Some Structures of Everyday Life in Pre-Liberian Coastal Societies, 1660-1747

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Periodical article

Title:	Some Structures of Everyday Life in Pre-Liberian Coastal Societies, 1660-1747
Author:	Burrowes, Carl Patrick
Year:	1993
Periodical:	Liberian Studies Journal
Volume:	28
Issue:	2
Pages:	231-244
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Liberia
Subjects:	demographic history social history History and Exploration Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
Abstract:	The 'Annales' school of historiography rejects the centrality of events, regarded as the 'ephemera of history', in favour of less obtrusive but more fundamental demographic and geohistorical structures. This study applies 'Annales' historiography to the coast of what is now Liberia from 1660 to 1747. Demographic and geohistorical conditions are analysed using data from the contemporaneous accounts of European visitors. These records reveal house types, the number of persons per dwelling (which varied from 13 to 20 persons), forms of marriage (although polygyny was evident, it was confined to wealthy men), the number of dwellings per settlement (settlements were generally small, on average consisting of 37 dwellings), and the spatial distribution of settlements (people were concentrated mainly near the mouth of rivers). Based on variations in these features, three subregions are identified: Cape Mount, Cape Mesurado and the Kwa Coast. Finally, it is estimated that coastal pre-Liberia supported 26 persons per square mile for a total of 143,421 people during the second half of the 1600s. Notes, ref.