Yuratuhl wrote:
We traded them guns and Christianity in return for them selling us enemy tribes.
And virtually every chance of a resource surplus they could have had after, say, the beginning of the Age of Exploration. That tends to get taken away when you're dominated by either of two opposing religions during a series of major conflicts between the peoples of said religions and the aftereffects over the next several centuries (e.g. the rise of the Ottomans, African Muslim conflict with Coptic Christianity on the continent itself, and the triangular slave trade) following the aforementioned series of conflicts.
Edit: Oh, and we didn't really trade them guns. The concept of gunpowder being used as a weapon dates back further than the beginnings of European colonization, and there's no distinctive reason for us to believe that WE traded them guns. The Muslims occupying the civilized majority of the continent were more connected to the former Silk Road than the western colonists.
I mean, we sort of traded them guns over time. Especially the goddamn British. But we didn't bring it to them in the first place, so no harm done, I suppose.