The Songhai Empires: The Impact Of Slave Trade In West Africa

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Intro:
The competition for wealth shaped many West African societies, such as the Songhai Empire. Like most empires, the Songhai Empire participated in acts of trade to provide more wealth for their kingdom to build larger empires and armies for protection from competition. Through contact with the world outside of Africa, involving many European civilizations, the Songhai Empire was capable of conquering areas such as Timbuktu, a primary city for general acts of trading. This strategic move lead to the empire 's advancement in finance, wealth, and gain in agricultural dominance which eventually lured people into the city, increasing the population and opportunities for agriculture and trade to acquire more wealth. During the early fifteen …show more content…

One of the negative impacts could possibly be the encouragement to wage more wars and conduct more raids against neighbors through the implications by European civilizations when demanding more slaves. Theoretically supported by the items of exchange, where kingdoms are provided with guns in exchange for slaves may prove this idea to not be totally sparked by insanity. Also, amongst the entire Atlantic slave trade Africa was the only continent to be affected by the loss of their population. There were not enough births in Africa to offset the number of people that would be shipped overseas. Leading to the disruption of the African nation 's cultures and economies impacting the development of African history. In fact, Another effect was that many of the African “societies with slaves” would become “slave societies” with their economies built off of slaves from other African civilizations. Additionally, the remaining population played a major factor that lead to its economic underdevelopment. Because of their incapability to develop economically and their progressively weakening society they were unable to resist Europeans once they begun to colonize Africa. Although Africa was negatively affected by the impacts of slave trade, the New World benefited from it in a positive way. First, the New World was able to make up for cheap labor. Also, the New World was experienced a rapid economic growth that can be attributed to the agricultural plantations that all ran off slave labor which made excellent profit. The economic growth during this time led to technological advancement and the gain of power in the world as a whole. Especially as Africa began to lose its dominance and alpha

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