ABSTRACT
Ways of life had changed greatly even before the onset of modern times. Bigger food supplies had become available because of better tools, improved farming methods and wider markets. A third kind of dividing-up of society had already gone very far in West Africa by the early years of the sixteenth century. Government through a highly trained and educated civil service is a modern development. But states and empires of this period had civil services of a less complicated sort. Some people had many laws, many social rules and regulations, and went to great trouble to enforce them. There was a growth in the means of enforcing law, whether by specially appointed officials, by special associations elected or recognized for the purpose, or by the formation of soldier groups who took their orders from judges or kings.
