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The slave trade

and the Atlantic economies 1451-1870

73

demand for European goods—worked powerfully toward the institutionalization of

the system. Whether making wars in order to capture prisoners for sale or defending

themselves against neighbours with similar ambitions, coastal and near-coastal rulers

found firearms indispensable to their security. The firearms did much to fasten power-

ful rulers, as well as weak ones, into a trading system which required the sale of

captives.^49

Of central and eastern Africa it is said :

The opportunity for gaining durable material wealth from the slave trade obviously

encouraged rulers to expand their possessions and increase the number of people

over whom they ruled. Such expansion often took place by warfare which initially

provided prisoners of war, a ready source of slaves, and subsequently provided new

subjects on whom taxes could be levied in the form of men. By expanding his fief the

ruler also acquired a position of being the final arbiter in judicial matters. This position

brought the ruler export slaves through a manipulation of the judicial processes. Thus,

for various reasons, the gains to be derived from the slave trade provided one of the

sharpest incentives to imperial expansion in Central Africa.^60

On the other hand, while the European and Arab slave merchants may not

have openly encouraged inter-State wars in Africa, apart from Portuguese

military activities in Angola, their willingness to loan firearms to warring groups

in return for war captives may have played an important role among African

States in reaching decisions to make war or peace. For example, a European

slave merchant, resident on the Guinea coast, wrote to his co-partner in Great

Britain in August 1740:

We have been greatly disappointed in our trade. Ever since the Fanteens went to
engage Elmena no thinking man that knew the coast could have expected otherwise;
all the trading paths were stopped; nothing going forward but thieving and panyar-
ring; had the said Fanteens become conquerors it's certain we should for our own
parts have got eight hundred or one thousand slaves at pretty easy terms; but as they
came back repulsed and were even forced to run away, we have suffered to be sure
considerably, for I credited the headmen pretty largely to secure their interest on their
return that I might have the preference of what slaves they took in the war.^51

Earlier on this same merchant had written :

General Shampoo is encamped at the head of the River Vutta [Volta] with 20 thousand
men ready to engage Dahomee King of Whydah ; the said king has an army equal to
the other's, encamped within two miles of each other. On the success of the former we
have a large interest depending and until that battle is decided in some shape or
another there are no trade to be expected. Young in the Africa I am loading him with
a proper assortment of goods and to dispatch him with all expedition for Little Popo
to attend the result of the Battle.^52