" BRIEF HISTORY OF TRADE BETWEEN AFRICA AND EUROPE Hereditary slavery had been around since the times of Greece and Rome and was nothing new. But with the Renaissance, Europe introduced certain novelties: never before had slavery been determined by skin color, and never before had the sale of human flesh been the brightest light in the world of business. During the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, Africa sold slaves and bought rifles: it traded hands for arms. Then during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Africa delivered gold, diamonds, copper, ivory, rubber, and coffee in exchange for Bibles: it traded the riches of the earth for the promise of heaven. "

― Eduardo Galeano , Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone