Africa and the European Slave Trade

Many developments took place in sub-Saharan Africa from the 15th through the 18th centuries. Major regional kingdoms were established in several sectors. Bantu immigration to the south persisted, spreading agriculture. Conversions to Islam increased in the area below the Sahara, particularly in the 18th century, and European adventurers and traders made their first contacts with the vast African subcontinent.

Because many African societies lacked writing and instead expressed their values and history through art and oral traditions, during this period many key political and cultural developments were not recorded using conventional historical records. Documentation focuses on the European impact, which was not the only major current of the period; and it focuses on European, not African, perceptions. This poses unusual dangers for the student of early modern African history in terms of incompleteness and distortion.

The European arrival, however, was a major new ingredient in African history. Because most Europeans worked through local traders and set up only small outposts of their own, their cultural impact before 1800 was limited. Even their political impact was highly localized, except in a few regions such as the Dutch-held Cape region in the south. African rulers used European funds and armaments in their own political rivalries, and while Westerners were often on the stage, they did not yet write the script. Direct penetration into the interior was rare. However, Europe's vast appetite for slaves, intended for use in the Americas, did have huge consequences for many regions, reducing population and economic vitality despite the collaboration of many African rulers and traders in the process.

The three documents I would like you to read (you can read them by clicking here) range from the 15th to the 18th century and suggest aspects of European-African interaction. They are taken from the east coast, where European activity was less intense than in parts of the west. Coastal settlements along the Indian Ocean already participated in an extensive trading network dominated by Arabs. The Islamic religion had won many adherents, and Swahili, a written language, had developed well before the 18th century.

The first document, written around 1520 in Arabic, offers an unusual opportunity to glimpse directly into African reactions to the first Portuguese explorers, colored of course by the Muslim author's hostility to Christianity. The second document, drawn from the same region on the coast around the port city of Kilwa Kisiwani, is a characteristic slave-trade treaty drawn up between a French adventurer and the Sultan of Kilwa. Around the same period a French ship's captain in the slave trade offered a businessman's approach to human trade, in which the view of slaves as profit-and-loss commodities comes through clearly.


While the documents sketch European activities in the period, they also allow some evaluation of diverse African reactions and the reasons why some Africans believed they profited from Western ventures. When you have finished reading the documents, I would like you to consider and discuss the following: Why might African reactions to Europeans vary? What probable causes differentiated the 1520 Arabic account from the King of Kilwa's response to European demands? What were the dominant motives of the French slave trader? What problems did he report and how did he suggest they be resolved? Based on this account, what were the main features of early European colonialism in Africa? What do the documents suggest about the impact of the slave trade on Africa and Africans in the early modern period? Your thoughts...