Title: BBC - History - British History in depth: Africa and the Transatlantic Slave Trade
Headings: Africa and the Transatlantic Slave Trade
Africa and the Transatlantic Slave Trade
Beginnings
Enslavement and racism
West Africa before European intervention
African enslavers
African resistance
The African Diaspora
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Content: In the areas where slavery was not practised, such as among the Xhosa people of southern Africa, European captains were unable to buy slaves. On the African side, the slave trade was generally the business of rulers or wealthy and powerful merchants, concerned with their own selfish or narrow interests, rather than those of the continent. At that time, there was no concept of being African. Identity and loyalty was based on kinship or membership of a specific kingdom or society, rather than to the African continent. Rich and powerful Africans were able to demand a variety of consumer articles and in some places even gold for captives, who may have been acquired through warfare or by other means, initially without massive disruption to African societies. However, by the mid-17th century the European demand for captives, particularly for the sugar plantations in the Americas, became so great that they could only be acquired through initiating raiding and warfare. There is no doubt that some societies preyed on others to obtain captives in exchange for European firearms, in the belief that if they did not acquire firearms in this way to protect themselves, they would be attacked and captured by their rivals and enemies who did possess such weapons. Top
African resistance
However, some African rulers did attempt to resist the devastation of the European demand for captives. As early as 1526, King Afonso of Kongo, who had previously enjoyed good relations with the Portuguese, complained to the king of Portugal that Portuguese slave traders were kidnapping his subjects and depopulating his kingdom. King Agaja Trudo of Dahomey not only opposed the trade, but even went as far as to attack the forts that the European powers had constructed on the coast.