Introduction
The African continent had been connected to the rest of the world since ancient times, and by the XI century, it was deeply embedded in international trade. Its central geographical position allowed access to and from all over the Old World. Caravans with various cargo coursed across the Sahara Desert using a series of oases as stopovers along a trade route. Gold was the staple of lucrative trade throughout the Middle Ages, as many nations began to mint currencies and required the Sub-Saharan gold to produce coins (Harms, p. 127). The cultural and intellectual exchange with the Islamic Caliphate left its mark both on the African people, and the Mediterranean enjoyed bountiful trade.
To the East of Africa lies the Indian Ocean, on which ships could sail to India and the Far East, carried by regular and consistent winds. Africa’s most coveted exports to the East included gold, ivory, animal hides, ambergris, and slaves (Harms, p. 149). The eastward seafaring trade began as early as the I century AD on the Swahili Coast. By the XIII century, that stretch of coastlands enjoyed profitable trade with various other nations and developed into a sprawling urban society that adopted Islam. The trade cities of the Swahili coast acted as intermediaries between the inland empires and the nations of the Old World, serving as integral connections between the East and the West.
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
In the XV century, the trans-Atlantic trade began with Portugal, which sailed along Africa’s Western coast. Initially, these expeditions were hostile, but the Portuguese raiders and slavers were met with an overwhelming force of African archers. In 1456 peaceful trade negotiations began after Portuguese price concluded that armed conflict was too dangerous to be profitable. Subsequently, the European travellers sailed across the Atlantic to the Western African coast and sold trade goods to the local rulers and merchants in exchange for gold and slaves (Harms 172). That would mark the beginning of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which would become the economic backbone of the world for the coming centuries.
The slave trade attracted commerce to the Atlantic coast of Africa, which was previously largely inaccessible to the Europeans. The discovery of the Americas and the Caribbean has led to the establishment of colonies by the major European nations. Portugal was the first to begin transporting slaves to its colonies, and it held a monopoly on it, as well as dominated the sugar trade for a long time. Only in the XVII century did the Netherlands, England, and France catch up to Portugal. Sugar production was the primary driver for the trans-Atlantic slave trade, as it was a precious commodity, and its production was mainly situated in the European colonies in the New World. As the aboriginal population was unintentionally decimated by conquest and disease and European immigrants were not allowed to be exploited, the African captives became the primary labor force in the sugar market. By 1807, approximately 12,521,000 slaves were transported to the New World, out of which 1,818,000 perished during the journey.
The captives were sold to the European slave drivers by the local rulers and merchants. Slave trade had been an established practice since ancient times in all parts of the word. The captives brought agricultural and medical expertise to the colonies, with settlers adopting African crops and herbal remedies from the slaves, such as bananas, yams, and sorghum. The various religions of the African captives were also imported to the Americas, where they intertwined with Christianity and Islam. The local African population engaged in profitable trade with the Europeans, also adopting their customs and technology. Although brutal and inhumane, the slave trade facilitated cultural exchange and enrichment on a global scale.
War Capitalism
Even though slaves were bought and sold primarily through peaceful commerce, with European nations respecting the sovereign African nations, at least at first, the slave trade had an insidious and lasting effect on Africa. The people that were sold into slavery were primarily captured through military action, as was the custom in all parts of the world since ancient times. However, as the European demand for cheap labor rose, African nations were incentivized to wage war and capture citizens into slavery, both their neighbors’ and their own. Slave trade brought in cloth, firearms, and other valuable trade goods, and expansionist coastal nations such as Segu, Fuuta Jaloo, and Dahomey rose around it. They were diverse in structure and even state religion, and upholding their borders required trading with Europeans for artillery, gunpowder, and other essentials. Thus, slaves became the staple export, like gold and ivory, used to be several centuries prior. During the XVIII century, private trade companies were allowed to engage in the slave trade. The wars and raids along the coast were not enough to meet the demand, and the slave trade moved further into the continent.
On the Eastern coast, European nations engaged in outright military conquest, with Portugal capturing city-states of the Swahili Coast during 1505-1506. The Portuguese dominated the trans-Indian trade until Arabs ejected them from the Swahili coast from them in 1698. The Dutch established Cape Town in 1652, which became their foothold in Africa, and a colony. In the North, the Ottoman Empire conquered Egypt in 1517 and established provinces along the Mediterranean coast with the help of corsairs. Other nations began to encroach on African soil, and use it to engage in their own conflicts, while changing the African landscape through the barely sustainable slave trade.
World War and Decolonization
By the time of the Second World War, Africa was thoroughly colonized and industrialized, and there was no trace left of respect for African sovereignty. There was relatively little military action on the African soil, compared to Europe. During and immediately after the war, the colonial nations began to develop the colonies and build new infrastructure. There were substantial shifts in the African way of life as a result of these reforms, with the most impactful being the agricultural changes imposed by the outsiders. The Europeans had limited knowledge of the local conditions, and the agricultural reforms and projects they imposed on the colonies were, at times, devastating. The move to urban life gave rise to labor strikes, protests, and general anti-colonial sentiment.
After the Second World War, Europe needed to recover and rebuild its own cities, and the upkeep of the colonies was too expensive. Throughout the second half of the XX century, the majority of the African colonies were granted sovereignty. That process was motivated by rebellions, such as the Algerian War for Independence, which ended in 1962 after the French Government granted Algiers independence. The local colonial governments were vindictive, and the European settlers were aggressively resistant to African independence. Africa was quickly becoming sovereign, but the heritage of European meddling, militarism, and racial separatism would take its toll. Even after the nations of Africa gained their independence, their resources were sold off to their former rulers. The local leaders were stuck with the consequences of the European meddling with none of the support. The economic and military dominion of the Soviet Union and the United States would continue until the beginning of the XXI century and, arguably, even beyond.
Works Cited
Harms, Robert. Africa in Global History with Sources. W. W. Norton, 2018.