Between the 16th and the 19th centuries, an estimated 12 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic to satisfy the demand for slave labor in the plantations and mines of the New World. About 85 percent of the slaves, says the book American Slavery​—1619-1877, “went to Brazil and the various Caribbean colonies of the British, French, Spanish, and Dutch.” An estimated 6 percent went to the colonies that would later become part of the United States.a

A Long, Ugly History

In very early times, African rulers sold war captives to Arab traders. Later, European powers entered the slave trade, especially after establishing colonies in the Americas. At that time, intertribal warfare and the resulting captives provided an abundance of slaves, making war a lucrative enterprise for both the victors and the greedy slave traders. In addition, slaves were acquired through kidnapping or from African traders who brought them from the interior. Nearly anyone could be sold as a slave, even a prince who had fallen out of his king’s good graces.

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“MAN HAS DOMINATED MAN TO HIS INJURY”

Many believe that the slave traders obtained their quarry by raiding villages and kidnapping whomever they wanted. While this may have happened, slavers likely would not have taken away many millions of people “without the cooperation of a huge network of African rulers and merchants,” said professor of African history Dr. Robert Harms in a radio interview. How true that “man has dominated man to his injury”!​—Ecclesiastes 8:9.

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