Shell money still important

Shell money or tabu is still a significant part of Tolai economy, Professor Richard Salisbury says in his book Vunamami, reviewed below.

He estimates there are 1,730,000 fathoms of shell money, each fathom containing some 300 shells, currently in circulation in the Rabaul area.

He said although most Europeans saw shell money as a quaint survival that would shortly disappear, it was in fact “the mainspring, not only of inter-Tolai trade and business enterprise, but of a critical area of entrepreneurship in Tolai society. . . . Since the 1880’s the Roman Catholic Mission has inveighed against the practice as being harmful to ‘habits of frugality and saving’ which would lead ‘to improvements in family life’. The German Government prohibited the use of shell money in trade by Europeans. Modem administrators try to discourage it by tolerant laughter. And some anthropologists continue to use 19th century concepts of ‘primitive money’ in relation to tabu, and predict its demise, as other writers have done for 60 years. The Tolai themselves avoid European scorn by concealing most tabu transactions,”

The largest source of shell for the tabu is the eastern Nakanai coast of New Britain.