- Some African rulers or chiefs who often had conflicts with neighbouring chiefdoms preferred obtaining European guns, ammunition, and other goods over slaves.
- They would capture enemy combatants, criminals condemned to death or life imprisonment and sell them to the Europeans.
2. Warfare
- European slave traders sometimes organised armed attacks against African societies and capture thousands of people, especially women and children.
- Some powerful African chiefs would engage in military campaigns against their neighbours with the aim of capturing enslaved people.
3. Slave raiding and kidnapping
- European slave traders organised raiding parties into the African interiors. They would capture people from their homes, farms or villages and sell them to coastal slave traders.
- Kidnapping was the most dehumanising form of slave acquisition. European slave traders and their agents would capture free men and women and sell them into slavery.