"Por conto e peso": o comércio de marfim no Congo e Loango, séculos XV – XVII

Abstract

This article describes the organization of the ivory trade in West Central Africa between 1490 and 1620. The region has been scrutinized by scholars working on the Atlantic slave trade, but not on the ivory trade. Carved ivory studies, by the way, approach art objects that correspond to the end of a long chain of diplomatic and commercial exchanges, frequently without exact provenance and date of the referred objects. The paper focuses on the trade of raw ivory in Loango and Congo presenting the context of trade, and its commercial relevance among other commodities in order to demonstrate the importance of the ivory trade in those ports before the growth of the slave trade.