Black Experience | Page 8

of primitive savagery. On the contrary, a number of
other small yet powerful states existed throughout the entire period. If
this had not been so, the Europeans, as they arrived in the fifteenth
century, could have pillaged West Africa at will. Instead, the Europeans
were only able to establish trading stations where local kings permitted

it. With the exception of a few raiding parties which seized Africans
and carried them off as slaves, most slave acquisition was done through
hard bargaining and a highly systematized trading process. The
Europeans were never allowed to penetrate inland, and they found that
they always had to treat the African kings and their agents as business
equals. Many of the early European visitors, in fact, were impressed by
the luxury, power, trading practices, skilled crafts, and the complex
social structure which they found in Africa. Only in some parts of East
Africa, where the states were unusually small, were the Portuguese able
to pillage and conquer at will. While many Europeans may have
thought of Africa as being filled with ignorant savages, those who
reached its shores were impressed instead with its vigorous civilization.
The Culture of West Africa
An African should not have to find it necessary to make apologies for
his civilization. However, Europeans and Americans have come to
believe, at least in their subconscious minds, that civilization can be
equated with progress in science and technology. Because the Africans
lagged far behind the Europeans in the arts of war and of economic
exploitation, the Europeans believed at the Africans must be
uncivilized savages. Africa, like the rest of the world outside Europe,
had not made the break-through in science, technology, and capitalism
which had occurred in Europe. Nevertheless, they had their own
systems of economics, scholarship, art, and religion as well as a highly
complex social and political structure. There are common elements
which run throughout the entire continent of Africa, but to gain the best
insight into the background of the American slaves, West African
culture can be isolated and studied by itself.
The West African economy was a subsistence economy, and therefore
people were basically satisfied with the status quo and saw no point in
accumulating wealth. Also in a subsistence economy, there is little need
for money, and most trade was done through barter. Because there was
no money, there was no wage labor. Instead, labor was created either
through a system of domestic slavery or through a complex system of
reciprocal duties and obligations. However, West African slavery was
more like the European system of serfdom than it was like modern
slavery.
Within this subsistence economy, each tribe or locality tended to

specialize in certain fields of agriculture or manufacture which
necessitated a vigorous and constant trade between all of them.
However, within the trading centers, money had come into regular use.
It usually took the form of cowrie shells, iron bars, brass rings, or other
standard items of value. Systems of banking and credit had also been
developed, but even those involved in money, banking, and trade had a
noncapitalist attitude towards wealth. They enjoyed luxury and the
display of affluence, but they had no concept of investing capital to
increase overall production.
West Africa also carried on a vigorous trade with the outside world.
When the Europeans arrived, they discovered, as had the Arabs before
them, that the West Africans could strike a hard bargain. They had
developed their own systems of weights and measures and insisted on
using them. Europeans who failed to treat the king or his agent fairly,
found that the Africans simply refused to deal with them again. Trade
was always monopolized by the king, and he appointed specific
merchants to deal with foreign businessmen. As previously noted, it
was by the control and taxation of commerce That the king financed his
government and maintained his power.
The strength and weaknesses of the West African economy can be seen
by a cursory glance at a list of its main exports and imports. West
African exports included gold, ivory, hides, leather goods, cotton,
peppercorn, olive oil, and cola. While some of these items were only
exported for short distances, others found their way over long distances.
West African gold, for example, was exported as far away as Asia and
Northern Europe. Some English coins of the period were minted with
West African gold. West African imports included silks from Asia,
swords, knives, kitchen-ware, and trinkets from the primitive industrial
factories of Europe as well as horses and other items from Arabia. Two
other items of trade became all important for the future--the exportation
of slaves and the importation of guns and gunpowder.
West African manufacturing demonstrated a considerable amount of
skill in a wide variety of crafts. These included basket-weaving, pottery
making, woodworking and