BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY : WHAT ROLE DID THE AFRICANS HAVE IN THE SLAVE TRADE :

Warring tribes would often capture members of other tribes as slaves and then sell them on to African Slave Traders who take them to the ports here they would sell them to European Slavers. Some African tribes did well out of the slave trade, they were particularly enriched by the slave trade, the Ashanti of the Gold Coast now Ghana. European slave traders were very careful to stay on very good terms with the African slave traders who brought them slaves, they depended on there co-operation to keep the trade going. Some European slave traders married African wives who kept the business going in the absence of there husbands.

Slaves for the Trans-Atlantic slave trade were sourced in the Senegambia and the Windward Coast. Around 1650 the trade moved to west-central Africa the kingdom of the Congo and neighboring Angola. Slavery was also a traditional part of African society, various states and kingdoms in Africa operated one or more of the following - Chattel Slavery, Debt Bondage, Forced Labour and Serfdom. With this well embedded in the African Culture and Society, there were ready made slaves and means of enslaved Africans to be shipped into slavery right from the beginning.