ns and Africans became more common. The technological superiority of the Europeans afforded them important advantages over the Africans and they effectively altered the existing trade patterns of the African states with which they came in contact. It was also at this time that Europeans began buying African slaves from African traders. Slavery had existed in Africa in the form of prisoners of war. Desiring to increase their wealth and standing, the rulers of the dominant African states began selling captives to Europeans, who transported them to newly established colonies in the western hemisphere (Bohannan & Curtin, 1988, pp. 284-95).
It was inevitable that Europeans begin seizing African territories as colonies. The commercial encroachment changed in the Nineteenth Century as the Industrial Revolution drastically widened the technological gap between Europe and Africa. The rampant nationalism of that period led European powers compete with each other through colonial expansion. All of the major po
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