Title: Why Did African Chiefs Participate In The Transatlantic Slave Trade? | by Francis Korkor | Mother-Afrika | Medium
Headings: 
Why Did African Chiefs Participate In The Transatlantic Slave Trade?
Content: Why Did African Chiefs Participate In The Transatlantic Slave Trade? | by Francis Korkor | Mother-Afrika | Medium
Francis Korkor
Oct 5, 2019 · 2 min read
Why Did African Chiefs Participate In The Transatlantic Slave Trade? Most ancient societies dabbled in slaves, because they did not have prisons and resources to hold and feed enemy combatants from wars. Instead of killing the enemies captured from external wars and tribal wars, most ancient societies chose to rather sell the enemy combatants as slaves. In this way they didn’t have to waste resources holding the prisoners, or worse killing them and having their blood on their hands. Ancient societies also saw this arrangement as a reasonable punishment for prisoners of wars. So the type of slavery that was going on in Africa before the Europeans, was not slavery established for the sole purpose of trading human for profit, but was for the purpose of not killing their enemies after a battle. It must be noted that this pre-existing slavery in Africa before Europeans arrived, was not regulated by any entity. As with any unregulated system, some unscrupulous tribal warriors could have corrupted it to some extent but capturing and selling more and more slaves than other tribes, but even then the system was just not made for trading and transporting millions and millions of people. Remember in those days, anyone buying slaves was buying them because he could send them to rich households in the Islamic states as servants.