Palm Oil - History

History

Human use of oil palms may date as far back as 5,000 years; in the late 1800s, archaeologists discovered a substance that they concluded was originally palm oil in a tomb at Abydos dating back to 3,000 BCE. It is believed that Arab traders brought the oil palm to Egypt.

Palm oil from Elaeis guineensis has long been recognized in West African countries, and is widely used as a cooking oil. European merchants trading with West Africa occasionally purchased palm oil for use as a cooking oil in Europe, but palm oil was not able to supplant olive oil or butter, and culinary uses of palm oil remained rare outside West Africa until after commercial oil palm plantation development in non-African tropical regions. In the Asante Confederacy, state-owned slaves built large plantations of oil palm trees, while in the neighbouring Kingdom of Dahomey, King Ghezo passed a law in 1856 forbidding his subjects from cutting down oil palms.

Palm oil became a highly sought-after commodity by British traders, for use as an industrial lubricant for machinery during Britain's Industrial Revolution. Palm oil formed the basis of soap products, such as Lever Brothers' (now Unilever) "Sunlight" soap, and the American Palmolive brand. By around 1870, palm oil constituted the primary export of some West African countries, such as Ghana and Nigeria, although this was overtaken by cocoa in the 1880s.