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• Portugal


  The European country that established early contacts with the coastal regions of West Africa
• When the Portuguese first sailed out on their voyages of exploration along the West African coast, reaching India was their distant objective
• Immediate goal of the Portuguese

  To bypass Muslim North Africa and gain direct access to the gold producing region of West Africa
• This endowed the Portuguese with the major source of national wealth
• Once this is achieved, the wealth would provide them with further exploration and discoveries
• Henry the Navigator


  The Portuguese prince who sponsored Portuguese exploration of Africa, driven by two desires: spreading Christianity and establishing Africa as a mainstay of Christianity against the Ottoman Empire
• Portugal also had an objective to create commercial links with Africa
• The conquest of territory in Africa also meant that the Portuguese could use African gold to finance travel along this new trade route
• Getting safe passage through Africa could also open the entire Indian Ocean to direct Portuguese trade
• Ceuta


  The first step forward in Portuguese expansion across the Atlantic coast in 1415
• King João, I (John I) and his sons organised an expedition to conquer Ceuta that lay across the Straits of Gibraltar on the coast of North Africa, specifically in today's Morocco
• The Portuguese stayed in this part of Morocco from 1415 to 1769, a long period of constant war, since the Portuguese presence was not accepted
• In 1432, the Portuguese reached Cape Bajador, further southwest of Ceuta in Morocco, on the shores of the Atlantic Coast
• A Portuguese explorer named Nuno Trisatao reached Cape Blanc, further south along the Atlantic coast, in 1441
• Senegambia


  One of the earliest regions affected by European trade in West Africa
• The Portuguese arrived on the shores of Sierra Leon in 1460 and stayed there until their gradual decline as leaders in world exploration in the 16th Century
• Senegambia state provided enslaved people for European purchase for roughly a century; perhaps a third of all enslaved Africans exported during the sixteenth Century came from Senegambia
• Gold Coast


  One of the African kingdoms the Portuguese encountered during their exploration of the west coast of Africa, some of which controlled substantial deposits of gold, salt, and enslaved people
• In 1482, the Portuguese built their first permanent trading post known as the Castle of Elmina on the western coast of present-day Ghana
• This fortress was constructed to protect Portuguese trade from European competitors, and hostile Africans still stand
• The intensive contact of the Gold Coast with Europeans also led to the importation and spread of American crops, notably maize and cassava
• The success of these crops in West and Central Africa is believed to have contributed to population growth in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
• During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, other European powers soon followed in its footsteps; adventurers such as Dutch, English, and the French joined the competition for overseas trade
• With the loss of Elmina in 1642 to the Dutch, the Portuguese left the Gold Coast permanently
• Slavery


  Traffic in slaves that had a long history in Africa, Europe and Asia, continuing at a fairly steady level in the fifteenth century
• The primary market for enslaved Africans was Southwest Asia, where most enslaved people were used as domestic servants
• Captives from Nubia were transported down the Nile to Egypt in ancient Pharaonic times, and some were also transported across the Sahara to North Africa in Roman times
• All of these numbers seem small when compared with the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
• Slavery


  Manifested in the lives of those categorised as servants, serfs, apprentices, or slaves, who were distinct social groups whose lives were routinely controlled by others
• The expansion of long-distance trade and many of the early kings of Mali and Songhai and other states promoted the use of slave labour in agriculture
• In Benin's West-African state, large numbers of slaves were used in agriculture, and these slaves were the private property of their owners, symbolizing wealth and prosperity
• Long before the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, enslaved Africans were being sold across the Sahara and transported to the Mediterranean by land and sea routes to Asia Minor
• Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade


  Began in the 15th century after the discovery of America in 1492, as Europeans established large plantations and minefields in America and needed labourers, initially enslaving Native American Indians and then transporting black people from West Africa as slaves
• Triangular Trade


  The Trans-Atlantic slave trade that connected three continents: Africa as the source of human labour, America and the Caribbean as the destination for the enslaved Africans, and Europe as the destination for the raw materials produced by the enslaved labour
• The Trans-Atlantic slave trade began in West Africa within three important circumstances: the fragmentation of large, indigenous political states, the region's growing importance as a source of slaves, and the endemic conflict between the small coastal states and their willingness to cooperate with European traders in exchanging slaves for arms
• Phases of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

  1. Piratic slave trade (15th century to 1580s) - individual merchants, adventurers, navigators or common sea robbers
  2. Monopolistic slave trade (1580s onwards) - monopolistic slave-trading companies officially supported by governments with armed forces
  3. Free trade (1690s onwards) - several individual traders joined the slave trade, fierce competition
• The transatlantic slave trade impacted Africa economically by undermining African craft technology and agriculture, reallocating labour away from these sectors, and exporting the African working force to America and the Caribbean
• The Triangular trade helped the west European nations to accumulate a huge amount of wealth that led to the industrialization of Western Europe in the nineteenth century
• Politically, the slave trade threw black Africa into confusion and insecurity, discouraged political development, and encouraged violence that destroyed African states
• Socially, the slave trade undermined the morality and dignity of Africans, caused great human suffering and horrors, and had tragic effects on the lives of individual victims and their families