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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There were actually slave trade between Europe and Africa before America was discovered. We do not actually know how old this slave trade was. But the slaves were not always from Africa to Europe, usually it was the other way around. In general slaves are being sold to places that need workers to work vast fields. Throughout history you have found slaves working in areas with vast amounts of farmland supporting a population growth. This have been the case with several African empires who needed slaves but also occasionally in Europe.
The trans Atlantic slave trade started up because there were plenty of farmland being cleared in America and the local Indian population were being killed in the millions from the harsh slave conditions as well as new diseases. So the colonial plantation owners turned to slaves imported from Africa. Most of the farms in Europe was already being run by free men so there was no need for slaves.
I am not saying that the treatment the slaves were given was justifiable. The Afro-American slaves were working under some of the worst conditions throughout written history. But it did not just appear out of nowhere.
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