slaves for internal West African (and ultimately trans-Saharan) markets. This involvement in the slave trade had diverse aspects, in which Borgu might figure as both a victim and a beneficiary of the trade. First, inhabitants of Borgu were among those enslaved and sold. In the early seventeenth century, the Timbuktu jurist and scholar Ahmad Baba included Borgu and Bussa (along with Yoruba, Mossi, Kotokoli, Gurma, and other ethnic groups) in a list of non-Muslim peoples whom it was legitimate to take as slaves.4 Some of those who were sold were enslaved by neighboring countries at war with Borgu, as in the invasions by Songhay documented in 1505/6 and 1555/6.s Besides external aggression, slaves from Borgu may have included some people enslaved within Borgu, either in intra-Borgu conflicts or through judicial or other nonmilitary mechanisms, and sold by Borgu traders. Second, Borgu traders presumably also sold captives taken in wars with neighboring peoples. And third, Borgu also operated as a middleman in the trade in slaves between other regions, though explicit evidence for this is lacking before the nineteenth century.6 Asante, for example, imported slaves from Hausaland and other neighboring territories which became part of the Sokoto Caliphate, and these must have been brought, at least for the most part, along the same routes by which kola and gold passed in the opposite direction, via Borgu.7 By the late eighteenth century, Borgu was also involved in trade with the Europeans at the coast to the south, as a minor but significant supplier of slaves for the trans-Atlantic trade.' Recently published research on the history of Borgu, however, has not given any great attention to its involvement in the Atlantic slave trade.9 This neglect no doubt reflects primarily the fact that the role of Borgu in the Atlantic slave trade is not very well documented, principally because for most of the history of this trade Borgu remained beyond the limits of the direct knowledge of Europeans. This paper attempts to draw together the