4.8. AFRICANS TAKE CENTER STAGE

IT IS ASSUMED THAT THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE CAUSED DEPOPULATION AND INSECURITY, DISTORTED SOCIETIES AND IMPOSED A WEAKNESS THAT HAS EXISTED EVER SINCE

In fact, most captured people were from communities based on subsistence agriculture. Since they had nothing to do with commerce, the slave raids had no effect on the economy; they might even encourage growth by liberating land that could then be used for commercial production.

The Atlantic slave trade did have an indirect effect, by reinforcing kingdoms whose revenues came from providing the captives and whose presence was a barrier to the producers' rise. The trade's end weakened those kingdoms, letting producers sweep away the states of the savannah and menace those of the forest. Powerful and dynamic, they blocked the colonialists' economic control, forcing them to emancipate the slaves. Without a labor force the producers' economy immediately collapsed.  

Historians involuntarily reflect the dependence on the West that followed. Emphasis on the Atlantic slave trade makes Africans victims, collaborators or opponents of the Europeans, playing secondary roles — the stars are white. The leading roles actually belong to the fervent, ruthless and extremely dynamic commercial producers.  

Believing that foreigners exercised hegemony for centuries

 implies that such a phenomenon is natural and almost eternal. 

Showing that in fact it has existed

 for only a few generations

points to its economic underpinnings

 and suggests that it will pass. 

Zoom

Painting of al-hajj Umar Tall on a Dakar wall.

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End of Part IV.

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Part V,
Using the same method for France