International Relations in Africa before the Europeans

Abstract

This article analyses the nature of international relations in West-Central Africa before the en masse arrival of Europeans in the late fifteenth century. Several different viewpoints are employed to describe these relations. Firstly, the different types of political units found in the region are discussed, and, secondly, regional trade, war, slavery, and norms and values are detailed to demonstrate the extent to which these practices connected African states. The argument is that these states made up a unique international system, one that was markedly different from other historical systems such as that in Western Europe. The case accordingly raises important issues about how we think about international systems, and about how international systems such as this one fit into the context of international history. In its entirety the study fills a significant void in the existing literature, which otherwise has very little to say about African international relations and its history.The purpose of this article is to introduce an international system that has hitherto been ignored outside of African history and by international-relations scholars in particular. This is the African international system, or more specifically, the WestCentral African international system. It is curious that such a unique system has been ignored, considering the increasing attention international-relations scholars are paying to non-Westphalian orders and non-Western international thought. 1 This neglect is also unfortunate because the West-Central African system came to have extensive and influential relations with Europe and the Americas, and would ultimately help to shape these two regions from the fourteenth century onwards. 2 In order to rectify this oversight and to enhance recent trends in the study of international relations and international history then, this article examines West-Central African international relations in their own right prior to large-scale contact with other international systems.To do this the opening section introduces the article's principal theoretical concept, the international system, advocating for a broad interpretation of the concept that encourages analysis of political, economic, and socio-institutional relations amongst political units. The international relations of West-Central Africa are then studied in this way, beginning in the second section which details the four different types of political units present in the region. The third section then examines the

Something New out of Africa: States Made Slaves, Slaves Made States

“…7.See especially Herbst 2014 but also Butcher and Griffiths 2015; Pella 2015a, 2015b; Reid 2012; Stilwell 2014.…”

“…15.Butcher and Griffiths 2015, 724; Herbst 2014, 43; MacDonald and Camara 2020, 174; Pella 2015b, 104.…”