Ivory Trade

Ivory, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is the hard off-white modified dentine that composes the tusks of a tusked mammal (as an elephant, walrus, or narwhal). Dentine is a hard, dense, bone like tissue that forms most of a tooth or tusk. Elephant ivory is so highly valued, because of it's durability. Ivory can be carved easily without splintering.

White Gold
The East African ivory trade is an ancient one. The ivory produced by African elephants is soft, ideal for carving. Ivory is shown to be an important product in even the earliest records of trading activity on the East African coast. What really opened up the ivory trade, though, was the coming of the 19th century, when Arab traders and European explorers expanded their reaches southward into Africa.

Initially, the ivory trade was taken over by both the Arab traders taking over from the east coast and Egyptians that came down from the north and invaded Sudan and Equatoria. However, the establishment of protectorates by European explorers in the 1890s helped to stop the violent exploitation - at least the exploitation by Arabs and Egyptians. Ivory overtook all other items in trade value in the 19th century, though, even the trade value of slaves. The demand created in this window forever changed the market for ivory, and it's possible that it's even the reason that ivory has stayed such a popular commodity.

With a gestation period of about two years, elephants are slow to reproduce. One group of 17 elephants was enclosed in Addo Park in South Africa; in 27 years, they only reproduced 91 times. A human group of the same size could easily produce around 230 children in the same time period. This slow growth rate makes elephants extremely prone to over-harvesting.



Slavery
Slavery is directly related to the trade of ivory, because slaves were who transported the ivory to the coast. The Twenty Ten Theme blog says that in the 19th century people were concerned with the amount of slave trade, as a result of this they believed that by increasing ivory trade the demand for slaves would decrease. This somewhat failed because there was only one way to transport the "white gold." According to F.D. Blyth, England imports about 550 tons of ivory annually, and out of that 280 tons are run through other countries. In order for this amount of ivory to be transported there were many slaves needed at the time.

Edward A. Alpers describes slaves as the most important item in commerce. In the 19th century slaves produced 55 percent of the revenue. Slaves were at the bottom of the food chain, but were valued just as much as the ivory itself. In some situations colored individuals were caught and sold by people of their own race. Ivory and slaves were a packaged deal in a way because you couldn't get one without the other. In the Heart of Darkness the native people were enslaved for one reason only, to bring in ivory.

Slaves were not treated to the finest dinners for all the money they were sending back to the Empire. In the book Marlow mentions that he saw "black shapes." The people he saw didn't even look human anymore because they were so miss treated. The African slaves were beaten so much that their human characteristics were taken away. In this time period the world of the Africans was as developed as the English world there was no legal action that could be taken.

In 1847 slavery was abolished in Europe, slowing down the delievery process of ivory. Directly slowing the trade of slaves. Later in 1847 the last slaves that were being held in a Swedish colony were freed. In 1848 there was a treaty between Britian and Muscat to supress slave trade. At this point in time slavery had been banned almost everywhere in the world.

Sources:

Buja, Diana. "Diana Buja's Blog: Africa, The Middle East, Agriculture, History and Culture."Abolishing Slave Trade by Enhancing Ivory Trade, 19th Century. Word Press, 26 Mar 2011. Web. 16 Mar 2014. .

Alpers, Edward. Ivory & Slaves in East Central Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975. Web. .

. Profound Changes. N.p., 03 Aug 1999. Web. 16 Mar 2014. <http://www.biothinking.com/applysd/profound.htm

CHARITY - how ivory trade/ivory ties into HoD


Ivory is a huge object of symbolism in this book. It symbolizes death and greed in the Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

This book starts out as four sailors take refuge at a small cove off a river. The main character, Marlow, goes on to tell stories of his last excursion involving a man named Kurtz and ivory.

Ivory is the main reason Marlow went on his last adventure/job. Kurtz was a middle manager bringing in ivory for a “Belgian” company. His entire job depended on how much ivory he could bring in. Kurtz often times would disappear for long periods of time to different tribes along the river, befriends them and then convinces them to help him find ivory. Ivory then became Kurtz obsession, after spending so much time alone or with these tribes, he began to obsess over how much ivory he could get his hands on. His obsession drove him to do the most horrendous thing a person could do, threaten a loved one.

“He declared he would shoot me unless I gave him the ivory and then cleared out of the country, because he could do so, and had a fancy for it, and there was nothing on earth to prevent him killing whom he jolly well pleased." (Conrad, 54). This quote shows how Kurtz was willing to kill his most faithful companion in order to get more ivory. It was his obsession and it created a monster of a man.

Ivory was a symbolism of death as well in this book. First off, elephants and other large mammals whose body could produce ivory was killed in order to get more of it. However, Kurtz was dying because of his drive for more ivory. Ivory was used to symbolize Kurtz downfall as well.

“I could see the cage of his ribs all astir, the bones of his arms waving. It was as though an animated image of death carved out of old ivory had been shaking its hand with menaces at a motionless crowd of men made of dark and glittering bronze.” (Conrad, 57). This quote is describing Kurtz’s broken dying body, and how it literally is becoming the thing he has made his main obsession.

Ivory was one of the most frequent symbols seen throughout this book. It was a symbol that most people might have seen it as hope and purity, but instead was used as the opposite. Ivory is associated with the main focal point of this story; many of the obstacles and trials faced in the book was either caused or associated with ivory. It is a very important element that helps this story move along.

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Clayton: Prestwick House, 1918. Print.

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