I found out some interesting facts after my reading of Maddisson books. From this book I knew that in the year 1000 the West was not richer than Africa. That is very surprising because of the big gap existing between the two regions. For example, in 1000 the level of per-capita GDP in Africa was 425 against 400 in the West. Also, the per-capita GDPs were almost the same wherever in the world. According to Maddison book, there was a big gap of 18:1 between the richest and the poorest region in the world.