Walter Rodney called the West African coastal communities that worked with the Europeans during the

slave
trade "Local Mulatto mercenaries." They became powerful because they had to sell their own people as slaves.
The Europeans tricked the mercenaries and gave them a lot of gifts to get them to help them trade for more
slaves. The desire for power and wealth drove these men to plan wars and kidnappings against their own people
in Africa. They were looking for slaves to trade for guns and other goods from Europe. This led to the slave
trade, which made a lot of Africans unhappy and destroyed kingdoms like the ones of the Kongo-Angola and
the Yoruba. West African societies that were small and didn't have much power or weapons made them more
likely to be attacked by slave raiders. They had no way to defend themselves against the mercenaries, who had
the power to gather able-bodied men and strong weapons like guns.