
Welcome to UNIT 4: The African Slave Trades
Elmina,
Axim
Accra

1480s Sugar Plantations
o
in Principe
o Sao Tome
o Canaries,
o Madeira,
o Cape Verde,
o Fernando Po.
INSTANCE WHEN PORTUGUESE ENTERED AFRICAN INTERIOR = INVITED
Nzinga Mbemba, King Dom Afonso ruler of Kongo Kingdom
Sir, Your Highness should know how our kingdom is being lost in so many ways
that it is convenient to provide for the necessary remedy, since this is caused by
the excessive freedom given by your factors and officials to the men and
merchants who are allowed to come to this kingdom to set up shops with goods
and many things which have been prohibited by us…And we cannot reckon how
great the damage is, since the mentioned merchants are taking every day our
natives, sons of the land and the sons of our noblemen and vassals and our
relatives, because the thieves and men of bad conscience grab them…and
cause them to be sold, and so great, Sir, is the corruption and licentiousness that
our country is being completely depopulated, and Your Highness should not
agree with this nor accept it as in your service. And to avoid it, we need from
those [your] kingdoms, no more than some priests and a few people to teach in
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schools, and no other goods except wine and flour for the holy sacrament. That
is why we beg Your Highness to help and assist us in this matter, commanding
your factors that they should not send here either merchants or wares because it
is our will that in these kingdoms there should not be any trade of slaves nor
outlet for them.
The Abolition + Suppression of Slave Trade

Goree
North Asante (Tamale totally ravished), Eastern Nigeria, Northern Yorubaland
2. Rise and Disappearance of Kingdoms

Rose: Asante, Dahomey, Oyo, Old Calabar, Zanzibar, Yao

Disappeared: Oyo, Akpomu, Kreppi (Ghana), Kongo,
3. Rise and Influence of middlemen
1. Yao (ivory hunters) middlemen.

Kilwa

Lake Nyasa
o Mozambique port
2. Nyamwezi middle men

Bagamoyo

Tanganyika,

eastern Zaire

+ Buganda territories
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3. Prazeros (middlemen)
4. Aro middle men


Arochukwu
long juju oracle (Ibinikpabi)
4. Rise of New Towns and States

Examples
o Whydah,
o Bonny,
o New Calabar (Kalabari),
o Brass (Nembe)
o Old Calabar (Calabar),
o Port Harcourt,
o Salt Pond,
o Cape Coast
3 new political states created:



Freetown, Sierra Leone:
Liberia
Libreville, Gabon
5. Plants and Animals
African Resistance to Slavery

Sokoto Caliphate (Nigeria)
o people of Gwolu (Ghana).
o Paramount Chief Koro Liman IV describes walls
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I am standing in front of the inner wall of the Gwolu protective wall,
which protected the great Gwolu from slave raiders and encroachments
into Gwolu city in ancient times. We have two walls and this is the inner
wall.
In ancient times when slavery was rampant, our great great ancestor
King Tanja Musa built the wall to ward away slave raiders and slave traders
from coming into Gwolu to enslave our people.
The reason we have the inner and outer wall is that between the two
walls we had ponds and farms, so that the inhabitants would be protected
from being kidnapped by slave raiders.
First, there was only the inner wall. Then they realized that people
who went to farm, find firewood and fetch water were kidnapped by slave
raiders. The king found it necessary to construct a second wall and that is
why it is a two-walled city. And I know that in the whole of Ghana there are
only two such walls.

transforming habitat + manner land is occupied
o Ganvié city [Dahomey]
o Tofinu language means= “we are saved”
o
o
Lake Nokoué.
Dahomey
o Fon [Dahomey].
EXAMPLE 2

The Musugu of Southern Lake Chad
2. Resistance of African ruling elite
.
1. Nzinga Mbemba, King Dom Afonso ruler of Kongo Kingdom
2. 1530s King [Oba] of Benin
3. 1670, King Tezifon of Allada, Dahomey
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
King Tezifon of Allada made following clear-sighted reply:
You will make a house in which you will put at first two little pieces of cannon,
the next year you will mount four, and in a little time your factory will
metamorphosed into a fort that will make you master of my dominions and
enable you to give laws to me.
4. 1724 King Agaja of Dahomey

Ouidah and Ardrah
5. 1787 Almamy of Futa Toro
3. African Abolitionists Abroad
1.Quobna Ottobah Cugoano (John Stuart), a fanti

Wrote: Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of
the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Humbly
Submitted to the Inhabitants of Great Britain by Ottobah Cugoano,
a Native of Africa
…kings are the minister of God, to do justice, and not to bear the sword in
vain, but revenge wrath upon them that do evil. But if they do not in such a
case as this, the cruel oppressions of thousands, and the blood of the
murdered Africans who are slain by the sword of cruel avarice, must rest
upon their own guilty heads…
2.Olaudah Equiano (Gustavus Vassa)
o The Interesting Narrative of the life of Oluadah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa
the African
The whisper that my master was my father, may or may not be true; and,
true or false, it is of but little consequence to my purpose whilst the fact
remains, in all its glaring odiousness, that slaveholders have ordained, and
by law established, that the children of slave women shall in all cases
follow the condition of their mothers…
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4. Overt resistance by African slaves un route to and in the New World

Toussaint L’Ouverture
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