Expert: Ernest Tufft - 2/22/2007

Question
MY question is, for you to briefly tell me a summary of slave trade in West Africa.

Answer
Bernadette I can't really do justice with a summary of the slave trade in West Africa as this is a very complex subject.  However, I can provide a brief overview.
First, the slave trade can be divided into three types:  African to African, African to Arab, and African to European.  The African to African slave trade has a very long history, but basically this would occur following a military defeat of a tribe.  The tribal members would be forced to join the other tribe as subservient workers, but families weren't broken, and tribes often retained their identity.  Frequently, the value of slaves was important enough for a king to give powerful leadership positions to a slave.  Intermarriage under such circumstances was commonplace and racial bigotry didn't exist.  In the African to Arab trade, winning tribal chiefs sold the losing tribal members to Arab traders who shackled them in irons for the long hot walk across the Sahara desert.  This was a cruel practice and many slaves died in the desert.  Here again though, racial bigotry wasn't a primary problem and Arabs married Africans.  In the final type, African chiefs along the coast brought down slaves from upriver to sell to the European slave merchants.  Of course, many slaves died in the voyage to the Americas.  Most such slaves went to the plantation societies of Brazil, the Caribbean, and Southern United States.  

There were many European countries involved, but I know a little about the slave trade between the Senegal and Lousiana.  First, New Orleans was considered the least valuable American possession for the French, and it was difficult to get French citizens to settle in Lousiana.  Often then, prisoners, drunks, whores, and heavily indebted French citizens were forced to go.  French soldiers were as poorly clothed and fed as the first slaves brought from Africa.  The Bombara tribe of the Senegal and Mali produced the greatest number of immigrant slaves to Louisiana during French colonial times.  These slaves brought skills for draining swamp land and building levees, growing rice, indigo, and the vegetables now associated with "soul food" and "creole" cooking.  Thus, the status of these slaves was relatively high and French marriage to slaves was a commonplace practice for a slave woman seeking freedom for herself and her children.  Where cruel masters wer found, slaves often ran away to join American Indian tribes, as did the mistreated French soldier from time to time.  Thus, the modern cajun/creole culture of New Orleans and Louisiana is a mixture of French, African, and Indian influences.

After 1803 and the sale of the Lousisan Purchase to the USA, the status of Louisiana African-Americans dropped, and racial bigotry developed.  Old French and Spanish marriage and birth records were destroyed, and formerly free blacks were returned into bondage.  Slave masters had legal ownership of slaves, allowing them to punish at will, rape, or sell-off family members.  Slave marriage weren't regarded as legal, and so the impact on African-American family values declined to the pitiful situation that we often see today.

Overall though, the impact of African immigration to the USA and the Americas in general can't be overvalued.  Food, music, and even language of all Americans owe much to the culture brought from Africa.

At the same time, the impact of the labor and talent loss in West Africa also had it's impact, reducinng the population and weakening political bonds such that European colonization of West Africa became possible.  Many of the political problems of Nigeria and Liberia, for example, have their origins in the late 19th century colonization of West Africa.

Today, West Africans and Americans share a great deal in common that is difficult for Europeans to appreciate.  Urban youth of West Africa love American Rap and Hip Hop music artists, for example, and so American would be doing both itself and the Africans a great deal of good to help improve the African economies such that they can appreciate more American products.  Hope this helps...