deal hung on this idea, and attempts were made in the mid-nineteenth century to develop such commerce, especially in the export of oils to supply growing industrial and food markets in Europe. However, this commerce was not only seen to have failed but also, in a cruel paradox, to have renewed slavery within Africa. In some African societies, men of power and influence, now deprived of Atlantic slave markets, turned to local slave labour to produce goods for Western consumption. This wholly unforeseen development prompted the idea that it was not enough to abolish the trade outside Africa;