Title: Trade between Europe and Africa | Revealing Histories
Headings: Trade between Europe and Africa
Africa, the arrival of Europeans and the transatlantic slave trade
Trade between Europe and Africa
by Dr Emma Poulter

Content: Kingdoms such as Kumasi (former Ashanti capital) in present day Ghana and Dahomey and Benin in Nigeria grew large and prosperous from the money they made from trading enslaved Africans to Europeans. The only contact with Africa that European slave traders had during this period, was therefore conducted along the west African beaches. The basis of the relationship between Europeans and coastal Africans was purely one of commercial interest. In order to legitimate the large-scale sale of humans as commodities over a period of 300 years, any understanding of the cultures from which these enslaved Africans belonged were nullified in order to promote the idea of African peoples as ‘primitives'. As the historian James Walvin points out: 'European trading had a transforming impact on Africa. Europeans poured into Africa enormous volumes of commerce, the whole range of European manufactured goods and hardware, notably firearms, luxury goods (especially alcohol) and transhipped items from Asia (particularly textiles). This stimulated a widespread taste for imported goods which was satisfied in part by the exchange and transfer of slaves...'