What factor motivated the beginning of the atlantic slave trade

The main factor that motivated the Atlantic Slave trade was the colonies that European countries had become began to develop due to the demand and availability of cheap labor for tobacco, cotton and sugar plantations as the case of America which was a British colony. Africans were the most profitable source of labor enslaved from central and western Africa captured by slave traders. Slave trade was further triggered when the native people started dying and needed people to work on their farms thus the need for slaves.