CHAPTER XXXVI THE EUROPEAN SLAVE TRADE The West African coast history of the eighteenth century is mainly a history of trade, and as the most profitable trade was done in slaves, it is hardly an over statement to say that it is a history of the slave trade. It may be remembered that one of the most valued privileges conceded to Great Britain at the Peace of Utrecht in 17 12 was the Assiento contract, or the right to supply the J Spanish colonies on the American coast with slaves.

In that treaty, which may be said to have laid the foundation of the British Colonial Empire, other British colonies and settlements obtained other advantages. The concession of a monopoly in the Spanish slave trade was the special advantage pressed for by the section of the country which was interested in the West African trade, and was obtained for them by British diplomacy in satisfaction of what was felt to be their legitimate claim. Other European nations were no less active in the same traffic, and thus it came about that whereas in the interior the influence of ancient and medieval civilisation, operating from the north, had been an influence tending to the development of all that is admirable in the history of nations,/in the south the modern relation of Europeans to the natives of the coast was simply as the relation of beasts of prey to their victimsjL The victims were generally of a very low order of humanity. Europe made its settlements at the extreme southern edge of what may be called the equatorial slums of Western Africa. Europeans seldom lost sight of the sea, and European influence scarcely extended beyond 333