African kingdoms had their own systems of slavery long before the Atlantic trade began. In most West African societies, enslaved people were typically captives taken in warfare between kingdoms, people enslaved as punishment for serious crimes, or people sold into slavery to settle debts. These systems varied considerably in their harshness and in the legal and social status they conferred on enslaved people.
What matters for the reparations argument is that the African kingdoms that became major suppliers to the Atlantic slave trade were not simply responding to European demand for the first time. They were expanding and redirecting an existing practice. The infrastructure of slave raiding, capture, and trade already existed. European ships arriving on the coast offered a new and lucrative market for a commodity that was already being produced.
The Kingdom of Dahomey in present-day Benin is perhaps the clearest example. Dahomey built its military power specifically around the capture of enslaved people from neighbouring peoples, particularly the Yoruba. It sold tens of thousands of enslaved people to European traders over the course of the eighteenth century. The slave trade was not something imposed on Dahomey by Europeans. It was a deliberate state policy that made Dahomey one of the most powerful kingdoms in the region.
The Ashanti Confederacy in present-day Ghana operated similarly. Ashanti military campaigns generated large numbers of captives who were sold to European traders at the coast. The Ashanti kingdom grew wealthy and powerful in part through this trade. Its leaders were sophisticated participants in an international market, not passive victims of European exploitation.
None of this transfers moral responsibility for the Atlantic slave trade from European buyers to African sellers. Both parties participated in a system that caused immense suffering. But when African governments today seek reparations from Britain for the slave trade, the history of their own predecessors’ participation deserves to be part of the conversation.
