African's sold themselves into slavery


As with Native Americans, Africans were often sold into slavery by enemy tribes. However, as Christopher C. Boyle points out in his essay Rise of the Georgetown Rice Culture,

The most common reasons for selling tribal members to the Europeans were for offenses against society, such as murder or theft, offenses against the king, or even personal or tribal misfortunes such as indebtedness or tribal famine.
But whatever the reason, he says, "the sale of human lives was profitable for African tribal kings and the European traders as well as the colonial planters." source:http://www.sciway.net