Labor shortage and world commodity demand drove internal African slavery expansion

Evidence

The institution of slavery in West Africa has been explained in part by the low population-to-land ratio characteristic of the region, which often resulted in a labor shortage. These shortages encouraged the expansion of slave labor, particularly once West Africa began to be drawn into commercial exchanges with the Atlantic world. The expansion of the Atlantic slave trade in the eighteenth century marked the first important increase in both forms of internal African slavery in the modern era, particularly in Lower Senegal. Slavery expanded again after 1850, when parts of West Africa began to be drawn into production of oils for the world commodity market; slave labor was used for much of this production. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 111