New research in West African societies and the Atlantic Slave Trade was presented by history Professor Michael W. Tuck to a packed room on Oct. 8. The event was hosted by Phi Alpha Theta, NEIU’s History Honors Society, and the History Department.
Professor Tuck presented the argument that slave exports or trade dominated West African commerce after 1700 as an overall generalization. He then pointed out the sheer size of West Africa and how easy it is to generalize about the area. “What I’m going to argue is that the commodity trade in many stateless societies continued to be the dominant form of trade, that the slave trade was never the dominant form of trade,” stated Professor Tuck.
Tuck used an 18th Century stateless society, known as the Diola, in the region of Senegambia (present day Senegal and Gambia) to prove his argument. When the Portuguese and English began trading in Western Africa, they saw the beehives the Diola kept and raised for honey. “In this way,” Tuck shared, “The Diola were able to access Atlantic trade by providing beeswax to the Portuguese and then the English.”
Tuck mentioned how beeswax was the Diola’s main export, not slaves. To show how important and expensive beeswax was at the time, Tuck shared a quote by the English Trading Company- “Beeswax is so valuable a commodity here [London] that you cannot send over too much of it… we wish you would have filled the brig with it, we wish you would have sent us more.”
“Unfortunately,” Tuck explained, “The Diola did not have a happy ending.” Once the slave trade threatened the Diola civilians, they began to trade beeswax for weapons, mainly guns. These were initially used for self-protection, but the Diola eventually began to capture other tribe members for trading purposes.
Either way, beeswax continued to be the Diola’s main export. When asked why the Diola began selling slaves, Tuck responded by saying, “It was crucial in order to continue with Atlantic commerce.”
Professor Tuck teaches African and African American history courses at NEIU. He visited the Senegambia region in West Africa this past Summer for research purposes.