Silent trading

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mute trade , even Depot Trade (English silent trade ), is a special form of the exchange of goods, in which the exchange partners do not talk to each other and not otherwise come into direct contact with each other. The silent tradewhose descriptions often have legendary traits, is, according to the older opinion of explorers, ethnographers and economic historians, an agreement that goes back to the beginning of trade and that enables initial contact between foreign or hostile groups. Typically, a group leaves the goods to be exchanged at a certain location and withdraws. The other group, which may have been notified by a signal, makes its counter offer, which the first group takes with it if it meets with approval. Otherwise the offers will be changed until the exchange has been satisfactorily completed for both parties.

This institution is said to have been widespread in many regions of the world in the past. Herodotus described in the 5th century BC The silent trade of the Carthaginians in West Africa; his representation became a topos in the Arab and European travelogues about the gold trade with the medieval empire of Ghana . The silent trade is also a motive in some myths like the European blacksmith legends , in which dwarfs living in mountain caves are induced to carry out blacksmith work for the people. In all historical reports and mythical narratives, the essential characteristics of the silent trade can be seen, which is a reaction to communication difficulties or insurmountable cultural differences between foreign and often warring peoples. Ethnic groups of different social levels are in a symbiotic relationship through silent trade.

From around 1900 the silent trade was also treated in monographs and formed a fact in ethnological and economic-historical theories. The first doubts about the historicity of the phenomenon arose in the 1970s and today the majority of researchers view silent trade as a historical phenomenon with skepticism or as probably legendary. In this case the question remains as to how the many reports of trade relations between hunters and gatherers and their farming neighbors are to be derived from a literary tradition.

Origin of trade

Goods change hands when trading . The most original trade is the direct exchange of goods for goods or services. Trade takes place in the general sense as a reciprocal , balanced exchange in a peaceful environment. Goods that are preferably suitable for exchange are either only found in a certain area or are only produced in one area in a special quality. Through trade, the goods reach areas where they would otherwise not be available. Trade is only one way of spreading material goods, including the ideal bases behind them, beyond the realm of individual communities. Goods can also change hands through looting during war, robbery, wedding gifts or other forms of gift exchange. Trade is a fundamental element of human interaction and plays a key role in the process of cultural development.

To what extent people from the Upper Paleolithic onwards traded raw materials (natural products, minerals) that are excavated in places that are far away from their natural occurrence. A well-known example are settlements from the second half of the 4th millennium BC. BC with decorated ostrich eggs , which belonged to the Capsien culture in North Africa, the habitat of ostriches . These ostrich eggs prove a trade around the Mediterranean, because they were also found in southern Europe, where ostriches do not occur naturally. However, it is hardly possible to make a statement about the type of trade relationship. Often these are only seen in connection with the invasion of a higher civilization or the effects of long-distance trade on social changes are overestimated - for example in the case of the archaic trade in amber from the Baltic States to the Aegean along the Amber Road from the 3rd Millennium BC Apart from such proven professional trade relationships , according to archaeologist Colin Renfrew (1969), most prehistoric cultures probably did not trade with one another.

According to an outdated thesis of the economist Josef Kulischer (1899), at the beginning of the cultural and historical development were people who did not know trade. This was followed by people who satisfied newly developed needs through robbery and only then gradually found peaceful forms of trade. As evidence of this development, Kulischer sees the still impersonal, silent trade, which he regards as the earliest form of trade. The American economist George W. Robbins (1947) puts together six hypotheses on the origin of trade that were discussed at the time: (1) Trade is innate and instinctive. (2) Trade developed out of the war after it became clear that its purpose of stealing prey is easier to implement through the peaceful exchange of goods. (3) A vital element of the economy was initially robbery. (4) In the beginning there was a friendly exchange of gifts. (5) In the beginning there was silent trading, which Robbins considers to be an important step in early communication, regardless of its practical limitations. (6) Trade grew out of surplus production.

For a social group, trade is primarily an outward-looking activity, comparable to hunting, an expedition or a raid, in which objects are also transported over long distances, but which differs from trade in its peaceful and reciprocal character. When the trade is institutionalized, a centrally located marketplace is set up through which the goods are exchanged. There is also a control mechanism that measures the value of a commodity based on the relationship between supply and demand. At the beginning of the development of trading relationships, traders were established who act as professional middlemen and thus make a living. As a result, members of a community who seldom and reluctantly leave their local area of ​​action have been able to forego travel. If the goods to be exchanged were not available in the original trade, an exchange broker had to be introduced. This was an easily transportable object with a generally accepted value that was as high as possible and a size to be determined. Such traditional or vormünzlichen cash were often metals (copper, bronze, iron bars), in Africa for example manillas , cowrie money and salt bars. In pre-monetary societies, the social aspect of trade meetings was sometimes more important than the economic one.

In indigenous communities, trade is related to the degree of kinship and familiarity between trading partners. While close relatives do not have a balanced give and take, on the other hand, people living outside the group are viewed as strangers or enemies with whom trade takes place on the basis of self-benefit.

Silent trading in cultural history

Silent trading took place in reality or in fiction in several respects on a border area: on a geographical border or on the border of two cultures, that is, on the edges of two inwardly oriented groups between which there is a social distance. In the descriptions of the historical sources, mythical elements are often convincingly combined with historical facts. Regardless of this, the idea of ​​silent trading alone has a cultural-historical significance. A fascinating aspect of this idea of ​​an exchange of goods is the presupposed and actually required trust, which contrasts with the strangeness or hostility of the partners. There is a practical reason why the word “exchange” has an etymological connection with “deception”. Every act of exchange carries the risk of being “disappointed” by the more or less unknown goods received. This resonates with what Josef Kulischer said in 1878 with regard to silent trade: "Trade is originally a trade between hostile people."

According to popular belief, hunters and gatherers in prehistoric times, like today's isolated peoples, are characterized by a way of life and food production that are independent of the outside world. Thomas N. Headland and Lawrence A. Reid (1989), on the other hand, take the view that many prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies were dependent on trade with agricultural groups and exchanged goods for thousands of years. As a comparison, the two linguists use the Filipino Negritos , of which they assume that these nomadic peoples traded with settled peoples and adopted their language over a thousand or three thousand years ago. The same trade relations have existed for a long time in Africa between the nomadic San and Mbuti and the sedentary groups surrounding them. Forms of silent trading that are difficult to prove could also have been involved here.

Herodotus (490/480 - 430/420 BC) is considered the first ancient historian. In his extensive work ( Historien des Herodotus ) he describes the entire Mediterranean area including the North African coast as well as Central Asia and Persia, based mainly on oral information. Book 4 contains a representation of the inhabitants on the " Libyan " coast of Africa, whose culture, history and geography are partly legendary. According to Herodotus, the Carthaginians drove their ships to the Libyan coast, brought their goods ashore, announced their arrival through rising smoke and withdrew again on their ships. Now the coastal inhabitants came, laid gold next to the goods and left. Now the Carthaginians came again, checked whether the gold was enough and, if so, took it with them. Otherwise, they left the gold in place and waited on their ships until the Libyans had left enough gold. Only when both parties were satisfied did one take the goods and the other the gold. Herodotus emphasizes the mutual honesty in this deal. With Herodotus, "Libya" means the West African coast beyond the pillars of Heracles , along which Hanno the navigator around the year 470 BC. Probably sailed south to the Gulf of Guinea .

Al-Idrisis world map from 1154. South is on top.

Herodotus' earliest description of a silent trade, in which seafarers from North Africa exchanged goods for black African gold, was followed by many similar reports of trade contacts in West Africa. They all reported about the silent trading, either with little confidence from hearsay or describing a trading that was only non-verbal . The Arab geographer al-Masʿūdī (around 895–957) reported as the first Arab source about the silent trade in gold in the trading center Sidschilmasa , at that time an oasis in the Moroccan Sahara, and about Berber traders who deposited their goods on the banks of a large river , where they waited for their trading partners from Ghana , the medieval "gold country". What mythical traits the Arab reports can have, emerges from a statement by the historian Ibn al-Faqih , who wrote around 903, i.e. before al-Masʿūdī: “In the country of Ghana, gold grows in a plant species from the sand, just like carrots, and is picked at sunrise. ”The geographer al-Idrisi (around 1100–1166) was the first to explain where this mysterious place was. He entered an island called Wangara on his map of the world, around which the“ Nile ”(meaning Niger ) flowed. Every year after the floods had ended, many people would come there to collect the gold lying on the surface. The African traders who presumably belonged to the Mandinka and from the middle of the 13th century largely had a monopoly on the gold trade in the kingdom of Ghana were also referred to as Wangara . In doing so, they not only controlled "silent trading", but also denied Arab traders access to African gold miners. The enigmatic origin of gold spurred the spread of some fantastic stories.

The Arab geographer Yāqūt also spoke about the silent trade in gold from Ghana around 1200 . The silent trade in gold on the Guinea coast was then mentioned by the early European seafarers, namely the Venetian Alvise Cadamosto (1432–1483) and in the 17th century the English explorer Richard Jobson . Cadamosto made two sea voyages along the West African coast: 1455 and 1456. To find out something about the origin of the gold, he once had a local detained who, however, refused any information or food and died in captivity. So it remained with the declarations circulated half a century earlier by al-Qalqashandī (1355-1418). Al-Qalqashandī came close to a possibly real basis in the carrot story when he stated that there are “... two kinds of gold in Sudan. One occurs in springtime when it (the gold) grows in the plain, when it leaves leaves, similar to those of 'nagil' ( dog-tooth grass ); the roots are made of pure gold. The second species (which has a higher value) is found in known places on the banks of the Niger, where digging is carried out and the gold is found in the form of stones and pebbles. ”This could have meant that after the end of the floods on the Niger bank Plants had grown that were dug up with the roots and in the process found the gold nuggets in the holes.

Alvise Cadamostos reported in the 15th century what he had learned about from Arab traders and traders in Sanhādschas . It is the typical version of the Europeans, according to which middlemen (wangara) were involved in the trade. According to this, the traders transported salt with camels to the south until they came to a region where the salt was taken over by black porters and brought to a river where another black African people were waiting. On the bank they piled up the salt in piles and withdrew. The other group came across the river in large boats, placed a portion of gold next to each pile of salt, and walked away on it. If, after repeating this process several times, the salt traders found the gold sufficient, they took it with them and left the salt behind for the boating traders. Equivalent amounts were weighed against each other. Both groups never saw each other in this typical story, which was structurally based on Herodotus. Cadamosto's version differs from the Arabic descriptions by the motif of the boats, which could be an allusion to the ships of the Europeans.

A parallel to the traditions of the gold trade in Ghana are the stories of the imprecisely localized "Lobi" gold fields, perhaps on the upper Volta , which are said to have existed at least since the end of the Middle Ages. Marin Perinbam (1988) specifies and sets out the thesis of 118 mine locations that were located in the “Loby Region” west of the Black Volta in what is now southern Burkina Faso . Under the rule of Dioula from the Kong Empire , "animistic, decentralized groups" are said to have owned the mining rights. Since the 17th century, Dioula controlled the trade on the route from Kong to Djenné , on which the gold was transported. One of the problems in reproducing the historical evidence is the geographical name “Lobi”, which does not correspond to the settlement area of ​​today's Lobi , who only immigrated after the middle of the 18th century. Katja Werthmann (2007) does not consider the predominance of Dioula to be historically proven, they probably only came to the Lobi region from 1897 in the course of the French colonial conquests. Pre-colonial gold mining in the Lobi area was believed to have been carried out by family groups and not by professional gold diggers. The ethnic identity of these groups is unclear because the Lobi are not mentioned by name until the end of the 19th century. Attempts to relate the Arab and Portuguese horror tales of the late Middle Ages about ugly deformed gold diggers in connection with the silent trade to the Lobi is therefore absurd.

Heinrich Schurtz (1900) provides a seemingly plausible explanation for the introduction of silent trade: Market trade occurs primarily between tribes with abundant, but one-sided and different food production (arable farmers and fishermen). The need for a more varied diet urges exchange. "This urge can be so strong that even between tribes that are at war or extremely mistrustful of one another, a kind of market trade can develop, which then gladly takes the form of so-called 'silent trade'." Schurtz adds restrictively: ".. .but it can hardly be called the original form of all market trading. ”In his summarizing treatise, Grierson (1903) cites numerous descriptions of silent trading from often dubious sources, without attempting to critically evaluate it. In Paul Ehrenreich's review of Grierson's work, published in 1905, it summarizes and enhances his statements: “Dumb trade, the simple placement of objects of exchange at certain points, whereby both parties remain hidden, is common with many indigenous peoples, especially those in South America and Africa and Australia, the only form of exchange of goods. It forms an extremely important phase in the social development of the human race ... “An essay by Richard Hennig from 1917 is titled with astonishing certainty with The silent trade as the archetype of foreign trade .

More than half a century later, Lars Sundstrom (1974) drew the radical conclusion at the time that silent trading was just a literary phenomenon and that all reports about it, especially those contained in the extensive collection at Grierson, were only passed down from hearsay. This applies to the silent trade in Africa, starting with the description of Herodotus to the Arab sources, which are often based on hearsay, from the 13th and 14th centuries to the travel reports of Europeans. The Portuguese navigator Duarte Pacheco Pereira (1469–1533), who claims to have spoken to men who saw the silent trade in slaves and goods with their own eyes, Sundstrom also quotes with the abstruse statement that the African gold traders therefore kept themselves in secret held because they did not want to show their monstrous, deformed and sore bodies. Sundstrom also relativizes Pereira by referring to older Arab authors. All in all, the often emphasized honesty in the silent trade in gold in Africa makes him skeptical - in a time otherwise marked by power struggles. According to Sundstrom, every report in a chain of traditions is ultimately based on Herodotus.

Paulo de Moraes Farias (1974) wishes Sundstrom's analysis more attention in the professional world and summarizes again the corresponding questionable reports of the Arab and European chroniclers on the West African gold trade, which are in a tradition chain. The only Arabic source that does not rely on al-Masʿūdī and Yāqūt, Moraes Farias considers the Damascus- born scholar Shihāb al-ʿUmarī (1301–1349), who in his writings from the 1340s recorded statements by people who believed the Malians King Mansa Musa experienced Hajj in Cairo in 1324 . Since Mansa Musa and his followers did not make any statements about the silent trade, although they did not agree with the relationship between Mali and the producers of gold, al-ʿUmarī had to rely on a sheikh from Almería in Andalusia as an informant for this aspect , but his information as usual based on hearsay. The reliability of the medieval reports on silent trade in West Africa as a whole is also shaken by the fact that the best medieval source on the western Sudan region , Ibn Battūta's travel report from 1352/53, does not mention it. It seems noticeable that either nothing or only extremely vague information can be found about the time and place of the activities described. The contemporary informants are likely to have had more precise knowledge of the path of gold.

Economic evaluation

Market square in a French city. Illuminated manuscript of Thomas III. de Saluces , Le chevalier errant. Paris, 1400-1405.

The Institutional Economics is an influential research approach of economics , with the interactions of the economy are to be examined with the social institutions. Within this discipline, there are differences of opinion between the older Original Institutional Economics (OIE) and to the added in the 1970s New Institutional Economics and New Institutional Economics (NIE). The focus is often on methodological or economic- historical considerations, both of which were also discussed in relation to the phenomenon of silent trading.

The starting point is the question of how the original exchange of gifts within families was able to develop into a trade in goods between strangers that extended beyond the village boundaries, and what role linguistic communication played in this. The difficulty of this question posed in a cultural context is illustrated by ethnographic reports that reveal elementary misunderstandings when encountering foreign groups. The parties are alien to each other in every way and neither understands the social standards of the others. Such a typical conflict occurred in the second half of the 19th century between the Azande (today in South Sudan and the Central African Republic ) and European and Arab traders who were interested in the ivory of the Azande and had metals and weapons on offer for it. The merchants brought iron and copper to the Azande kings, which the rulers naturally accepted as gifts appropriate to their high rank and in return for a guarantee of security for the foreigners. The Azande had not traded in ivory until then. An Arab trader has now handed over some iron spears as a bride price for the daughter of an Azande king. When the Arab wanted to leave, however, the girl fled and returned to her father's court. The Arab then reclaimed the spears because he considered them to be bartered in a trade that had been canceled. For the king, however, the demand for return was an insult, because spears had only a ceremonial value for him and were part of his insignia. The king returned the spears, but had the retreating caravan ambushed, and several violent clashes between the Azande and foreign trade caravans ensued.

The economic historian Douglass North (1920–2015) sees trade gradually opening beyond the village to a regional market, specializing in the process and finally reaching world standards. He does not mention how the transition to the next step could be managed. This is where representatives of NIE come in and postulate silent trading as a procedure to take the next step at an early stage in this development. They refer to Karl Polanyi (1886-1964), an influential critic of the free market, the transition from an early market laws not subject society to today's market economy as a "great revolution" ( Great Transformation ) describes. Silent trading appears to be a possibility, at least in theory, and for Polanyi its origins go back a long way in history. The classic form of silent trading, in which both partners do not know each other, is presented. Armed conflict is excluded from this peaceful picture. Even if the representations of silent trading, as handed down by Herodotus and his successors, have proven to be implausible in historical analysis, the phenomenon here has become a theoretical explanatory model.

As a model, silent trading is only an option if the foreign trading partners cannot communicate with one another in either of the two languages, including a third language. Trade should therefore be possible without the actually necessary basis of understanding, because language acquisition is generally considered essential so that individuals can arrive at a different, communicable interpretation of reality. Dolfsma and Spithoven (2008) consider trade without understanding to be impossible and thus reject silent trade as a hypothetical intermediate stage in the exchange of goods that is developing beyond the village limits. In some specialist publications, silent trading continues to be portrayed as a historical fact.

distribution

Reports of silent trade have come down to us from almost every region of the world: Africa, Europe, North Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and South America. With reference to Grierson (1903), such reports were generally considered to be historically reliable until the 1970s (first review by Moraes Farias, 1974). In the undoubted words of John A. Price (1967): “During a certain period of time, at the turn of civilization in Africa, Southeast Asia, Northern Europe, and Northern Asia, 'silent trade' was an important form of social economic exchange, an impersonal one Form of trade without verbal communication and even without eye contact. "

According to most ethnographic descriptions, there were two types of silent trade:

  1. Arabs, Europeans or Chinese who traded long-distance practiced a silent trade with indigenous ethnic groups on the seashore or on a river, as has been handed down since Herodotus.
  2. A silent trade took place at a known location between the two habitats between arable farmers living closer together and nomadic hunters or fishermen.

Africa

Direct barter trade on the west coast of Africa in the Brandenburg colony of Groß Friedrichsburg, which existed from 1683 to 1717 . The Brandenburgers offer fabric and iron bars against African ivory. Ink drawing by Rutger von Langerfeld , 1690.

Igala

Even if Herodotus' description of the silent trade in gold in West Africa in the last two and a half millennia should have been repeated as a fiction in modified garb, the question of a certain historical existence of such a trade in Africa is not answered, because there are also narrative traditions, which clearly do not go back to Herodotus. Roger Blench (1982) recorded a mythical tale among the Igala speakers in southern Nigeria , in which strange creatures with long tails called Amelu appear. It is said that the Amelu ( àmelù ) are to be equated with the áfùnùnù ("those who have a tail"). The guinea pig, ikéléku elù , which means "the rat of àmelù", is also linguistically linked . The Amelu are extraordinary beings in the story because they manufactured all European everyday consumer goods such as cars, refrigerators and radios in an unknown location. What they lacked was salt, so they brought their modern consumer goods to the market to exchange for salt. As they were ashamed of their long tails, they came to the market early in the morning, dug holes in the ground in which to hide their tails, and sat motionless over the hole all day until the last European trader had disappeared. In front of them they had spread their goods, next to which their trading partners put salt. If the amount of salt seemed sufficient to an Amelu, he nodded his head and the other took the goods with him. In this narrative there is a lack of internal logic in places, but the structure is reminiscent of Herodotus tradition.

The underlying elements of the story are the trade between unfamiliar, unequal partners and the desire for special, valuable things, while strangeness in particular means a danger for the traders and demands distance. The silent trade appears as a possibility to cope with the fundamental problems of such encounters. The background for this Igala story is the colonial era, which was felt as a profound socio-cultural breakdown and left a feeling of humiliation. On the other hand, the Amelu appear as sympathetic, morally superior beings who are naturally disadvantaged, but can assert themselves against foreigners who want to make a profit from the Africans by offering cheap barter goods (salt). In one detail, the description of the body anomalies, the story is reminiscent of the statement made by the Portuguese Pereira (around 1506-08) that the locals (in Ghana) have faces, teeth and tails like dogs.

Aksumite Empire

The Aksumite Empire , which in the first millennium in what is now Eritrea and northern Ethiopia was, ran a barter with Primitive money in the form of bars of salt ( Amolen ), iron bars, fabrics and jewelry. From the second half of the 3rd century onwards, the Aksumite empire was the only African country to mint its own coins. In addition to the money economy, trade in bartered objects continued to be carried out in parallel, in some cases until the 20th century, although money introduced according to the market economy theory was supposed to displace barter trade. The earliest description of the Aksumite barter is provided by the Greek author Kosmas Indicopleustes from Alexandria in his "Christian Topography", written around 550.

According to Kosmas, the caravans sent by the Aksumite king to distant gold lands engaged in a kind of silent trade: They moved into the gold miner's area with oxen, salt and iron, and when they got close to it, they stopped and made camp surrounded them with a high ring of thorns. They stayed in the camp, slaughtered the ox, and spread the meat, along with the salt and iron, on the thorns. The locals then came and placed one or more gold nuggets on the meat, salt or iron they wanted and withdrew to some distance. Then the Aksumite owner of the goods looked to see whether the gold seemed sufficient and, if so, took it with him. The gold dealer observed this and then took the meat, salt or iron. Otherwise, as with the other descriptions, one of the parties had to keep adding until both were satisfied. Kosmas comments: This is what barter is like with the people of this country because they speak a different language and translators are hard to find.

Besides the problem of understanding, the silent trade is justified by the hostile and fearful atmosphere in which both parties meet.

Central Africa

Africa was considered to be the continent with not only the longest, but also the most widespread tradition of silent trade. The Africanist Diedrich Westermann (1921) describes the silent trade between the Gola (in the area of Liberia and Sierra Leone ) and the Kpelle , who tilled their fields on behalf of and partly as slaves of the Gola. The trade between the two peoples is said to have taken place in silence and outside the villages. The word for “market”, dowo , which means “bushland”, should remind of this.

From what was then the Belgian Congo , the British officer Guy Burrows (1861–1912) reports on the pygmies , whose only occupation is hunting, on which they mostly live. Since they need vegetable food in addition to animal food, Burrows explains in 1899, nomadic pygmies usually settle near a Bantu village, where they can expect banana plantations. When a pygmy comes home from the hunt, he goes to the nearest banana plantation and carefully wraps small pieces of meat in grass or leaves. Then he cuts a stalk of plantains and attaches one of his meat bundles to the banana trunk as a kind of payment. This is a generally accepted custom. Sometimes the pygmy shoots an arrow into the trunk of a banana plant whose fruits he wants to reserve for later. The owner of the banana will respect this wish and will not remove the arrow, according to Burrows.

Burrows also mentions the exchange of spears, arrowheads and knives from the pygmies' Bantu neighbors for their dried meat, leaving open how this trade was conducted. The Hungarian ethnologist Emil Torday (1875–1931) describes in 1925 that this also happened through silent trade:

“In order to get vegetables or iron (which they need for their arrows, knives and spearheads), they practice the most primitive known form of bartering: An animal that they have killed is deposited at the entrance of a village at night. The next night they return to receive the gift that awaits them in the same place where they left their game. "

Grierson (1903) concludes from the examples he cited, in which Europeans suffered, that the custom of giving someone else a “gift” in exchange for asking for anything more valuable from that person is particularly pronounced in Africa they would have preferred to make purchases according to their own ideas. The ethnologist Willy Fröhlich (1940) argues that individual trade represents a young form of culture, in contrast to the very old, silent trade that was carried out between foreign groups. As an example of the latter, he cites the exchange of goods between Central African Bantu and pygmies, which grew out of an “economic need”, because between the two “economic opposites collide (hunter - fisherman - shepherd - soil farmer)”. However, Fröhlich does not see a linear development between silent trading and market trading in Africa. Apart from the fact that both forms of trade often take place on the border between tribal areas, silent trade was a long-distance trade organized by men, while modern market trade is internal trade between neighbors, which is mainly done by women.

Northern Europe and Northern Asia

Fur trade between Chukchi and Eskimos on an island in the Bering Strait . Book illustration from 1911

According to several reports from the 19th century, there was silent trade between peoples in Northern Europe and Northern Asia ( Siberia ). According to Arabic sources, the Volga Bulgarians engaged in silent trade with Russians from the 10th century, as is the case in the "History of Russia since the Ancient Times" (Volume 1, Chapter 8) by the Russian historian Sergei Mikhailovich Soloviev (1820 ), published between 1851 and 1879 -1879). The center of the fur trade was the Russian city of Bolgar on the Volga. The historian Abu'l-Fida (Abulfeda, 1273–1331), who comes from Syria, describes the fur trade in Bolgar from his own observation and adds what he learned from an eyewitness: There are peoples further north on the Arctic Ocean who trade without them the trading partners see each other. According to Abu'l-Fida, a caravan announces their arrival and goes to their camp site. Then the traders put their goods and a slip of paper at the agreed place and return to the warehouse. The locals put their skins next to the goods and move away. The traders take whatever suits them best or the trading procedure continues until both sides have reached an agreement. What was written on the slips of paper has not been passed down, but for Richard Hennig (1930) the mention of slips of paper and several trading centers shows that the silent trade in furs was well organized and widespread in the north of what is probably the European part of Russia even the occasional Arab traders came there.

According to a report by the Italian historian Paolo Giovio (1483–1552) published in Basel in 1561 , the same fur trade still existed in Lapland in the 16th century :

“The Laplanders exchange the snow-white furs, which we call ermines, for all kinds of goods, but in such a way that they avoid any conversation or sight of the traders to such an extent that the trade in goods, when both sides have estimated the goods for sale and the skins are left in the middle of the square, with unknown absentees in the utmost honesty (sincerissi ma fide). "

There are some reports that a silent and semi-silent trade in fur between Eskimos and Chukchi continued in North Asia into the 17th and into the 19th century. A semi-silent fur trade is what the Chukchi ethnographer Wladimir Germanowitsch Bogoras (1865–1936) said was common “in very old times” (around the 17th century): the parties came heavily armed for fear of hostilities outside the village on the shallow seashore to the trading post and in full combat gear offered their goods on lance tips. Or they reached out to each other with one hand while holding a knife in the other, ready to attack at the slightest provocation. The following account of Bogora about Chukchi is about "the invisible" who live in a large forest:

“When they come to trade, all you can see is the fox and beaver skins they are holding, and it appears that the pelts are moving on their own. They then come towards our dealers to the edge of the forest and shout: 'We want to act. The traders take a bunch of tobacco and throw it over. 'Tobacco, tobacco' echoes through the forest, but nobody can be seen. After a while a bag of fox or beaver pelts is thrown from the forest. "

In the 17th century, the Chukchi also engaged in the typical silent trade with seafarers, in which they deposited furs, ivory and ivory carvings on the seashore.

The aforementioned Soloviev also reports (Volume 5, Chapter 3) of a silent trade in the 16th century between Russians and Sami in the north of the European part of Russia and east of the Urals on the Ob . In the far east of Siberia, on the Bering Strait , according to the ethnologist Adolf Bastian (1873), the Chukchi on the Asian mainland maintained a silent trade with the inhabitants of St. Lawrence Island . The latter traded in fur goods. In Siberia, Russians are said to have generally obtained fur goods through silent trading. Further south, according to the geographer Karl Andree (1877), the Ainu, who lived on the Kuril Islands , brought their goods to the beach, only to return the following day and pick up the barter goods left by the Russians.

Blacksmith legends in Europe

Blacksmithing legends, in which elements of the topos play a central role, were used to provide indirect evidence of a silent trade that probably existed in Europe earlier. Max Förster (1907) was the first to point out this connection to myth.

Blacksmiths appear in the sagas as people or as otherworldly beings in dwarf form. Legends of forging dwarfs are mainly known from northern Central Europe and Scandinavia. Some stories are about ore-mining miners in the Alps. These dwarfs reside in certain mounds where it is said that their hammering or the crackling fire of their food is heard. Like blacksmiths in general, blacksmith dwarves are ascribed magical abilities and secret knowledge, which is why they can make special tools or weapons. The mutual exchange of goods is expanded in the blacksmith legends to include the exchange of goods or money for commissioned works, i.e. services. Following the principle of silent trading, the dwarfs remain invisible, even if they can be heard while they are working. In addition, there is a strict separation between the world of humans and the dwarves. Blacksmiths can appear as helpers to people in the stories or cause them damage. If someone does not stick to the silent trade agreements meticulously, the dwarves take revenge or they break off relations with the people and withdraw. They also disappear when they receive unsolicited gifts. The penalty is actually applied for violating the rules of distance between the human and the demonic world.

In the silent trade with blacksmith dwarves, for example, the client places an object to be repaired and food or sometimes a coin on a stone in front of a cave and the next morning he finds the blacksmith's work done there. Orders for new products are called in a loud voice at the agreed places in nature or left on a piece of paper. The blacksmith's dwarf encloses a slip of paper with the invoice, which must be paid precisely. Max Förster recognizes the legends handed down “the origin of this form of intercourse between humans and blacksmith demon ... as a precipitate of that former primitive state of culture, the above-described silent exchange.” One of these legends is that of Wieland the blacksmith in a local decoration, the about the prehistoric barrow in the south of England called Wayland's Smithy . In 1738, the archaeologist and archivist Francis Wise gave the oral tradition together with a description of the stone grave: “An invisible blacksmith used to live here. If a traveller's horse lost a horseshoe on the way, all the rider had to do was bring his horse and some money to this place and leave it there for some time. When he returns, he finds the money has disappeared, but the horse has been restored. ”According to Wise, the stone grave has always been called Wayland's Smithy (“ Wieland's forge ”) among the local population . Förster concludes with the assumption that the myths of silent trade could refer back to the first trade contacts between Teutons and Celts in the Latène period (from around the 4th century BC).

In Germany, legends of blacksmithing dwarfs are mainly known from Westphalia and the Harz Mountains . A legend about the Darnsee near the Lower Saxon town of Bramsche , recorded by the Indo-Germanist Adalbert Kuhn (1859), contains all the elements of the course of a silent trade with a blacksmith, who in this case is not presented as a dwarf.

“A long time ago a blacksmith lived here in Darmssen who did all the blacksmithing work for people that they wanted; All they had to do was write what they wanted on a piece of paper and then put it in a certain place by the lake, and then the next day the work and a piece of paper were already there, whereupon the sum they had to pay , has stood. But once someone thought: something! you have what you want, what else should you pay? And left again without payment; since then the blacksmith has stopped working in Darmssen. "

A central element of these blacksmithing legends - going unnoticed, diligent and surprisingly quick to do something helpful overnight - also characterizes the Cologne legend of the brownies . The oldest mythical tale of a silent trade with a blacksmith is provided by the Greek navigator Pytheas (around 380 - around 310 BC), which is contained in a scholion for the Argonaut saga of Apollonios of Rhodes (295–215 BC). In it, the seven Aeolian Islands are described as the anvils of the mythical blacksmith Hephaestus . Hephaestus is on the two islands of Lipari and Stromboli , from where you can hear his hammering from afar. It is said that in the past everyone could bring unprocessed iron there and pick up a sword or other ordered item the next day if they had paid for it.

Arabia

Traders in leopard skins in Iraq. From the French illustrated Le Tour du Monde from 1867.

Traditional Islamic commercial law , like all regulations derived from Islam , ultimately takes the utterances of the Prophet Mohammed and the reports about his time as a model. According to Islamic tradition, a dividing line runs through all areas of society between the Islamic period and the pre-Islamic period of Jāhilīya which it replaced . Mohammed rejected the previous marketplaces and established new ones. Islamic sources describe forms of trade from pre-Islamic times with the frequently mentioned feature of being silent or secret. The descriptions deal with the economic and social situation of Muhammad and his followers in Medina ; Little is known about other places and about pre-Islamic trading methods. The markets held annually in Arabia in pre-Islamic times are listed in the tradition called hadīth al-aswāq ("Report of the Markets") and started in the 9th century and contrasted with disdain for the markets under Islamic law.

A distinction is made between two or less often three forms of pre-Islamic trade, all of which are said to have been forbidden by Mohammed: In “selling by touching” ( mulamāsa ), the buyer acquires an object simply by touching it without having seen it beforehand or in any way checked to have. Because knowledge of the purchased item is insufficient, the acquisition is considered risky and invalid under Islamic law. Alternatively, touching means that the buyer wants to reserve these goods for himself. In "selling by throwing" ( munābadha ), in most cases the seller throws the object to the seller, in some descriptions the buyer also throws something back. Some authors have linked this practice with another, called "throwing a stone," which is open to multiple interpretations. It can be understood as follows: the seller throws a stone and sells the item of clothing on which the stone lands or the stone throw means that the sale of this item of clothing is sealed. It is also possible to understand: someone sells land to the point where his thrown stone flies, which expresses that the buyer has the choice between the goods presented until the seller throws the stone.

This is how the Syrian legal scholar an-Nawawī (1233-1277) summarized the sales rules. Subsequent interpreters understood the situations described differently, for example that it was not a question of clothing that was for sale, but of clothing that both parties were wearing and therefore an exchange was taking place. Regardless of the interpretation, the trading practices described have in common that both parties remain silent or almost silent, which is in stark contrast to real market events, but in some cases parallels the silent trading that has been handed down since Herodotus. However, the parties in pre-Islamic trade are not invisible to one another.

According to the Greek philosopher Theophrastus (371–287 BC), there was a classic silent trade in the ancient kingdom of Saba on the Arabian Peninsula. There, in the temple of the sun god, frankincense and myrrh were traded in such a way that both parties could neither see nor hear each other. A third of the proceeds went to the temple as tax. The pre-Islamic trading practices could have been an attempt to introduce a certain authoritative order and discipline in the market by relating the process to the sphere of the religious and the sovereign. Actual communication problems or the wish to maintain the status of one's own tribe through silence could also have had an influence.

South America

In South America , the silent trade, about which there are numerous reports, was mainly used to establish initial contact with previously isolated indigenous peoples in order to pacify them. Indigenous peoples living in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso are grouped together under the name Xingú . The first foreigners on the upper reaches of the Río Xingú were American Protestant missionaries from 1926, who withdrew from the area after a few years. To protect the Indians from invading adventurers, posts were gradually established between 1920 and 1954. The ethnologist Günther Hartmann (1986) suspects that the exchange of goods between the individual groups in this area may have taken place earlier as silent trade or openly during formal mutual visits and agreed trade trips.

Adrian Cowell, in his experience report The tribe that hides from men (1973, a documentary with the same title was released in 1970), describes how the Villas-Bôas brothers (Orlando, Cláudio and Leonardo) set out on an expedition to some previously uncontacted hostile tribes in 1943 who led the Xingú with the aim of pacifying them. This should make it possible to set up a protected area for the indigenous peoples, which was implemented in 1961 with the establishment of the Parque Indígena do Xingu . Cowell describes the efforts of the Villas-Bôas brothers on several expeditions. In order to pacify the indigenous people, they deposited machetes, pearls and other tempting things in the jungle as a sign of their friendly attitude and in the hope that the indigenous people would take the things with them and leave something of themselves for them. In order to protect themselves from attacks, they also attached such objects immediately outside of their camp. This was a well known method of contact in Brazil.

A reliable report by the British civil engineer Charles Napier Bell (1835–1906) depicts a kind of silent trade, as it was started in the 1850s and 1860s on the Miskito coast in Nicaragua by the Indian groups Smoos (Ulvas, Woolwas, am Toongla River) and Twakas (on the Twaka River) with the coastal population. The settlers on the rivers exchanged tiger and roe deer skins, cocoa, corn and plantains for the goods of the Indians on the coast, including clothes, pearls, iron pots, cutlery, fish hooks and salt:

“The simple trade is carried out without effort and without competition. The value of the goods is determined out of habit and no fraud or forgery is possible or imaginable. You have a great deal of confidence in the fairness of the transaction. I have often seen a barked and painted stick planted in a certain place at river mouths. When I landed, I found plantains , baskets with corn, flat cakes made from toonoo ( natural rubber ), fabrics and furs hanging in the trees . Attached to each item was a pattern of what was expected in return, like a fishhook on one, a few pearls on another, some salt on the next, and so on. These things were placed there in the expectation that the coastal Indians passing on the main river would carry out the desired barter. If after some time things are still untouched, the river Indians bring them to the coastal villages. "

East asia

According to Richard Hennig (1917) there is a not clearly legible text from Pliny the Younger (around 61 - around 113) that refers to the “Land Seres ” (ancient Greek for China ) behind the “Emolian Mountains” ( Himalayas ). The passage in question begins, presumably translated correctly: "The goods that are placed on the other bank of the river next to the stalls are taken away by you if you like the exchange ...". A little earlier in the 1st century AD, the Roman geographer Pomponius Mela already knew to report: “The Seri are a people full of justice and very well known for their trade in barter goods that are deposited in the desert without anyone remaining with them. "The geographer Ernst Tiessen (1871–1949) confirms this old Chinese tradition and adds:" Not a word is spoken. "

A Chinese source from the 14th century contains a fragment of text about the trade between the Ainu on Sakhalin Island and the Yeren ("savages", meaning Jurchen in the Amur region) during the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368). Accordingly, the ermines that lived in crevices in the mountains were very popular in northern China. The Jurchen set up trading places on the island, where they exchanged Chinese goods for ermines without meeting the Ainu directly. Silent trading could have been a way of avoiding sanctions from the Chinese authorities, as the Ainu of Sakhalin Island had been in conflict with the Yuan Chinese for years. The fact that this trade is mentioned in a Chinese document suggests that the Chinese authorities knew about it and tolerated the trade because of the coveted pelts.

The French priest Abbé Jean-Baptiste Grosier (1743–1823), in his general description of China from 1785, confirms the use of silent trade in recent history between Chinese and “wild peoples”.

Southeast Asia and the South Seas

A group of Kubu (Orang Rimba) women and children in southern Sumatra. Formerly isolated forest nomads who have long been sedentary and are in contact with Europeans. First decades of the 20th century.

Silent trade is said to have existed in Southeast Asia for a very long time between indigenous peoples and Indian, Chinese or Arab traders, possibly even before the turn of the century. In the first half of the 1st millennium, Buddhist traders came to the Malay Islands from India , followed by Hindu and Arab seafarers who established trade relations with the Chinese. The main trade between the nations took place according to the ceremonial customary for powerful ruling houses. Europeans came to Southeast Asia relatively late (in the 16th century) as traders and conquerors and generally did not engage in silent trade. According to the reports, this was limited to the exchange of goods with smaller peoples.

For example, there are reports of silent trading between the Orang Rimba (Kubu) , who lived in isolation in the lowland jungle in southern Sumatra , and Malay traders from the 17th century to the end of the 19th century. According to the American anthropologist Edwin M. Loeb (1935), the Kubu never came into direct contact with the dealers during the time of the Malaysian domination, but always remained invisible, deposited the natural products they offered in one place on the ground, then disappeared and then returned to collect the payment offered by the Malays. The trade was never particularly fair to the primitive Kubu, adds Loeb. The ethnologist Max Schmidt (1926) gives the same description of the Kubu, which contains all the components of a silent trade .

The two social scientists mentioned were not the first to comment on silent trading among the Kubu. The British explorer and botanist Henry Ogg Forbes , who was in Indonesia from 1878 to 1883, deals in his research report from 1885 in detail with the way of life of the "wild" and "shy" Kubu, whom he met himself, but who are hardly a European ever seen. The Kubu offered the wild animals they had killed in the jungle to the Malays in exchange for knives and spears, as they had no manual skills. Forbes describes a silent trade with all typical elements.

Two Enggano , the middle one with bow and arrows, on the right an Arab visitor on the shore of the island of the same name. Illustration in a work on the history of East India by the Dutchman Willem Lodewijcksz, 1598.

According to Loeb, the most primitive of all peoples in the region lived on the island of Enggano off the west coast of Sumatra, who in 1770 were still handling stone axes, while iron tools have long been used everywhere else. By this time, however, they had already recognized the benefits of iron and exchanged their coconuts for iron in a silent trade with the Malays.

Long-distance trade was only conducted silently in certain cases. From the 10th century onwards, Chinese ships were sailing between the islands, and from the 13th century onwards the Chinese increasingly established trading establishments. Usually the ships anchored off the coast and the locals paddled there in small boats with their barter goods. There is also said to have been silent trade on a smaller scale, as the American anthropologist Fay-Cooper Cole (1945) mentions on trade with the Philippines in the 16th century. The Chinese junks landed on the bank and laid out their goods - silk, pearls, copper pots, various vessels and gongs . The locals also brought their goods to the beach and then withdrew. The Chinese traders took what they thought was right and sailed to the next berth in a settlement. In this way, mainly Chinese porcelain vessels reached the Philippine islands and were traded further inland. Occasionally valuable Chinese porcelain from the Song Dynasty , the Ming Dynasty or from later times came onto the international art market, which originated in the interior of the Philippines.

Similar descriptions hold a silent trade between Malays and the "timid Negritos " on the Philippine island of Luzon resistant, as with the time as hunter-gatherers living Semang on the Malay Hanlbinsel and dealers the Indonesian island of Ternate . The latter referred to the silent trade in their language as potage tagali vuru , "to barter with the savages", to distinguish it from potage tagali damaroi , normal trade in the presence of both parties.

Negritos . Illustration in the Boxer Codex , 1590, a manuscript from the beginning of the Spanish colonization of the Philippines.

The American John M. Garvan (1875 - around 1940) lived as a trader and traveler in the Philippines from 1903 until, after a few years, he adopted the simple lifestyle of the Manobo, a Lumad ethnic group on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao , where he lived stayed until around 1924. In his extensive records there is also a description of the silent trade among the Negritos. The missionary, ethnologist and Negrito connoisseur Paul Schebesta (1887–1967) subjected Garvan's work to a critical appraisal, referring the silent trade “to fairytale land” because he had not seen this trade himself. In an essay published in 1925, the Catholic missionary Morice Vanoverbergh shares what he heard from Christian Filipinos living in the lowlands and what he saw with his own eyes. The Filipinos told the missionary that they usually went to trade with the Negritos in their area up to the edge of the forest and deposited their barter goods (fabrics, rice) there, because it was impossible to approach the shy Negritos. The Negritos would bring their goods (beeswax, rattan ) there at night and put aside what they wanted from the Filipinos until they came back to take their part with them. According to Vanoverbergh's own observations, Negritos often went to the city themselves and exchanged their products there with those of the Christian traders. The Negritos would also do work for the Filipinos for (much too little) wages, the author stated.

The "usual method of bartering" between Semang and Malays is described in 1834 by the British officer Peter James Begbie (1804–1864), who served on the Malay Peninsula for the East India Company's Madras Army : The Malays brought their goods - mainly simple fabrics , Tobacco and knife - to a vacant spot near a Semang settlement and retreated some distance. Then came the Semang with ivory, pieces of the agarwood tree (popular with the Chinese as incense sticks), dammar resin , rattan and other forest products, of which they dumped abundantly because they had no idea of ​​their market value. Few Semang, however, who had shed their shyness and went to the villages, quickly learned to make a high profit from the trade in herbal medicinal preparations.

There have also been reports of silent trading from mainland Southeast Asia. The Danish major Erik Seidenfaden (1881–1958) lived in Siam for 40 years, until 1947, during which time he traveled to the country as an employee of the Siamese government and carried out ethnological research. He wrote about a small group of nomadic hunters on the Mekong near the village of Pakbeng (in northern Laos ) called Khā Dong Lüang ("the withered leaves-savages") or Khā Tam Bang ("the savages who make themselves invisible can ”) what he heard from other hunters there. Accordingly, these Khā were dark-skinned, smooth-haired, both sexes went naked and after a few days changed their whereabouts, where they lived under a canopy of leaves. Since they were very shy and feared people who did not belong to their tribe, they carried out a typical silent trade. Your in the Lao coveted goods such as rhinoceros horns , antlers and skins they deposited at a specific location. The Lao traders, who the Khā practically never saw because they were hiding in the bush not far from the trading post, gave them tobacco, salt and sometimes some cotton cloth. Seidenfaden further explains that a Thai provincial governor confirmed this information to him.

In an article from 1981 Jesper Trier describes the hunter-gatherer group Khon Pa, of which about 200 people live in the northern Thai provinces of Phrae and Nan and a few 100 people in northern Laos. The Khon Pa are considered shy, they have little contact with other mountain peoples , they have been in the jungle for a long time, which for them is populated by a multitude of spirits, for whom they often perform rituals. They used to practice silent trade, according to the ethnologist Jesper Trier, who conducted field research among mountain peoples in northern Thailand in 1970.

The economist August Sartorius Freiherr von Waltershausen (1852–1938) first described the principle of silent trade in 1896, only to explain it to the original form of barter in Polynesia . Dumb trade takes on an even higher social function because it functions as a peace treaty with which two parties end a violent conflict. Even between hostile peoples, the need to exchange goods, once aroused, remains, trade is to continue, but another war is to be ruled out. Waltershausen illustrates such behavior with stories of encounters between European ships and the islanders. One of them is contained in Capitain Wallis' voyage on the Dolphin around the world, from June 1766 to August 1768 (compiled from the ship's diaries by the writer John Hawkesworth, 1715–1773). The initially peaceful encounter between Captain Wallis and the residents of Tahiti in 1767 turned into a dispute, which the British put down with cannons, after which the islanders gave the sign of peace with green branches and white mats attached to the beach. Subsequently, both parties took turns laying gifts on the beach, which led to the barter continuing. The sailors James Cook and Louis Antoine de Bougainville had similar experiences in the 18th century when they met locals in the South Pacific. Although the trade contacts only roughly corresponded to silent trade, the seafarers noted the noticeably long distance that the locals always kept.

The description of a barter, the essential feature of which, the distance, is reminiscent of the silent trade, shows that the individual small empires in Hawaii were not always peaceful in earlier centuries:

“To facilitate the exchange of their items, markets were held at certain times and in certain places where mats, salted fish, pigs, baked and pounded taro roots, etc., were for sale. The buyers and sellers were separated by a river, facing each other and shouting what and on what terms they wanted to trade. The merchandise was spread out on a rock in the middle of the river, where the parties went to inspect them. "

South asia

"Wild Men". Veddas with a bow and arrow in a photo from 1907.

In Kumaon, the eastern part of the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand and in the Jajarkot district in western Nepal, nomadic or semi-nomadic groups are called Raji, Raji-rhombus or Ban-Raja ("forest kings") and together with other small groups in northern India the Janggali ("Forest people", cf. English jungle , "jungle"). The Raji are also called "invisible traders" by the villagers in both areas. When they were questioned in 1997, the sedentary population of Jajarkot remembered how the Raji traded until a generation ago by placing a bowl and a headscarf in the courtyard of a homestead during the night. The homeowner was expected to put some grain and vegetables in the cloth and take the bowl. If he did so, the Raji came the following night and took the cloth with the food they had bought with them.

The British explorer Clements Markham (1830–1916) reported in 1862 about a people called Poliar in southern India (probably in the mountains of Kerala ):

“... the Poliar, a shy people of wild forest people, live in the more remote forests. Chenatumby [his guide] told me that they have no dwellings, but walk from place to place through the jungle, sleep under rocks and live on wild honey and roots. The women run with them like wild goats, their children wrapped around their waist in a row. Occasionally the Poliar trade with the people from the villages who put cotton and grain on a stone, and as soon as the strangers are out of sight they take the wild creatures and put honey in their place, but they will not allow anyone to come near them . "

Better known than the small Adivasi groups in the mountains of southern India are the Veddas , the indigenous people of Sri Lanka , about whom numerous ethnographic reports are available, including their silent trade. Many of these descriptions are of dubious value and subject to prejudice. An early account of the Veddas comes from the English navigator Robert Knox (1641–1720), who wrote a historical work on the Kingdom of Kandy in 1681 , in which it was established for almost 20 years. Knox differentiates between “wild and tame” Veddas. The latter had in a way subordinated themselves to the king (of Kandy). If the Veddas could be found in the woods by his envoy, they brought ivory, honey, wax and meat from wild animals, for which they received arrows and clothing, among other things. But Knox writes about the "wilder" Veddas:

"I have been told by many people that the poachers among them, when they want arrows, bring a lot of meat at night and hang it up in a forge , and there is also a sheet hung next to it, which is cut out in the shape like them want their arrows made. If the blacksmith makes them according to their pattern, they reward him and bring more meat. But if he doesn't make them, sooner or later they'll send him a calamity and shoot him that night. When the blacksmith makes the arrows, he puts them in the same place where the Veddas hung the meat. "

Knox's description was subsequently repeated several times until the end of the 19th century. It represents a version of the European blacksmith legends with silent trade that probably goes back far into the past.

literature

  • Michael Bonner: The Arabian Silent Trade: Profit and Nobility in the “Markets of the Arabs” . In: Sebastian Günther, Wadad Kadai (Ed.): Islamic History and Civilization. Studies and Texts. Volume 79 ( Histories of the Middle East ) Brill, Leiden 2011, pp. 23-50
  • Wilfred Dolfsma, Antoon Spithoven: “Silent Trade” and the Supposed Continuum between OIE and NIE. In: Journal of Economic Issues, Volume 42, No. 2 ( Papers from the 2008 AFEE Meeting ) June 2008, pp. 517-526
  • Rainer Ertel: “Silent trading” from an economic point of view. In: Journal of Ethnology, Volume 106, Issue 1/2, 1981, pp. 93-98
  • Richard Hennig : Dumb trade as the archetype of foreign trade . In: Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv, Volume 11, 1917, pp. 265–278
  • Philip James Hamilton Grierson: The Silent Trade. A Contribution to the Early History of Human Intercourse. William Green & Sons, Edinburgh 1903
  • Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias: Silent Trade: Myth and Historical Evidence. In: History in Africa , Volume 1, 1974, pp. 9-24
  • John A. Price: Conditions in the Development of Silent Trade . In: Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers, No. 36, 1967, pp. 67-79
  • Ulrich Rebstock: Gold from the mysterious interior of Africa: the "silent trade" of the Wangara. In: Charles Verlinden (ed.): The medieval origins of European expansion. ( Documents on the history of European expansion, Volume 1) Beck, Munich 1986, pp. 303-306
  • Dieter Veerkamp: "Silent trade" in blacksmithing legends in Europe and South Asia. In: Journal of Ethnology, Volume 80, Issue 2, 1955, pp. 187–191
  • James Woodburn: Introductory note to "Silent trade with outsiders: Hunter-gatherers' perspectives". In: HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, Volume 6, No. 2, 2016, pp. 473–496

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Bonner: The Arabian Silent Trade, 2011, p. 35
  2. ^ See Rahul Oka, Chapurukha M. Kusimba: The Archeology of Trading Systems, Part 1: Towards a New Trade Synthesis. In: Journal of Archaeological Research, Volume 16, No. 4, December 2008, pp. 339-395
  3. ↑ Mysteries of decorated ostrich eggs in British Museum revealed. BBC News, April 9, 2020
  4. ↑ Janusz Czebreszuk: Amber Between the Baltic and the Aegean in the Third and Second Millennia BC (on Outline of Major Issues). In: I. Galanaki, H. Tomas, R. Laffineur (Eds.): Between the Aegean and Baltic Seas. Prehistory across Borders. (Proceedings of the International Conference Bronze and Early Iron Age Interconnections and Contemporary Developments between the Aegean and the Regions of the Balkan Peninsula, Central and Northern Europe University of Zagreb, April 11-14, 2005). Aegaeum 27, Universite de Liege, 2007, pp. 363-370
  5. ^ Colin Renfrew : Trade and Culture Process in European Prehistory . In: Current Anthropology, Volume 10, No. 2/3, April – June 1969, pp. 151–169, here p. 152
  6. ^ Josef Kulischer : On the history of the development of the interest on capital . In: Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik / Journal of Economics and Statistics, Third Volume , Volume 18 (73), No. 3, 1899, pp. 305–371, here pp. 319, 321
  7. ↑ George W. Robbins: Notions about the Origins of Trading. In: Journal of Marketing, Volume 11, No. 3, January 1947, pp. 228-236, here pp. 231-234
  8. ↑ Malcolm C. Webb: Exchange Networks: Prehistory. In: Annual Review of Anthropology, Volume 3, 1974, pp. 357-383, here p. 360
  9. ↑ Banu Doǧan: Trade and Exchange in Prehistory. A Theoretical Evaluation . In: Ertekin Doksanalt, Erdoǧan Aslan (Ed.): Proceedings of the International Symposium “Trade and Production Through the Ages”. Konya, November 25-28, 2008. Selçuk University, Konya 2008, pp. 33-50, here pp. 37f
  10. ↑ See Ivo Bayer, Holger Bonus: Exchange and deception. In: Dirk Loerwald, Maik Wiesweg, Andreas Zoerner (eds.): Economics and society. Festschrift for Gerd-Jan Krol. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2008, p. 100
  11. ^ Josef Kulischer: The trade on the primitive levels of culture. In: Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft und Völkerpsychologie, Volume 10, Issue 4, 1878, pp. 378–389, here p. 380
  12. ↑ Thomas N. Headland, Lawrence A. Reid, MG Bicchieri, Charles A. Bishop, Robert Blust, Nicholas E. Flanders, Peter M. Gardner, Karl L. Hutterer, Arkadiusz Marciniak, Robert F. Schroeder, Stefan Seitz: Hunter- Gatherers and Their Neighbors from Prehistory to the Present [and Comments and Replies]. In: Current Anthropology, Vol. 30, No. 1, February 1989, pp. 43-66, here pp. 46, 59
  13. ↑ Herodotus: Historien, Volume 4; reproduced for example by: Josef Kulischer: On the history of the development of capital interest. In: Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik / Journal of Economics and Statistics, Third Volume, Volume 18 (73), No. 3, 1899, pp. 305–371, here pp. 321f; Philip James Hamilton Grierson, 1903, p. 47f
  14. ^ Philip D. Curtin: Cross-cultural trade in world history. ( Studies in comparative world history ) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1984 p. 13
  15. ^ Edward W. Bovill: The Silent Trade of Wangara. In: Journal of the Royal African Society, Volume 29, No. 113, October 1929, pp. 27-38, here p. 28
  16. ↑ Quoted from: Ulrich Rebstock, 1986, p. 304
  17. ↑ JD Fage: Ancient Ghana. A Review of the Evidence. In: Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana, Volume 3, No. 2, 1957, pp. 3–24, here p. 5
  18. ↑ Ulrich Rebstock, 1986, pp. 305f
  19. ^ E. Ann McDougall: Salts of the Western Sahara: Myths, Mysteries, and Historical Significance. In: The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Volume 23, No. 2, 1990, pp. 231-257, here p. 237
  20. ^ Edward W. Bovill, 1929, pp. 29f
  21. ↑ Moraes Farias, 1974 p. 13
  22. ↑ B. Marie Perinbam: The Political Organization of Traditional Gold Mining: The Western Loby, c. 1850 to c. 1910. In: The Journal of African History, Vol. 29, No. 3, 1988, pp. 437-462, here p. 437
  23. ↑ Katja Werthmann: Gold Mining and Jula Influence in Precolonial Southern Burkina Faso . In: The Journal of African History , Volume 48, No. 3, 2007, pp. 395-414, here pp. 402f
  24. ↑ Katja Werthmann, 2007, p. 406
  25. ^ Heinrich Schurtz : Urgeschichte der Kultur. Bibliographical Institute, Leipzig / Vienna 1900, p. 287
  26. ^ Paul Ehrenreich : Grierson Hamilton, the silent trade, a contribution to the early history of human intercourse. Edinburgh 1903 (book review). In: Journal of Ethnology , Volume 37, A. Asher & Co., Berlin 1905 p. 229
  27. ^ Lars Sundstrom: The Exchange Economy of Pre-colonial Tropical Africa. C. Hurst, London 1974, pp. 22, 25f, 31
  28. ↑ Moraes Farias, 1974 pp. 12, 14
  29. ↑ See Jairo J. Parada: Original Institutional Economics and New Institutional Economics: Revisiting the Bridges (or the Divide). In: Revista de Economia Institucional , Volume 5, No. 8, April 2005, pp. 43-61
  30. ↑ Shereen Ratnagar: Dealings with Strangers. In: Bulletin of the Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute, Volume 49, 1990, pp. 347-356, here pp. 347f
  31. ^ Douglass North : Institutions . In: Journal of Economic Perspectives, Volume 5, No. 1, Winter 1991, pp. 97-112, here pp. 98f
  32. ^ Karl Polanyi : The Great Transformation: The political and economic origins of our time, 1944; see. Ajit Karnik: Transformations, Then and Now: The Appeal of Karl Polanyi. In: Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 43, No. 48, November 29 - December 5, 2008, pp. 101-109
  33. ↑ Wilfred Dolfsma, Antoon Spithoven, 2008, pp. 519, 522
  34. ↑ Wilfred Dolfsma, Antoon Spithoven, 2008, pp. 522, 524
  35. ↑ See Johannes Kopp, Anja Steinbach (Ed.): Basic concepts of sociology. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2016, p. 334, keyword “exchange”. Development history in front of the "noisy" marketplaces, cf. Karin Knorr Cetina: The Market. In: ( Theory, culture and society, Volume 23, No. 2/3, 2006, pp. 151–156) Konstanzer-Online-Publikations-System , pp. 1–6, here p. 2
  36. ^ John A. Price, 1967, p. 67
  37. ↑ James Woodburn, 2016, p. 477
  38. ^ Roger Blench: The Silent Trade. At Igala version. In: The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, Volume 7, No. 3, 1982, pp. 59-61
  39. ↑ B. Marie Perinbam: Perceptions of Bonduku's Contribution to the Western Sudanese Gold Trade: An Assessment of the Evidence. In: History in Africa, Volume 13, 1986, pp. 295–322, here p. 303
  40. ^ Alula Pankhurst: The Logic of Barter in Ethiopian History and its Resilience in Contemporary Society: Case Studies in the Exchange of Food, Clothing and Household Goods. In: Journal of Ethiopian Studies, Volume 40, No. 1/2 ( Festschrift Dedicated in Honor of Prof. Richard Pankhurst & Mrs. Rita Pankhurst ) June – December 2007, pp. 155–179, citation p. 158
  41. ^ Diedrich Westermann : The Kpelle. A Negro tribe in Liberia. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1921, pp. 21-27, cited in: John A. Price, 1967, p. 70
  42. ↑ Guy Burrows: On the natives of the upper Welle District of the Belgian Congo. In: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Volume 28, No. 1/2, 1899, pp. 35–48, here p. 39
  43. ^ Emil Torday: On the Trail of the Bushongo. Seeley, Servie & Co., London 1925, pp. 57f; quoted from: John A. Price, 1967, p. 71
  44. ^ Philip James Hamilton Grierson, 1903, p. 19
  45. ↑ Willy Fröhlich: The African market system. In: Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Volume 72, Issue 4/6, 1940, pp. 234–328, here p. 238
  46. ↑ Ibn Battūta (1304–1368) provides the most precise description of the Arabs' trade relations, which reached into the far north of Europe, but not for silent trade . See Harry Thirwall Norris: Ibn Baṭṭūṭa's journey in the north-eastern Balkans. In: Journal of Islamic Studies, Volume 5, No. 2 ( Islam in the Balkans ) July 1994, pp. 209-220
  47. ↑ Richard Hennig: The Northern European fur trade in the older periods of history . In: Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Volume 23, Issue 1, 1930, pp. 1–25, here p. 16
  48. ↑ Richard Hennig, 1930, p. 21
  49. ↑ Richard Hennig, 1930, p. 22
  50. ↑ Wladimir Germanowitsch Bogoras, 1904, p. 54, translation by Richard Hennig, 1930, p. 22
  51. ↑ Wladimir Germanowitsch Bogoras : The Chukchee. The Jesup North Pacific Expedition, edited by Franz Boas . Volume 7. Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History, New York 1904, pp. 53f
  52. ^ Josef Kulischer: On the history of the development of the interest on capital. In: Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik / Journal of Economics and Statistics, Third Volume, Volume 18 (73), No. 3, 1899, pp. 305–371, here p. 323
  53. ^ Adolf Bastian : Geographical and ethnological pictures. Hermann Costenoble, Jena 1873, p. 341
  54. ^ Karl Andree : Geography of world trade. Volume 1 (1867), 2nd edition, J. Engelhorn, Stuttgart 1877, p. 14 (Chapter 2: The silent trade among wild peoples , p. 13-16)
  55. ^ Max Förster: "Stummer Handel" and Wielandsage. In: Alois Brandl, Heinrich Morf (Hrsg.): Archive for the study of modern languages ​​and literatures . 61st year, 119th volume, George Westermann, Braunschweig 1907, pp. 303–308
  56. ↑ Edith Marold: Blacksmith. In: Rolf Wilhelm Brednich (ed.): Encyclopedia of fairy tales. Volume 12, 2007, Col. 106f
  57. ↑ Max Förster, 1907, p. 304
  58. ↑ Quoted from Max Förster, 1907, pp. 306, 308
  59. ↑ Adalbert Kuhn : Legends, customs and fairy tales from Westphalia and some others, especially the neighboring areas of northern Germany. Volume 1, Brockhaus, Leipzig 1859, p. 78 ( Sagen vom Darmssen, No. 36)
  60. ↑ Dieter Veerkamp, ​​1955, pp. 189f
  61. ^ MJ Kister: The Market of the Prophet. In: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Volume 8, No. 3, January 1965, pp. 272–276, here p. 273
  62. ^ Michael Bonner: "Time has come full circle." Markets, fairs and the calendar in Arabia before Islam. In: Asad Q. Ahmed, Michael Bonner, Behnam Sadeghi (eds.): The Islamic Scholarly Tradition. Studies in History, Law, and Thought in Honor of Professor Michael Allan Cook. ( Islamic History and Civilization, Volume 83) Brill, Leiden 2011, pp. 13–48, here p. 23
  63. ↑ Michael Bonner: The Arabian Silent Trade, 2011, pp. 25f
  64. ↑ Michael Bonner: The Arabian Silent Trade, 2011, p. 36f
  65. ^ Günther Hartmann : Xingú. Among the Indians in central Brazil. Dietrich Reimer, Berlin 1986, pp. 60, 267
  66. ^ Adrian Cowell: The Tribe that Hides from Men. Bodley Head, London 1973
  67. ↑ James Woodburn, 2016, p. 490
  68. ^ Michael D. Olien: After the Indian Slave Trade: Cross-Cultural Trade in the Western Caribbean Rimland, 1816-1820. In: Journal of Anthropological Research, Volume 44, No. 1, Spring 1988, pp. 41-66, here p. 49
  69. ↑ Charles Napier Bell: Tangweera: Life and Adventures Among Gentle Savages. Edward Arnold, London 1899, pp. 266f
  70. ^ Richard Hennig, 1917, p. 269
  71. ↑ Ernst Tiessen: China, the empire of the 18 provinces. ( Länderkunde Library, Volume 10/11) Alfred Schall, Berlin 1902, p. 35; quoted from Richard Hennig, 1917, p. 270
  72. ↑ Anatolii Trekhsviatskyi: At the far edge of the Chinese Oikoumene: Mutual relations of the indigenous population of Sakhalin with the Yuan and Ming dynasties. In: Journal of Asian History, Volume 41, No. 2, 2007, pp. 131–155, here p. 145
  73. ↑ Jean-Baptiste Grosier: Description generale de la Chine, ou tableau de l'etat actuel de cet empire. Moutard, Paris 1785
  74. ^ Richard Hennig, 1917, p. 270
  75. ^ John A. Price, 1967, p. 71
  76. ^ Edwin Meyer Loeb: Sumatra: It's History and People. Publishing house of the Institute for Ethnology of the University of Vienna, Vienna 1935, pp. 281f
  77. ↑ Max Schmidt : The Primitive Races of Mankind: A Study in Ethnology. George G. Harrap, London 1926, p. 181
  78. ^ Henry Ogg Forbes : A naturalist's wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago. A narrative of travel and exploration from 1878 to 1883. Harper & Brothers, New York 1885, pp. 235f
  79. ↑ Edwin Meyer Loeb, 1935, p. 208
  80. ^ Fay-Cooper Cole: The Peoples of Malaysia. D. Van Nostrand Company, New York 1945, p. 28
  81. ^ John A. Price, 1967, p. 73
  82. ↑ Jesús Azcona: Critical examination of the more recent Negrito research with special reference to John M. Garvan . In: Anthropos , Volume 70, Issue 1/2, 1975, pp. 208-261, here pp. 222, 224
  83. ↑ Fritz Bornemann: JM Garvan's materials on the Negrito of the Philippines and PW Schmidt's notes on it. In: Anthropos, Volume 50, Issue 4/6, 1955, pp. 899–930, here p. 914
  84. ↑ Morice Vanoverbergh: Negritos of Northern Luzon (conclusion) . In: Anthropos , Volume 20, Issue 3/4, May – August 1925, pp. 399–443, here p. 431
  85. ↑ AG Harfield: Three 19th Century Military Authors of the Far East. In: Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, Vol. 57, No. 231, Fall 1979, pp. 144-153, here pp. 144-146
  86. ↑ Peter James Begbie: The Malayan Peninsula, Embracing Its History, Manners and Customs of the Inhabitants, Politics, Natural History & c. from its earliest records. Vepery Mission Press, Madras 1834, pp. 8f
  87. ↑ Erik Seidenfaden: Further Notes About the Chaubun, Etc. In: Journal of the Siam Society , Volume 13, No. 3, 1919, pp. 47-53, here p. 50
  88. ↑ Jesper Trier: The Khon Pa of Northern Thailand: An Enigma. In: Current Anthropology, Vol. 22, No. 3, June 1981, pp. 291-293, here p. 293
  89. ^ A. Sartorius Freiherrn von Waltershausen: The emergence of barter in Polynesia. In: Journal for Social and Economic History, Volume 4, Issue 1, 1896, pp. 1-66, here p. 50f
  90. ^ A. Sartorius Freiherrn von Waltershausen, 1896, p. 53
  91. ^ Jana Fortier: Sharing, Hoarding, and Theft: Exchange and Resistance in Forager-Farmer Relations. In: Ethnology, Volume 40, No. 3, Summer 2001, pp. 193-211, here p. 205
  92. ^ Clements R. Markham : Travels in Peru and India . John Murray, London 1862, pp. 403f
  93. ^ Robert Knox : An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon together With somewhat Concerning Severall Remarkable passages of my life that hath hapned since my Deliverance out of Captivity. London 1681 ( digitized version of the 1817 edition )
  94. ↑ Robert Knox, 1681, p. 117; quoted from James Woodburn, 2016, p. 482
  95. ↑ Dieter Veerkamp, ​​1955, p. 190