IV.I. AFRICAN TRANSFORMATION RETHOUGHT

IT IS OFTEN ASSUMED THAT THE ATLANTIC SLAVE DESTROYED FLOURISHING CIVILISATIONS LEAVING THEM VULNERABLE TO CONQUEST 

*Take the esteemed French monthly "Le Monde diplomatique:" [The Atlantic trade] was the form of slavery that indisputably contributed most to the present situation of Africa. It permanently weakened the continent, led to its colonisation by the Europeans in the nineteenth century, and engendered the racism and contempt from which Africans still suffer.

-- La Dimension africaine de la traite des noirs, by M. Bokolo, 1998 / zoom

So whites dominate: If you click "African slave trades images" on the web, you will find dozens of pictures dealing with the Atlantic slave trade, a few with that to North Africa, and, except for lines of chained captives who could be going anywhere, almost none within Africa itself. 

For example:

     The Slave Trade by Auguste François Biard, 1840 / zoom

A dead captive lies in the center, but the light shines on the white doctor and white master.

City of London Slave Trade Money Trail Tour (no source named)

     The Transatlantic Slave Trade through the Eyes of an African Artist, at the Abomey palace in Benin, 2022 / zoom

There is nothing about Dahomey's ritual decapitation of slaves, or about the 300 sacrificed so as not to be fall into producers' hands.

Written history shows the same point of view. Contradictions concern the economically primitive coast, where slavery meant doing chores and strengthening the lineage, and where the massive raids that wracked the interior did not (yet) take place. When economic growth is unmistakable it is seen as "stability," that is, changelessness. 

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But if one compiles the facts explorers' give and compares them over time and space, it becomes clear that throughout the Sudanic Belt economic growth was steady.

 The Sudanic Belt is the light green band.

The Atlantic slave trade did affect the interior, however, since when it stopped toward 1850, far more violent and extensive raids by local forces wracked the area. Because that trade had distorted traditional social systems, it is said.

But why would those much more destructive raids coincide with theocracies whose dynamism was based on intensive use of captive labor and whose implacable opposition to Europeans made establishing colonial economies impossible after military conquest was assured?

Puzzles are often clues. 

Please read on.

End of this short section.

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Next section,
V.2.
Commerce strikes a communal society