1. The Effects of the Slave Trade
African Societies

2. Aim: Consider the main effects that slavery had on African societies.
Success Criteria:
On a map of Africa you can label the kingdoms of Ashanti and Dahomey.
You can give an example of how slavery affected farmers, tradesmen, tribes and families.

3. Introduction The slave trade had effects on all the areas it touched.
The main effect was on the continent of Africa – some people did gain out of the trade but many more suffered.
It is important to remember that there had been slavery for many years in West Africa.
However the work that slaves did and the way they were treated varied immensely.

4. Olaudah Equiano 1745-1797 Born in 1745 in modern day Nigeria.
At the age of 11 he was taken into slavery and sent to Barbados and then Virginia in America.
He was bought by a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy and trained to be a sailor – he was expected to fight in battles his master was involved in.
He was sent to Britain to attend school and learned how to read and write.
Olaudah was sold two more times – his final master, Robert King said he could buy his freedom for £40.

5. Olaudah Equiano
After he returned to Britain he became heavily involved in the Abolitionist movement.
He was encouraged to write his life story or autobiography ‘ The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano’
His personal account of slavery was a sensation at the time and provides historians with valuable evidence about slavery.
He married a British woman – Susan Cullen and had two daughters.

6. In Source A Olaudah Equiano describes the lives of slaves among his own Ibo people of West Africa. The extract is taken from his 1789 autobiography.
We kept as slaves the prisoners of war that were not
bought back or sold off. But their conditions was so
much better than the slaves in the West Indies. With
us they did no more work than anyone else. Their
food, clothing and lodging were nearly the same.
Some slaves even held important positions and had
slaves of their own.

7. Ashanti
‘The Gold Coast’
Ashanti is in modern day Ghana – the Europeans called the coastline near Ashanti – the ‘Gold Coast’.
Ashanti was an inland kingdom, so it was too difficult for white Europeans to attack.

8. Ashanti – The Gold Coast
Ashanti used slaves for many years but they used even more once the slave trade developed.
Ashanti traded some of its slaves for white men’s goods, such as cloth, alcohol and especially guns.
It used the guns to make itself more powerful and start wars against its neighbours to gain more slaves.
It also had gold mines were slaves worked.

9. In Source B, a Danish visitor to Ashanti in the eighteenth century described the Ashanti gold mines
They are pits dug into the ground in a slanting manner.
The pits are like a staircase with each step measuring
about one metre high. On each step stands a slave
who passes up soil on trays and hands down the empty
ones to men working at the face, who pick out the
earth and extract the ore. The pits vary in length from
four to ten metres. Slaves in Ashanti are also put to
death in religious rituals, as human sacrifices.

10. Dahomey ‘The Slave Coast’
Dahomey, in modern day Benin, was another inland kingdom that became rich and powerful by exploiting the slave trade.
The Kings of Dahomey organised raids into neighbouring lands, to capture slaves to sell on to the whites.

11. In Source C, Olaudah Equiano describes how, at the age of eleven, he became a slave.
When the grown up people were gone into the fields to work,
the children gathered together to play. Usually some of us
climbed into a tree to look out for any kidnapper, for they often
took the opportunity of our parents’ absences to attack and
carry off as many as they could seize. Three people, two men
and a woman, climbed silently over a wall. Before we could
cry out they seized my sister and me and gagged us. Then they
carried us off into the woods. For two days they hurried us
through the woods. On the third day some new people took my
sister off. I never saw her again.

12. Mungo Park was a Scottish traveller who made a 500-mile journey through West Africa. In Source D, he describes one of the many slave caravans he met in the interior.
The slaves which Karfa had brought with him were all
prisoners of war. They looked at me first with horror,
for many of them believe the whites buy Africans for
the purpose of eating them. This is one reason the
slave merchants keep them constantly in irons, and
watch them very closely lest they escape. They are
usually secured by putting the left leg of one and the
right leg of another in the same pair of fetters (chains).

13. Every four slaves are likewise fastened together by the
necks, with a strong rope. At night another pair of
fetters is put round their wrists.

14. Effects of Slavery on West Africa
Farming
Effects of Slavery on West Africa
Effects of Slavery on African Societies
Trade
Tribes
Families and Communities

15. In Source E, John Newton a slave trader in West Africa comments on the trading methods used between Africans and Europeans.
Europeans try to cheat Africans at every turn. Any
article of trade that can be cheapened is so. Spirits are
diluted with water, kegs of gunpowder have false
bottoms, pieces are cut out of rolls of cloth. The
natives are cheated in every way, and become more
and more jealous, revengeful and cheating the more
they trade with Europeans, and especially, I am sorry
to say, with the English.

16. Source F is from the ‘The Shameful Trade’ by F. G
Source F is from the ‘The Shameful Trade’ by F.G. Kay published in It describe the effects of the slave trade on Africa.
From Cape Verde to the Cuanza river, a coast of over
1000 miles, more than 150 European forts dominated
Africa. African farming changed to grow the crops
used to provision the slave ships. Native crafts died
out, unable to compete with cheap European goods.
Chiefs and Kings stopped ruling by law and custom,
and became greedy cunning tradesmen, surrounded by
corrupt African officials and advised by unprincipled
European agents.

17. Tribal wars went on and one, caused invariably by the
profits from the slave trade. Law and justice were
being corrupted, more and more crimes no matter
how small were punished by being made a slave.
Husbands sold wives, parents sold children, neighbours
tried to blame each other for crimes punishable by
slavery. Thousands of villages were ruined or deserted
as a result of wars or raids to get slaves. Towns that
had once flourished as trading centres became
derelict. Only one trade flourished – in slaves.