Yes, I remember struggling to teach students -- I once was a private tutor -- why one had to include the history of Africa since it had little meaningful history to the students until AFTER the invasions of Europeans.
I finally was honest with them and told them it was because we were required by the weight of tradition to PRETEND that their pre-European contact history had significant meaning all on its own intrinsic merits and then had them learn the facts anyway for testing purposes. Africa, the Americas; most places had no meaningful history in terms of the march of technologically-based civilization and meaningful science until Europeans arrived.
It's not nice, but it is true. Oh and most of them were every bit as routinely capable of savagery as any European nation. It was NOT a nice world for people in general no matter where one lived.
The exceptions are China and Japan -- as they both did have mature civilizations and both ultimately proved capable of adapting to the driving forces of Eastern-based sciences, technologies , and industrialization with ridiculous ease. I am sure there were other notable exceptions as well . . . but not all that many. I haven't taught this stuff for decades now. Yes for the nitpickers out there -- and they are ALWAYS around -- yes, the Muslims and Algebra and refinements of astronomy . . . as if Algebra would not have logically been invented or astronomy refined in European nations anyway. So forth and so on.
