The trade did not begin at the coast, and it was not only Atlantic.
Salaga, Savannah Region
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Salaga and the Inland Market
The trade did not begin at the coast, and it was not only Atlantic.
Salaga in the north was one of the great markets of West Africa — the "Timbuktu of the south," in an old phrase — sitting on the trans-Saharan routes where kola, salt, cloth, livestock and enslaved people were traded long before European ships arrived and for a long time after they left. Captives moved north across the desert as well as south to the sea.
There are wells at Salaga where the enslaved were washed before sale, and a market ground, and a cemetery.
Salaga is also where the honest, difficult part of the history is unavoidable: African states, kingdoms and merchants participated in this. Captives were taken in wars fought between African polities and sold onward. Ghanaian public discourse now includes formal apologies — chiefs and, at national level, officials have publicly asked forgiveness of the descendants of the enslaved for the role local rulers played.
The Atlantic system was created and driven by European demand, capital and ships, and it operated at a scale nothing on this continent had produced before. Both of those things are true at once, and a serious site says both.
If you visit Ghana. At Salaga in the Savannah Region, the inland market's history sits inside the town and its surrounding routes.
The trade did not begin at the coast, and it was not only Atlantic.
Salaga in the north was one of the great markets of West Africa — the "Timbuktu of the south," in an old phrase — sitting on the trans-Saharan routes where kola, salt, cloth, livestock and enslaved people were traded long before European ships arrived and for a long time after they left. Captives moved north across the desert as well as south to the sea.
There are wells at Salaga where the enslaved were washed before sale, and a market ground, and a cemetery.
Salaga is also where the honest, difficult part of the history is unavoidable: African states, kingdoms and merchants participated in this. Captives were taken in wars fought between African polities and sold onward. Ghanaian public discourse now includes formal apologies — chiefs and, at national level, officials have publicly asked forgiveness of the descendants of the enslaved for the role local rulers played.
The Atlantic system was created and driven by European demand, capital and ships, and it operated at a scale nothing on this continent had produced before. Both of those things are true at once, and a serious site says both.