ABSTRACT
Before the abolition of the slave trade by Denmark in 1802 and Britain in 1807, the various European settlements of the West African Coast had been almost exclusively concerned with obtaining slaves for the plantations of the New World. The French carried on trade in gum arable from their posts on the Senegal river; gold was exported from the European forts on the Gold Coast. The relationship between Europe and West Africa was to be radically altered at the turn of the eighteenth century. The nineteenth-century history of West Africa can be seen as the conflict of two imperialisms: African-Muslim and European-Christian. Before 1600 Islam had percolated through the Western Sudan by means of the trans-Sahara caravan routes. Brought by the Arab and Berber traders, it was adopted in many cases by the Negro merchants with whom they traded.
