038840engo 2

The slave trade

and the Atlantic economies 1451-1870

77

slave trade became increasingly unprofitable due to long credits and bad

debts in the West Indies, the company made some frantic efforts to develop

trade in African products, not only with the coastal States but also with States

in the far interior. In March 1722 the company wrote to its officials on the

coast:

We have already in divers letters acquainted you with our thoughts concerning the

carrying on of our trade, and as the negroe branch of it grows every day less and less

profitable it is from the article of the home returns we see our chief advantage must

arise.^64

From then on, the company endeavoured to make its officials on the coast

open up trade with Africa along these lines. It suggested a number of ways

of doing so, from the development of company plantations and encouraging

Africans on the coast to cultivate sugar cane, cotton, indigo, tobacco and

other crops, to the questioning of slaves brought from the interior about the

opportunities for opening up trade with them in the products of the soil. It

was even suggested by the company's officials on the coast that ' from the notion

we have of the Whydah natives industry', the cotton grown on the company's

plantations and by the Africans could be sent to Whydah and

be worked up there into assortments proper for the West Indies and as you have

encouragement or profit by that branch of trade your honours slaving vessels will be

capable of taking on board such quantities as you shall please to direct from hence to

be wrought up at Whydah.^65

Thus, from the available records, it is clear that not only were the European
merchants aware of the possibilities of developing trade with Africa in the
products of the African soil, but also they made some efforts to develop such
trade. However, they all tended to see the trade in African products as subor-
dinate to the slave trade, which they were unwilling to give up in favour of
devoting full attention to the development of trade in the products of the soil.
Hence, the zeal and enthusiasm with which late-nineteenth- and twentieth-
century European merchants encouraged the development of trade in the
products of the African soil throuth trial and error were completely lacking
in the slave-trade period.
The explanation for the European merchants' attitude is that the devel-
opment of trade in products of the African soil would have been a slow process
compared with the development of trade in commodities produced in the Am-
ericas with African slave labour, and such development would have required a
mass withdrawal of factors from the exploitation of the American resources
and the shipping and marketing of the output. In other words, the exploitation