Summary report of the meeting of experts
on the African slave trade217From another point of view, the experts considered that it would be desirable
to analyse qualitatively the losses suffered. While it is already known
that those uprooted from Africa were generally the young people, too
little is known of their social level and the circumstances of their capture.
It is relatively easy today to map the main places where the slave trade was
carried on. Such a map shows areas whose relative importance varied with the
time and 'collecting areas' related to 'demand markets'. It was considered
that in this field it would be easy to produce fairly quickly a collective publica-
tion summarizing the results achieved to date for the whole of Africa between
the tenth and twentieth centuries.
The experts examined the question of the changes undergone by the
African political authorities owing to the slave trade. Divergent opinions
emerged on certain points.
The idea that the authorities may have shown organized opposition to the
slave trade has often been put forward in recent years. Recently, oral
traditions have been found which advance such a reason as one of the
basic causes of the emergence of the Empire of Mali. It was considered
that no study had yet been made of the forms taken by such authorities,
which varied greatly institutionally according to the region and the
society concerned.
The traditionally organized authorities, for example in Jolof, Cayor, Balol,
Songhai, Congo and Zimbabwe, were, in various ways and at various
times, confronted with the pressure of European or Muslim demands for
slaves. They were all upset by this pressure. They all suffered immediate
defeat, or such a transformation of their relations with the societies that
they represented that they became either the forced instruments of the
traders or the victims of less scrupulous political rivals. The slave trade
had an indisputably destructive effect on the oldest African authorities.
On the other hand, new forms of authority arose more or less directly out of
the slave trade. There were some kings who sought, through the formation
of docile groups of slaves, a means of domination without opposition,
contrary to traditional customs. Others created a privileged military
caste as a defence for their group, thus establishing a warrior class
supported by domestic slaves in greater numbers than formerly. In the
nineteenth century such authorities emerged all over Africa, even inland.
Subjected to the aggression of the European slave trade, the black
Muslims of West Africa reacted by encouraging the organization of
religious authorities whose primary concern was to defend the Islamic
communities by refusal to co-operate with the slave-traders, and also
by the use of force.
The political map of Africa was profoundly modified as a result of such move-
ments. In general neither the authorities nor the societies of the nineteenth