American Research Journal of History and Culture

 In spite of many years of slave trade in Africa, this paper finds relevant contemporary political economy relationship with the current politics of development and under development in Africa with Europe. The paper, by way of political economy analysis, argues that Europe did not start the slave trade. African societies had sold slaves to each other for centuries and for export to North Africa and Asia across the Sahara through Ethiopia and the Azanian ports. However, the flow of slave across the Indian Ocean was very minimal compared with transatlantic trade. It is the sheer volume of the slave traffic across the Atlantic and the brutality/the current impact that has continued to affect Africans that this paper investigates. The paper interrogates the ideological metamorphosis of nomenclature to globalization and capitalism and examines its implication in our contemporary society with particular reference to Nigeria and recommends that the issue be readdressed in the light of the present capitalism.