The rise of the African slave trade and European imperialism led to obvious material transformations as well as certain paradigm shifts on both the African and European continents. Both the transformations and the paradigm shift were nothing but symptoms of the disease running rampant across the face of the globe: greed. Though all humans possess an innate sense of greed, the condition is most easily observable in those equipped with the means to express their greed. Europe possessed such means: the slave trade and imperialism were ideal for extracting resources, labour, and capital from Africa. Thus, greed transformed Europe and Africa as it transforms all its victims and their prey: the greedy become wealthy and the defenseless become poorer; the wealthy despise the poor and the poor hate the rich.
The economic transformations of Europe and Africa presented themselves, simply put, as Europe prospering and Africa sinking into poverty. As Edmund Dene Morel observed on the Belgian docks, a steady stream of ships carried expensive commodities such as rubber and ivory to Europe and left empty of any tradable goods (Hochschild 2). Once the international slave trade began to develop, Europe benefited further as its nations found an export market in their African colonies, trading European products for African slaves at an exchange rate hugely in the European’s favour (Wolf 198). Thus, while European economies flourished, Africans rapidly lost control of their economies as the Europeans depleted their resources and depopulated their lands, leaving the African nations impoverished and powerless (Hochschild 13).
Equally as important as the economic transformations, both Europeans and Africans underwent major paradigm shifts in the ways they perceived race. Originally, the Europeans and Africans imagined each other to be supernatural beings such as spirits of the dead, mythical birds, and three-faced one-legged lions (Hochschild 6, 15). After some interaction, the two races very briefly learned to view one another as human beings, trading with one another and discussing religious beliefs together (Hochschild 9). However, as the Europeans came to value objects such as ivory and gold more highly than African lives, the value of an African life became equal to the amount of money that could be extracted by his labour. By the time slave traders referred to little girls as worthless once the girls became to sick to work and politicians referred to their Africa porters as “beasts of burden”, the European paradigm had shifted completely, no longer regarding Africans as humans, but as animals (Hochschild 11, 119). As the Europeans wreaked death upon the African continent, Africans returned to their original conclusion: that the white men were ambassadors of the land of the dead (Hochschild 16). These shifts and changes left Africa and Europe’s economies and mentalities irreversibly transformed.
