"Africa was in fact a great deal less primitive than they imagined.… However, in three respects it struck the Victorians as benighted. Unlike North Africa, the faiths of sub-Saharan Africa were not monotheistic; except for its northern and southern extremities, it was riddled with malaria, yellow fever and other diseases lethal to Europeans (and their preferred livestock); and, perhaps most importantly, slaves were its most important export – indeed, supplying slaves to European and Arab traders along the coast became the continent’s biggest source of revenue. The peculiar path of global economic development led Africans into the business of capturing and selling one another."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
University of Oxford facultyHistorians from ScotlandUniversity of Oxford alumniHarvard University facultyPeople from Glasgow
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Chapter 3, “The Mission” (p. 116; ellipsis represents the elision of examples)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Niall_Ferguson
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Niall Ferguson
75 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Niall Ferguson →
Related Quotes
"It was the phenomenon of industrial unemployment that shocked contemporaries most. 'Next to war,' remarked The Times …"
"The West may collapse very suddenly. Complex civilizations do that, because they operate, most of the time, on the ed…"
"In 1940, under Churchill’s inspired, indomitable, incomparable leadership, the Empire had stood alone against the tru…"
"It is a point worth emphasizing that to a significant extent British rule did have that benign effect. According to t…"
"The empire that rules the world today is both more and less than its British begetter. It has a much bigger economy, …"
"The whole point about historians is that we are really communing with the dead. It's very restful – because you read.…"
"Yet the nineteenth-century Empire undeniably pioneered free trade, free capital movements and, with the abolition of …"
"Without the spread of British rule around the world, it is hard to believe that the structures of liberal capitalism …"
"A country’s economic fortunes are determined by a combination of natural endowments (geography, broadly speaking) and…"
"Finally, although Anglophone economic and political liberalism remains the most alluring of the world’s cultures, it …"