|The Crisis in African Agriculture - Studies in African
Political Economy (UNU, 1987, 99 pages)| If the modes of
production that existed in precolonial Africa had, as we have
seen, strong tendencies to stagnation or even regression (and
these tendencies were accentuated by the slave trade), the
African societies of that time that rested on these modes of
production could not prevent the settlement of colonial invaders
despite often very strong resistance. As they installed
themselves so capitalism reduced these precapitalist modes of
production to its domination. In what form, and through what
types of relations was this subordination secured? It should be
recalled that the beginnings of the colonial era were preceded
by the establishment of merchant capitalism along the African
coasts in the form notably of trading posts. This merchant
capital performed the role of a transmission belt marketing
tropical products in the metropoles in order to supply the
holders of industrial capital. In the metropoles themsel