The source of the slave trade was #Africa, where English observers fixed upon the sources of enslavement. Nevertheless, this could not fail to direct attention to the fact that most of the Africans had never been enslaved and even those who were enslaved had been free. . . . In this sense, in early-modern discourse, Africa was identified not only with enslavement but with freedom.

Over time, however, . . . the central site of English discourse moved westward across the Atlantic. . . . What the planters needed was the reason that Africans could never become free. The unfitness of the Africans for freedom was an idea first presented to meet the conceptual demands of American slavery. . . . Whether in America or in Africa, Anglo-American authors maintained, the peoples of Africa were best suited to be slaves.

– John Samuel Harpham in interview with Alec Israeli