Slavery apologists put a lot of emphasis on Africans selling other Africans to the slave traders, as though it is the Africans’ fault in general that some of them were willing to participate in the trade. Of course this happened, Europeans did not usually go into the hinterland to round people up. The apologists ignore, though, that European goods, especially firearms and gunpowder, soon made the slave catchers dominant and powerful. It was this, and not some general moral deficiency among Africans, that led to large scale African involvement in the trade.