Creole Women Traders in the Nineteenth Century

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Periodical article

Title:	Creole Women Traders in the Nineteenth Century
Author:	White, E. Frances
Year:	1981
Periodical:	International Journal of African Historical Studies
Volume:	14
Issue:	4
Pages:	626-642
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Sierra Leone
Subjects:	Krio women traders mercantile history Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Women's Issues Economics and Trade History and Exploration
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/218229
Abstract:	Nineteenth-century Sierra Leonean women, especially but not only the Yoruba, were notably successful traders. Beginning with the Nova Scotian women who relied on their African-American heritage to help them survive in Sierra Leone, women entered trade and, taking their marginal position in the indigenous African and European worlds and linking the two together, they filled important middlemen positions in the developing Afro-European trade. Despite the dangers that confronted these women, they formed a loose-knit diaspora that helped them participate in the Afro-European trade and to dominate sectors of the kola nut trade. And they traded throughout Sierra Leone's hinterland and much of West Africa. The present paper focuses on how the Sierra Leone women organised their West African trade and how they responded to the special obstacles faced by female traders. It pays particular attention to the liberated African women and follows their progress until the end of the nineteenth century. Notes.