Slavery, Abolition, and “Legitimate Commerce”

End of Atlantic slavery, internal slavery, economic transitions, and European moral justifications

1. How did Gomes Eanes de Zurara’s writings influence European perceptions of Africa and justify the Age of Discovery?
2. What political and administrative features enabled the Oyo Empire to become one of the most powerful states in West Africa?
3. In what ways did the Kingdom of Nri differ from the Oyo Empire in its political organization and methods of expanding influence?
4. How do the histories of the Oyo Empire and the Kingdom of Nri challenge common stereotypes about precolonial African societies?

Gomes Eanes de Zurara (c. 1410–1474)

Gomes Eanes de Zurara was a Portuguese royal chronicler and one of the earliest historians of European exploration along Africa’s Atlantic coast. Serving under Prince Henry the Navigator, he documented Portugal’s early maritime expeditions and helped shape the ideology of the Age of Discovery.

Crónica da Guiné (1453) was to celebrate the achievements of Henry the Navigator and Portugal’s expansion along the West African coast.

Before the 15th century, European prejudice was directed mainly toward differences in religion, culture, language, or political allegiance rather than the belief that entire peoples were naturally inferior. Slavery existed, but it was generally not justified as the inherited condition of a particular race.

In the 15th century, the Portuguese chronicler Gomes Eanes de Zurara helped reshape this thinking by portraying Africans as uncivilized people whose conquest and enslavement supposedly benefited them through conversion to Christianity. By presenting Portuguese expansion as a divine mission and slavery as an act of charity rather than exploitation, Zurara provided one of the earliest ideological justifications for the emerging Atlantic slave trade and later racial theories.

Gomes Eanes de Zurara did not invent racism, but he was one of the earliest European writers to provide a systematic ideological defense of the enslavement of sub-Saharan Africans. His writings helped lay intellectual foundations that evolved into modern racial ideologies supporting the Atlantic slave trade and European colonialism.

Zurara emphasized that Africans were descendants of Adam and could be converted to Christianity. In the same chapter, he wrote that the captives were «of the generation of the sons of Adam,» recognizing their common humanity even while defending their enslavement.

«…amongst them were some white enough, fair to look upon, and well proportioned; others were less white like mulattoes; others again were as black as Ethiops, and so ugly, both in features and in body, as almost to appear … the images of a lower hemisphere.»

Zurara GE de. Wherein the Author reasoneth somewhat concerning the pity inspired by the captives, and of how the division was made. In: Beazley CR, Prestage E, eds. The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea. Cambridge Library Collection – Hakluyt First Series. Cambridge University Press; 2010:80-83.

A few other experiences

Oyo Empire (c. 1300–1835)

Not egalitarian. A constitutional monarchy with some representative institutions.

The Oyo Empire was a powerful Yoruba state in West Africa, located in present-day southwestern Nigeria and eastern Benin. Founded around the 14th century, it reached the height of its power during the 17th and 18th centuries, becoming the largest Yoruba-speaking state. The empire was renowned for its formidable cavalry, sophisticated political administration, and its central role in regional and trans-Saharan trade.

Kingdom of Nri (900–1800)

The Kingdom of Nri was more egalitarian than many contemporary states, although it was not fully egalitarian. It combined unusual spiritual authority with a relatively decentralized social and political organization.

Pre-Colonial Africa, 1858