The movement of millions of Africans to the New World, during a period of roughly four hundred years, was by any standards a major historical phenomenon, with long-term international consequences. To assess these consequences, we need to look at the three corners of the Atlantic’s “triangular trade”. First, what effects did the trade (and the loss of so many people) have on Africa itself? Second, how important was the trade to the development of the Americas? Third, what was the impact of the trade on Europe? Could Britain, the first “industrial nation”, have industrialised without the slave trade?

The Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on Africa
Perhaps the hardest of these areas to address is the impact on Africa, because of the lack of reliable statistical information. Historians’ estimates of the effects of the slave trade range widely, from those who see the trade as fundamental to the problems that blighted Africa both then and later, to those who see it as only a marginal factor in Africa’s historical development.

Nevertheless, it is possible to make a number of observations. Whatever the African impact of the Atlantic trade, it was at its greatest in West Africa, which supplied the largest number of captives, although at the height of the trade many other parts of Africa were also used as a source for slaves. In addition, the trade had a disproportionate impact on the male population, because male slaves were the most sought after in the Americas; it is thought that roughly two-thirds of the slaves taken to the New World were male, only one-third female.

Powerful Africans who engaged in slave dealing could make a sizeable profit from the trade, especially in view of the relatively high prices that European merchants were prepared to pay for African slaves. By the eighteenth century, slaves had become Africa’s main export. But whether the ordinary people of Africa felt a significant benefit is far more doubtful. It seems that the period between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries was a time of economic stagnation for Africa, which fell further and further behind the economic progress of Europe as the years passed by. Little wonder, then, that some historians interpret this as a sign that the Atlantic trade was seriously retarding Africa’s economic development.

The possible negative consequences of the trade were not only economic. Politically, as African rulers organised the capture of slaves, traditions were created of brutal and arbitrary intervention by the powerful in people’s lives. Meanwhile, as rival African rulers competed over the control of slave-capture and trading, wars could result. On both counts, the Atlantic trade badly affected the political landscape of Africa, and set disturbing precedents for the future.

Admittedly, not all the consequences of slavery for Africa can be attributed specifically to the Atlantic slave trade. Before, during, and after the era of the Atlantic trade, African rulers were capturing slaves for their own use, and for sale to the Middle East. According to Manning, between 1500 and 1900, while twelve million captives were sent on the Atlantic slave ships, eight million were kept as slaves within Africa, and six million were sent as slaves to the Middle East and other “Oriental” markets. But the Atlantic trade marked a substantial expansion of the African slave system, and should still be seen as responsible for many of its evils.

    next > Page 1 of 3

Comments