Background to annexation

In his Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, Adam Smith observed that while possessing ‘many considerable settlements’ on the coast of Africa and in the East Indies, Europeans had yet to establish in these regions ‘such numerous and thriving colonies as those in the islands and continent of America’. ¹ Seeking to explain this dichotomy, Smith argued that while Africa was ‘inhabited by barbarous nations’ these were ‘by no means so weak and defenceless as the miserable and helpless Americans’. Indeed, he went on, ‘in proportion to the natural fertility of the countries which they inhabited’ they were ‘much more populous’ than those in America, a fact he attributed to the settled nature of even the ‘most barbarous’ African societies. By comparison, ‘the natives of every part of America, except Mexico and Peru, were only hunters; and the difference is very great between the number of shepherds and that of hunters whom the same extent of equally fertile territory can maintain’. As a result, in Africa it was more difficult ‘to displace the natives, and to extend the European plantations over the greater part of the lands of the original inhabitants’. For Smith, therefore, European trade with Africa was founded on negotiation with indigenous peoples, not colonisation.