Oyekan Owomoyela . A HISTORY OF TWENTIETH CENTURY AFRICAN LITERATURES. ABŞ, University of Nebraska Press, 1993.

In the half millennium that has elapsed since Christopher Columbus's fateful "discovery" of the New World, humankind has experienced profound revolutions directly related to Columbus's voyage and those of the European explorer-adventurers who came after him. Nowhere has the impact of those revolutions been more dramatic than on the African continent, for as a consequence of the voyages Africa quickly became an object of European attention—as either an obstacle or a restocking facility for ships on their way to the spices of the Indian Ocean, as a treasure trove of possessions to be transferred from one European power to another in treaties concluding intra
European wars, as a source of slave labor for the new plantations in the Americas, and as a group of colonies supplying European empires with raw materials, markets for finished goods, and career opportunities for European civil servants.