Slavery and the slave trade existed in West Africa long before the arrival of Europeans in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. For centuries, Africans had enslaved other Africans, both to use as slaves in Africa and to sell to Muslim merchants as part of the international trade that connected Africa to the Arab world. Nonetheless, European participation altered the African slave trade in profound ways. Most important, it resulted in a surge in demand for African slaves. As European empires in the New World grew, so too did the demand for slave labor. Over time, the combined efforts of Africans and Europeans to meet that demand would distort and destabilize African societies and economies.