[TheDaddy]

Originally Posted by Niles Crane

The vast majority of slaves sold to Europeans by African rulers were already slaves, prisoners of war or criminals within society and refusal by the local powers to collaborate with the colonialists would see them captured along with their people anyway - as happened with any Kings who refused. In addition, to fulfil the European demand, enslavement became almost an inevitable consequence of crime or capture during war - to such an extent, war between kingdoms was sponsored and encouraged by colonialists.

"Sell to the Europeans or be sold to the Europeans"

Your simplification is misleading scape-goating, which is no better than ignoring the indigenous involvement and laying all the work at the hands of Europeans. On that and the original subject of this thread:

Perhaps my post was a little simplistic, one line posts generally are, however time wasn't on my side then so I am glad you took the opportunity to make those points. I am certainly not trying to absolve Europeans of blame but places like Zanzibar grew very wealthy of the back (literally) of trading the continents indigenous peoples and when we tried to impose sanctions against the slave trade it helped lead to war in the Sudan and its reimposition by the Mahdi, this as you point out shouldn't be forgotten either imo.