Slave trade impact on Africa and suffering of the enslaved Africans.

Impacts on Africa:

-Demographical impact

        Demographical impact on Africa is maybe the most important thing to be considered in explaining what happened to African people who were enslaved. It has been estimated that around 11 million people departed from the coasts of Africa to the New World. Another fact to be considered is the number of people who have died resisting and fighting against slave traders. It has been estimated that Africa would have another 100 million people by 1880 if the slave trade did not happen.  But demographic impact is not all about the numbers. More important, most of the captives were males, young and strong males. This created certain gender imbalance in Africa since majority of the male population has been shipped to the New World.

All this affected demographic growth of African societies and migration of these young men from villages caused a shift in marriage patterns and also the number of men who were ready to be married and reproduce drastically declined. Having in mind that future of a country depends on the people, in particular young people, we can see the real meaning of demographic impact.  

-Social Impact

        Slavery existed in Africa long time before Europeans appeared and it was the form of regulated slavery. The term regulated means that slaves had certain rights. For example, woman who had a child with a man who enslaved her would eventually be set free. Also other slaves or their children would become part of the families that they worked for. Very often kings would appoint slaves as their generals, to keep them under control, because slave didn’t have a family and it was hard for that person to get any support.  Most of the exported slaves were males and ratio of women to men was almost two to one. This led to polygamy in some areas in Africa.Another impact was on kinship structure. There were two kinds of kinship systems in Africa: matrilineal and patrilineal. In matrilineal system it was the brother of the mother who controlled the children while in patrilinear father had control over children. With Atlantic slave trade in progress this was about to change. Slaves in the New World hardly had any right and worked as hard as their masters wanted them to. African slaves were mostly used for agricultural labor, on the fields, had no rights and their children became slaves by birth.

-Political Impact

        During the slave trade there was an increase in warfare. This is also described by the fact that most of the slaves were captured as prisoners of war. Africans would simply declared war to another African tribe and conqueror would take all the prisoners of war and enslaved them. Also many times these wars were undeclared and unprotected villages were attacked. All this was done in order to enslave captured men in those wars. 

Since the warfare was in expansion there was a great need for weapons. Africans were technologically behind the Europeans and they needed weapons in order to win their wars and capture more slaves. Europeans sold African firearms and horses in exchange for slaves and raw materials. Since the horses died within few years because of the Tsetsefly they had to buy more horses from Europeans.Most of the Africa consisted of little states or societies, which were under constant attack of the slave gatherers. They lived in fear of those slave gatherers and most of the Africans in these areas became slaves.

-Economic Impact

        The economic impact of the slave trade can be seen in many ways, even today. The slave trade produced all sort of disruptions and chaos. It created sort of “poor business” climate and increased the cost of running any kind of business in Africa at that time. Entrepreneurs and other dynamic people would go into the slave trade business rather then something else.  Profit that Africans made during the slave trade has been used for purchasing Europeans goods like alcohol, tobacco, textiles, iron goods, guns and other firearms. Instead of technology and machines they imported all those things and this had a negative effect on African economy. People that were involved in the slave trade business became very rich and powerful and this created a widening gap between rich and poor.

        Also with the abolition of the slave trade goods entering Africa were drastically reduced. This was disruptive to the kingdoms that were making profit on the slave trade. Later they started to export mainly palm oil and cocoa.

        While Europeans invested in technology and industrialization, African leaders were buying exotic things from Europe and enjoying them, all this bought with the freedom of their kinsmen. I think Africa would be far more economically developed today if this didn’t happen.

        Atlantic slave trade left a huge impact on Africa in many ways, yet Africans voluntarily participated in it. In general African rulers who participated in the slave trade have been described as sell-outs, greedy, or they were overwhelmed by European superiority and had no choice but go along with the slave traders from outside. Of course by doing so, African rulers and others involved in the slave trade grew wealthy and powerful. African leaders also has acquired taste for exotic and expensive things from Europe and enjoyed the products of its civilization. On way to buy them was – selling slaves. African leaders acted for their own interest.  So we can say one of the main reasons were wealth and power.        

        Some would say that even today African elite is not fundamentally different from African rulers from the slave trade period. Corruption in some African countries today is often linked to the slave trade. Also there is a thesis saying that if the West had not decided to abolish slavery, the transatlantic slave trade chain would be still “alive”.

        As we can see there are few clear reasons why Africans participated and how material goods, greed and European imports blinded African rulers.

        

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