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In 1102 the Catholic Council of London decreed: "Let no one hereafter presume to engage in that nefarious trade in which hitherto in England men were usually sold like brute animals."
It didn't go anywhere. But how can we get the mentality behind it to be picked up by the English and other European monarchs so that slavery (of all men) is illegal by the time the Americas are discovered?
If the slave trade is abolished, what would replace it? I imagine indentured servitude would replace it, but would European settlers really be happy to have all the extra free blacks about as they have to release them after seven years? Would poor central and eastern Europeans be used instead?