impossible for Portuguese gunners to target. Occasionally, they were able
even to board and seize the Portuguese (and later, other European) ships.
That was the beginning of African resistance. It would prevent the
Portuguese from achieving the second of their objectives, establishing
large-scale sugar plantations, and so it encouraged the growth of European
colonization of the Americas when that became possible. Resistance spread
and grew. It was so effective that in 1456 the Portuguese began negotiating
treaties with the coastal city-states to get by trade what they could not win
by force of arms. But the Portuguese, like other nations, rarely learned from
experience, so a century later, in 1590, when they were trying to conquer
Angola, they suffered another stunning defeat by the Ndongo state. From
that debacle, the Portuguese were able to recover in 1615 only by recruiting
African mercenary soldiers. But by then, all along the coast, African states,
such as Calabar on the Bight of Bonny, were restricting the Portuguese and
other foreigners, refusing to allow them to build forts or even to reside
ashore.
Initially, as I have said, the trade with Europeans was not for slaves but
for gold, ivory, and pepper. The Portuguese were the leaders, but they were
soon followed by rival European states. The Dutch were the first rival. After
building a fort for themselves, they attacked the Portuguese and drove them
away from the Gold Coast. Then, being careful not to anger the natives,
they took over the partnerships the Portuguese had established. In turn, the
Dutch were followed by the British, the Swedes, and the Danes. By the late
seventeenth century, the Prussians and the French were also trying to gain
foothold in the gold country; and by the early years of the eighteenth cen-
tury, the 300-mile stretch of coast would be crowded with twenty-five
European forts.
These forts had originally been strongholds in which gold could be safely
stored. By the middle of the seventeenth century, the gold trade was being over-
taken by the slave trade; from being importers of slaves, the Akan people of the
Gold Coast had become exporters. So the buildings that had originally been
lockboxes were converted into prisons for captives. These prisons, or concen-
tration camps, were called barracoons. It was through them that most of the
10 million to 12 million Africans began the journey across the Atlantic. Roughly
half a million of them would become the ancestors of today’s Afro-Americans.
The African Roots of American Blacks 85