Antique Fulani Manilla Currency/Slave Trade Bracelet, West Africa (3146GKE)

Description

The Fulani are the most numerous nomadic people on earth and one of the largest ethnic groups in West-Africa. Mostly Muslim and primarily nomads and sedentary farmers, for centuries they created African metalwork and jewelry in the form of arm and ankle bracelets. They were symbols of wealth and status, fashion adornments for birth, coming of age, marriage and burial ceremonies, used to trade and barter for animals and domestic and agricultural goods and were a easily hidden and east to travel medium of exchange, as there were no banks or conventional money exchange systems. Since the Fulani were numerous, their bracelets were found throughout West Africa. During Africa’s colonization in the 1500s, the British, French and Dutch appropriated African bracelets and manufactured their own versions in European factories and called them manillas. Once a beautiful indigenous African metalwork adornment and currency made for and by Africans, manillas became the currency of the slave trade to the Americas and were known as slave bracelets, slave trade money and bracelet money and used to purchase slaves to work on plantations in the Americas. Finally prohibited for use by foreign traders under the Manilla Currency Ordinance of 1919, they were finally confiscated and melted down into metals to use for other purposes in the 1940s. Still worn by slave descendants in the Caribbean, they are considered a significant African art treasures to pass on to future generations.