Just learned this

The two slave trades aren't comparable. Slaves under Islam were treated better, for one thing.

I'm thinking the transatlantic slave trade during the period roughly from 1750-1870, when slaves were sent over from West African civilizations to the Americas
Once they were in the Americas, they weren't treated the same as they would in an Islamic civilization

It was a unique western invention (Papal doctrines of "Discovery"), that dehumanized the African slaves, in a way that Islam did not. Only 10% of those loaded on the ships in West Africa, even made it to the New World alive, because of the unthinkably awful conditions that they traveled under, as I understand it. Because these victims weren't valued as people - these loses were considered acceptable. Since those that survived were so valuable.

Neither of the traditions of enslavement (of war prisoners) in West Africa, nor in the Islamic world involved this kind of dehumanizing treatment. It's wrong whenever and wherever it's practiced. But the scope and the scale and the dehumanization in the Transatlantic slave trade have no modern precedents.

That was my point. There's a politicized and revisionist effort afoot to minimize and normalize what occurred in the New World, Europe and Africa, to Africans. I object to it.

I apologize if I came off as trying to normalize it, as that wasn't my intention.
I understand that all of the slave trade was wrong, and that all of the blame for the dehumanization that occurred cannot be placed on only one civilization or group of people.
All that I meant with this post was to provide people with a piece of information I learned while researching imperialism for my AP world history class, which I thought not everyone had known, especially as I had previously thought that this trade system was entirely caused by Europeans and Americans.

Good to know. It's a common misconception.

But it tends to get seized upon by the intolerant to minimize and decontextualize what occurred, down to a "everyone did it" thing. Alternatively they'll point to limited participation of free blacks in the peculiar institution - for the same purposes.

And lastly, they'll correctly point out that some Irish whites were enslaved by the British, and used in Jamaica. Kamala's (white) slave owning ancestor was an example... He started as a slave, and became one of the cruelest of slave owners - because enslaved whites were upwardly mobile, in ways that enslaved Africans generally weren't.

It's not that "everybody does it" and it's therefore morally acceptable, it's that it was the standard of the time. In 1000 historians will look back on us barbarians today and say "how could they have done that!", but we would think nothing of it because what we do is standard. There's nothing uniquely western about the slave trade, as slavery existed in some form in all civilizations.

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade had no known historical precedents - whether we're talking about scope, scale, or the totally dehumanizing racism/ethnocentrism behind it. And that was all uniquely western.

Agree to disagree, gg man

A LEGIT Squidward fun fact????