African History: A Very Short Introduction by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Africa, General, Historiography, Social History, Political Science, Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, Social Science, Archaeology, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9780192802484
Google: fXgRDAAAQBAJ
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2007-03-22T18:29:42.158332+00:00

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14. A ‘coffle’ of slaves (from the Arabic kafila, ‘caravan’) observed on ist

16 March 1850 chained together outside the Portuguese fort at Ouidah (in present-day Bénin), from F. E. Forbes, Dahomey and the an H

Dahomans (London, 1851)

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Africa’s modern ‘underdevelopment’? Then there is the question of the relationship between the overseas trade and the institution of slavery within Africa. Did the demand from overseas tap into existing systems of servitude? Or was slavery in Africa caused by –

or at least transformed and intensified by – overseas demand? Finally, in what ways did the slave trade reshape regional political landscapes? What was the role of Africans themselves in the making of Atlantic commerce?

These are only some of the more important lines of inquiry. There is no space here even to summarize the range of possible answers, so let’s step back and think about them in the context of our theme of Africa in world history. All of these issues to some extent turn on the problem of ‘getting the balance right’ between the internal and the external, between the agency of Africans and the impact of global 80

forces. The slave trade was barbaric and exploitative, a crime against humanity. But by emphasizing these features, the tendency has been to portray Africa and Africans simply as passive victims. In an important work of revision, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, John Thornton argues that far from simply being victims, Africans very much held their own in the balance of power in the Atlantic in the era of the slave trade, controlling the terms of trade and dominating exchanges on the West African coast.

This argument has been controversial. Not because of the issue of Africans selling other Africans: there is no doubt that with only a few partial exceptions, notably Portuguese Angola, Europeans were restricted to the coast throughout the history of the trade, purchasing their slaves from powerful African middlemen. Indeed, slave testimonies reveal that it was common for captives to pass Afric

through the hands of multiple owners as they moved down the a in th

elaborate commercial networks to the grim barracoons and e w

dungeons of the coastal ports. Here we can see the most obvious o

historical example of Bayart’s concept of ‘extraversion’: of powerful rld

African states and individuals forging economic links with outside forces by exploiting weaker peoples around them. Rather, the problem is that by stressing African agency, it becomes all too easy to lose sight of the fact that the majority of Africans involved in the making of the Atlantic world were victims.

Africa’s ‘extraversion’, moreover, can be exaggerated. Historians have been drawn to the slave trade because of its horrors, its moral implications, its importance in forging an interconnected modern world – and, it must be pointed out, because of the relative abundance of written sources documenting its operation. It has been described with good reason as Africa’s ‘holocaust’, and like the Nazi holocaust of the 1930s–40s, occupies a prominent place in popular perceptions of the past.

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