Africa the Savage, the Untamable. Africa, the Heart of Darkness. Africa, swarming with pygmies and cannibals. Western attitudes reflected this comic book view of the continent until recently. Europeans strenuously denied all of Africa's achievements and its great civilizations. They needed to believe Africans were children, requiring the firm rule and superior intellect of white people to progress.

The root of this view, as with modern racism, lay in slavery. Europeans rationalized slavery by considering Africans less than human; and generations of Europeans only came into contact with black people as degraded drudges on brutal plantations. If Europeans were to invade and partition Africa it would help if they could construe this not as the immoral greed that it certainly was, but rather, as a moral duty aimed at civilizing barbaric inferiors. Any historical evidence of great African civilizations had to be dismissed.

African slavery led the European economic growth that spiraled into the Industrial Revolution, as well as providing the United States with a kick start it could never have hoped for by the sweat of its settlers' brows alone.

Over the four centuries of the slave trade, between 10 and 12 million Africans were sold in the Americas and about two million died along the way. All of those taken were young and healthy. This removed not only those most able to have children but also those most stable to work. The ground for development was undermined and Africa is still counting the cost today.