buying African produce, traders provided basic instruments of a market
economy. Offering practical assistance as well as a literary education and a
contemporary
Christian, European world view, missionaries assisted Af-
ricans to adapt to conquest. All those innovations created fresh divisions in
the population,
between the chiefs and those commoners who had ac-
quired new forms of wealth and new skills. Many Xhosa, and stiJl more
Mfengu, seized the new opportunities and produced a surplus of wool and
grain for the market or earned wages as clerical assistants to the magis-
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