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For centuries the most valuable of Africanresources for Europeans were the slaves, but these could be obtained at coastal ports, withoutany need for going deep inland. Slaveryhad been an established institution in Africa. Prisoners of war had been enslaved, as werealso debtors and individuals guilty of serious crimes. But these slaves usually were treated as partof the family. They had clearly definedrights, and their slave status was not necessarily inherited. Therefore it is commonly argued that Africa'straditional slavery was mild compared to the Vans-Atlantic slave tradeorganized by the Europeans. Thisargument, however, can be carried too far. In the most re-cent study of this subject,some scholars warned against the illusion that "cruel and dehumanizing enslavementwas a monopoly of the West. Slavery inits extreme forms, including the taking of life, was common to both Africa andthe West. The fact that African slaveryhad different origins and consequences should not lead us to deny what it was——theexploitation and control of human beings. "Neither can it be denied that thewholesale shipment of Africans to the slave plantations of the Americas wasmade possible by the participation of African chiefs who rounded up theirfellow Africans and sold them as a handsome profit to European ship captainswaiting along the coasts.
Granting all this, the fact remains that thetrans-Atlantic slave trade conducted by the Europeans was entirely different inquantity and quality from the traditional type of slavery that had existed withinAfrica. From the beginning the Europeanvariety was primarily an economic institution rather than social, as it hadbeen in Africa. Western slave tradersand slave owners were acted on by purely economic considerations, and werequite ready to work their slaves to death if it was more profitable to do sothan to treat them more mercifully. Thisinhumanity was reinforced by racism when the Europeans became involved in theAfrican slave trade on a large scale. Perhaps as a subconscious rationalization theygradually came to look down on Negroes as inherently inferior, and therefore destinedto serve their white masters. Rationalizationalso may have been involved in the Europeans' use of religion to justify thetraffic in human beings. It was argued,for instance, that enslavement assured the conversion of the Africanevil-believing religions to the true faith as well as to civilization.
In the first paragraph, the author argues that A．the Europeans were innocent in the trade ofAfrican slaves.
B．slavery in Africa and in the West was the samein nature.
C．the view in the most recent studies ofenslavement is baseless.
D．slaves had been treated even more cruelly inthe African tradition.
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