West Africa in the Atlantic Community: The Case of the Slave Coast

Abstract

T SHE section of the West African coast known to Europeans as the was, as the name implies, a major source for the transatlantic slave trade between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. The two principal ports of embarkation for slaves in the region were Ouidah and Lagos.1 The history of Slave Coast ports such as Ouidah and Lagos cannot be understood or adequately represented in isolation, since they were involved in wider regional and transatlantic networks. Within Africa, the operation of the slave trade linked the coastal ports not only to the countries in the interior that supplied slaves to the coast but also to one another, especially through the coastal lagoon system, along which slaves were commonly moved from port to port prior to embarkation.2 Across the Atlantic, the commercial links established by the slave trade among ports in West Africa, America, and Europe are well known, but the trade also generated transatlantic social and cultural connections whose importance has been commonly underestimated. The scale and intensity of these bonds were such that the coastal communities of the Slave Coast, or at least their commercial and ruling elites, may be considered as participating in what can reasonably be termed an Atlantic community. The degree of involvement in this