The Slave Trade and Africa

More Africans arrived in the Americas than Europeans, greatly enriching the latter while decimating the African communities of the former.

Capturing and Shipping Slaves

Europeans got their slaves from ancient African slaving networks. Some slaves went north or east to Muslim or Hindu shippers, who took them to Indian Ocean ports. As the demand for slaves in the Americas rose, however, more and more slaves were sent to Africa’s west coast. Some 12 million slaves survived to arrive in the New World; many millions more perished on the journey or even before departing Africa. Most were men, thus slave populations in the New World could not reproduce readily enough to maintain populations.

In the interior, most slaves were captured by Africans operating secret societies, such as Ekpe. Ekpe ensured that slave capturers fulfilled their quotas and built networks extending deep into inner Africa. Once captured, slaves were transported to slave ports along the African coast. Here, many died of hunger and disease, waiting until a ship’s hold was filled. Once the ships set sail, diseases often spread, leading to mortality rates of 20 percent or so.

Africa’S New Slave-Supplying Polities

The slave trade profoundly altered African development. Africans who captured and sold slaves to European buyers profited greatly. For everyone else in Africa, the slave trade left terrible destruction. Regional leaders fought over control of the slave trade. Populations disappeared as men sporting firearms rounded up large numbers of people. Slaving tribes, enriched by the trade, bought more weapons and established their own plantations, worked by enslaved women.

The Asante used locally acquired gold to purchase weapons and dominate their neighbors before establishing a centralized state comprising almost all of present-day Ghana. Borders emerged. Roads led out of the capital in all directions to bring slaves back for trading. Based on the savanna, the Oyo people and their king employed large cavalry forces to engage the forest peoples and capture whole villages. These tribes profited and gained goods from the outside, while other Africans suffered terribly. Port cities harbored most wealth while the interior became impoverished. Africa’s population in the interior plummeted.

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