The slave trade within the African continent 151Mediterranean or Asian goods. 'The people of Lemlem', writes Edrisi, 'are
perpetually being invaded by their neighbours, who take them as slaves...
and carry them off to their own lands to sell them by the dozen to the merchants.
Every year great numbers of them are sent off to the Western Maghreb'.^3 Arab
traders also took many captives from East Africa and sold them in Arabia,
Iraq and as far afield as China. In both cases, however, the number of slaves
was actually comparatively small. The traders did not have the transport to
carry their human cargoes in bulk. The trans-Saharan crossing precluded the
purchase of great numbers of slaves. Arab authors state almost unanimously
that it was chiefly women who were purchased to fill the Maghrebian emirs'
harems. The Arabs were in fact drawn to the area mainly by gold, regarded at
the time as the 'blacks' main commodity'.^4 Slaves were only used as currency
in very large transactions. Otherwise cowrie shells and animals were quite
adequate for barter purposes.
Between 1441 and the middle of the nineteenth century, the expanding
slave trade ultimately became Black Africa's only link with Europe and Am-
erica. The establishment in the New World of European sugar, cotton and
tobacco plantations, as well as mining for precious metals, gave rise to a
demand for an abundant, cheap manpower force which could not be met by
either the Amerindians or the European workers. The answer was the Black
Africans, who were regarded as good farmers. What is more, they would have no
difficulty in adapting to the tropical climate. Once they had been enslaved and
transported to America, they would find it easy to work the settlers' estates.
The constant rise in demand led the African dealers to set up well-
organized trade structures to keep the Europeans supplied in slaves.
The true beginnings of the Atlantic slave trade coincided with the collapse
of the last great African Empire, the Songhai. The breaking up of the land into
a number of kingdoms and small political divisions at the tribal or small
village community level, many of which were hostile to one another, favoured
the expansion of the slave trade. Ambition and vanity caused the chiefs to
turn on one another. Acute jealousies and sudden retaliation by the defeated
led to incessant warfare and raiding. War thus became the simplest means of
procuring slaves. After the battle, the victorious side, not content to capture
those who had been unable to flee, would penetrate into the defeated tribe's
territory and seize captives from amongst the people living in the border areas.
Free men who were taken as slaves and were able to pay a ransom were gen-
erally freed in exchange for two good-quality slaves.^5
With the growth of the slave trade, some chiefs finally lost all sense of
responsibility. Claiming that some members of a village had said something
against them, they would not hesitate to order the guilty parties' village to
be razed to the ground and the inhabitants reduced to slavery.^6 In the dead of
night the village would be encircled by the chief's warriors. At dawn the attack