22 Atlantic African, American, and European Backgrounds to Contact, Commerce, and Enslavementbecame an essential component in the development of a
number of Euro- American societies.
While European nations were vying for power in the
Atlantic, a number of expansionist kingdoms emerged in
Atlantic Africa during the 15th and 16th centuries, which
played fundamental roles in the slave trade. While the “in-
tertribal” warfare model was once the dominant theory in
explaining the rapid expansion of slave-trading activities
in Atlantic Africa, there was perhaps more confl ict be-
tween European powers than between African kingdoms
and city-states. Nevertheless, the very nature of military
expansion and the tributary system in Atlantic Africa
meant the creation of a large number of slaves for purchase
by European buyers. Principally, the kingdoms of Asante,
Dahomey, Benin, Kongo, and Futa Jallon—among many
others—expanded signifi cantly, creating political and so-
cial ripples that displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
At the same time, European traders were importing guns
and horses, which further contributed to military expan-
sion and displacement.
At least during the early years of this trade relation-
ship between European merchants and African traders,
there existed a partnership based on equality and balance.
European slave raiding undoubtedly occurred, but it was
not the primary way by which enslaved Africans were
acquired. Instead, Europeans typically followed African
protocol and obeyed African laws, paid rent for their use
of coastal slave fortresses, and even paid tribute to coastal
kingdoms. In certain cases, European merchants had their
goods confi scated and lost trade privileges if they violated
protocols established by coastal polities. In other cases, Eu-
ropeans lost their lives in retaliation for raiding for African
slaves. In this regard, one of the many locations of power
of the slave trade resided in Atlantic Africa among African
kingdoms. Th us, they played a much larger role in the cre-
ation of the Atlantic World and the formation of the Atlan-
tic slave trade than previously understood.
One pattern that shaped African-European relations
was the signifi cant amount of resistance to the continua-
tion of the slave trade mounted by certain Atlantic Afri-
can polities and even enslaved Africans themselves. Th is is
one level of agency that is oft en understated or ignored by
scholars of the Atlantic slave trade. Resistance to the slave
trade occurred on a number of diff erent levels: the 400 or
more instances of shipboard revolts; the thousands of sui-
cides during the Middle Passage; the formation of escapedproduction of tobacco caused by the ever-increasing num-
ber of tobacco planters drove down the price of the once
lucrative crop.
Th e problems inherent in the indentured servant sys-
tem were magnifi ed in the 1640s when, for no clear reason,
a higher percentage of white servants survived their terms
of indenture to accept their freedom dues. Th is required
immediate reaction by the Tidewater elite who moved to
eliminate land as a portion of the freedom dues, purchased
most of the arable land, and extended the term of indenture
with the hope that more servants would die before becom-
ing free. While they successfully stunted the creation of
more competition, the Tidewater planting elite also man-
aged to destroy their most reliable source of labor. While
the notion of land ownership had appealed to the English
poor, compelling many thousands to come to the Chesa-
peake to labor in the tobacco fi elds, this incentive was gone
and other North American colonies off ered better eco-
nomic opportunities and higher living standards. Begin-
ning in 1640, a slow but decided shift toward racialized
slavery occurred in the Chesapeake colonies, which culmi-
nated in the legalization of slavery by the late 1660s and the
increasing importation of enslaved Africans. Th e intense
rivalry between several European powers—Spain, Por-
tugal, the Netherlands, France, and England—convulsed
both sides of the Atlantic in a series of imperial confl icts. A
number of colonies changed hands in the Americas and a
number of trading posts and fortresses were captured and
recaptured by a long line of European interests. Between
the 1590s and the 1670s, Portugal was integrated into the
Spanish Crown; northern European pirates were attack-
ing Iberian possessions throughout the Atlantic; the Dutch
waged long-standing wars against the Spanish, the Portu-
guese, and the English; the French gained a sizable foothold
in the Americas with their colonization of the western half
of Santo Domingo; and the English founded several North
American and Caribbean colonies in direct opposition
to Spanish territorial claims. In the decade between 1637
and 1647 alone, the Dutch West India Company claimed
the Portuguese possessions of Elmina, Príncipe, Angola,
and São Tomé through military conquest. Even though the
Dutch could manage to control Angola only from 1641 to
1648, they had eff ectively replaced the Portuguese as the
dominant European power in Africa by the mid-1640s.
Th is complex web of interconnections within the Atlantic
World, fostered by trade, international rivalry, and war,