Editing Gbe languages (section)

===European traders and the transatlantic slave trade===
[[Image:Doctrina Christiana - Y explicacion de sus Misterios en nuestro idiom Español, y en lengua Arda (first page).png|thumb|right|First page of the Spanish/Gen version of the 1658 ''Doctrina Christiana'']]

Little is known of the history of the Gbe languages during the time that only Portuguese, Dutch and Danish traders landed on the [[Gold Coast (British colony)|Gold Coast]] (roughly 1500 to 1650). The trade of mostly gold and agricultural goods did not exercise much influence on social and cultural structures of the time. No need was felt to investigate the indigenous languages and cultures; the languages generally used in trade at this time were [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]] and [[Dutch language|Dutch]]. Some [[loanword]]s remain from this period, for example ''atrapoe'' 'stairs'<ref>{{cite book| page=[https://archive.org/details/adictionaryasan00chrigoog/page/n635 603] |title=A Dictionary of the Asante and Fante Language Called Tshi (Chwee, Tw̌i): With a Grammatical Introduction and Appendices on the Geography of the Gold Coast and Other Subjects |author=Johann Gottlieb Christaller |publisher=Evangelical Missionary Society |year=1881 |via=New York Public Library, Internet Archive|url=https://archive.org/details/adictionaryasan00chrigoog}}</ref> from Dutch ''trap'' and ''duku'' '(piece of) cloth' from Dutch ''doek'' or Danish ''dug''. The few written accounts that stem from this period focus on trade. As more European countries established trade posts in the area, [[missionary|missionaries]] were sent out. As early as 1658, Spanish missionaries translated the ''[[Doctrina Christiana]]'' into the language of [[Allada]], making it one of the earliest texts in any West African language. The Gbe language used in this document is thought to be a somewhat mangled form of [[Gen language|Gen]].<ref>This catechism was reprinted in Labouret & Rivet 1929, who also document the history of the Spanish mission in Allada or Arda.</ref>

The relatively peaceful situation was profoundly changed with the rise of the [[History of slavery|transatlantic slave trade]], which reached its peak in the late eighteenth century when as many as 15,000 slaves per year were exported from the area around Benin as part of a [[triangular trade]] between the European mainland, the west coast of Africa and the colonies of the [[New World]] (notably the Caribbean). The main actors in this process were [[Netherlands|Dutch]] (and to a lesser extent [[England|English]]) traders; captives were supplied mostly by cooperating coastal African states.

The [[Bight of Benin]], precisely the area where the Gbe languages are spoken, was one of the centers of the slave trade at the turn of the eighteenth century. The export of 5% of the population each year resulted in overall population decline. Moreover, since the majority of the exported captives were male, the slave trade led to an imbalance in the female/male ratio. In some parts of the [[Slave Coast of West Africa|Slave Coast]] the ratio reached two adult women for every man. Several wars (sometimes deliberately provoked by European powers in order to [[divide and rule]]) further distorted social and economical relations in the area. The lack of earlier linguistic data makes it difficult to trace the inevitable linguistic changes that resulted from this turbulent period.