The slave trade was driven by economic motives from "summary" of Capitalism & Slavery by Eric Eustace Williams
The driving force behind the slave trade was not simply a matter of racial prejudice or moral indifference. It was, at its core, a system built on economic motives. The entire enterprise was structured around the maximization of profits, with human beings reduced to mere commodities to be bought, sold, and exploited for financial gain. The triangular trade, which connected Europe, Africa, and the Americas, was a complex network designed to extract wealth from the labor of enslaved Africans. European merchants would exchange goods for slaves on the African coast, transport them across the Atlantic under brutal conditions, and then sell them to planters in the Caribbean and the Americas. The profits generated from this trade flowed back to Europe, fueling the growth of capitalist economies. Plantation owners in the Americas were driven by the need for cheap labor to cultivate lucrative crops such as sugar, tobacco, and cotton. The profitability of these enterprises relied heavily on the exploitation of enslaved laborers who were forced to toil under...
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