While Dahomey and Ashanti are the best-known examples, several other West African kingdoms played significant roles in supplying the Atlantic slave trade.
The Kingdom of Oyo, at its height one of the largest states in West Africa, controlled much of what is now Nigeria and Benin. Oyo’s cavalry armies raided extensively into neighbouring territories, and enslaved captives formed a significant part of the tribute and trade that sustained the kingdom. Oyo supplied enslaved people to the coast for export throughout the eighteenth century, and its eventual collapse in the early nineteenth century was in part caused by the disruption to this trade.
The Kingdom of Kongo, in present-day Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo, was an early and significant participant in the Atlantic trade. Kongolese rulers initially cooperated with Portuguese traders and later with Dutch and other European merchants. Kongolese elites profited from the trade even as it devastated the populations of the regions from which enslaved people were taken. The Kingdom of Kongo’s own internal slave raiding and trading supplied a substantial portion of the enslaved people transported to Brazil and Spanish America.
The Kingdom of Benin, in present-day Nigeria, was more ambivalent about the Atlantic trade than some of its neighbours. Its rulers at times restricted the sale of male captives to Europeans and at other times participated actively. Benin’s relationship with the trade was complex and changed over time, but it was never simply a victim of European exploitation.
The general pattern across West African states was of active participation by local rulers who saw the trade as an opportunity to be exploited, not an imposition to be resisted. This does not mean all African peoples were willing participants. The people who were enslaved were victims. But the states and rulers who enslaved and sold them were not.
