• Indirect trade contacts between China and Egypt began perhaps as early as 700 B.C.E. By the time of the Tang Dynasty (618–907 C.E.), there were several Chinese accounts of Africa’s eastern coast acquired through direct contact. You Yang Za Zu (A General Book of Knowledge), written by Duan Chengshi (803–863? C.E.), contains a description of people living along the coast around modern Somalia (“the country of Po-pa-li”), which is excerpted here. A Portuguese mariner named Gomes Eannes de Azurara left the first account of the people and places along the West African coast. The selection here recounts the capture of the first slaves of the Atlantic slave trade along the West African coast in 1441 by two Portuguese ship captains, Antam Gonçalvez and Nuno Tristam.

Duan Chengshi

“The country of Po-pa-li is in the southwestern sea. (The people) do not eat any of the five grains but eat only meat. They often stick a needle into the veins of cattle and draw blood which they drink raw, mixed with milk. They wear no clothes except that they cover (the parts) below their loins with sheepskins. Their women are clean and of proper behaviour. The inhabitants themselves kidnap them, and if they sell them to foreign merchants, they fetch several times their price. The country produces only ivory and ambergris.

If Persian merchants wish to go into the country, they collect around them several thousand men and present them with strips of cloth. All whether old or young draw blood and swear an oath, and then only do they trade their products. From olden times on they were not subject to any foreign country. In fighting they use elephants’ tusks and ribs and the horns of wild buffaloes as lances and they wear cuirasses and bow and arrows. They have twenty myriads of foot soldiers. The Arabs make frequent raids upon them.”

Gomes Eannes de Azurara

“Thereupon [Nuno Tristam] caused Antam Gonçalvez to be called. . . . “You,” said he, “my friend Antam Gonçalvez, are not ignorant of the will of the Infant* our Lord, and you know that . . . he hath toiled in vain in this part of the world, never being able to arrive at any certainty as to the people of this land, under what law or lordship they do live. And although you are carrying off these two captives, and by their means the Infant may come to know something about this folk, yet that doth not prevent what is still better, namely, for us to carry off many more; for, besides the knowledge which the Lord Infant will gain by their means, profit will also accrue to him by their service or ransom. Wherefore, it seemeth to me that we should do well to act after this manner. That is to say, in this night now following, you should choose ten of your men and I another ten of mine . . . and let us then go together and seek those whom you have found. . . .”

And so it chanced that in the night they came to where the natives lay scattered in two encampments. . . . And when our men had come nigh to them, they attacked them very lustily, shouting at the top of their voices, “Portugal” . . . the fright of which so abashed the enemy, that it threw them all into disorder. And so, all in confusion, they began to fly without any order or carefulness. Except indeed that the men made some show of defending themselves . . . , especially one of them who fought face to face with Nuno Tristam, defending himself till he received his death. And besides this one, . . . the others killed three and took ten prisoners, what of men, women and boys.”

Sources: J. J. L. Duyvendak, China’s Discovery of Africa (London: A. Probsthain, 1949), pp. 12–13; Gomes Eannes de Azurara, The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea, vol. 1, trans. C. R. Beazley and E. Prestage (New York: Burt Franklin, 1963), pp. 46–48.

QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS