As the eighteenth century began, the white man's efforts at formal colonisation in Africa had come to a standstill. Indeed, some of these projects, the missionary kingdom in the Congo, the Portuguese holdings along the East Coast, the Jesuit beginnings in Ethiopia, had broken completely against the hard facts of Africa; the only surviving white settlers were the traders of Angola, and the farmers of the Cape, whose impact was as small as their prosperity. But if European flags or bibles made small headway, commercially a great connection was being built. The work of white traders, the play of the market, the needs of countries far away, were dragging West Africa into the world economy. This was not for the sake of its raw materials, for the gold and ivory of the West Coast would not by themselves have attracted much attention, had there not been a more fundamental commodity for sale.

The trade in African labour is very old, but the development of the New World in the seventeenth century had switched it from a northerly into a westward, transatlantic direction, and made slaving a more spectacular, as well as a more massive type of Raubwirtschaft. For the plantation economies of America a regular labour supply was vital, and only immigration could provide it, while the profitable geometry of the Triangular Trade benefited both African slave brokers and European traders. Herein lay the reason for the gigantic population transfers made by the slave trade.