Exclusive: German scientist analyses quality of manilla bracelets, the currency used by early enslavers
Copper manilla bracelets from a late 17th-century Royal African Company trader in the Western Approaches.Copper manilla bracelets from a late 17th-century Royal African Company trader in the Western Approaches.Last modified on Mon 3 Oct 2022 15.14 BSTto create manilla bracelets, the grim currency of the transatlantic slavery trade, and used an impure mix to maximise their profits, according to a study.
He also found that many of the bracelets had been made from an inferior-quality metal, to “buy” humans as cheaply as possible. He said: “They would smash manillas with a hammer. If the manilla would bend, it was good quality, because then you had a very pure copper. If the manilla would break, you had bad quality.”
Kingsley has explored dozens of shipwrecks worldwide, but “slaver” ships have been particularly hard to find. One of them is a 17th-century English merchantman that he identified as the world’s earliest Royal African Company English “slaver” ship, that had been returning from a trading voyage to west Africa and the Caribbean when it sank in a storm in the Channel.
Skowronek said that while the big English slavery traders later sourced their metals from Sweden, those particular bracelets showed that Cornish copper was used for the production of these currencies earlier than previously assumed., co-written with Simcha Jacobovici, is published on 4 October.
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