After the middle of the 17th century, almost everyone not already corrupted by the slave trade felt that it was wrong in principle. Even Bishop las Casas who originally had urged Charles V to use African slaves was convinced by 1566 that it was as unjust to enslave Africans as it was to enslave Indians. Even the bible came to be incompatible with slavery, despite the long association that all of the Christian churches had made with the institution of slavery.
Britain, after having exploited the African slaves for over a century, was the first major power to renounce slavery as an unacceptable practice. Because of their heavy involvement in the slave trade, the British were keenly aware of the injustices being exacted upon the African slaves. They made it illegal in 1807 and released 750,000 of their own slaves. Instead of taking a Laissez-faire policy about abolition, they started trying to enforce it in an expensive, one-nation campaign against slavery.
Sugar and cotton crops have been responsible for the death and suffering of millions of human beings. The New World only created a demand for labor, Africa actually supplied that demand with its own people. The slave trade has left behind a bitter racial conflict between white and black and a sense of guilt that refuses to disappear. ?It is as if we were all responsible now, for the sin of our forefathers, and as if the sin was so great that not even the Civil War could atone for it.? The slaves neither escaped from slavery nor rose up above it upon their own. They were released by those who believed in the right for freedom of each human being and fought and died for that principle.
The Europeans never introduced anything of lasting value to Africa in return for the trade of slaves. They never started manufacturing, business, political or religious systems as they were doing in the New World. Nothing could compete with the profitable business of slave trading.
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