ABSTRACT
Commerce has often been seen as a civilizing passion, a doux commerce that obviates the need for violence. Moreover, economic violence is not just a base urge of the remote past, harnessed by the drive to "barter and truck". Violence was a great competitive advantage when it could be used to create monopoly conditions. Violence took other forms beyond slavery, piracy, and war. Sometimes destruction and death were directed at wealthy groups within the country. Violence not only erupted as a tool of capital accumulation, but also served as a weapon for self-defense against the forces of world economy. Besides being an important lever of accumulating wealth in the global economy, warfare has been a mother of invention. Africa, somewhat remote from the world economy in the early modern period except through the destructive slave trade, became much more closely linked in the second half of the nineteenth century when it was taken over by Western European powers.
