last of the three great empires of West
Africa.

It would be a mistake, however, to assume that those parts of West Africa
which remained outside of these three empires fulfilled the usual
European image of primitive savagery. On the contrary, a number of other
small yet powerful states existed throughout the entire period. If this
had not been so, the Europeans, as they arrived in the fifteenth century,
could have pillaged West Africa at will. Instead, the Europeans were only
able to establish trading stations where local kings permitted it. With
the exception of a few raiding parties which seized Africans and carried
them off as slaves, most slave acquisition was done through hard
bargaining and a highly systematized trading process. The Europeans were
never allowed to penetrate inland, and they found that they always had to
treat the African kings and their agents as business equals. Many of the
early European visitors, in fact, were impressed by the luxury, power,
trading practices, skilled crafts, and the complex social structure which
they found in Africa. Only in some parts of East Africa, where the states
were unusually small, were the Portuguese able to pillage and conquer at
will. While many Europeans may have thought of Africa as being filled
with ignorant savages, those who reached its shores were impressed
instead with its vigorous civilization.

The Culture of West Africa

An African should not have to find it necessary to make apologies for his
civilization. However, Europeans and Americans have come to believe, at
least in their subconscious minds, that civilization can be equated with
progress in science and technology. Because the Africans lagged far
behind the Europeans in the arts of war and of economic exploitation, the
Europeans believed at the Africans must be uncivilized savages. Africa,
like the rest of the world outside Europe, had not made the break-through
in science, technology, and capitalism which had occurred in Europe.
Nevertheless, they had their own systems of economics, scholarship, art,
and religion as well as a highly complex social and political structure.
There are common elements which run throughout the entire continent of
Africa, but to gain the best insight into the background of the American
slaves, West African culture can be isolated and studied by itself.

The West African economy was a subsistence economy, and therefore people
were basically satisfied with the stat