Who decided to make African people slaves?

Answer 1

Though this fact goes against the usual story told today, originally the fact is, many African parents sold their own child or children into bondage for a number of reasons including poverty and lack of food in the immediate area or region. When sailing ships came by, these "sales" occurred. This is a well-known fact of history, though it gets buried in today's story of black slavery. (The same thing occurred after the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia between 1805-1815. After the major eruptions, food crops were wiped out. Parents sold their children to passing ships just to get food. Whole families 'willingly' entered being owned by Whites just so the Indonesian people could get away from the stricken area.)

However, Whites-colonizers already had a colonizing and conquering mentality. They were not aversive to taking slaves--after all, slavery, which is power over a less popular or less powerful group of people, has occurred in many civilizations throughout history and all ancient civilizations. Along that line, White sailors who used to take children the parents sold for food or money then began to enact slavery even when the parents did not desire to sell their children.

By this point, the type of African slavery described today began. Whites took men, women, children, or whole families against their wills. When British, French, and Spanish colonized America, the elite Whites began to believe they were entitled to slavery. As the US South developed into farming, especially cotton, Whites believed they economically needed African slaves to do the work --both in White plantation homes and in the fields.

While some people in the North (northeast US) did originally own slaves and the North was primarily agriculture, the practice of slavery boomed in the South even long after most Northerners had freed their slaves. Southern plantation owners believed their plantations would fail without the free labor.

So the story told today about Black slavery origins 'forgets' this piece about how the sale of Africans truly began. There is no shame in the true story---it was simply a fact that when people had no food, they went to desperate means to make sure their children survived. That Whites then used their power to force Africans into slavery is true---but White-power was not how African slavery started.

Anyone willing to study history of civilizations will find these are the facts: Slavery began from desperation of circumstances on the African continent that forced parents to choose to sell their children in exchange for money / something of value, or for food. Whites simply took advantage of these circumstances....and much later, began to simply take people against their wills.

NOTE: While "slavery" is the primary word used today, originally even Whites were "indentured" to other Whites, even from Anglo-Saxon groups coming from Europe (first Britain, then Wales, Ireland, etc.). Indenturehood was a form of limited slavery in which one male "owned" the life and livelihood of another person. White people were often made Indentured Servants for a decade to several decades (or lifetime) to pay off their debt to the "Master"/owner, including debts owed from life in their native country. Many settlers also could not afford passage to come to the US---and so, became the property of another richer White who paid their way here. So US history followed a British-colonizing pattern of making the poorest, most uneducated people (Whites) work for or on behalf of rich and more educated White elite. Black slavery in the US came from this same mentality, but for Blacks it often meant lifetime bondage.

Answer 2

The decision to enslave African people was primarily made by European colonizers and traders during the era of transatlantic slave trade. This decision was driven by economic motives, as these colonizers sought to exploit the labor of Africans for the production of agricultural goods on plantations in the Americas. The slave trade was fueled by the demand for labor and the racial hierarchy that characterized European colonial societies at the time.