Question

How did the slave trade affect Africa?

A. It reduced tensions between tribes.
B. It eliminated the cycle of debt.
C. It destroyed many existing empires.
D. It helped the economy of most empires.

Answer 1

It's hard to say, among the choices given. Generally African slaves were sold to European slave merchants by Africans themselves, e.g. one nation would sell its prisoners of war from another nation into slavery. (This is the ancient pattern, the Romans did the same thing when they fought wars.) Europeans themselves rarely ventured inland from the trading cities on the coasts.

So what would be the effect of an outlet by which one African nation could sell away slaves taken from its competitors? This is where I'm not sure of what would be the best answer. It's hard to see how selling prisoners of war into slavery across the ocean would reduce tension between tribes. Before the European slave trade, a captured prisoner would probably make it home sooner or later, but afterward -- he was gone for good. That seems unlikely to reduce chronic tension.

I have no idea what "the cycle of debt" means, so there's nothing to say about that choice.

Destruction of empires is a possibility. Certainly a defeated nation whose warriors were permanently removed by being sold into slavery across the ocean would be even less likely to rise again in the future. It may not even be a good thing for the victorious African nation, since the wealth acquired through selling prisoners of war might be more tempting than wealth acquired through peaceful trade, so it might be the slave trade encouraged pernicious and destructive wars between African tribes, which would indeed destroy nations, whether they are the victors or losers.

Helping the economy seems somewhat plausible, becauset the Europeans paid very well (by African standards). But this also seems dubious, since an influx of wealth to the top doesn't generally seem to help economies generally. For example, the Spanish aristocracy acquired massive amounts of gold and silver from the New World in the 17th century, but it doesn't seem to have helped the Spanish economy generally. Perhaps that's because economic growth depends more on the growth of trade and innovation than on the mere acquisition of wealth. (The modern oil states seem to reinforce that idea: Saudi Arabia, for example, aside from its oil wealth has a fairly backward economy. All that money from oil seems just to have made some aristocrats rich, it doesn't seem to have improved the economy generally.)

So taken all together, I would probably go with "destruction of empires," because the slave trade undoubtably encouraged slave-taking, and the practice of slavery generally tends to destroy societies, which is what the American South found out in the 1850s.