Slavery was not new to Africa or Europe. Both had versions of it throughout their history. How were the Atlantic slave trade and American slavery different than previous versions of slavery?

Various forms of slavery, servitude, or coerced human labor existed throughout the world before the development of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the sixteenth century. As historian David Eltis explains, “almost all peoples have been both slaves and slaveholders at some point in their histories.” Still, earlier coerced labor systems in the Atlantic World generally differed, in terms of scale, legal status, and racial definitions, from the trans-Atlantic chattel slavery system that developed and shaped New World societies from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries.

c. free trade can lead to low pay for workers in poorer countries.