The Import of Firearms into West Africa in the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

The records of probably the biggest Birmingham gun-making firm specializing in the African trade and records of the Dutch West India Company are used in this article to throw more light on the quantities, types and quality of the guns imported into West Africa and on their effects in the eighteenth century. Inikori's estimate of 45 per cent as the proportion of English firearms in the total annual West African import of between 283,000 and 394,000 guns per annum is probably an underestimate because of the unknown quantities of English guns which were re-exported from Continental ports to West Africa. It is estimated tentatively that 180,000 guns per annum were being imported into the Gold and Slave Coasts by 1730, and that some of the most dramatic effects of the import of guns occurred between 1658 and 1730. A revolution in warfare began in the 1690s in the Senegambian coastal areas and along the Gold and Slave Coasts. The trebling of slave prices and the sharp reduction in gun prices between 1680 and 1720 enabled large militarized slave-exporting states to develop along the Gold and Slave Coasts. There was a strong demand for well-finished and well-proved guns as well as for the cheapest unproved guns, and the dangerous state of many of the guns imported into West Africa has been exaggerated. The reputations of European nations for the quality of their guns fluctuated. There was probably no steady deterioration in the quality of English guns imported between 1750 and 1807, but the quality of the cheapest guns deteriorated during periods of intense competition.