Compare And Contrast The European Slave Trade

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The European Slave trade was very different than the African Slavery, which took place in Africa. Europeans came to Africa in need of manual labor. They conquered colonies of innocent people that they felt they could have power over. Africans enslaving other Africans was a consequence of debt or the winning of war the majority of the time. There are similarities and there some very distinct differences between both systems but they are both considered slavery. The European Slave trade was initiated when Muslims sold their war captivates to the Italians. The Italians then sold the Muslim captives to the Christians and the Christian captives to the Muslims. That was the initial drop that started the ripple effect of the transatlantic movement, also known as the European Slave trade. This initial event led to African slave trading. Europe was expanding and conquering new lands increasing the necessity for physical labor to keep up and maintain the new…show more content…
They desperately needed labor forces for the sugar plantations that were becoming of high demand in the late 1490s. The Portuguese typically traded with Muslims to gain African slaves. They decided to go straight to the source of labor cutting out the middle man. They traveled past the equator to conquest the Guanches, an indigenous population in the Canaries and brought them back to Portugal, eventually this population became extinct due to diseases. The Portuguese did not decide to pick the African communities as their workers based off of skin color, it was geographically convenient for them. The natives of the new world were not used to the European diseases and it caused a great plague of extinction between them. The Europeans needed labor and then the Portuguese decided that the Africans would be a good fit in what they needed. Since the Africans were in contact with the Muslim community they were more immune to the diseases of

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