15th–18th Centuries: (The Demographic and Economic Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade — Population Loss, Retarded Growth, Limited Economic Development, and t…

15th–18th Centuries: (The Demographic and Economic Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade — Population Loss, Retarded Growth, Limited Economic Development, and the Paradoxical Expansion of Internal Slavery After Abolition): The slave trade clearly involved a serious loss to Africa’s productive potential — labor was exported for a fraction of its value, and slaves tended to be young, the most productive members of society. It is widely accepted that modern Angola experienced depopulation, while other areas such as the Slave Coast suffered retarded population growth at the very least. Overall, Atlantic Africa experienced no significant economic development during the era of the slave trade, although there were instances of indigenous economies benefiting — Igbo and Asante textile industries expanded in the eighteenth century, and Yoruba cloth was exported to Brazil. The degree to which imported commodities destroyed indigenous craft industries should not be exaggerated in the late-eighteenth-century context, though the Angolan cloth industry was undoubtedly damaged and Senegalese iron-smelting was undermined. Imported commodities did little to stimulate change or innovation, and there was no significant export of agricultural produce from Africa save food needed on slave ships. Ironically, the institution of slavery itself had expanded by the end of the eighteenth century and would continue to expand in the nineteenth century — to a large degree because of, not despite, abolition.