# Conclusion and epistemological lessons  
Research since the 1990s has made it increasingly clear that the Transatlantic African diaspora was a major factor in Atlantic world history. Since the 1980s, development theorists have debated the role of the State, the free market and culture in long-run development processes. The evidence on which this chapter is based makes it clear that cooperation between an effective State and the market is a requirement for development. Great Britain employed its naval power to obtain and protect for its entrepreneurs much of the expanded Atlantic markets that resulted from the employment of enslaved Africans in  
the Americas; its more economically competitive regions - Lancashire, the West Riding of Yorkshire and Stafford - captured a disproportionate share of those markets to launch the Industrial Revolution, with its factory system and new technologies (Inikori, 2015, pp. 224-265). The evidence shows that in the long run, culture is a dependent variable in the development process. All this is also true for the differing paths of development in the Americas and the adverse effects of transatlantic captive exports on long-run development in West Africa, where the free market operated without effective States in most places. Similarly, the evidence shows strongly that the free market, left to itself, cannot offer a desirable solution to the lingering legacy of slavery in the Americas. Well directed State intervention is needed.