>>514066320
There was a slave trade "triangle".

Ships left Europe, went to Africa where they sold desirable trinkets and picked up the only "product" that the west African states had, which was slaves. They then went to America and dropped off the slaves and picked up crops, which they took back to Europe.

The thing about Africans selling slaves, is that slavery in Africa existed a long time before this trade started. Tribes were always raiding each other and capturing slaves. So when the ships showed up, slaves was something they had in abundance. I said trinkets, but they were also interested in weapons, which they used to raid other tribes and to capture more slaves. So slavery in Africa was a big industry there... Europeans weren't going around and capturing people out of their villages, the Africans already did this and they had huge stores of slaves right on the coast, ready to be shipped off.