ered on the west coast near
the seat of perhaps the oldest and most interesting culture of Africa. It
came at a critical time. The culture of Yoruba, Benin, Mossiland, and Nupe
had exhausted itself in a desperate attempt to stem the on-coming flood of
Mohammedan culture. It has succeeded in maintaining its small, loosely
federated city-states suited to trade, industry, and art. It had developed
strong resistance toward the Sudan state builders toward the north, as in
the case of the fighting Mossi; but behind this warlike resistance lay the
peaceful city life which gave industrial ideas to Byzantium and shared
something of Ethiopian and Mediterranean culture.

The first advent of the slave traders increased and encouraged native
industry, as is evidenced by the bronze work of Benin; but soon this was
pushed into the background, for it was not bronze metal but bronze flesh
that Europe wanted. A new tyranny, blood-thirsty, cruel, and built on war,
forced itself forward in the Niger delta. The powerful state of Dahomey
arose early in the eighteenth century and became a devastating tyranny,
reaching its highest power early in the nineteenth century. Ashanti, a
similar kingdom, began its conquests in 1719 and grew with the slave
trade. Thus state building in West Africa began to replace the city
economy, but it was a state built on war and on war supported and
encouraged largely for the sake of trade in human flesh. The native
industries were changed and disorganized. Family ties and government were
weakened. Far into the heart of Africa this devilish disintegration,
coupled with Christian rum and Mohammedan raiding, penetrated. The face of
Africa was turned south on these slave traders instead of northward toward
the Mediterranean, where for two thousand years and more Europe and Africa
had met in legitimate trade and mutual respect. The full significance of
the battle of Tenkadibou, which overthrew the Askias, was now clear.
Hereafter Africa for centuries was to appear before the world, not as the
land of gold and ivory, of Mansa Musa and Meroe, but as a bound and
captive slave, dumb and degraded.

The natural desire to avoid a painful subject has led historians to gloss
over the details of the slave trade and leave the impression that it was a
local west-coast phenomenon and confined to a few years. It was, on the
contrary, continent wide and centuries long and an economic, social, and
political catastrophe probably unpar