Drain Collection, Walterboro, South Carolina

Wood and iron, Mali, ca. 1800

It is estimated that by 1730, 180,000 guns were sold every year on the Gold and Slave coasts and that some of the most destructive consequences of this importation occurred between the 1650s and 1730. There was a high correlation between increase in the import of guns and increase in the number of captives. From 1750 to 1807, between 283,000 and 394,000 guns were exported yearly to West Africa, about half of them from England.