Black slavery between antagonistic tribes existed in Africa long before the advent of the Portuguese in the 1400s. However, they and the other powerful nations of Europe developed a trading in black slaves that evolved beyond the tenet that prisoners of war were more valuable in human bondage than in death by convincing the powerful native empires of Africa that exchanging their prisoners of war, and other blacks, for European products was more beneficial than enslaving them.

Portuguese slave trading and kidnapping, beginning in 1442, particularly on the west coast in an area that became known as the ‘Slave Coast’ (present day nations of Togo, Dahomey, and Nigeria), caused the Spanish in 1517 to enter the lucrative market, followed by the English (1553), the French (1624), and soon after by Holland, Denmark and the American colonies. Africa’s estimated population was 100,000,000, nearly 20% of the world’s population, in 1650; 90,000,000 (1800); 95,000,000 (1850); and 120,000,000 in 1900.