did the same with legitimate commerce. But they did so in
a peculiar context, one in which slavery was a way of life but
the external demand for slaves had suddenly dried up.
What were all these slaves to do now that they could not be
sold to Europeans? The answer was simple: they could be
profitably put to work, under coercion, in Africa, producing
the new items of legitimate commerce.
One of the best documented examples was in Asante, in
modern Ghana. Prior to 1807, the Asante Empire had been
heavily involved in the capturing and export of slaves,
bringing them down to the coast to be sold at the great
slaving castles of Cape Coast and Elmina. After 1807, with
this option closed off, the Asante political elite reorganized
their economy. However, slaving and slavery did not end.
Rather, slaves were settled on large plantations, initially
around the capital city of Kumase, but later spread
throughout the empire (corresponding to most of the interior
of Ghana). They were employed in the production of gold
and kola nuts for export, but also grew large quantities of
food and were intensively used as porters, since Asante
did not use wheeled transportation. Farther east, similar
adaptations took place. In Dahomey, for example, the king
had large palm oil plantations near the coastal ports of
Whydah and Porto Novo, all based on slave labor.
So the abolition of the slave trade, rather than making
slavery in Africa wither away, simply led to a redeployment
of the slaves, who were now used within Africa rather than
in the Americas. Moreover, many of the political institutions
the slave trade had wrought in the previous two centuries
were unaltered and patterns of behavior persisted. For
example, in Nigeria in the 1820s and ’30s the once-great
Oyo Kingdom collapsed. It was undermined by civil wars
and the rise of the Yoruba city-states, such as Illorin and
Ibadan, that were directly involved in the slave trade, to its
south. In the 1830s, the capital of Oyo was sacked, and
after that the Yoruba cities contested power with Dahomey
for regional dominance. They fought an almost continuous
series of wars in the first half of the century, which
generated a massive supply of slaves. Along with this went
the normal rounds of kidnapping and condemnation by
oracles and smaller-scale raiding. Kidnapping was such a
problem in some parts of Nigeria that parents would not let