1000 BCE to 1000 CE · Africanspan
Merchant societies with ranks and rituals made long distance trade safe
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Trade across the eastern half of the Congo basin ran on an institution usually translated as secret societies. Their members were the merchants who moved the goods, together with leading figures from the chiefdoms and small kingdoms the routes passed through. Women could belong as well as men. The societies stretched from the Lomami River east to Lake Tanganyika. Secret here meant roughly what it means among Masons: ranks a member advanced through, rituals marking each advancement, and observances reserved for those who had reached a given standing. The practical effect was security. A merchant travelling with cargo could call on hospitality and protection in each district he entered, because in every district there were members of his own society or of one allied to it. Goods therefore crossed a patchwork of independent polities, including polities at odds with each other. With no single state anywhere in the region, this was the machinery that made distance trade possible, and it was made of obligation.
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