Further, Wilberforce was known to tactically approach the topic from a politician’s perspective by encouraging the implementation of specific laws that abolished the slave trade, rather than from the perspective of an interested party with a difference of opinion on the matter. Nevertheless, advocates of slavery not only defended, but also justified their positions that no harm was done in treating Africans similar to animals by capturing them and shipping them to the West Indies where they will live the rest of their lives enslaved to a White master. Further, the general conception concerning Africans pursuant to plantation owners is that Africans were simply an inferior species, addicted to stealing, prone to low cunning and contempt of truth, in addition to possessing the greatest aversion to every species of labor. As a result of the Africans’ “nature,” plantation owners, and advocates of slavery alike, fundamentally believed that they were doing the Africans a justice by providing them with a God-ordained “station in life,” where they would be provided housing, food, and …show more content…
More specifically, pursuant to mercantilism and, accordingly, the mercantilist economic theory, the production and profits developed in the Americas were to be sent to the mother countries in Europe for the promotion and benefit of those countries. As such, due to the benefit that the slave trade had on the production of those goods, it is likely that European states were inclined to encourage, as well as defend, the practice of the slave trade of Africans, despite the inhumane and controversial effects of said