who was responsible for the slave trade?

Answer 1

The Slave Traders.

Answer 2

I would say the countries that permitted slavery and the people who used slave labor. When there is a demand for slaves there will be be people who will engage in slave trading When the planters in the Americas greatly increased the demand, the Atlantic slave trade grew to satisfy the needs, and it continued until importation of slaves was stopped or slavery abolished.

Answer 3

Women were the first slaves, a family slave, an inferior sex partner, which grew out of mans decreased dependence upon women.

In earlier times captives were either eaten, tortured to death, set to fighting each other, sacrificed to spirits, or enslaved. Slavery was a great advancement over massacre and cannibalism.
Enslavement was a forward step in the treatment of war captives.

True, slavery was oppressive, but it was in the schools of oppression that man learned industry. Eventually the slaves shared the blessings of a higher society which they had so unwillingly helped create. Slavery creates an organization of culture and social achievement but soon insidiously attacks society internally as the gravest of all destructive social maladies.

All races have been enslaved at one time or another and war was for the most part responsible for the first slaves.

Peace..............