nd more transient kingdoms.

The third attempt at state building arose on the Guinea coast in Benin and
Yoruba. It never got much beyond a federation of large industrial cities.
Its expansion toward the Congo valley was probably a prime cause of the
original Bantu movements to the southeast. Toward the north and northeast,
on the other hand, these city-states met the Sudanese armed with the new
imperial Mohammedan idea. Just as Latin Rome gave the imperial idea to the
Nordic races, so Islam brought this idea to the Sudan.

In the consequent attempts at imperialism in the western Sudan there
arose the largest of the African empires. Two circumstances, however,
militated against this empire building: first, the fierce resistance of
the heathen south made war continuous and slaves one of the articles of
systematic commerce. Secondly, the highways of legitimate African commerce
had for millenniums lain to the north. These were suddenly closed by the
Moors in the sixteenth century, and the Negro empires were thrown into the
turmoil of internal war.

It was then that the European slave traders came from the southwest. They
found partially disrupted Negro states on the west coast and falling
empires in the Sudan, together with the old unrest of over-population and
migration in the valley of the Congo. They not only offered a demand for
the usual slave trade, but they increased it to an enormous degree, until
their demand, added to the demand of the Mohammedan in Africa and Asia,
made human beings the highest priced article of commerce in Africa. Under
such circumstances there could be but one end: the virtual uprooting of
ancient African culture, leaving only misty reminders of the ruin in the
customs and work of the people. To complete this disaster came the
partition of the continent among European nations and the modern attempt
to exploit the country and the natives for the economic benefit of the
white world, together with the transplanting of black nations to the new
western world and their rise and self-assertion there.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Ham is probably the Egyptian word "Khem" (black), the native name of
Egypt. In the original myth Canaan and not Ham was Noah's third son.

The biblical story of the "curse of Canaan" (Genesis IX, 24-25) has been
the basis of an astonishing literature which has to-day only a
psychological interest. It is sufficient to remember that for several
centuries leaders of the Christian Church