The Portuguese displaced resident Indian Ocean and African tradesmen

Evidence

The Portuguese, less audaciously but necessarily more cunning, accomplished the displacement of the area’s “resident” tradesmen at the end of the century and the beginnings of the next. Momentarily, the maritime markets most coveted by Europeans were in the hands of the Portuguese/Italians—the African and south Atlantic trades with their gold, salt, malagueta pepper, gum, cork, cereals, sugar, and slaves; and the trade with the East with its spices, wools, and dyes. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 542

Categorization

• QUESTION: The reader might follow where these pre-European ‘resident tradesmen’ of the African coast were and what social structures they represented before the Atlantic trade commodified African labor.