Title: Africans who played an active role in the Transatlantic slave trade - Face2Face Africa
Headings: Africans who played an active role in the Transatlantic slave trade
Africans who played an active role in the Transatlantic slave trade
Content: The slave trade contributed to the expansion of the most powerful West African kingdoms such as Mali and Ghana, as the business became one of the main sources of foreign exchange for many years. ‒‒:‒‒
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In a 2010 article published in the New York Times, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. said: “ Slaves were the main export of the kingdom of Kongo; the Asante Empire in Ghana exported slaves and used the profits to import gold. Queen Njinga, the brilliant 17th-century monarch of the Mbundu, waged wars of resistance against the Portuguese but also conquered polities as far as 500 miles inland and sold her captives to the Portuguese.” Britain banned the slave trade in 1807 and the United States later abolished it in 1865. Brazil was the last to ban it in the Caribbean in 1888 marking the end of the barbarism inflicted on men, women and children of colour and their descendants. There were recorded protests by West African chiefs and traders after the abolition of slave trade. According to Nigerian author Tunde Obadina: “ When Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807, it not only had to contend with opposition from white slavers but also from African rulers who had become accustomed to wealth gained from selling slaves or from taxes collected on slaves passed through their domain.