15th–18th Centuries: (The Political Economy of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Centralized Mercantilist States, Militarized Minorities Armed with Imported Firearms…

15th–18th Centuries: (The Political Economy of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Centralized Mercantilist States, Militarized Minorities Armed with Imported Firearms, and the Ironic Logic of Selling People to Acquire People): Atlantic and internal long-distance commercial systems had brought about major political, social, and economic changes among African states and societies by the end of the eighteenth century. The major political consequence of involvement in long-distance trade was the creation of centralized, essentially mercantilist states characterized by the fusing of political and economic power and territorial expansion at the expense of smaller, weaker, or stateless communities. Across swathes of western and central Africa, militarized states arose, while imported firearms facilitated the rise of small, well-armed minorities capable of dominating larger populations. The slave trade resulted in an increased level of violence: wars were often fought deliberately for captives, sometimes involving the systematic devastation of weaker communities. In Angola, Ndongo and the Lunda empire became deeply involved in slave-raiding violence, with the Portuguese permanently settled in the Luanda area; by the mid-eighteenth century, ten thousand captives a year were deported through Luanda alone. Yet captives were just as often the product of wars fought for other reasons: Benin sold captives during military expansion in the fifteenth century, eschewed the trade once expansion ceased, and resumed only in the eighteenth century as Benin disintegrated. Rulers sold captives to acquire goods with which to attract personal followers: they sold people in order to acquire people, a deeply ironic separation of collective from individual interest.