From Slave Trade to 'Legitimate' Commerce Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The initial ‘crisis of adaptation’: the impact of British abolition on the Atlantic slave trade in West Africa, 1808–1820
- 2 The West African palm oil trade in the nineteenth century and the ‘crisis of adaptation’
- 3 The compatibility of the slave and palm oil trades in Dahomey, 1818–1858
- 4 Between abolition and Jihad: the Asante response to the ending of the Atlantic slave trade, 1807–1896
- 5 Plantations and labour in the south-east Gold Coast from the late eighteenth to the mid nineteenth century
- 6 Owners, slaves and the struggle for labour in the commercial transition at Lagos
- 7 Slaves, Igbo women and palm oil in the nineteenth century
- 8 ‘Legitimate’ trade and gender relations in Yorubaland and Dahomey
- 9 In search of a desert-edge perspective: the Sahara-Sahel and the Atlantic trade, c. 1815–1900
- 10 The ‘New International Economic Order’ in the nineteenth century: Britain's first Development Plan for Africa
- Appendix The ‘crisis of adaptation’: a bibliography
- Index
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The initial ‘crisis of adaptation’: the impact of British abolition on the Atlantic slave trade in West Africa, 1808–1820
- 2 The West African palm oil trade in the nineteenth century and the ‘crisis of adaptation’
- 3 The compatibility of the slave and palm oil trades in Dahomey, 1818–1858
- 4 Between abolition and Jihad: the Asante response to the ending of the Atlantic slave trade, 1807–1896
- 5 Plantations and labour in the south-east Gold Coast from the late eighteenth to the mid nineteenth century
- 6 Owners, slaves and the struggle for labour in the commercial transition at Lagos
- 7 Slaves, Igbo women and palm oil in the nineteenth century
- 8 ‘Legitimate’ trade and gender relations in Yorubaland and Dahomey
- 9 In search of a desert-edge perspective: the Sahara-Sahel and the Atlantic trade, c. 1815–1900
- 10 The ‘New International Economic Order’ in the nineteenth century: Britain's first Development Plan for Africa
- Appendix The ‘crisis of adaptation’: a bibliography
- Index
Summary
The ending of the Atlantic slave trade and its replacement by what contemporaries called ‘legitimate’ (i.e. non-slave) trade – principally in agricultural produce, such as palm oil and groundnuts – during the nineteenth century has been one of the central themes in the historiography of western Africa since the beginnings of serious academic study of African history in the 1950s. Basil Davidson, in his classic study of the impact of the Atlantic slave trade on Africa, published originally in 1961, held that the slave trade had had a profound and essentially destructive effect on the African societies involved in it. Paradoxically, however, he argued that the ending of the trade in the nineteenth century was also negative and disruptive in its impact:
The ending of the trade was of tremendous significance for Africans and Europeans on the Guinea Coast. It upset the trading habits of four full centuries, undermined systems of government, disrupted social customs and opened the way for European intervention.
In Davidson's analysis, the ending of the slave trade caused an ‘economic crisis’ for African societies, leading to ‘political upheaval’ in them, which in turn provoked imperialist intervention and ultimately annexation.
When Davidson was writing in 1961, there was little detailed research on the impact of the ending of the slave trade in Africa to sustain the apocalyptic picture which he painted.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- From Slave Trade to 'Legitimate' CommerceThe Commercial Transition in Nineteenth-Century West Africa, pp. 1 - 31Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995
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