West Africa: The beginning of the European slave trade

The beginning of the European slave trade ; The interior of Africa in the 17th century was a mass of tribes, kingdoms and empires, most slave-holding, continuously changing in power and extent. The time of the Mandingos' Mali empire was over. Islamic Bornu now dominated sub-Saharan Africa. Round the coast there already lay the European outposts that would be used to buy and ship enslaved Africans for the next two hundred years.