The
Transatlantic slave trade radically impaired Africa's potential to
develop economically and maintain its social and political stability.
The arrival of Europeans on the West African Coast and their
establishment of slave ports in various parts of the continent triggered
a continuous process of exploitation of Africa's human resources,
labor, and commodities. This exploitative commerce influenced the
African political and religious aristocracies, the warrior classes and
the biracial elite, who made small gains from the slave trade, to
participate in the oppression of their own people. The Europeans, on the
other hand, greatly benefited from the Atlantic trade, since it allowed
them to amass the raw materials that fed the Industrial Revolution to
the detriment of African societies whose capacity to transform their
modes of production into a viable entrepreneurial economy was severely
halted.
The period saw major technological advances, including the adoption of gunpowder, the invention of vertical windmills, spectacles, mechanical clocks, and greatly improved water mills, building techniques (Gothic architecture, medieval castles), and agriculture in general (three-field crop rotation)
