Imperialism Was Imperative (And Still Is) addendum

Slavery is often invoked as a discredit to modern imperialists, but the arrival of Europeans in Africa merely provided a new market for the traffic in those unfortunates whom their fellow Blacks had already enslaved, as they had been doing to one another since time immemorial.  When you won a battle in primitive times, you simply put all your captives to death; not until later did the victors begin to permit the vanquished to live in order to serve them.  This practice was universal in Antiquity, but died out in parts of the world where society evolved beyond the "need" for it; because most of the Dark Continent still had a low level of civilization at the time of the Partition of Africa, the slave trade continued there until the establishment of rule by Christian powers enabled them to enforce its abolition.