Tags from the story. You may also like. Previous article The Alien Agenda. Leave a comment Cancel comment. More Stories. Search for: Search. Since , the Portuguese who were interested in obtaining Asante gold, had opened a trading port at El Mina. As a result, their first slave trade in West Africa was with the Akan people.
Slave labour made it easy for the Akan people to shift from small scale agriculture to large scale agriculture Giblin The shift transformed the Asante kingdom and it developed a wealthy agricultural and mining economy. The Akan people needed slaves to work their gold mines and farms. Passing traders and a growing population in the Asante towns demanded increasing supplies of food. The slave trade with the Portuguese continued until the early s.
The Akan people supplied the Portuguese with slaves to work on sugar plantations in Brazil. A small number of slaves were kept in the Asante kingdom. However, by this period, the Atlantic slave trade dominated trade with West Africa. Kingdoms like the Asante and Dahomey used their power to raid societies like the Bambara, Mende, and Fulanis for slaves. The kingdom of Benin is the only known kingdom in West Africa to abolish slave trading in Benin.
The slave trade ban was succesful and forced the Portuguese to search for slaves elsewhere in West Africa. However, Dutch traders took over the role. From the s the Dutch dominated the West african and Atlantic Slave trade. The Portuguese and Dutch governments were unable to colonise West African kingdoms because they were too strong and well organised.
As a result, the slave and ivory, rubber and gold trades remained under the control of Asante, Fon, and Kongo kingdoms. In , the British government abolished the slave trade. Because West African kingdoms did not co-operate with the British, the slave trade across the Atlantic Ocean continued. However, the slave trade declined in areas where the British had influence, for example the Gold Coast. Industrial development in Britain led to increasing trade with West Africa in agricultural products like palm oil, rubber, and cocoa.
To supply Britain with these products, the Asante kingdom kept the slaves they had captured for the Atlantic slave trade and used them as farm workers instead. This led to the growth of slavery in West Africa because each kingdom wanted to profit from this new trade. West African slavery came to a slow end towards the end of the 19th century when many of these kingdoms were colonised by the French and British. Former slaves became the landless lower classes.
Due to the many rivers, which cross over each other, the main source of transport was by canoe. Unlike other West African states, Niger ones were different in character. They were small states that maintained contact through war, trade and migrations. The Atlantic trade brought about great prosperity in this region.
Their long history of internal trade had brought these small states together and led to economic growth of Bonny also known as Igbani and Warri states. The Kingdom of Dahomey also known as the Fon Kingdom of Dahomey was the southern part of the Republic of Benin, a country that divides the dense forest of Nigeria from those of modern Ghana. Dahomey was the most prominent coastal state in the region.
It was ruled by a king on the authority of the queen mother who held the power to appoint an heir. The king and queen mother ruled Dahomey from their capital Abomey. Dahomey began emerging as a great power in the early 18th century because of the slave trade.
It also managed to overtake other coastal states competing for control of both the slave and inland trade. The Fon army was unusual in West Africa because its soldiers were women feared by other neighbouring coastal states.
In about there was a great demand from the West Indies sugar plantations for African slaves. The Fon people used their position as sea-merchants to ensure that they held a monopoly of the slave trade. The Dahomey kingdom also relied on its strong military to dominate weaker inland states and to conquer coastal states.
States looking to trade in the region were expected to pay a fixed amount of tax and fixed prices for slaves. Custom duties were paid in respect of each ship as well.
By the 18th century the Fon king had absolute power and under his rule Dahomey became strong enough to capture neighbouring coastal states. The Fon were still paying tribute to the Oyo kingdom and this meant that they had to appease the Oyo with guns and other goods each year.
In , Dahomey conquered the Oyo kingdom, and three years later they pushed south to Savi and Whyad, Jakin was taken in but it was only in that the Fon won complete control when Whydah became a Fon colony. This ushered in control of the coast and even visiting Europeans had to gain prior permission to go ashore.
The arrival of the Portuguese in the 15th century in search of new trading opportunities changed the trade networks in West Africa. An important change was the new direction of the slave trade across the Atlantic Ocean instead of the Sahara desert. This increased the power of small West African kingdoms like the Asante and Dahomey kingdoms.
It also contributed to the fall of the Songhai Empire, because the slave and gold trade were no longer going through the Songhai kingdom. As a result, the Songhai rulers could not claim tribute and taxes from these kingdoms. The other change came from the growing slave trade. Portugal, Spain, France and Britain were the key players in this slave trade, which lasted for more than years.
Because Portugal was the first to establish itself in the region and to enter treaties with West African kingdoms, it had the monopoly on the slave and gold trade. As a result, Portugal was responsible for transporting over 4. During the 18th century however, Britain was responsible for almost 2.
Due to expanding market opportunities in Europe and the Mediterranean, they increased trade across the Sahara and later gained access to the interior using the Senegal and Gambia River, which bisected long-standing trans-Saharan routes. The Portuguese brought in copper ware, cloth, tools, wine and horses and later included guns, in exchange for gold, pepper, slaves, and ivory. The growing trade across the Atlantic came to be called the triangular trade system.
The Atlantic Slave Trade also known as the triangular trade was a system of trade that revolved around three areas. The first point of the triangle would begin in Africa, where large shipments of people were taken across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas The Caribbean, North and South America to be sold to work in colonies on plantations as slaves. A city in Mali located on the River Niger that for much of its history was an important commercial center involved in the trans-Saharan trade.
Towards the end of the 13th century, it became part of the Mali Empire, but in the first half of the 15th century the town regained its independence and with the conquests of Sonni Ali ruled — it became the capital of the Songhai Empire.
The Songhai Empire also transliterated as Songhay was a state that dominated the western Sahel in the 15th and 16th centuries. At its peak, it was one of the largest states in African history. The state is known by its historiographical name, derived from its leading ethnic group and ruling elite, the Songhai.
Sonni Ali established Gao as the capital of the empire, although a Songhai state had existed in and around Gao since the 11th century. Initially, the empire was ruled by the Sonni dynasty c. During the second half of the 13th century, Gao and the surrounding region had grown into an important trading center and attracted the interest of the expanding Mali Empire. Mali conquered Gao towards the end of the 13th century and the town would remain under Malian hegemony until the late 14th century.
But as the Mali Empire started to disintegrate, the Songhai reasserted control of Gao. Songhai rulers subsequently took advantage of the weakened Mali Empire to expand Songhai rule. In the second half of the 14th century, disputes over succession weakened the Mali Empire and in the s, Songhai, previously a Mali dependency, gained independence under the Sonni Dynasty.
Around thirty years later, Sonni Sulayman Dama attacked Mema, the Mali province west of Timbuktu, paving the way for his successor, Sonni Ali, to turn his country into one of the greatest empires sub-Saharan Africa has ever seen. Sonni Ali reigned from to Like Songhai kings before him, he was a Muslim. Under his rule, Songhai reached a size of over 1,, square kilometers. During his campaigns for expansion, Ali conquered many lands, repelling attacks from the Mossi to the south and overcoming the Dogon people to the north.
He annexed Timbuktu in , after Islamic leaders of the town requested his assistance in overthrowing marauding Tuaregs Berber people with a traditionally nomadic pastoralist lifestyle who had taken the city following the decline of Mali.
After a persistent seven-year siege, he was able to forcefully incorporate it into his vast empire in , but only after having starved its citizens into surrender. Oral traditions present a conflicted image of Sonni Ali. On the one hand, the invasion of Timbuktu destroyed the city; Ali was described as an intolerant tyrant who conducted a repressive policy against the scholars of Timbuktu, especially those of the Sankore region who were associated with the Tuareg. On the other hand, his control of critical trade routes and cities brought great wealth.
Songhai Empire in Songhai rulers took advantage of the weakened Mali Empire to expanded Songhai rule.
0コメント