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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Perceptions of Bonduku's Contribution to the Western Sudanese Gold Trade: An Assessment of the Evidence |
Author: | Perinbam, B. Marie |
Year: | 1986 |
Periodical: | History in Africa |
Volume: | 13 |
Pages: | 295-322 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Ghana |
Subjects: | Abron polity economic history gold trade History and Exploration Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/3171548 |
Abstract: | Assessment of the contribution of Bonduku, principal town of the Akan state of Gyaman, to the we stern Sudanese gold trade. Because insufficient data limits the kinds of economic/quantitative studies that can be undertaken of the region's gold trade, the study uses a 'soft' approach to data gathering, dealing with changing and conflicting perceptions of Bonduku's contribution to the gold trade as it occurs in the Sudanese medieval cosmologies. Hence, for example, it examines shifting notions relating to Bonduku's name, social organization and location. The evidence strongly suggests an identity or association between the older Bighu and the newer Bonduku in western Sudanese cosmology. That the city's commercial apogee per se was delayed until the 17th and 18th centuries, does little to detract from the hypothe sis relating to its contribution to the gold trade from as early as the fifteenth century, and conceivably before. Notes, ref. |