From Venice to East Africa: History, Uses and Meanings of Glass Beads

The link between Europe and the rest of the world is often studied with Europe being the consumer of luxury commodities and Africa, America and Asia being the producers of exotic goods. As a consequence, very few studies have focused on Africans as consumers and very little attention has been paid to the ways in which consumer patterns in Africa were modified by the import of foreign goods, particularly by those commodities which were used as a means of exchange, like glass beads. The aim of this article is to analyse the commodity chain of glass beads, focusing on the production in Venice and Murano and the consumption in nineteenth-century East Africa. Even if Venetian glass beads arrived in East Africa on board the first Portuguese ships in the sixteenth century, my analysis will focus on the nineteenth century. During this period, a huge increase in the trade relations between East Africa and the rest of the world developed owing to the expansion of the ivory demand coming from Europe and Asia. This led to a deeper involvement of the regions of the interior of present-day Tanzania into the world economy and to a huge increase in the import of foreign goods, like glass beads. The first part of this article will provide a brief history of the glass bead production in Venice and in the Isle of Murano, with special reference to the connection between Venice and the foreign markets. The second part will set the historical context in which glass beads were traded and used while focusing on the different meanings that they acquired in Europe and in Africa. The third part will then concentrate on the use of glass beads in the societies of the interior of present-day Tanzania; attention will be paid both to the monetary functions of beads and to the meanings that they acquired once they had abandoned the economic circles. The final section will then explore how the demand for glass beads changed and how important East Africa was for the Venetian production. The main purpose of this article is to propose a biographical approach to the history of glass beads and to draw attention to the different functions and meanings that this commodity acquired in the historical, cultural and economic contexts in which it was used. The resulting picture will reveal how Africa was not only a region where luxury goods were produced, but also a place where European commodities were imported to satisfy a growing demand for luxury goods.