EUROPEAN ATTITUDES TO SLAVERY

TEXTS AND SOURCES: ATTITUDES TO SLAVERY

. . . many of these African nations inhabit fertile countries, are industrious farmers, enjoy plenty, and lived quietly, averse to war, before the Europeans debauched them with liquors, and bribing them against one another; and that these inoffensive people are brought into slavery, by stealing them, tempting Kings to sell subjects, which they can have no right to do, and hiring one tribe to war against another, in order to catch prisoners. By such wicked and inhuman ways the English are said to enslave towards one hundred thousand yearly; of which thirty thousand are supposed to die by barbarous treatment in the first year; besides all that are slain in the unnatural ways excited to take them.
Tom Paine, 1775

You have among you many a purchased slave, which, like your asses and your dogs and mules, you use in abject and in slavish parts, because you have bought them: shall I say to you, 'Let them be free, marry them to your heirs. Why sweat they under burdens? Let their beds be made as soft as yours, and let their palates be seasoned with such viands'? You will answer, 'The slaves are ours.'

William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice