Manilla Slave Token

While not exactly a coin, these pieces were used as currency for purchase of human slaves during the slave trade. It has become part of my educational collection, thanks to @PaddyB , and will be paired with our study of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. There's even a line in the novella which discusses how the natives were paid with essentially worthless brass wire.

 

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I wonder why one would need one of those to make a purchase? Here's one of my slave tokens, actually it's one I sold awhile back but I have a couple more somewhere in my stuff.

 

I don't think that's a slave token. Just a Barbados penny. I've wanted one for awhile.

 

I had been looking for info on these for a friend a few weeks ago. It was quite interesting research.

 

Yours is quite a bit cleaner than mine...I guess a century in the ocean will do that...

 

Yes, it's called a Slave Penny!

https://coins.nd.edu/ColCoin/ColCoinIntros/Barbados.intro.html

 

Here is some interesting info.
http://usslave.blogspot.com/2012/03/manila-african-money-of-slave-trade.html

 

It must have been hard to find any Barbadoes Penny in Africa.

 

Those are fascinating!

 

I actually ended up purchasing a Katanga cross through an overseas auction earlier this week that was listed with two slave manillas. It should arrive in a couple weeks.

 

Woah! Katanga cross is on my wish list at some point once I can actually afford one. They are crazy!

 

I justified the expense because I will be using it in my classroom.

 

Oh how cool! What do you teach?

 

This for me is up there with Nazi coinage. Very interesting and unique piece of history, but I’m not certain I could ever actively seek this stuff out. Thanks for sharing.

 

I completely agree. Typically I would never own such relics of human greed and depravity, but it will be used in an educational setting so an exception will be made. I teach high school literature and have sought to obtain a coin to correspond with each work I teach, be it contemporary to the novels’ setting or the novels’ era of publication. It allows my students to make a tangible connection to the literature, and, hopefully in the case of the Manilla, a deeper connection altogether. The way I see it, the study of literature can be many things, historical, intellectual, rhetorical, etc.; however, I see its most important trait as a tool for the development of empathy.
Literature asks us to consider the experience of others. It is one thing to ask a group of students to read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and analyze the manner in which the author characterizes the native Africans. It’s another thing altogether to put an artifact of the very slave trade they are reading about in their hands, ask them to close their eyes and listen to the sounds of actual human suffering. Hopefully these artifacts will transport my students across the thresholds of time and fiction to gain a greater understanding of the consequences of our behavior.

 

I understand. It’s nice to have tangible connections to history. That’s why I collect FYI, Heart of Darkness is one of my all time favorite books.

 

It’s a tough text to get through despite its very short length, as you know. I could spend an entire semester on it. There is so much to unpack and analyze, it is staggering.