19th Century: (Ivory — A Wasting Process Pushed Ever Deeper into the Central African Interior, the Suez Canal Redirecting Trade Toward Europe After 1869, and…

19th Century: (Ivory — A Wasting Process Pushed Ever Deeper into the Central African Interior, the Suez Canal Redirecting Trade Toward Europe After 1869, and Eastern Africa’s Progress Toward an Inevitable Dead End That Would Require an Abrupt Colonial-Era Rupture with Its Economic Past): Ivory was in increasing demand from the late eighteenth century — India remained an important market, but East African ivory was sought in Europe and North America too, especially after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. It was, however, a wasting process: supplies dwindled as the century wore on, with thousands of elephants killed yearly and the search pushed ever deeper into the central African interior. There was considerable dissimilarity in economic development between Atlantic and eastern Africa — in the latter, the export of slaves and ivory represented progress toward an inevitable dead end. These activities were inimical to long-term economic development: ivory was becoming increasingly scarce as the elephant frontier retreated, while slaves had no future as an export commodity under growing European influence. As the nineteenth century drew to a close, central-eastern Africa faced a massive rupture with its economic past — slaves and ivory were abandoned, and export agriculture was abruptly introduced under colonial regimes. Only with railway construction could the eastern African interior be linked to the global economy in the way that the coast had been for centuries.