Early Euro-African Trade: Editing the Account Book of the Casa da Guiné e Mina (1504-1505)

Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo (Lisboa), Núcleo Antigo, 799, fol. 1r-632v.

On over six hundred folios, the manuscript account book titled Livro da recepta e despesa do tesouro de Guynee (1504-1505) offers detailed insights about Portuguese trade on the coasts of West Africa: incomes, expenses, individuals as well as artefacts traded between the hinterlands, the coastal areas and various regions around the globe. It contains information on the trading factory of São Jorge da Mina (Elmina, Ghana), the so-called Sapi and Bini ivories, gold, spices, textiles, as well as on maritime journeys in the Gulf of Guinea and the slave trade in Cape Verde, Sierra Leone, Senegambia, São Tomé e Príncipe, and Mozambique. Throughout the pages we come across names of merchants such as the Florentine Bartolomeo Marchionni (1449-1523), Lucas Rem (1481-1542) from Augsburg, Lazarus of Nuremberg, or the Cattaneo family from Genoa, whose yet unexplored business network spanned from the Italian peninsula to Portugal, from Spain to Algeria, from the archipelago of Cape Verde to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.  

Editors:

Roberto Zaugg (UZH), Carlo Taviani (Università di Teramo), Pedro Pinto (CHAM – Centro de Humanidades, FCSH, Universidade Nova de Lisboa)

Translation:

Jeremy Roe