The region now known as Mali traded slaves at a time with other nations traded slaves, and like other nations, could have changed their approaches. We need to understand the role of the exploitation of southeren hemisphere countries from the 16th century onward, in order to understand the social conditions in those regions before, during and after colonisation. To assume the very old - savages replaced by civilisation - colonial argument is obviously problematic, because there is no appropriate comparison between socio-political traditions of those southern hemisphere regions and the north hemisphere regions. Mining in those regions by colonists cost those regions much of their material wealth, without any reasonable return of wealth on what they lost.