Western European and British Barbarity, Savagery, and Brutality in the Transatlantic Chattel Slave Trade

Man makes history, in a fashion, and history also makes man. As with other men, the historical experience of the African over the centuries has had a profound effect on his self-image as well as on his perception of the external world. Perhaps more than other men, the African in pre-colonial times developed a strong historical tradition, and his perception of himself and his world came to depend very much on his view of the past. European colonialism, brief as it was, produced a traumatic effect largely because it tried to impose on the African a gross distortion of his historical tradition.