This is a historical fact. But it must be recognised as a minor detail. The important fact remains that Europeans operated a murderous slave trade on a near unimaginable scale and that trade forms the foundations of our modern world, economically and culturally. That's why we must not forget, deny or dilute it. Whenever people bring up that African Chiefs / Kings owned and sold slaves, it is an attempt to dilute the blame. It must not be diluted. It's a good thing that the British etc. were excellent book keepers or by now I believe many people would deny that this most shameful chapter of human history ever happened.

Unfortunately, this bit of data is often used to make slavery in the US "not the white guy's fault". Which is, obviously, c**p. People were treated as chattel, there's no pushing the buck on that point.

While this is true, and pretty widely known, it is absolutely no justification of institutional slavery, and bringing it up is a weak argument.

In most African countries at the time, slaves had rights similar to those of sharecroppers. They had the right to approximately half of what their labor produced, they had the right to be fed and clothed properly, they even had the right to be removed from an abusive master. They also had the right to buy themselves out of slavery.

Doesn’t make it ok to buy them.

It's a pretty rubbish point for many reasons but the largest is that the enslaved were then jammed into slave ships and taken thousands of kilometres, with a phenomenal death toll and a huge array of other consequences which did not, would not and could not happen in the context of local enslavement practices. It's almost like doing a "well actually" about the horrors of war by saying people commit murder in peacetime too. It's trivially true but fundamentally disingenuous.

This is a supply and demand issue. If there were no demand then there would be no supply. If there is a market for something or in the is case someone then there's always some POS willing to sell his soul to make some cash.

None of which improves the horribly negative impact that slavery had on people, or the fact that racism is alive and well and also having a horribly negative impact on people.

Thanks, white apologist.

Yes, the slave trade could only exist because Black Africans were actively playing a roll in facilitating it. But....there's also the fact that many are acting as if the US was not only the place that "created" slavery, but the country that accounted for the majority of owned slaves. Slavery has been a thing, since humans settled into societies. Every single group of people, has enslaved every other group of people, including their own. For thousands upon thousands of years. It doesn't make it right by any stretch, but it's not a uniquely american thing. Of the 12.8 million slaves taken from Africa during the entire 400 year slave trade....388,000 ended up in the US....and the very first person in the colonies to own another human being, was Anthony Johnson....an Angolan born man Beside slavery remaining legal in other parts of the world for decades after the US abolished it, right now it's estimated that 45 million people are currently enslaved, worldwide.

Yes, but it was because the Portuguese began the cross-atlantic mega slave trade, whereas the custom in Africa stemmed from warring tribes as captives, as opposed to right-off-killing them. Sometimes the slaves were given a chance to integratr into the tribal chief's family.

Fortunately, we're now being taught about this (at least in my school)

And there were numerous black slave owners

A fact that seems to have been ignored in the "inspirational" movie The Woman King. It conveniently ignores the Dahomey Amazon's slave-owning roots.

Зараз так само і не тільки в Африці.

Commented several times on this thread. As the post says opposing tribes captured their enemies, and sold them both to European, but more so to Arab traders. It didn't help European powers conquer territories in Africa, or Asia either, as writing off the opposition it made the bigger tribes more powerful, and collected others around them, to oppose the colonialists. The same behaviour by the African tribes, virtually blind to the Arab or European intentions, other than a few wise chiefs, left them wide open to later colonisation and domination,new Americian states also went for Europeans trying to cash in on a lucritave trade, and later the race for colonisation of Africa, and profiting from their natural resources (again enslaving many in their own countries, and bringing in more slaves from others). Sad world. Support Ukraine from being another slave nation under Russia's jackboot for it's massive natural resources, etc.

That explains it! It's not the buyers who were responsible but the sellers. If humans had never been offered for sale, this would not have happened. Is this the same logic used to excuse child trafficking?

However, just because someone is selling human beings doesn't mean you should buy them

When money is involved, many people do evil.

I thought this was well known knowledge.

I knew this one.

Downvote this fact. It's incomplete.

White supremacists love these factoids and use them to justify how the US didn't do anything much wrong..

Shhhh! Don't say it out loud!

Keeping slaves was very common at the time, just as we consider it normal nowadays to keep cats and dogs. You can be angry about that, but that's how it was.

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This is a dangerous retelling of history because it omits a really important fact! Those African rulers had a choice: either you sell us the slaves and we'll trade you guns for them, or we'll go to your enemy and they'll sell us you. Is that really a choice? Do you think they were hyper enthusiastic about this deal?

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