Africa before the Rise of the Atlantic System
Africa and Europe were already connected before the emergence of the Atlantic slave trade. For many centuries, trading routes linked the two continents, whose peoples and goods traveled across the Sahara Desert through the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea.
The ancient Greek historian Herodotus not only wrote about “Ethiopians” (Black Africans) in his works; he also traveled to and described the African continent.3 During the expansion of the Roman Empire, in the context of warfare between Greeks and Romans, Africans—representing a small minority of enslaved persons in the Greco-Roman world—reached southern Europe, and they also entered the Mediterranean world by way of Egypt, Nubia, North Africa, the region south of the Nile River, the Sahara borders, and West Africa.4African and European exchanges continued in the next centuries. Romans conquered the Iberian Peninsula (known as Hispania) in 220 BCE, and following several Germanic invasions in the fifth century CE, the region was dominated by the Kingdom of the Visigoths. In addition, as early as the sixth century, the trans-Saharan trade that transported gold from West Africa to the Byzantine Empire connected African and Mediterranean populations.5 Then, taking advantage of internal divisions among Christian groups, Muslims coming through North Africa invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 711 CE. Referred to as Al-Andalus by the Muslim occupiers, the region was inhabited by Muslims, Christians, and Jews. During the many decades following Muslim occupation, Muslims and Christians fought to control the region. Gradually, Christian kingdoms emerged in the north. Between 850 and 1250, Christians expanded their influence southward to secure land. Through this long process known as the Reconquest, Christians led military campaigns plundering property and enslaving Muslim occupants, a strategy employed by the Portuguese two centuries later when they reached West Africa.
Eventually, in 1147, Christians controlled Lisbon. In 1179, Afonso I of the House of Burgundy became the first monarch of independent Portugal. Muslim occupation of the Iberian Peninsula lasted until 1492, when Christians eventually took possession of Granada.Ethiopia, which had fought against the Muslims since the thirteenth century, was also in contact with the Mediterranean world through Italy and Egypt. Although several historians have mentioned an embassy from Ethiopia sent to the court of Pope Clement V in Avignon in 1306, recent scholarship has questioned the existence of this early mission.6 Yet, one century later, in 1427, a diplomatic mission from Ethiopia traveled to Valencia., in present-day Spain. The group of emissaries met King Juan V of Aragón, who also sent a diplomatic mission back to Ethiopia, although his ambassadors never made it to their destination.7 Aragón also attempted to build an alliance through a dynastic marriage between Emperor Ishaq of Ethiopia and Joana d’Urgell, the sister of King Alfonso V, as well as an alliance between the infant Dom Pedro and an unknown Ethiopian princess. However, none of these attempts were successful.8
When Portuguese sailors began exploring the coasts of West Africa in the early fifteenth century, the populations of Western Europe, West Africa, North Africa, and Northeast Africa had already been trading for several centuries. Unified since 1128, Portugal was a small kingdom located in the Iberian Peninsula between the Atlantic Ocean and the Kingdom of Castile in present-day Spain, which by that time was divided into four other polities, the kingdoms of AragĂłn, Navarre, Granada, and Majorca. This geographical position left the Portuguese no choice other than to consider territorial and commercial expansion by using the pathways offered by the Atlantic Ocean.
Drawing from the long-standing connections established during the Muslim occupation of the Iberian Peninsula initiated in 711, trade and cultural links between the Kingdom of Granada and the cities of Gao and Timbuktu in the West African empire of Mali flourished by the fourteenth century.
In 1341, the Portuguese sponsored an Italian expedition in the region of Mar Pequeña, the part of the Atlantic Ocean encompassing today’s islands of Madeira and Azores, as well as the Canary Islands, first explored by a Genoese navigator in 1312. Ultimately, navigating the Atlantic Ocean would allow the Portuguese to reach Asia’s spice route and to access West Africa’s coveted gold production.9Following their pro-Christian orientation of a holy war against the Muslims, the Portuguese conquered Ceuta in North Africa in 1415 and then moved along Maghreb’s Atlantic coast. By 1418, these navigators explored the island of Madeira. In the following fifteen years, they also made attempts to colonize the Canary Islands and visited the Azores. Portuguese explorers were a heterogenous group composed of sailors, lesser members of the nobility, and merchants. Searching for wealth, these navigators benefited from growing knowledge of South Atlantic sea currents and winds and the creation of a new small three-masted vessel called the caravela (caravel). The innovative ship allowed travelers to sail against the wind much faster than previously existing boats. Once limited to sailing along coastal areas, these first navigators employed this technological innovation to successfully travel long distances, eventually establishing connections with the gold-producing region of West Africa.10 After passing Cape Bojador in 1434, Portuguese seamen explored the Northern African coastal region of present-day Morocco, reaching the Bay of Arguin in 1443, and in 1445 the mouth of the River Senegal and the Cape Verde islands.11 In 1445, the Portuguese began settling in Madeira and the Azores, which, like Cape Verde, were previously uninhabited.