19th Century: (The Structural Trap of Legitimate Commerce — Indebtedness, Middlemen Bypassed, European Penetration of the Hinterland, and the Prelude to Part…

19th Century: (The Structural Trap of Legitimate Commerce — Indebtedness, Middlemen Bypassed, European Penetration of the Hinterland, and the Prelude to Partition): Although the terms of trade tended to be more favorable to African producers in the first half of the nineteenth century, the new commercial system implied the economic empowerment of Europe at the expense of Africa over the longer term. Connected to the global economy, Atlantic Africa was subjected to periodic shifts in demand and prices beyond its control. Indebtedness among African producers increased, with many coastal traders dependent on credit advanced by European merchants — violence was often used to recover debts. Over-powerful and ambitious African middlemen were becoming obstacles to the flow of trade. Gradually, European traders, sometimes with official government backing, began penetrating beyond the coast into the hinterland to bypass middlemen and buy directly from producers — often by river, making the Niger increasingly important to British commercial concerns. Combined with anti-slave-trade activity, all of this denoted ever greater European intervention in Atlantic African polity and economy, forming the prelude to the actual partition of the region in the 1880s. Legitimate commerce did little to facilitate African economic growth — it was about the export of raw materials rather than finished products, and the continent was never an equal partner. Levels of personal freedom declined as domestic slavery increased; European imports did little to strengthen indigenous economies; and the independence of successful exporting societies was soon threatened by the interference of their European trading partners. Commerce, ultimately, would lead to conquest.