ABSTRACT
He goes on to suggest that in particular the proliferation of trade products from the industrial revolution, such as iron basins,2 matchets, knives, and so on provided increased competition to the African smiths throughout the nineteenth century. Another author has perceived the impact and interaction of technologies with an even more sweeping statement: But in a thousand years of African 'metallurgy' not only had furnace design remained unchanged, so too had its products: cast iron and steel continued unknown and wrought iron remained insufficient to meet the needs of local populations.. .The first nail was driven into the coffin of the traditional industry with the introduction of the European iron bar . . . From the mid seventeenth century the iron bar appears on the Guinea Coast to meet the demands of an iron hunger prevailing there apparently from the earliest times.3
