Currencies of the Swahili World

This is the first volume to explore the Swahili in chronological perspective and it is part of the Routledge Worlds Series. Each chapter offers a wealth of detail on an aspect of the region's past. The result is a book that allows both specialist and non-specialist readers to explore the diversity of the Swahili tradition, how Swahili society has changed over time, as well as how our understandings of the region have shifted since Swahili studies first began. The chapter reconstructs the history of the currencies used in the Swahili world. The first part explores coins issued by Swahili towns from the eighth until the sixteenth century. The second part focuses on commodity currencies that were used in the interior regions of eastern Africa, especially after the development of the international ivory trade since the early nine- teenth century. The third part looks at the imported coins that started to be used in the Swahili world after the arrival of the Europeans in the fifteenth century, and ends with the introduction of colonial money in the late nineteenth century.