I know that Europeans and Americans were responsible for ending the trans-Atlantic slave trade and not Africans. I also know that the Omani arab had to buy the slaves from someone and that someone was an African. So in my estimation the biggest slave trader was the African.
For every sale of a person there will be numerous examples of captured persons being taken. We are both right to a degree but the mere fact that there was the need to capture people in the first place will bring to light the reasons there were also sales, think about that. Think about this, if you are a chief and you have witnessed people on your land being ruthlessly gunned down by the hundreds, you have tried to fight back at it has proved futile, what do you do? Some chiefs decided that rather than die or have their people taken captive he may be advised to at least get something of value for them. Europeans were very reluctant to trade guns else they may be turned back on them but in the end this appeared to be european colonialisms downfall. The African chiefs eventually stated they would not do anymore trade unless it was for guns and the europeans eventually had no choice such was their desire for free labour. The british wars with Ashanti that span 100 years up until the 20th century are a great example of europeans weapons being used against them and eventually earning independence as Ghana.
