Britannia comprised at one point 1/5th of the world’s population and controlled a full 1/4 of the earth’s total land mass.
Slavery existed specifically in England and generally in all of Europe from pre-Roman days, and the practice continued throughout the growing Empire of Britannia until the early 1800’s, when slavery was finally outlawed.
Slaves were purchased from Africa and from the Caribbean (and even Ireland). Many “african” slaves were transported to the Caribbean specifically to be sold from there as “caribbean” slaves as a way of getting around political pressure discouraging trade in slaves from Africa. (related to Barbary Coast Pirate issues) “Caribbean” slaves came from other countries, too - for instance, some east-coast american indians had a pre-existing slave trade going on with the caribbean traders.
At the same time, of course, Africans (and Caribbeans) were taking their own slaves - and not only from amongst themselves - Pirates of the Barbary Coast became very wealthy selling into slavery those ‘europeans’ they didn’t kill after plundering their ships, as did the Pirates of the Caribbean. (Piracy-related slave-taking became such a problem it led to the sending of “Marines” to Tripoli, spawning a famous song and the caribbean pirates were a constant headache for decades).
The PC-named ‘indentured servants,” of all sizes and colors, generated in abundance by the courts on the flimsiest of evidence, were sent throughout the British Empire, to colonies in the Caribbean, in the Americas, the South Pacific, Australia and New Zealand.
There is no other nation on earth with more experience in slavery than Britannia except perhaps Egypt. And, remarkably, in spite of tens of centuries of slavery around the world, nowhere to be found, nowhere, is the level of ‘angst’ or ‘soul-deep wounds’, such as is being perpetually pimped in America as a means of gaining power.
from wiki:
“The first Englishman recorded to have taken slaves from Africa was John Lok, a London trader who, in 1555, brought to England five slaves from Guinea. A second London trader taking slaves at that time was William Towerson.”
Indentured servants were entirely different from slaves. Many came over from Europe to America, with someone in America paying their travel expenses. The debt would be worked off by being a servant for a fixed period of time (somewhat like doing the dish-washing at a cafe when unable to pay the bill), with a maximum length of 7 years, after which he was free of debt and the bond. A slave was quite different -- a servant forever with no hope of freedom, and his children were also slaves.