when did the europeans start using africans as slaves?

[vanessa r]

when did africans become slaves?

[Christine]

After the Jews started selling them. First however they used white slaves and indentured servants.

* 1642: Massachusetts becomes the first colony to legalize slavery.
* 1650: Connecticut legalizes slavery.
* 1661: Virginia officially recognizes slavery by statute.
* 1662: A Virginia statute declares that children born would have the same status as their mother.
* 1663: Maryland legalizes slavery.
* 1664: Slavery is legalized in New York and New Jersey.[202]

You do know in Africa they still use slaves... So why just Europeans?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_modern_Africa

"continues today. Slavery existed in Africa before the arrival of Europeans - as did a slave trade that exported millions of sub-Saharan Africans to North Africa, the Middle East, and the Persian Gulf."

[Lincoln6]

Probably after they read the bible.

[Heman the Seaman]

Probably because England, being the imperial pricks of Europe, in their exploration of the world, found black natives living in, what the English thought of, squalor, like in Africa, and appeared so barbaric and uncivilized that England thought the black natives could be thought of as not having a soul, being as black as they are, and could get the nasty Roman Catholic Church to decree them non-human and then sold and used as animals, because, to the English, they were animals, as dumb and backwards as the corrupt imperialist English morons were and are, thought. But slavery as always existed where an imperialist country conquers another, which is what England did to South Africa, and makes the conquered into slaves.

[David L]

Before it was abolished by the dominant European culture in the mid 1800s slavery had existed as long as history has been recorded. The Romans owned African slaves as well as Europeans and Asiatics.

In Africa, slavery has been an industry as long as we can remember. It should be noted that the Europeans did not take the slaves themselves, but bought them from other Africans who had captured them. The American market was certainly a stimulus to the business, but the practice of slavery was in place beforehand.

It was only in the early 1800s that any nation began to recognise that slavery should be abolished as a social evil. The British and French led the way, with other nations following eventually. The Americans, of course, fought the first modern war over the practice.

It should also be noted that much of the British involvement in Africa after the antislavery laws was in an attempt to impose enough order to stop the slavers from operating, and that since they left slavery has again become a common practice in parts of the continent.

Finally, with regard to the earlier answer blaming African slavery on the Jews, Talmud forbids one Jew from owning another. All a slave has to do is convert, and he or she must be freed. Slavery is not practible for practicing Jews.

So that must be another lie, hey?

[Jose P]

Porque la ley por ese entonces veia bien la esclavitud y los africanos eran considerados cosas y no seres humanos.
La junta de 1813 (argentina)declaro mucho antes la libertad a los esclavos que la de 1833. Estados unidos lo hizo recien en 1865.

[Tim D]

Rome (and other European city-states) used slaves in many occupations to build the empire, these were captured as a result of military campaigns and through commercial expeditions to take any populations that were outside the Roman Empire, a proportion of these were African. Although slavery existed long before, and since, Rome's predominance I believe they were the first Europeans to use a substantial number of African slaves.
Heman's agenda-based rant is far from accurate, slaves were imported into South Africa by the Dutch – not taken from South Africa by the British, who did not claim sovereignty of South Africa until 18 years before passing the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833.