19th Century: (Legitimate Commerce and the Crises of Adaptation — Palm Oil, Groundnuts, Rubber, and the Ironic Expansion of Domestic Slavery to Meet European…

19th Century: (Legitimate Commerce and the Crises of Adaptation — Palm Oil, Groundnuts, Rubber, and the Ironic Expansion of Domestic Slavery to Meet European Demand for Free-Produced Goods): Legitimate commerce increasingly supplanted the export of human beings, involving European demand for raw materials and agricultural produce from western and central Africa. It had moral and political implications — humanitarians hoped it would bring economic and social progress to Africa. Many Atlantic African societies participated in the export of palm oil, groundnuts, and rubber, but a number experienced crises of adaptation. States whose structures were geared toward slave capture and export, or whose military ethos demanded cyclical warfare, struggled to make the transition to agricultural exports. The era of the slave trade had produced ruling warrior elites at the head of centralized systems; these elites now faced crises because they could not as easily control or monopolize legitimate trade. The new economic system tended to undermine their internal power bases. Demand for palm oil had been increasing since the 1770s, with production spanning the West African coast from Sierra Leone to the Niger Delta. Groundnuts were cultivated in the Senegal–Gambia region, and wild rubber was exported from mid-century onward. Ironically, legitimate commerce led to an increase in the use of slave labor across the region — slaves were needed to produce legitimate goods, and the number of female slaves in particular expanded considerably. European humanitarians were uncomfortably aware of this and in time attributed it to the backward nature of African society itself, rather than explaining it in terms of Africa’s economic relationship with Europe.