...as we have seen, European intellectual looting was not confined to the Arab Muslim world. It has been established beyond a reasonable doubt, for instance, that the steam engine was invented by the advanced African empire of Songhai some time in the 14th century. The noble and peaceable Songhai naturally used this only for peaceful and benign purposes; to operate sugar mills, coacoa processors and complex mahogany contraptions that made chocolate cherry bonbons (also invented in Africa, don't you know).
Sometime in the mid-17th century, unfortunately, the notorious Scottish pirate James Watt led a band of British cutthroats to the domain of the Songhai on a slave-napping expedition. Watt had learned the rudiments of mechanical art during an earlier trip to the Africa, and soon realized the perverse uses to which this dazzlingly advanced technology could be put in his cold, fog-shrouded native land.
Being European, and therefore irredeemably greedy and bloodthirsty, Watt was especially interested in making guns and steamships for further slave raids.
Through trickery, he and his evil minions stole the steam engine. The Songhai, noble and peaceable as they were, chose to endure this outrage rather than kill the Europeans, whom they had somehow mistaken for fellow human being. Following the usual pattern in these deplorable cases of intellectual theft; the Watt expedition's chief druid, John Locke, then invoked his dark Celtic magic to deprive the Songhai of any knowledge of the machine's existence.
Next: Chapter IX, The "Maxim" Gun, Masai fertility symbol turned European Killing Machine