ABSTRACT
The essential characteristic of the exercise of power in African society was an ‘acknowledged recognition of ties of mutual obligation and respect’. ‘In “traditional” Africa,’ Basil Davidson insists, ‘the concept of an indispensable partnership formed the hearthstone of statesmanship. Africans themselves had always been involved in the Atlantic trade, as chiefs importing guns from Britain in exchange for slaves and as traders rounding up the human commodities for sale. The Europeans believed that all Africans belonged to tribes, and in pursuit of the policy of divide and rule cheerfully made and unmade tribes for administrative convenience. When African kingdoms failed to protect their peoples from enslavement, and their chiefs even took an active part in establishing what were in effect slave states, ‘the state grew apart from society’ and the people had to seek other forms of defence.
