The success of Africans in resisting the early European attempts at raiding their coasts meant that the interactions that would follow would be largely peaceful and commercial – for it would not be until 1579 that a major war would develop, in Angola, and even there it rapidly became an indecisive standstill. There would be no dramatic European conquests in Africa, and even the slaves who would flood the South Atlantic and sustain colonization in America would be purchased more often than captured. This state of affairs was already being put in place by Diogo Gomes's expeditions in 1456–62 and would characterize relations between Europeans and Africans for centuries to come.

African naval victories might not necessarily guarantee that the commerce that grew up in place of raiding was truly under African control or necessarily served their interests (or the interests of the wealthy and powerful in African society). Indeed, many scholars in recent years have most often seen the commerce of Atlantic Africa with Europeans as destructive and unequal, with Europeans reaping most of the long-range profits and Africans unable to benefit or being forced, through commercial weakness, into accepting trade that ultimately placed Africa in its current situation of dependency and underdevelopment.

Perhaps the most influential scholar to advocate such a position was Walter Rodney, whose work on Africa's Atlantic trade concluded that the commerce with Europe was a first, decisive step in the underdevelopment of Africa.