242 Appendixesleast important, effects have not yet been elucidated. Examples of such effects are the
perversion of men's minds caused by the slave trade and interferences of all kinds
which had a direct impact on the normal development of Africa. The fact that there
were some Africans who turned into accessaries to the heinous crimes committed in
the course of the slave trade, so becoming the suppliers of the slave-traders, deserves
further elucidation. But at the same time it is important to give consideration to a
basic fact, namely the strength of the spiritual and moral values, and the peoples'
powers of resistance, which gave rise in Africa itself to opposition movements.
Thus these values survived, and cultural identity persisted through all the
sufferings of enslavement and transportation. This is because this culture was deeply
rooted in the heart of men's innermost consciousness, an integral part of the very
existence of the communities concerned. It formed the very essence of their lives. It
was thus able to stay alive during exile, preserve dignity in servitude, and supply the
inspiration for revolt and the conquest of freedom and independence.
The qualitative factors connected with the study of social systems and of
spiritual, moral and cultural values thus have a part in your work alongside the
quantitative factors being determined under increasingly strict control and with ever
greater precision.
This work, while essential for a proper African epistemology, is also of prime
importance in throwing light on the history and the present situation of Europe and,
of course, Africa.
It is becoming increasingly clear that the slave trade had a fundamental part
to play as far as Europe was concerned, for the first industrial revolution can no
longer be isolated from the primitive capital accumulation deriving from the 'triangu-
lar trade' and the monopoly system. In recent years many historians and economists,
belonging to different schools of thought, have endeavoured to ascertain how his
kind of trade, based on the exploitation of slave labour, can have stimulated the
technological explosion.
These studies have clearly shown that the contribution of the slave trade to
the industrial and commercial development of countries embarked on an era of
capitalist expansion was decisive, as was therefore its influence on the socio-economic
and political institutions of Europe and North America.
Thus, to paraphrase Aimé Césaire, 'those who invented neither gunpowder
nor electricity' were, whether they liked it or not, at the origin of the extraordinary
economic drive which produced modern technological civilization; it can be said of
them, to quote the poet again, that 'without them the earth would not be the earth'.
Maybe it will be for them to contribute now to bringing this civilization into better
balance and harmonizing it so that the earth may be a better place for each individual
and for all mankind.
As regards Latin America and the Caribbean, by a happy chance the Inter-
governmental Conference on Cultural Policies, held by Unesco for the first time in
this region, and which has just ended in Bogotá, almost coincided with your meeting.
In the course of that conference a number of delegates stressed that many liberation
movements had started in the Caribbean and then spread to the continent, thus
sealing the historic link of unity between the Islands and Latin America. In an initial
summing up of the situation on the closing day of the conference, I myself made a