Did Slavery Exist Before Europeans

Some form of slavery existed in Africa before Europeans arrived; however it was a system of temporary consequences. People were enslaved as punishment for a crime, to pay a debt, or as captives of war. African slavery was very different from what was to come later with the Europeans because it was not for personal gain and inhumane suffering of others. Unlike European slavery, African slaves could work to buy their freedom and their children were not automatically slaves. Captive Africans and their descendants paid with their blood and sweat for the phenomenal expansion of human possibilities in the Atlantic world.' (Robin Blackburn)
Europeans changed the scale of slavery. Did slavery exist before the Europeans began to exercise its power
and enslave Africans on a large scale? Yes, however Europeans changed slavery in that their involvement led to generation after generation of people being taken from their country and enslaved forever. European enslaved people became legally defined as chattel slaves. Chattel slaves were considered to be another’s complete property forever and their children and children's children were automatically enslaved. Also, chattel slavery was established and legalized by European governments and monarchs for profit and gains. This type of enslavement was practiced in European colonies starting around the sixteenth century. So Europeans alone can be blamed for slavery, which African endured because they passed laws that ensured all enslaved people and their future generations would be doomed to the same fate.
Thus, the transatlantic slave trade shaped America with the labor of slaves taken from Africa and their future generations. After the Europeans seized large masses of land from the Native Americans, they needed cheap labor to tend it. So the Europeans set their sights on slaves from Africa to expand their territories in America. The Europeans under the guidance of King Ferdinand of Spain sent hundreds of Africans to the American colonies to work in enslavement in the early sixteenth century. The Spanish and Portuguese continued to enslave Africans to provide continual labor for their expanding new economies and growing labor demands. In response to these situations, more African laborers, European slave traders transported over a quarter million people from Africa to the Caribbean and the Americas in the years that followed. Since the plantations in America and the Caribbean could only be operated successfully if a large labor force was recruited, slaves were shipped from Africa to work on the plantations because sugar demands became a key economic factor.