ABSTRACT
History matters in understanding current patterns of development and underdevelopment across countries. For example, underdevelopment in Sub-Saharan Africa today cannot be understood without reference to the massive extraction of slaves and the division of Africa by European colonial powers at the 1884 Berlin Conference, imposing country boundaries that often had little or no correspondence with prior societies and ethnic territories. The disruption was massive. Some 18 million slaves were exported from Africa during the 400 years of the slave trade. By 1900, 90 percent of Africa had fallen under European control (Landes, 1999).
