19th Century: (The Social Revolution of Legitimate Commerce — Warrior Elites Weakened, Small Producers Empowered, Free Women in Trade, and the Widening of Ac…

19th Century: (The Social Revolution of Legitimate Commerce — Warrior Elites Weakened, Small Producers Empowered, Free Women in Trade, and the Widening of Access That Destabilized the Old Political Order): Unlike the slave trade, carried on largely at the level of the state, the very nature of legitimate commerce meant that it was easier to trade in small amounts — anyone with access to a small plot of land and family labor could participate in the export trade. Free women were able to become involved in small-scale commerce in the course of the nineteenth century, and there was a greatly heightened level of social mobility where overseas commerce was most intense. West African warrior elites sometimes found their political and economic monopolies weakened and their revenues reduced, as alternative pockets of power developed and access to the export trade widened. Firearms and other luxury commodities became more widely distributed. Sociopolitical disruption, even collapse, ensued in a number of states and societies. Trade in legitimate produce tended to increase steadily until mid-century, when prices collapsed during the great depression between the 1870s and 1890s. From the early nineteenth century until the 1870s, African producers enjoyed reasonably favorable terms of trade, but with the collapse of prices, tension between Europeans and Africans escalated markedly — commercial hostilities were a crucial factor in the European partition of West Africa.