ABSTRACT
A steady globalization process brought partial reorientation for Niumi between 1446 and 1600. Portuguese merchants came by sea and connected westernmost sub-Saharan Africa to a growing plantation complex centered on the Atlantic Ocean. Among other things, this meant a significant heightening of the trading of slaves. Before Portuguese arrival, people in Niumi may have sent slaves northward toward the Sahara, but the numbers were not large and the importance of the trade to Niumi’s economic well-being was not great. The state’s main commercial activity was the trading of salt from the Atlantic toward the savanna hinterland of the upper Gambia, mainly for cloth, iron, and gold. But within a few decades of the appearance of Portuguese caravels in the Gambia River, Niumi, with other states along and near the Senegambian coast, became a supplier of commodities for the Atlantic economy: gold, hides, beeswax, foodstuffs, and slaves. The rulers of Niumi, more than the others, taxed the trade passing through the state and into and out of the river’s mouth. Participation in the Atlantic commerce did not diminish the amount of trade taking place across the western savannas, however. If anything, it heightened that trade, and Niumi continued to exchange goods between the Atlantic, the upper Niger River, the southern edge of the Sahara, and the Guinea forests.
