

needed annually

(million daily

rations)

Total slave

exports (n)

Provisions

needed annually

(million daily

rations)

1601-1625 68 0.18 6,518 0.23

1626-1650 2,429 0.20 42,049 0.52

1651-1675 30,806 0.43 164,354 1.50

1676-1700 75,377 0.82 351,892 3.03

1701-1725 229,239 2.09 674,172 5.65

1726-1750 231,418 2.14 770,245 6.45

1751-1775 268,228 2.47 876,524 7.34

1776-1800 285,643 2.65 882,788 7.43

Source: slave exports from TSTD2 Estimates. See text above for number of provisions

estimated per slave exported, and for assumptions about size of the tenured European

population.

Note: provisions necessary for tenured staff at the fort, and for crewmen working the slave

ships, as discussed in the methodology section above, are included in the estimates in the

table.

As the slave trade grew, the demand for provisions steadily followed, reaching a demand of

almost 1.8 million daily rations of food every year by the end of the 18th century. Estimating

the absolute size of the demand from the slave trade does however by itself tell us very little

about how large an impact such a demand might have had upon the local agricultural

economy on the Gold Coast. We must put the demand from the slave trade relative to the

demand from the local population in order to be able to tell anything about its potential

impact. This is here done using what rough population estimates there are available from the

Gold Coast (see appendix table A1). Combing, then, the estimates of the demand for the

provisioning of the slave ships, and the demand from the local inhabitants on the Gold Coast,

can then tell us the relative importance of the demand for provisions to the slave trade.

Graph 2. Demand for provisions from slave ships as a share of local demand for foodstuffs on

the Gold Coast, 1700-1807

Source: demand from slave ships based on table 1. See appendix for estimation of size of

local population.

Graph 2 shows the demand for provisions from the slave trade relative to the demand for

foodstuffs from the urban population (grey lines) as well as the total population (black lines)

of the Akan-speaking part of the Gold Coast. It also shows estimates of the demand assuming

on the one hand that region only provisioned for ships also exporting slaves from the region

itself (solid lines, here labelled “Gold Coast slave exports”) and, on the other hand, that the

Gold Coast region also provisioned for ships purchasing slaves from a much wider stretch of

the West African coast, including all provisions for all the ships buying slaves in the Bight of

Benin and the Bight of Biafra (dashed lines, here labelled “West African slave exports”). The

estimates indicate that the slave trade from the Gold Coast per se, at its height, contributed

with at most 5 per cent incremental demand relative to what urban markets’ must have

supplied to feed the local population already living in towns and cities on the Akan-speaking

parts of the Gold Coast. Compared to the total agricultural production in the region, however,

0,0%

2,0%

4,0%

6,0%

8,0%

10,0%

12,0%

14,0%

16,0%

18,0%

1701-1725 1726-1750 1751-1775 1776-1800 1801-1807

Urban population - West African slave exports

Urban population - Gold Coast slave exports

Total population - West African slave exports

Total population - Gold Coast slave exports

the demand from the slave trade probable was almost completely negligible. The demand for

provisions to the slave ships embarking from the Gold Coast per se does not, even at its

height, seem to have amounted to less than one per cent of the aggregate agricultural

production on the Gold Coast. Even if we assume that the Gold Coast alone supplied all

provisions for all the slave trade stretching from the Gold Coast to the Bight of Biafra, the

demand would not have been overwhelming: the incremental demand would certainly have

been important relative to urban demand on the Gold Coast (adding at most an extra demand

of at most 15 per cent to what was already demanded by urban populations on the Gold

Coast). Compared to the total production in the Gold Coast region, however, the demand

would not even have amounted to two per cent, even if the Gold Coast would have supplied

all of this trade with the foodstuffs required.

The impact on urban commoners

As was noted above, a benchmark estimate of the subsistence ratio of unskilled labourers

(exemplified by canoemen) from around the middle of the 18th century has been estimated in

previous research (Rönnbäck 2014b). Graph 3 shows the subsistence ratio for such labourers

in a longer perspective, comparing the benchmark data from the 1730s with data on the wages

paid at the Dutch castle of Elmina around the middle of the 17th century.

Graph 3. Subsistence ratios for African canoeman on the Gold Coast, 1660s and 1730s

Source: data for 1660s based on Kea 1982:308-310, data for 1730s based on database assembled from British

National Archives, T/70/376-441 (Accounts: Journals: Cape Coast Castle).

Note: Kea’s data refers to 1659 for wages, and the 1650s and 1660s for prices. Data on prices are lacking from

this period for a couple of goods; in these cases, I have added the same percentage to the total cost of the

consumer basket as these goods were worth in the early 18th century (=20%). The wage ratio shown in the graph

for the 1660s is what Kea claims “most” canoemen working for the Dutch West India Company received at this

time, whereas it shows the median wage paid to the sample of canoemen working for the British Royal African

Company in the 1730s. The error bars show the wage span of the wages paid to the canoemen in each respective

period.

The data in graph 3 shows the living standards for two benchmark periods, and can thereby

help us understand how living standards developed over a longer period of time on the Gold

Coast. This data must certainly be interpreted with some caution, since the data reported by

Kea is so scarce and unprecise, and since the data only originate from two benchmark periods,

with no data – so far – for the period in between. The data does however seem to indicate that

living standards declined quite drastically for the unskilled labourers between the 1660s and

the 1730s: the mean, maximum and minimum wages paid to the canoemen all seem to have

0

0,5

1

1,5

2

2,5

3

1660s 1730s

declined substantially. While median wage paid to the canoemen decreased by 15 per cent,

minimum wages declined some 35 per cent and maximum wages declined by around 45 per

cent.

The impact on urban elites

While unskilled labourers were paid very low wages (and seemingly declining over the

period), skilled labourers on the other hand seem to have experienced significantly higher

living standards throughout the period under study in this paper. They do furthermore not

seem to have experienced a similar negative development of their living standards over the

period as the unskilled labour did. This is especially the case for those skilled African

labourers employed by the Europeans up until the first decades of the 18th century. By this

time, a carpenter or a linguist working for a European company could earn a wage many times

the cost of a family subsistence basket of goods, as is shown in graph 4.

Graph 4. Subsistence ratios for African carpenters and linguists on the Gold Coast, 1660s to

1750s

Source: database assembled from British National Archives, T/70/376-441 (Accounts:

Journals: Cape Coast Castle).

In graph 4 we thus find data on wages paid to two groups of more skilled and more highly

paid workers – carpenters and linguists – employed by the European companies. The data

must in these cases so far be interpreted as merely suggestive, since the samples are very

small. The European Companies employed quite few Africans holding these occupations

every year (from one single individual to a handful per year), and there are many years when

they seem to employ virtually none at all, or when the account books are missing. The wage-

data for these categories of employees might therefore contain unknown biases due to

individual traits that are not noted in the accounts, and must be treated accordingly.

Nonetheless, the data on these highly skilled workers is important, since it might inform us

about the living standards of some of the more affluent strata in the local society.

One of the features of the real wages paid by the Europeans to the craftsmen is that they seem

to have changed quite much over time. The shifts are in this case not only due to fluctuations

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

1660 1670 1680 1690 1700 1710 1720 1730 1740 1750

Linguist Carpenter

in the price of the consumer basket, but nominal wages are also changing quite considerably

over time. This is in sharp contrast to the nominal wages paid to canoemen, which were quite

standardized at a set level over the period for which there is data.

As for skilled craftsmen, such as the carpenters shown in the graph, they seem to experience

an increase in payment during the first phase of the growth of the slave trade: in the 1660s, the

carpenters were paid a wage quite close to what would have been necessary just for the sheer

subsistence of a family. By the early 18th century, therefore, the carpenters were paid rather

high wages (a subsistence ratio around 5). From then, onwards, however, the trend for the

carpenters is negative: the real wages paid to the carpenters thus seem to decrease

substantially over the first half of the 18th century. In contrast, the linguists seem to have

received increasingly higher pay throughout much of the period. The subsistence ratios grew

very high over the period, in some periods approaching a ratio of 10. The data thus shows that

the linguists employed by the European companies experienced quite a marked improvement

in living standards over the period.

Discussion

It is by now well-established that enslavement primarily occurred through raids or warfare.

Since it would be easier to defend oneself in a more densely populated area, not the least in

more or less fortified towns and cities, we might expect that the rural population of Africa in

general was at most risk of being enslaved. The trauma of the slave trade – the violence and

deaths, the loss of kin and family – would thus have been carried by the rural population to a

very large extent. It has however been argued that, horrible as the slave trade was for its

victims, it at least contributed to a positive linkage effect for the agricultural sector in the form

of an incremental demand for provisions for the slave ships (Feinberg 1989:71; Law

1991:220; Hernaes 1992:ch. 4, p. 38; Green 2013; Eltis 2013). Presumably, this would have

favored those in the rural population who managed to avoid being enslaved. As was shown in

graph 2, however, the incremental demand for foodstuffs that the slave trade contributed to

was very marginal relative to how large the local production must have been in order to

supply what was necessary to support the local population, probably representing less than

one per cent of total demand for foodstuffs in the region if we assume that they only

provisioned for slave ships embarking from the Gold Coast, or less than two per cent if

provisioning for slave ships trading slaves in a much broader region. According to these

estimates, then, the boost that the agricultural economy on the Gold Coast gained from

linkages from the slave trade, in the form of incremental demand for provisions to the ships,

must have been very limited. Much of agricultural production on the Gold Coast was however

simply subsistence production, and only a small share of the production was ever sold on

urban markets. Relative to this supply to urban areas, the incremental demand from the slave

trade might not have been completely negligible – ranging from 5 per cent extra demand if

only provisions Gold Coast slave ships are included, or up to 13 per cent if provision for all

supplies of all ships leaving from the Gold Coast, the Bight of Benin and the Bight of Biafra

would be included. While the latter most certainly is an unrealistic assumption – some

provisioning most probably occurred along these parts of the coast as well – it seems

reasonable to assume that the Gold Coast provided food for more ships than just those buying

slaves there.

It might be argued that the region impacted by the demand for foodstuffs was considerably

smaller than the whole of the Akan-speaking part of the Gold Coast (which is, as is described

in the appendix, the region for the local population estimates). Reducing the geographical area

argued to have been impacted by the demand for provisions (say, by excluding the Asante

Empire situated in the northern part of the Akan-speaking section of the Gold Coast) would

naturally reduce the competing local demand for foodstuffs, and thus inflate the ratios

estimated of the relative demand from the slave trade.1 Still, as has been shown in recent

previous research, the demand for provisions from the slave traders had no independent effect

on the local prices for foodstuffs on the urban markets on the Gold Coast (Rönnbäck 2014a).

Even though the demand for foodstuffs from the slave trade might, at most, have amounted to

a couple of per cent of total urban demand, it was simply not large enough to have any

discernible impact upon the aggregate economy throughout the Akan-speaking part of the

Gold Coast, let alone West Africa in general. The incremental demand might thus at most

have had an impact for producers in the immediate vicinity of the ports, forts and castles,

boosting demand in relatively small enclaves close to points of the slave trade, but the impact

was probably very small for the region of the Gold Coast as a whole (let alone for the whole

of West Africa). Significant linkage effects from export demand for agricultural produce

would surely have to wait until the development of the so-called ‘legitimate trade’ (Law 1995;

Behrendt et al 2010:81-101)

Turning instead to how the slave trade might have impacted the living standards of the urban

population, graph 3 showed the development of the subsistence ratio for canoemen working

for the European companies on the Gold Coast. It was assumed that the canoemen represented

a segment of free but comparatively unskilled segment of the working class, what in the local

terminology was called the anihumanifo or adwumafo. This strata of society seems to have

1 In the early 20th century censuses, the population of what was then the Gold Coast Colony made up around 2/3

of the Akan-speaking population of Ghana (Austin 2007:table 2). Assuming that the18th century population of

the Akan-speaking territories might have reflected a similar relationship, the relative importance of the

incremental demand for provisions to the slave ships would increase, but would for example still not exceed

perhaps more than around 7.5 per cent relative to the urban demand on the Gold Coast, if we assume that the

Gold Coast primarily provisioned ships also buying slaves in the same region.

fared badly from the growth of the slave trade. The data indicates that living standards for

common labourers, if anything, fell between the two benchmark periods (median value

declining from 1.05 to 0.91, and both minimum and maximum value declining even more in

relative terms), i.e. just at the time when the transatlantic slave trade took off in the region

(see graph 1). The results are to some extent sensitive to changes in the model because of the

great scarcity of data in the primary sources. What data there is does however suggest that if

the wages that these canoemen earned from working for the European companies was the

only income of their family, they would soon have had a very hard time even affording the

basic goods necessary for sheer survival. Even though many of these labourers often were

paid their wages in kind with European and Asian consumer goods of different sorts that the

European companies traded with, they would most probably not have been able to enjoy these

goods themselves. The unskilled labourers would rather have been forced to sell any goods

paid to them in kind on local markets, in order to be able to purchase basic subsistence goods.

As has been shown in previous research (Rönnbäck 2014), furthermore, the wages paid to the

canoemen does not seem to have recovered for a long period of time, but remained throughout

the 1740s and 1750s on a similar level as they had been in the 1730s.

At first glance, falling real wages as a consequence of the transatlantic slave trade might seem

counterintuitive. In the African case, a low population density to begin with would lead to a

low labour supply relative to other production factors (in particular land). In such a context, it

becomes tempting for the ruling elite to resort to coercion in order to get hold of enough

labour at a low cost (Austin 2009). Decreasing the amount of labour available locally even

further by exporting thousands of young and able-bodied men and women across the Atlantic

every year must have exacerbated any such labour shortage. One might assume that this

would work to drive up the real wages of labourers who were lucky enough not to be

enslaved. The market for labour on the pre-colonial Gold Coast was however far from what a

modern-day economist would call a perfect market. It seems highly plausible that in particular

two effects noted by previous scholars – both an increase in slaves used in domestic slavery

on the Gold Coast, and increasing political instability in the wake of the growing slave trade –

had repercussions on the urban economies studied in this paper. Firstly, urban labour markets

might have been flooded with dispossessed refugees from rural areas, seeking protection from

the ravages of war and slave-raids. Such refugees would have quite naturally have increased

the competition primarily among propertyless labourers. Secondly, many scholars have

argued that imported slaves increasingly were used for domestic use. The demand for free

labourers might thereby have decreased, again increasing competition among the free

labourers. Both these factors ought then to have had the effect of counteracting any general

labour scarcities locally, thereby pushing down local wages in the towns studied towards

subsistence levels.

One might furthermore expect that this primarily had an effect upon the market for unskilled

labour, such as the canoemen studied in the graph above. Refugees from rural areas were most

probably quite unskilled and therefore competed primarily for urban work that required no or

very little skills, and these groups were probably also the first to be crowded out from the

labour market when domestic slavery became all the more prevalent. This interpretation

seems to find support when comparing graphs 3 and 4, where graph 4 shows the subsistence

ratios of some of the presumably more affluent strata on the Gold Coast, in contrast to the

more unskilled labourers studied in graph 3. As was shown in graph 4, skilled craftsmen such

as carpenters initially seem to have gained from a growth in the slave trade: the subsistence

ratio of the carpenters working for the European companies increased substantially (from 1.4

to 5.0) between the 1660s and the 1700s. This might indicate that the growth of the slave trade

induced a temporary shortage for skilled craftsmen, which gave rise to a substantial premium

to anyone possessing such skills. By the first decade of the 18th century, therefore, skilled

labourers must have been quite affluent, earning wages that enabled them not only to support

a whole family with basic necessities but leaving quite some room for luxury-consumption.

The skilled labourers studied in this paper might thus have belonged to a small segment of

society that was able to gain from the slave trade – at least for a period of time. From the

wages they earned, they would have been able to take an active part in the process of

commercialization, and enjoy the fruits of the spread of many new European and Asian

consumer goods that were sold on the local markets. In the following decades of the 18th

century, however, the demand for skilled labourers seems to have decreased again. One

possible explanation to this might be that the growth of domestic slavery in time might have

had an impact even on more skilled labourers. The accounts of the European companies do

unfortunately not reveal much information about the domestic (‘castle’) slaves’ occupations

prior to the 1750s. At this time, however, quite a large share of the castle slave population at

for example the Cape Coast Castle were trained as quite highly skilled craftsmen (Rönnbäck

mimeo). It thus seems plausible that the free craftsmen experienced increasing competitive

pressure from skilled slaves, crowding out the free craftsmen from the local labour market,

and thereby contributing to a downward pressure on their real wages.

Other social strata on the Gold Coast might however have gained even more than the skilled

craftsmen. One example can be seen in the case of the interpreters working for the European

companies, also studied in graph 4, who presumably often belonged to the more privileged

ahenfo, the highly positioned “nobles”, in the African societies (at least they did on the Slave

Coast, where they belonged to the group of people who were to receive payment for the right

to purchase slaves (Law 1991:208-209)). Even though these people might not always have

had much formal education, they were key individuals for the trade both for their language

skills as well as for their network connections, and possibly also their position in the local

hierarchies. Without these interpreters the Europeans would surely have had a considerably

harder time making any business at all on the coast. The interpreters also seem to have been

amply rewarded economically from their participation in the transatlantic slave trade: in the

early 18th century, they were earning a wage three times higher than what was necessary just

for sheer survival. As the slave trade grew during the first decades of the 18th century, the real

wages paid to the interpreters increased drastically (the subsistence ratio increased from 3.1 to

9.6). Wages paid to the the interpreters thus grew along with the slave trade, during the late

decades of the 17th and the early decades of the 18th centuries, until the latter experienced a

first peak by the 1720s. It is certainly tempting to interpret the falling real wages for the

interpreters in the 1730s not just as a random correlation, but as related phenomena to the

stagnation of the slave trade at the same time. The further development of the interpreters’

real wages does however not fit well into such an interpretation: whereas the slave trade

slumped in the 1740s but rebound in the 1750s (see graph 1), the wages paid to the

interpreters in this period experienced opposite trends: all-time high levels in the 1740s,

followed by a quite drastic fall in the 1750s. The sample of interpreters employed is simply

too small to rule out the possibility that individual traits of the specific interpreters employed

influenced the particular wages, so that a change in who exactly was employed at a certain

time had an impact upon the time trend. None the less, the interpreters employed generally

seem to have been able to make considerably economic gains from their participation in the

slave trade. They would then have had considerable opportunity to indulge in luxury

consumption of European and Asian import goods, or use the surplus to gain status for

example by providing for a larger family. It is thus among these elites that the fruits of

commercialization and the spread of consumer goods from around the world really could be

enjoyed. If they, furthermore, were able to participate in the trade on the side of their

employment as interpreters, their gains would naturally have been much higher. The

interpreters were furthermore probably not the highest paid Africans. Ray Kea has for

example found that some captains paid by the European companies could earn a wage fifty to

a hundred times higher than what an unskilled labourer earned (Kea 1982:313-314).

Certainly, it is important to remember that the slave trade by no means was the only

development on the coast at this time. It is furthermore not the only region in the world where

material living standards declined during this period. On the contrary, living standards for the

common population seem to have deteriorated in many parts of the world around this time,

including for example Florence, Vienna and Delhi (Allen 2009:figure 2.3). There is however

very little information available in what scarce primary sources there are on many other

factors crucial for the socio-economic development of the region, such as the climatic impacts

on the agricultural production, or the prevalence and intensity of conflicts in the region. It is

therefore hard to isolate the particular effects of the slave in particular just from this case

study, and therefore infer any causal relationships. It is furthermore not possible to completely

rule out the possibility of reverse causality: that decreasing living standards induced by other

factors (e.g. climate-induced drought and famine) might have increased the availability of

slaves from the region. Any such explanation would, however, it seems rather to have had

more homogenous effects across society, impacting all social groups quite negatively. The

fact that the development in this case seems highly stratified – with urban elites experiencing

a positive development in tandem with the growth of the slave trade, whereas urban

commoners lost out economically in the same period of time – does however seem to fit well

with what theoretically would be expected from an impact of the slave trade. It thus indicates

that the developments shown in this paper indeed might have been an impact of the slave

trade per se, rather than any other way around.

Conclusion

This paper has studied the socio-economic impact of the slave trade upon societies one the

pre-colonial Gold Coast in West Africa. Even though much previous literature has discussed

the topic, there have been no previous attempts to quantify many of the key aspects of this

impact.

In the paper, it has been shown that there was a highly stratified development of living

standards during the period when the slave trade took off during the late 17th and early 18th

century. Urban commoners, such as unskilled labourers, seem to have lost out economically

in the process, experiencing substantially falling living standards over the period under study.

It was argued in the paper that increasing competition from an increasing use of domestic

slaves that could replace the hired labourers, as well as from refugees fleeing from enslavers

and flocking to urban areas for protection, contributed to this process of pauperization of the

free working class.

More highly skilled labourers seem to have been able to increase their wages at least for an

initial period of the slave trade from the Gold Coast, during the last decades of the 17th

century. This might have been an effect of an increasing demand for their skills in particular,

in order to service for example the growing infrastructure of the slave trade, including the

ships or the forts and castles along the coast, driving up the skill premium on the coast. Their

skills do however seem to have become less in demand over time, arguably as a consequence

of increasing competition from domestic slaves even for skilled labour. From the early 18th

century the living standards of this group too seem to have deteriorated.

Horrible as the slave trade was, some previous scholars have furthermore argued that the trade

at least had a positive linkage effect in the form of creating a large demand for agricultural

produce, thereby boosting the rural economy and contributing to the development of a

commercial agriculture. This paper has however shown that this demand for foodstuffs must

have had very marginal linkage effects upon the local agriculture: the demand was too small

relative even to what urban demand there already was (let alone to the total agricultural

production, given that a large part of the agricultural sector on the Gold Coast most certainly

was involved in subsistence production only), that it hardly can have provided much boost to

the local economy.

The rural and urban working classes, constituting the vast majority of people, on the Gold

Coast did then lose out socially and economically from the slave trade: the rural population

were probably at greater risk than anybody else of being enslaved, but gained little or nothing

from any export trade of agricultural produce; the urban commoners faced increasing

competition for jobs and resources as domestic slavery grew in tandem with the external slave

trade, and as social disruptions in the wake of the slave trade caused a growing number of

people to flee to towns and villages seeking protection from enslavement. Urban nobles were

the only ones that seem to have gained from the slave trade. The living standards of people

such as the interpreters working for the European companies grew to very high levels during

the first half of the 18th century. It was thus only this class that was able to reap the benefits of

the growing imports of consumer goods into Africa.

Albert van Dantzig has suggested that the most negative impacts from the slave trade

probably occurred in African societies that were the main objects of slave-raids, rather than in

societies involved in the enslavement or sale of the slaves. In such a categorization, the Gold

Coast studied in this paper must probably be classified as a society selling slaves, rather than

being victims of slave-raids themselves. The generally negative socio-economic impacts from

the slave trade found in this paper are therefore all the more important: if the effects of the

slave trade were this negative even in a society that wasn’t a primary object of slave-raids

themselves, how much worse must the impact not have been in that kind of society?

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Appendix: Population estimates of the pre-colonial Gold Coast

Population estimates from the Gold Coast are fraught with uncertainties. Ray Kea has

assembled information from a lot of different qualitative sources in order to arrive at a very

rough estimate of the population on the Coast around the middle of the 17th century. His

conclusion is that there might have been around 120,000 to 150,000 people living in towns

and cities on the Gold Coast at this time. He also argues that the urban population might have

constituted of around 10 per cent of the total population (Kea 1982:35). The total population

on the Gold Coast might thus, according to Kea, at this time have amounted to somewhere

between 1.2 and 1.5 million people. Harvey Feinberg has however criticized Kea’s estimates

for being inconsistent and imprecise, and therefore quite unreliable (Feinberg 1989:83).

More recently, Patrick Manning has attempted to make backward projections of the

population in Africa from censuses done in the 20th century. In these projections, Manning

makes assumptions about the default historical population growth rate (based on a comparison

with population growth rates in India), and then takes into account a number of contributing

factors impacting each specific region in Africa, including for example estimates of the

external slave trade, epidemics and migration (Manning 2009). What interest us here in

particular are Manning’s estimates for the Akan-dominated parts of the Gold Coast. In the

estimates the population in this region amounted to some 2.3 million people in the 1850s.

Projecting the population estimates even further backwards, Manning also estimates that the

population of the same region had been around 2.9 million people by the early 18th century,

implying a quite drastic population decrease during the 18th century (Manning 2013).

Ewout Frankema and Morten Jerven on the other hand argue that the assumptions Manning

make about population growth in the region are unrealistically low, arguing that the growth

rates in Africa probably ought to be compared to those of for example Southeast Asia

(Indonesia and the Philippines) rather than India. When using these figures to extrapolate

population figures backwards in time, Manning therefore arrives at an estimate of the size of

the population in 1850 which is way too high. Using Frankema and Jerven’s figures, instead,

the population on the Akan-dominated part of the Gold Coast might at the time have

amounted to some 1.3 million people only (Frankema and Jerven 2014).

In order to bias any results against the hypothesis of the paper, it is important to not

overestimate the size of the local population. For that reason, it might be useful to use

Frankema and Jerven’s estimates for the 1850s, but project them further backwards using the

model suggested by Manning for the period 1700-1850. This is done in table A1. These

figures are then used for a calculation of the local demand for foodstuffs (see graph 2).

Since one central aspect of the issue is the extent to which the demand from the slave trade

contributed to the growth of a commercial agriculture, an important aspect is how large the

production for markets was relative to subsistence production. Here, the ratio of the domestic

urban population will be used as a proxy for this, assuming that the urban populations largely

had to be fed by agricultural production in a rural hinterland aimed at urban markets. Ray Kea

has guesstimated that the urban population might have amounted to ten per cent (or more) of

the population (Kea 1982:26, 35), a guesstimate that is also assumed in this paper for lack of

any more precise data.

Table A1. Population estimates for the Akan-speaking parts of the Gold Coast

Manning’s estimates Frankema and Jerven’s 1850

estimate (with backward

projections)

1700 2,900,000 * 1,650,000

1750 2,650,000 * 1,500,000

1800 2,400,000 * 1,350,000

1850 2,300,000 * 1,300,000 **

Sources: * = Manning 2009, Manning 2013; ** = Frankema and Jerven 2014. Other figures, in italics, are

backward projections from Frankema & Jerven’s 1850 estimate, using Manning’s backward projection

variables for the period 1700-1850 (Manning 2013).