in the Atlantic Slave Trade

Agency and Interest: The Role of African Middlemen in the Atlantic Slave Trade

François Auguste Biard, The Slave Trace, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

Many myths surround the events, processes, and trajectories of the Atlantic slave trade. Some myths portray Africans as having no agency or control, as victims of Europeans who came to African shores, enslaved millions of people, and sent them to the colonies across the Atlantic. Other myths allow for African agency in selling slaves to the Europeans, but the question remains why Africans would sell their own people on such a scale? However, as is always the case in history, lived experience is far more complicated than these myths allow. Over twelve and a half million African slaves were trafficked across the Atlantic from 1525 until the middle of the nineteenth century, though the largest number were sold from 1670 onward. Although the European traders did have influence in the economic and power structures of the West African kingdoms, they did not have control over the agency of the African traders and middlemen. The Atlantic slave trade developed out of two established trade networks: an existing trade network with the Europeans for exports such as gold and ivory, and the trans-Saharan trade network. During the early modern period, African middlemen not only benefited from this trade but also controlled it. As well, competing interests in the trade would lead these African middlemen to go to war over controlling the coastal kingdoms and ports: where the slaves of the interior would be sold to West African middlemen, and held until they could be traded to the Europeans. In this way, African middlemen freely played a major role in the export of African slaves.

The trans-Saharan trade network was the foremost trade network in West Africa until the seventeenth century. The trans-Saharan trade was oriented towards the interior of the continent, leaving the West African coast on the periphery of that trade. Interior kingdoms, such as Ghana and Mali, stood between the coastal kingdoms and the North African caliphates, and Europe beyond the Mediterranean. Gold, salt, and slaves traversed this network and were essential exports to the development of the coastal kingdoms.1 However, the interior kingdoms experienced periods of unrest, and their leaders were no longer able to secure the trade routes. Portuguese explorations in the early fifteenth century around the coast of West Africa offered new prospects, and the insecurity of the trans-Saharan trade encouraged coastal kingdoms to take advantage of those new trade opportunities. Atlantic routes bypassed the difficult caravan routes across the Sahara, and placed the peripheral coastal kingdoms as the intermediaries between the interior kingdoms and the Europeans. Trans-Saharan trade continued to be important to the interior African kingdoms, but new trade routes to the coast became increasingly easier.

West African kingdoms had long participated in the trans-Saharan slave trade. This network of slave exports had been established in Antiquity, and during its peak between the tenth and nineteenth centuries, historians estimate that an average of six to seven thousand enslaved people were transported north every year.2 Domestically, the need for slaves was already growing in the late fifteenth century as city-states came to understand the benefits of slave labour in bringing costs down, while increasing the production of goods and services. As well, a slave labour force released farmers to become full-time soldiers, thereby increasing the military power of these formerly peripheral kingdoms.3

As the Europeans arrived on the coast of West Africa, they began to set up trade networks through a system of forts and factories that competed with one another for trade with the African kingdoms. In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, grain, gold, and ivory dominated the West African export market, as Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, Brandenburgers, Swedes, and British trading companies all competed for mercantilist monopolies in these regions. This network grew rapidly, establishing its value to Africans in the region and to the Europeans who traded there. At first European demand for slaves was very low, and the trade remained mostly based in ivory and gold. The demand for slaves was initially internal. It was not until the colonization of the Americas and the development of plantations in the western Atlantic that the external demand for African slave labour would grow exponentially. In this way, the Atlantic slave trade developed out of two pre-existing trade networks to serve the expanding demand for labour across the Atlantic basin.

Why would Africans sell their own people on such a scale? Historian John K. Thornton claims that “the Atlantic slave trade rests on a giant paradox… [that] the slave trade was bad for Africa …. Yet at the same time, it is equally easy to see that this same trade, bad as it was at a regional level, was controlled by the political and economic middlemen of Africa, and not by their European trading partners.”4 Thornton claims that African middlemen’s power and agency over the trade created a paradox with the catastrophic effects of selling their own

Boukary Koutou's Mossi Cavalry Returning with Captives from a Raid, Édouard Riou (1833 - 1900), Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

people. However, this paradoxical interpretation of the events does not adequately reveal the communal identity of the individual kingdoms in relation to that of their neighbours. Africans did not identify as a nation of singularly defined African people. Rather, identity lay within their individual community and ethnic group, whether that was Fon, Yoruba,

Dahomean, Kongolese, etc. In this sense, Africans did not sell Africans. Yoruba were selling Dahomean; Fon were selling Asanti. Each group were generally not selling their own people; they were selling foreigners, prisoners of war, and outsiders to their communities. As historian Basil Davidson notes, by custom and moral law, slaves were only taken from foreign states and enemies of the state.5 African kings, much like their European counterparts, were concerned with protecting their own citizens. With increased demand for slaves, it also became permissible to sell criminals into slavery. Criminals, who previously would have had varying sentences, became capitalist products of convenience, and selling them into slavery was a simple way to be rid of them. The West African kingdoms had a long tradition of enslaving prisoners of war, including inhabitants of captured villages. For many of these kingdoms, the slave trade, both internal and external, was a by-product of their tribal and state warfare, and some African kingdoms such as, Oyo, Dahomey, Benin, Ashanti were especially involved in warfare and enslaving prisoners of war.

One myth that arose out of the Atlantic slave trade is that the warring and raiding kingdoms traded slaves for guns and then used those guns to acquire more slaves, building up the arsenal and power of the warring kingdoms. According to the myth, this gun-slave cycle in which Europeans held a monopoly on gunpowder gave the Europeans power over the Africans and led to the destabilization of the region through a fierce competition for more guns with which to obtain more slaves. This ignores the fact that most of these kingdoms made very little use of European guns and gunpowder, preferring their traditional weapons in war.6 Moreover, European trade was marginal within the overall economies of West Africa’s kingdoms, and thus cannot be considered solely responsible for the destabilization of West Africa that would occur through the warfare that wracked the region in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.7 Therefore, this theory exaggerates European pressure and control in West Africa’s slave economy.

One of the items most commonly traded for slaves was cowrie shells. West Africans began using cowries as currency as early as the fourteenth century. They were small, durable, portable, and significantly, they were difficult to counterfeit. One account of the relation between slaves and cowrie shells claimed that without banks to stockpile capital, Africans wealthy in cowries “were compelled to buy more slaves.”8 Thus, cowries became a very desirable import into West African kingdoms. Europeans, in turn, seeking to meet the demand for cowries, significantly increased their cowry imports from cowrie exporters in India and East Africa.9 In this way, Europeans provided trading opportunities that reorientated the trade away from the interior and towards the coasts.

As European demand in the colonies grew for slaves, so did the power and agency of African slave traders and middlemen. With the exception of Portuguese-controlled Angola, African kingdoms controlled the trade on their own terms. The African middlemen built up their wealth through their control of the ports, as all trade had to go through the middlemen. Interior kingdoms conducting warfare and slave raids marched their slaves to the coastal kingdoms and traded with the coastal kingdoms for European goods. The delivery and trade of slaves from the interior, through the coastal ports, and onto European slave ships was wholly an African business. European trading company records show very little evidence of direct enslavement. Instead, these records show that slaves were purchased from African middlemen who were actively supported by their kingdoms.10 Coastal African kingdoms often functioned both as commercial sellers and tax agents, as slaves from other kingdoms were sold through their ports.

European accounts of factories and trading posts also indicate African control of the slave trade. European trading companies had to pay rent to African rulers for the land on which they built their factories and trading posts. And for centuries Europeans remained confined to the forts and port cities. However, when other kingdoms waged war against a port for control, Europeans found themselves at the mercy of the prevailing side. This was the case with the French factory at Oudiah, which experienced a series of attacks and raids from Dahomey in the 1720s. The French were unable to withstand the African forces. The French director wrote that he believed the Europeans had been allowed to build their forts along the coast so that European traders could be raided more easily.11 It was nearly impossible for Europeans to force their trade interests when African Kingdoms, such as Dahomey waged war against the coastal kingdoms. Contemporaneous to these events, the Portuguese factory experienced similar troubles in Ouidah and the director was forced to explain the Portuguese capitulation to Dahomean demands to the crown. Faced with Dahomey’s armies outside the fort, the director considered himself to be in an impossible position, believing that the King of Dahomey had the power to force his demands on the Portuguese traders.12 Events like these demonstrate that European factories had very little military capacity with which to defend their interests over the interests of African kingdoms in the slave economy in West Africa.

Europeans were also powerless along the coast of West Africa to force African participation in the Atlantic slave trade. The kingdoms that traded had the power to stop at any time. Certain African kingdoms never participated in the slave trade, or only joined for short periods. The Kingdom of Benin traded with the Europeans throughout the early modern period, but only traded slaves from the early 1500s until 1550 and between 1715 and 1735. When Benin wanted to trade slaves again in 1715, Europeans were not prepared to purchase them. Other coastal regions, such as the Grain Coast and the coast from southern Cameroon to Gabon, exported very few slaves. They participated more in the export of other commodities such as melegueta pepper or ivory. Interestingly, the Kingdom of Orungu was a net importer of slaves, and only really attempted to become an exporter of slaves toward the end of the Atlantic slave trade in the nineteenth century. African Kingdoms were very much in control of their own participation in the Atlantic slave trade.

Another way African middlemen displayed their agency in the trade with Europeans was to leverage the competition between Europeans. A major port in the Fante Confederacy was

Annamaboe (in modern-day Ghana). The Fante had allowed the Dutch to build a fort on their land first; later, they permitted the British to build a fort as well. In the early eighteenth century, the British held the monopoly to trade in Annamaboe. European trade was run through African officers in the port known as caboceers. John Corrantee, the most important caboceer in Annamaboe at the time, was famous for his ability to maximize the competition between the British and the French.13 Corrantee oversaw one of the highest points of the slave trade in Annamaboe, mainly due to his ability to keep the trade routes to the interior open and safe from raiding. In order to keep the routes open, they had a large standing militia. The Europeans needed these militias to keep the routes open to make their voyages as successful and efficient as possible. Knowledgeable of this, the caboceers in Annamaboe had the Europeans arm their militias as a cost of keeping the trade open.14

Mathias (1719-1804), Public domain, Wikimedia Commons. William Ansah Sessarakoo, son of John Corrantee. Gabriel Corrantee also did not accept the European notion of monopoly. French and British diplomats and traders courted his favour in order to be able to trade successfully in Annamaboe. Corrantee used this to his benefit, growing the rivalry to his advantage. The British paid tribute to Annamaboe for the continuation of their monopoly on that trade. However, Corrantee interpreted this tribute as a customary duty that all Europeans had to pay in order to trade there, and he allowed the French to denigrate the monopoly. To court Corrantee’s favour, the French toured one of his sons around France to show they were superior to the British. The British heard this and attempted to tour another of Corrantee’s sons around London. However, they lost his son to kidnapping and had to buy him back out of slavery. When both sons returned to Annamaboe, Corrantee used them as messengers to their respective hosts to keep both the British and the French coming to his ports. This kept the demand for slaves high and also elevated prices. Both the British and the French eventually offered to build forts in his town and showered his sons with gifts in hopes of swaying Corrantee’s opinion. Corrantee’s skill in playing the two empires off one another allowed him to grow the slave economy in Annamaboe and establish the port as the primary state in the Fante Confederacy.15

The significance of controlling the coastal ports led many West African kingdoms to wage war against coastal kingdoms. Maintaining power over ports meant that a kingdom and its slaving elite became the middlemen who controlled the trade through that port. For centuries, European interests were generally confined to trading forts, and trade could only be conducted at the will of their African landlords. One of the only major methods that

Europeans could influence the trade was through supporting claimants for succussion who might be favourable to Europeans, or to support neighbouring states in their wars against the kingdom that controlled the port. Even if this worked, however, the result for Europeans was only a more favourable trading partner, not more power. The new middleman was in control of the port and the trade with the Europeans, not the other way around. For competing African kingdoms and empires, a change in control of the ports could be disastrous for several reasons. For the ruling power that lost control of the port and the kingdoms that relied on good trading relations and access to the ports, a new ruling entity might deny further access to Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed, the port. In the early CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. eighteenth century, the Oyo Empire, Dahomey, and others traded through the coastal kingdoms of Ouidah and Allada. When the two tried to tighten their control of the slave trade and establish monopolies where all slaves had to be sold through the middlemen, Dahomey responded by conquering Allada in both 1724 and 1727. This change of middlemen was disastrous for Oyo and other interior kingdoms. Dahomey had little interest in allowing other kingdoms to trade through the ports. Therefore, Oyo sent its own armies to conquer Dahomey, making it a tribute state in 1730. The Kingdom of Dahomey would free themselves from tributary status in 1823 under the rule of King Ghezo and would regain total control of their port at Oudiah. War for control of the ports was common through the early modern period as different kingdoms sought to control their interests in the Atlantic slave trade.

African middlemen played a significant role in controlling the slave trade. Europeans had no control over the availability of slaves for market, and they were far from their regions of power, making it difficult to impose European interests in these trades. As Europeans colonized the Americas, their need for slave labour grew exponentially. West Africa had an existing slave trade network and an existing trade network with the Europeans. When the European demand for slaves increased, West African slave traders looked to the coast as an opportunity to build their wealth. To believe Africans were naïve trade participants is to discredit the adept diplomatic skill of African middlemen, such as Corrantee. African middlemen linked the slave-producing exporters in the interior with the slave-importing Europeans and were, thus, free participants, controlling African participation in the Atlantic economy.

Andrew Dick

MAIH (History stream)