Fulani

The Fulani are one of the largest ethnic groups in West Africa and the Sahel, the warm tropical grassland region between the Sahara Desert and the Sudan Savannah stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. They are concentrated in Nigeria, Mali, Guinea, Cameroon, Senegal, and Niger, and elsewhere in Africa in lesser numbers and are one of the largest groups numbering 38-40 million members, the most numerous nomadic people on the planet. Also called Peul or Fulbe, they are primarily Muslim, and large numbers are either nomadic or sedentary farmers. The Fulani crafted manillas locally, considered them attractive body ornamentation, and wore them as indications of wealth, to buy or trade for animals, domestic and agricultural goods, and wore them for ceremonial purposes such as births, coming of age, marriages, and burials. In the 16th century, recognizing the importance of bracelets and anklets as displays of wealth and as currency in West African, European merchants began to fabricate similar Fulani manillas in huge quantities in Europe. So, horseshoe-shaped bracelets/anklets with flared ends used initially as an indigenous form of currency for trade, and barter soon became the chief slave trade currency known as slave trade bracelets forged in Europe and brought to West Africa to purchase slaves who were then transported by merchant ships to the Americas. They were used by Europeans from the 1600s to the early 1800s when the slave trade ended, nd were finally banned and recalled by the British government in 1948.