The slave trade
and the Atlantic economies 1451-187071that would have led to internal colonization, taming the forests, and greater
population concentration. Internal colonization would have led to interregional
differentiation of economic functions arising from climatic differences, diffe-
rential natural-resource endowments, and differing population densities. The
taming of the forests and greater population concentration would have led
to a reduction in distribution costs by lowering costs of transportation. All
this would have stimulated interregional trade and therefore the growth of
production for the market and all the institutional developments associated
with that growth. But because the ratio of population to land remained
extremely low, population remained largely dispersed, the forests remained
untamed, extensive, rather than intensive, cultivation was encouraged, and
subsistence production and local self-sufficiency remained the rule. Because
land was never a scarce resource no market for land developed and agriculture
generally remained uncommercialized. The land-tenure system which became
hardened under the conditions produced by the slave trade is one of those
institutions inimical to the growth of capitalism which took root in Africa as
a result of the external slave trade. In most of Africa, this system if often talked
about as if it were something inherently African, without it being realized that
the persistence of the system has its history in the slave trade, which prevented
the growth of demand for land that would have made it a scarce and, therefore,
marketable resource. The present development of a market for urban land in
many African countries, following the pressure of population in the urban
centres, shows clearly why a land market (urban and agricultural) failed to
develop in much of Africa many years ago. In the absence of a large population,
the existence of a very great and growing external demand for African products
that were land-intensive in production would gradually have reduced land to
a scarce and marketable resource and hence led to the commercialization of
agriculture and the whole rural economy. This was what the export of raw
wool and wollen cloths did for British land tenure and agriculture in the six-
teenth century and after; what the export of foodstuffs to the West Indies did
for the agriculture of the middle and northern colonies of North America in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and what the export of cocoa is
doing for the western State of Nigeria.^45 But, as we shall show later, the oppor-
tunity cost of the slave trade made impossible the growth of such an external
demand during the period of that trade. Dr Hopkins suggests that, in the
absence of population growth, technical innovation would have encouraged
the growth of market activities by reducing production costs.^46 This is rather
a case of putting the cart before the horse since, historically, the growth of
market activities preceded technical innovation. This is to say that, historically,
technical innovation was not an autonomous variable, having always been
stimulated by demand pressures, although in its turn, it later stimulated the
growth of market activities.