What I’m trying to ask is, if the slave trade develop in order to bring slave labor to America, de facto viewing the subjects brought across the ocean as inferior (I’m guessing due to skin color and cultural differences) why did it not develop with the indigenous people in the americas as well? They were different colors skin and culturally different, and it wouldn’t have required transporting millions of people across a very large ocean.
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Slavery was worldwide. In Africa, the Europeans just tapped into an already robust and very old Islamic slave trade, although their desire for slaves of course increased that trade quite a bit, which increased even more when slaves were desired to work the new land in the Americas. Natives in the US also had slaves before the Europeans arrived, and they even owned black slaves after the Europeans started importing them.
Race wasn’t necessary to consider someone inferior and thus worthy of slavery. Being culturally different was sufficient.
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