When the Portuguese first came to Africa, they had to pay taxes and tributes on the coast and had to stay on the coast, and in Dahomey the King made them build their houses with mud. African had states some with Kings, Queens like The Ashanti Kingdom, Songhai Empire, Benin Kingdom Dahomey Kingdom. The Europeans had to say that this were untenable and uneconomic so as to claim superiority. Even in Angola, Congo and other Kingdom and states at first their was a mutual respect for each other.
But eventually, Africa an old center of civilization began to decline and capitalization in Western European States began to rise and the balance of power shifted to the Europeans and they began establishing and strengthen themselves on the coast. They began to go inland to look for trade in human beings.
It follows that if the Portuguese had wanted to limited their trade to normal commodities in Africa - Gold, Spices, ect ect, they could have done so, but they wanted to "buy" " Human Beings".
King Henry The Navigator of Portugal gave explicit instruction to his sailors in 1445 "Win Over" the Africans so they could "Buy" Human Beings, instead of kidnapping them as they had hitherto been doing, How any body can "Buy" a human being for a Motley Collection of a bottle of Rum, Tea Pot and a Thread of Glass Beads and still call them self "Civilized" and a "Christian" numbs me, my mind and God knows what God they Be live In and Prayed to.
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