| Popis: |
This chapter examines the growth and impacts of European contacts and the trade in slaves on peoples and places that make up contemporary Nigeria. The trade in human beings between indigenous groups and Europeans on the coast was built on structures and markets that had existed for a long time in the interior of the continent, but with greater intensity between the seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries CE. The dynamics of the slave trade differed regionally, but the growth of the trans-Atlantic slave trade brought about significant changes to the political economies and cultures along the coasts, in the hinterlands, and even in the savannah regions that now make up northern Nigeria. Historians have debated important aspects of the slave trade and the long-term impacts and legacies of the trade in human beings on the region, even as our understanding of the demographic impact has sharpened significantly in recent decades. |
