NEFTA BAPTISTE U6.

The transatlantic trade in Africa up to 1800 benefitted the local elite but undermined West African society and economy. To what extent do you agree with this statement?
In my opinion the transatlantic trade in Africa up to 1800 did indeed benefit the local elite but only to the extent that they gained wealth and military supremacy when they traded Africans for weapons and luxury goods. However I believe that this trade did indeed undermine West African society and economy. An assessment of the impact of the transatlantic trade in Africans must begin by asking three questions. How many people were actually taken across the Atlantic between 1450 and 1870? Did the overall demographic impact of the slave trade depopulate West Africa? Since there was a preferential demand for male slave how did this affect the agricultural and industrial workforce of West African societies, especially where the division of labour however rudimentary was based on sex-role differentiation. According to some scholars including Walter Rodney, the estimated number of Africans taken as slaves to the New World was between ten and fifteen million. The implications of depopulation for Africas socioeconomic development were many and varied: the development of division of labour was retarded; the growth of internal long distance trade was stifled and the diversification of commodity production, suffered tremendous setbacks. African slave dealers -whether they were traditional rulers, like those in the Bights of Benin and Biafra, or private traders, developed and expensive and ostentatious taste for European luxury items. This one might argue retarded the development of an African industry of refined luxury goods. Also agriculture and agro-based manufacturing activities, which offered employment to most persons in West Africa, suffered serious neglect during this period as a result of activities related directly or indirectly to the slave trade. In the first place, depopulation meant that fewer persons were now available to sustain and manage this labour- intensive sector of the economy. It is also important to note that those who were enslaved- men and women- fell between the ages of fifteen and forty five years. In all societies these persons constituted the most virile and productive members of the workforce. Also given the preferential demand for male slaves by the European slavers, the workforce in these slaveproducing societies became female dominated.

The shortage of men had the effect of dislocating the existing pattern of division of labour based on sex-role differentiation within the family in the agricultural and manufacturing sectors of these West African societies. The insecurity that prevailed in these societies was also a huge disincentive for most cultivators who feared that they might not be around to reap their crops. In some instances security concerns compelled cultivators to migrate to less arable and obscure hilly territories in order to escape kidnapping by the slave raiding warriors. The result of all this was a decrease in agro-based commodity production for both the local and long-distance markets. The late eighteenth century food shortages in Dahomey, for example, was the penalty that the state had to pay for neglecting agricultural production. Another negative effect of the trans-Atlantic trade on Africa was that the dialectic connection between the export market for captive slaves and the socio-political structures evolved in these states meant that the dominant ruling class no longer had an interest in imperial expansion for the sole purpose of administering and exploiting the natural resources of their vassal states under peaceful conditions. Instead they were more interested in forcefully removing conquered subjects for sale to the Europeans. This gave rise to an endemic and vicious cycle of hostilities that ruined inter-state relations in West Africa. Therefore with inter-sate relations ruined, inter-regional trade within West Africa suffered a severe blow. Also laws, which had previously existed to protect the people, were now punitively used to entrap litigants who were subsequently sold into slavery. In some cases false charges of stealing, adultery and witchcraft, among many others were brought against the most vulnerable and poor members of society, who may not be able to engage in costly litigations with their accusers, in order to have them convinced and sold into slavery. Therefore by implication the social and judicial institutions, which had been designed to encourage peaceful coexistence and nation building, became the very instruments for inflicting pain, terror and distress on the weak and helpless members of society. When we take all these things into consideration it clearly shows that the Trans-Atlantic trade in Africa up to 1800 undermined West African society and economy and also benefitted the local elite in the process.