Between 1200 and 1450, Mali became a significant state on the Straits of Malacca. In Mali was a city called Timbuktu that had a huge library with hundreds of thousands of books. Timbuktu had the biggest library in the world and became a center for Islamic learning. Muslim merchants learned Arabic and although it wasn’t required to know arabic, it advantaged many that spoke the language because it enhanced their communication. Between 1450 and 1750, Chris Columbus and his Spanish explorers discovered the Americas and as other Europeans such as the British, French, and Portuguese conquered lands in the Western Hemisphere, the Trans African Slave Trade started where millions of Africans, typically from West Africa became enslaved by the Europeans and torn away from their families to live different fates in the Americas. They were forced to raise tobacco, cacao, and especially sugar.