Holiday 1
Sean Holiday
Professor Blyden
History 101.10
15 December 2005
Question 2: Describe the early relationship between Europeans and West Africans. How and
why did this relationship change and what was the impact, if any, of such change on West
African societies?
The Evolution of Inequality
Motivated by a variety of scientific, religious, political, and economic reasons, and with
the help of newly discovered advanced technologies, Europeans first began to expand their
influence in West Africa in the late fifteenth century.1 This early relationship was primarily a
distanced interaction between equals based on the trade of material goods. Competition and
violence occurred mostly between European powers instead of between Europeans and West
Africans. In the eighteenth century, however, this relationship of semi-equality devolved into
one of European economic plunder based on an unequal relationship, as European ideas of racial
superiority became solidified during the slave trade. Traditional African institutions began to be
destroyed and the European view of African inferiority was cemented. Eventually, once slavery
was abolished and colonial rule expanded, this relationship evolved into one characterized by
European paternalism vis-à-vis West Africans. This Euro-African relationship, constantly
changing, resulted in the near total destruction of African indigenous traditions whose long-term
effects of an embedded sense of African inferiority are still felt today.
Holiday 2
The Early Relationship: A Partnership of Equals
Since Europeans had hitherto been unable to reach West Africa via the seas because of
insufficient technology, the development of advanced European sailing methods allowed for the
European “discovery” of West Africa to occur in the early fifteenth century. Such a relationship
necessarily implies a rather distant connection characterized by limited contact between the
European and the previously unknown West Africa. This Age of Exploration was initially
propelled by Prince Henry the Navigator’s desire to reach West African riches and find a sea
route to the Orient. Meanwhile, the concurrent growth of centralized states in Europe under
national monarchs and of the rise of a merchant class interested in conducting overseas trade to
obtain the products of Asia, Africa, and the Americas propelled the desires of rulers like Henry.
Consequently, one cannot see the Age of Exploration as being purely motivated by scientific
curiosity or national prestige. The principal object of national monarchs and merchants to
explore previously unknown areas was to monopolize world trade, bringing power to the king
and profits to the trader.2
A European apprehension vis-à-vis West Africa underwrote the development of a
distanced and largely egalitarian Euro-African relationship founded on trade and is highlighted in
Gomes Eannes de Azurara’s excerpt “The Discovery of Guinea” from his chronicle Chronica de
Guine. In the early part of the excerpt, Azurara describes the great anxiety with which the
Portuguese view the West African lands that lie beyond Morocco’s Cape of Bojador. He
constantly reminds the reader of the inherent peril of the trip: “there was great doubt as to who
would be the first to risk his life in such a venture.” Later, he offers fantastic images of West
Africa: “there is no race of men nor place of inhabitants.”3 Although Azurara concedes that
explorers “found the lands beyond quite contrary to what he, like others, had expected,”
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Europeans generally viewed involvement in West Africa with reticence. His further descriptions
clearly demonstrate a close tie between the desire to explore for national prestige and the
importance of economic motives. He continues:
Yet [those who failed] did not return wholly without honor, for as an atonement for their failure
to carry out more fully their Lord’s wishes, some made descents upon the coasts of Granada and
other voyaged along the Levant Seas, where they took great booty of the Infidels, with which they
returned to the Kingdom very honorably.4
Clearly, while passing the Cape may be a magnificent achievement that will bring Portugal
prestige throughout Europe, the exploration only becomes very honorable when explorers return
with “great booty.” Azurara closely links “honor” and “profit,” making these two goals of
exploration inseparable. 5
Motivated by these goals, exploration during this period was characterized by limited
contact, largely at sea ports, by a variety of European states including Portugal, the Netherlands,
Spain, Great Britain, France, Sweden, Prussia and Denmark.6 Although initially frustrated with
conversion and colonization efforts, Europeans quickly found that economic and commercial
activities in West Africa to be extremely lucrative, first trading in sugar, pepper, ivory, wax, and
gold. The especially profitable trade in gold attracted many Europeans to the Gold Coast region
and resulted in the construction of numerous forts and castles that became access points that
allowed for the eventual exploration of the African hinterland.7 Based on trade, the Euro-African
relationship was not primarily violent. Instead, West Africans and Europeans interacted as coequals. This relationship is expressed in an anonymous letter written by a Portuguese pilot
between 1535 and 1550. In this letter, he states:
All the coast, as far as the kingdom of Manicongo, is divided into two parts, which are leased [to
European traders] every four or five years to whoever makes the best offer…Great caravans of
negroes come here, bringing gold and slaves for sale.8
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This description implies a peaceful interaction between the European and West African as
business associates. West Africans willingly participated in trading opportunities either through
renting of coastal forts or bringing goods to sell. This passage also demonstrates that the most
intense competition arose between the European powers themselves. The competition for forts is
between “whoever makes the best offer.” Eventually though, bloody violence did erupt between
Europeans, especially as seen in the activities of the Dutch to unseat the Portuguese who had
been the first country to firmly establish itself in West Africa.9
Thus, the early trading relationship between Europeans and Africans was one of
cooperation between co-equals. The two parties operated in different spheres, demonstrated by
the anonymous letter that states, “those in the business are called contractors…and their deputies
and no other may approach and land on the shore, or even buy and sell.”10 While there were
instances of abduction of Africans and trade in slaves, such instances of kidnapping were rare
and the slave trade was rather minimal, making such negative interactions not characteristic of
the Euro-African relationship as a whole.
Slavery and Colonialism: The Conversion to Inequality
Although the initial trading relationships between Europe and West Africa were based
primarily on material goods like gold and ivory, the trade in humans quickly took on greater
importance in the sixteenth century. Indeed, as European colonization of the new world
expanded, the demand of West Indian plantation owners for cheap labor became voracious.11
Therefore, this transformation in the Euro-African trading relationship is primarily viewed within
an economic context. As demanded goods changed because of European colonization of the
New World, the trading relationship shifted away from a European demand for material goods in
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favor of slaves. This expansion was a primary force in changing the Euro-African relationship
from one of co-equals to one of European domination over West Africa. Boahen argues that the
slave trade brutalized all the people who took part in it,12 and such a violent interaction
fundamentally altered the Euro-African relationship, making the more powerful European
superior to the West African that became nothing more than a traded good.
One of the major consequences of the Atlantic slave trade proved to be the destruction of
the African empires that formed the foundation of African political strength. Empires like
Dahomey lost its most virile and active citizens. Further, the raiding wars that were propelled by
the insatiable demand for slaves caused widespread destruction throughout the region. The
increased European demand for slaves also drove and intensified civil and inter-state wars.
Because commercial greed instead of self-preservation and imperial ambitions motivated these
conflicts, they proved to be more demoralizing than pre-European ones. Additionally, the influx
of European goods that were traded for slaves tended to suppress indigenous industries that had
existed before the coming of the Europeans. In the end, the slave trade significantly retarded
African growth and promoted the deterioration of indigenous African societies, allowing for the
eventual expansion of European colonization in West Africa.13
Motivated by a combination of economic and humanitarian reasons, the slave trade began
to be suppressed beginning in the early 1800s. For many Europeans, slavery was a crime against
humanity that should not only be abolished but should also be atoned for by bringing western
civilization, education, and Christianity to West Africa. While such humanitarian considerations
certainly underwrote European actions in West Africa after 1800, economic motives again drove
the change in the Euro-African relationship as “legitimate” trades in cash crops soon replaced the
lost trade in slaves. The introduction of such crops required expansion into the interior and the
Holiday 6
compulsory labor of the West African people. Driven by industrialization in Europe, European
powers gradually extended direct control throughout West Africa to acquire raw materials, set up
plantations, and find compulsory laborers. Indeed, as soldiers, missionaries, abolitionists, and
industrialists propelled the expansion of their interests in West Africa, direct European control in
the region became necessary. From coastal bases like St. Louis, Calabar, Bissau, and Freetown,
Europeans expanded direct control throughout West Africa and had, by 1920, firmly established
themselves as colonial rulers in the region.
Since Europeans saw the West African less as a commodity during this period, the EuroAfrican relationship evolved into one characterized by European paternalism vis-à-vis West
Africans. Such an outlook is demonstrated in Lord Lugard’s treatise “Indirect Rule in Tropical
Africa.” He argues that British rule is carried out for “the welfare of the masses” where the
government can “provide new interests and rivalries in civilized progress, in education, in
material prosperity and trade, and even in sport” as part of a “great change which is taking place
in the social conditions of African life.”14 While such an outlook doesn’t brutalize West
Africans and their traditions, it firmly ensconces the African in as the naïve inferior. Even in
British colonies governed by indirect rule, European colonialism excluded many Africans from
local government and solidified the concept of European paternalism toward the inferior West
African. The introduction of compulsory labor, Western education, Christianity, and European
governance significantly retarded the development of indigenous African political institutions.
While great strides in fields like sanitation, education, and the establishment of judicial systems
were brought by colonialism, colonial rule destroyed West African traditional institutions and
introduced alien rule.15
Holiday 7
This relationship that shifted, based on economic pressures, from distanced equality that
characterized the early Euro-African relationship, to an unequal relationship of racist economic
plunder of the slave trade, to denigrating European paternalism of the colonial age demonstrates
that the fluidity of the Euro-African relationship between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries.
As the relationship transformed after the sixteenth century to become increasingly unequal and
demeaning toward West Africans, European imperialism became partly or sometimes wholly
responsible for the fall of the forest and coastal kingdoms, replacing indigenous African
traditions with alien institutions. The long-term effects of this changed relationship has, as
Boahen notes, created a deep sense of inferiority that has not entirely disappeared today. Indeed,
this sense of inequality left by imperialism does not leave much hope for the quick return of the
largely egalitarian nature of the early Euro-African relationship.
Holiday 8
Notes
1
Adu Boahen, Topics in West African History (London, UK: Longman Group Ltd., 1986) 102, 105.
2
Robert O. Collins, ed. Western African History (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1997) 151.
3
Gomes Eannes de Azurara, “The Discovery of Guinea,” Western African History, ed. Robert O. Collins
(Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1997) 171.
4
Azurara 172.
5
Azurara 172.
6
Boahen 102.
7
Boahen 106.
8
“The Discovery of Guinea,” Western African History, ed. Robert O. Collins (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener
Publishers, 1997) 175, 179.
9
Boahen 102.
10
“The Discovery of Guinea” 179.
11
Collins 152.
12
Boahen 110.
13
Boahen 109-10.
14
Lord Lugard, “Indirect Rule in Tropical Africa,:” ed. Robert O. Collins (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener
Publishers, 1997) 232-33, 237.
15
Boahen 128-133.