Trade Between Western Africa and the Atlantic World in the Pre-Colonial Era

Abstract

IN 1728, PtRE LABAT, A FRENCH MISSIONARY and enthusiastic imperialist, advocated the introduction into Africa of a wide range of manufactured goods. Africans, he believed, would become "hooked on French goods in the same manner as Europeans developed a dependency on tobacco." This dependency would induce them to offer "all their labor, their trade and their industry."' Labat was neither the first nor the last European to articulate this view, although his religious credentials make him one of the more interesting advocates. The conviction that fostering wants among domestic wage earners would create both a marketoriented supply of labor and a demand for goods and services was widely held by contemporary observers of European industrialization. This same conviction, it has been argued, was a cornerstone of British policy toward Africa in the mid-nineteenth century.2 Most modern commentators accept the view that Europeans were at least partially successful in imposing this policy on Africa. If historians concede that Africa was thus pulled into the Atlantic economy, it is not such a large step to the view-also widely held-that Africa made indispensable contributions to the development of the pre-colonial, or pre-1870, international economy.3