Title: African Participation and Resistance to the Trade · African Passages, Lowcountry Adaptations · Lowcountry Digital History Initiative
Headings: African Participation and Resistance to the Trade
African Participation and Resistance to the Trade
Content: Many of these traders acquired captives as a result of military and political conflict, but some also pursued slave trading for profit. Scholars provide various explanations for why African traders were willing to supply enslaved Africans to Europeans for the trans-Atlantic trade. By the early sixteenth century, slavery already played a major role in some western and central African societies, and contributed to maritime slave trade systems across the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. Subsequently, some historians argue that Europeans in the Atlantic took advantage of a pre-existing slave trade system in Africa to obtain labor for expanding plantation economies in the Americas. During the development of the trans-Atlantic trade, West and Central Africa consisted of diverse political and social structures, ranging from large empires to small states, and these groups often conflicted over internal politics as well as economic expansion. Manillas from Nigeria, commonly used as currency in West Africa during the trans-Atlantic slave trade, particularly by European traders on the coast purchasing enslaved people from African traders. As noted earlier, though ethnic identities were influential, these groups did not share a common African or black identity. Instead, they saw cultural and ethnic differences (such as Igbo , Ashanti , Mende, and Fulani) as social divisions. Frequent conflicts between these groups produced captives who could then circulate in the local slave trade system, and eventually the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Europeans also went to great lengths to influence African traders and leaders to provide enslaved Africans for the trans-Atlantic trade.