No open-access location is known for this record yet.
No open-access location is known for this record yet.
J. Africanus Horton, the distinguished Sierra Leonean doctor, joined several other observers of the West African scene when he noted the success of nineteenth-century Sierra Leonean women. The Yoruba women of whom he spoke were the most successful of these women, but others traded as well. Beginning with the Nova Scotian women who relied on their African-American heritage to help them survive in Sierra Leone, women entered trade and filled important middlemen positions in the developing Afro-European trade. Together the Sierra Leonean women formed an alliance that allowed them to plot the course of their own destiny. And they traded throughout Sierra Leone's hinterland and much of West Africa. Horton described them as among the foremost traders in the river Gambia, advancing considerable distance in the interior.... Their female population are hard-working, and make excellent traders; they also accumulate great wealth, although some of them enter into reckless speculation.2 This paper focuses on how the Sierra Leone women organized 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.
Loading…
Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.