The pharisians (and later jews) have engaged in slave ownership and trading for all their existence: https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Judaism_and_slavery Throughout the history, they were often the last ones to be banned from the practice, and some (((historians))) classify the prohibition from owning Christian slaves issued by some of the Visigoth kings (which were seldom enforced in practice anyway) as antisemitic, since it hurt their "businesses and way of life". Ping me if you can't find the sources for that and I'll retrieve them when I have the time. So knowing this, why would you, or anyone, find it surprising that they were still major players in the transatlantic slave trade? And more importantly, would they stop now, that they own the western world?