How Did The European Pre Colonial African Trade

Trade among European and African precolonial nations developed relatively recently in the economic history of the African continent. Prior to the European voyages of exploration in the fifteenth century, African rulers and merchants had established trade links with the Mediterranean world, western Asia, and the Indian Ocean region. Within the continent itself, local exchanges among adjacent peoples fit into a greater framework of long-range trade.
The merchants from Britain, France, Portugal, and the Netherlands who began trading along the Atlantic coast of Africa therefore encountered a well-established trading population regulated by savvy and experienced local rulers. European companies quickly developed mercantile ties with these indigenous powers and erected fortified “factories,” or warehouses, on coastal areas to store goods and defend their trading rights from
Non Utilitarian items such as jewelry, beads, mechanical toys and curiosities, and alcohol also met a receptive audience. Catholic countries such as Portugal were, in theory at least, forbidden by papal injunction from selling items with potential military uses to non-Christians, although it is unclear how closely this order was followed in practice. In exchange for their wares, Europeans returned with textiles, carvings, spices, ivory, gum, and African slaves.
Contrary to popular views about precolonial Africa, local manufacturers were at this time creating items of comparable, if not superior, quality to those of preindustrial Europe. Due to advances in native forge technology, smiths in some regions of sub-Saharan Africa were producing steels of a better grade than those of their counterparts in Europe, and the highly developed West African textile workshops had produced fine cloths for export long before the arrival of European