TOEFL Question

The African Slave Trade

Much is known about the Atlantic slave trade in which Africans were taken from Africa and brought to the Americas to toil in the plantations of their white captors. Phrases like “triangular trade” and “middle passage” have become synonymous with the cruelties and depredations of this period. It’s a well documented fact that a minimum of 20 million Africans were taken from their homes and that nearly one half of them died on the slave ships of the English, Dutch, and Spanish before they ever reached the New World.

What is less widely recognized, however, is the key role that some African kingdoms played in facilitating the slave trade. Slavery was well established in Africa long before the first European ever set foot on its shores. As in most ancient cultures in other parts of the world, slavery in Africa had long been a natural consequence of warfare. Members of defeated tribes were often taken as slaves by the victors Furthermore, since the customs of many African cultures placed strict limitations on marriage within one’s own tribe (even the most distant relations were placed off limits for marriage), raiding other tribes for the acquisition of brides had also been a long established practice. Finally, there had been an active slave trade with Arab kingdoms to the north for centuries when the first European slave ship arrived. ⓐ

That said; the European slave trade fundamentally changed the face of African slavery. ⓑ European ships brought rum, finished goods, high quality cloth, and most importantly firearms, to Africa in exchange for slaves. ⓒ So great was the demand for these products that many African tribes were enticed to enter the slave business. ⓓ Where slavery had before been a byproduct of inter-tribal warfare, it now came to be the primary motivation for such warfare. The tribes of coastal West Africa, armed by the Europeans, became greatly feared by their inland neighbors due to their constant attacks and raids to net ever greater numbers of captives to be sold to the Europeans.

As cruel as this may seem, the circumstances of these tribes must be considered in mitigation for their actions. These tribes were faced with the overwhelming superiority of European soldiers and their firearms. Had they resisted the slave trade, they would have had no hope of success and would have simply been enslaved themselves. Therefore, in many ways their cooperation was not by choice but coerced by the necessity of survival.

Q1. The word facilitating in the passage is closest in meaning to

(A) creating

(B) preventing

(C) assisting

(D) developing

Q2. Look at the four alphabets [ⓐ~ⓓ] that indicate where the following sentence could be added to the passage.

In fact, for some African tribes sending slaves northward became their main source of revenue.

Where would the sentence best fit?

A1. (C)

A2. ⓐ