West African Trading Posts: The Advent of European Colonialism
West African trading posts along the coast were cosmopolitan in nature. These communities gradually evolved over centuries of slave trading with Europeans and included heterogeneous populations. In Maryse Condé’s novel, Segu, portrayals of Ouidah, Gorée, and the Cape Coast of modern Ghana illustrated their cosmopolitan nature through architecture, trade, interracial marriages and relationships, the presence of Christianity, and the increasing importance of the slave trade. Therefore, the above characteristics of coastal communities allowed them to facilitate imperialism since they provided initial zones of missionary activity and early colonial conquests by European powers in the 19th century.
Miscegenation, perhaps the most ostensible change reflected by these communities, was quite common. The mulatto offspring of interracial unions tended to adopt European racial theories to elevate themselves above darker-skinned Africans. For example, some biracial Africans, such as the half-French and half-Wolof Anne Pépin, owned land and slaves.[1] Anne, who owned Naba, saw no problem with owning slaves and looked to her father’s French origin for her identity instead of her Wolof mother. For example, she dressed in a European style, with skirts, tunics, scarves, and a shawl.[2] The mulatto class also resided in tall stone houses or flat-roofed wooden homes and lived from trade.[3] As a mulatto landowner and slaveholder, Anne was more tied to the land than the French who only came to trade in slaves. Since her world revolved around the slave trade, she refused to recognize the possibility of abolition in the future, despite the growing antislavery movement in Britain and the Haitian Revolution.[4] When her French lover Isidore informed her of the upcoming abolition of the slave trade by the British and the importance of establishing agricultural colonies in Cape Verde, she could not imagine the very idea of ending the slave trade.[5] Instead Naba’s labor was used to beautify her home as a gardener and the slaves are not used for profit-making plantation agriculture within the French trading post. However, Anne would be willing to revive connections with her mother’s family in order to purchase land.[6] Although she is no longer in contact with them, Anne and other biracial coastal people were able to take advantage of their family ties to Africans to access land and wealth. And through connections like hers, Europeans could move further inland.
Besides selling slaves to European and New World traders, African slaves were not being utilized for export agriculture by the French and mulatto landholders. In addition to Anne, biracial people in Ouidah, Lagos, and other coastal cities thought of themselves as better than black Africans since they occupied an intermediate position in European racial schema that dehumanized blacks. The biracial daughter of a Portuguese trader, Eugenia de Carvalho, and her brother shared this belief in color prejudice. Her brother even called Eucaristus a “Dirty nigger, cannibal…”[7] Thus, they adopted European racial theories and distinguish themselves from Africans while at the same time they’re inextricably linked to Africa through blood and their dependence on slavery and the slave trade. Due to their acceptance of European racist discourse, they sided with Christian missionaries and colonial powers since they perceived themselves as racially distinct from black Africans.
Likewise, Creoles in Sierra Leone and other coastal cities believed that they would inherit positions of authority in the administration of the colonies and thought of themselves as civilizers.[8] Their communities reflected the gradually increasing missionary zeal of European and African Christians. Creoles in Sierra Leone consisted of an assortment of recaptured slaves from all over West and West-Central Africa, the Caribbean and the United States. Obviously those from the Caribbean and the United States or Christianized recaptured slaves often promoted Western culture and Christianity.[9] Unlike the mulattoes off the coast of Senegal, they were actively promoting European culture and Christianity in the interior and embraced the Society for the Civilization of Africa and similar groups. Although Naba was baptized and given a Christian name, neither Naba nor neighboring Africans were targets for missionary activity and Anne never endeavored to test the veracity of his conversion. In areas populated by Creoles, missionaries made more meaningful attempts to convert Africans. Samuel Ajayi Crowther, a Yoruba recaptive, converted to Anglicanism and became the first bishop of the Anglican Church, established an all-African Christian settlement on the Niger River, translated the Bible into Yoruba, and made an English-Yoruba dictionary. These aforementioned accomplishments obviously made missionary activity easier since whites were less inclined to live in the Nigerian interior because of diseases such as malaria. Creoles also accepted European culture and admired the technological superiority of Europe. For instance, Dr. J. Africanus B. Horton, son of an Ibo recaptive and intellectual who published on African affairs believed in the superiority of European civilization. Creoles were thoroughly prepared at Fourah Bay College in Freetown to become clergymen and Africans took advantage of the opportunities offered by Western education. In fact, a higher proportion of children went to school in Sierra Leone than England at the time since education was publicly funded.[10] Other Creoles saw themselves as harbingers of civilization and Christianity, and believed they would gradually take leadership positions in their communities instead of whites from Europe.[11] For example, Crowther believed in a form of European colonialism that deposed African kings and governments in order to spread Christianity.[12] However, Creoles never envisioned the future form of colonialism that disempowered them. Like the mulattoes of Gorée, Creoles aided European colonialism. As cultural brokers and intermediaries between Western missionaries and Africans in the interior, they actively proselytized and spread aspects of Western civilization, which encouraged European imperialism in the region since the Creoles and other coastal peoples welcomed Europeans as traders. In spite of the general appreciation for the opportunities of European education and technology, some Creoles, such as Emma, the wife of Eucaristus and descendant of Jamaican Maroons, opposed the cultural and political imperialism of Britain.[13] Some Creoles clearly disagreed with the total abandonment of non-Western traditions and religions, but they could not stop other Creoles from encouraging colonialism and opening up new areas for missions in the interior.
Moreover, coastal communities reflected the growing importance of the Atlantic slave trade and African dependence on European manufactured goods. Conde demonstrates this dependence in the kingdoms of Dahomey and the Asante Empire. The increasing presence of European goods undermined local industries and gradually developed into dependence on Europeans for the types of goods Africans had produced before or received from trade within Africa. In Dahomey, white traders in Ouidah were also influential and European demand for palm oil led to Dahomean palm oil plantation labor. Indeed, the labor of enslaved peoples in Dahomey resembled New World slavery, and Europeans overlooked the use of slave labor to provide this “legitimate commerce.”[14] This type of trade in which external demand induced Dahomean leaders to supply raw products for machine lubricants and soap in Europe shows the imbalance in trade and power and it gave European merchants and their respective nations too much power in the kingdom. Francisco da Souza, the slave trader in Ouidah provides evidence of this since he is respected and given a position of authority by the king of Dahomey, who also granted a Malobali the right to engage in palm oil cultivation. Furthermore, the only people who benefitted from legitimate commerce were the kings and slave traders who established plantations and relied on slave labor to supply the growing European demand.[15] The Agoudas, or descendants of Catholic ex-slaves from Brazil also impacted Ouidah since they often identified with Christianity and served missionary interests. Romana exemplified this attitude since she was known as a devout Catholic who treated worked with missionaries. Unlike Dahomey, the Asante had a larger empire with trade connections to the north but its attempts to control the coast were challenged by Europeans, such as the English governor of the Cape Coast fortress. Indeed, the white governor actually desired British political control of the entire region to ensure uninterrupted trade.[16] So while Malobali did not understand why the Asantehene refused to drive whites away from the coast, it’s apparent that the kingdom would not wish to go to war with the people who supplied their rivals with guns. Once again, coastal West Africa exposed and prepared the way for colonialism by allowing Europeans to directly govern forts and towns with more and more freedom from direct African supervision.
Clearly, trading posts along the West African coast facilitated European colonial expansion. Christianity, the increasing dependency of African kingdoms on Europe for guns and manufactured goods, and interracial peoples and Creole cultures became very common on the coast. These factors then impacted inland states more and more and aided European imperialism because coastal trading towns were the precursor to European rule. The coastal cities provided a launching pad for European militaries and alliances with groups like the Creoles or coastal Africans. Like the Fante and the British against the Asante kingdom, coastal regions provided knowledge of the interior, soldiers, and Westernized intellectuals and Christians who often identified with European powers and eventually served their interests as colonial outposts. Therefore, the coastal trading posts reflect the tensions between two vastly different worlds and the connections that arose to places as far away as Europe and the Americas.
9. Ibid.
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