Trade, the slave trade and missionaries in Africa

Long-distance trade

• Indian Ocean trade: East African coast (Kilwa, Sofala) linked with Arabia, Persia, India and China; gold, ivory and slaves exchanged for cloth, beads and porcelain.
• Trans-Saharan trade: West African empires (Ghana, Mali, Songhai) traded gold for salt, using camels.

The Atlantic slave trade (16th–19th centuries)

• Millions of Africans were taken to the Americas to work on plantations, in a triangular trade between Europe, Africa and the Americas.
• Effects: loss of population, warfare, destruction of local industries, and suffering of the enslaved.
• Abolition: campaigns by humanitarians, slave resistance and economic change led Britain to abolish the trade in 1807 and slavery in its empire in 1833.

Missionaries in Zimbabwe

The London Missionary Society opened Inyati Mission in 1859, the first permanent mission in present-day Zimbabwe (near Bubi in Matabeleland North). Missionaries spread Christianity, built schools and clinics, and recorded languages, but some also prepared the way for colonisation and undermined African cultures.

Check yourself

1. Name two commodities exchanged in the trans-Saharan trade.
2. In which year did Britain abolish the slave trade?
3. Name the first permanent mission station in Zimbabwe.