Throught my American high school and college history courses, I was constantly told that "Transatlantic Slave Trade was unique", a one-of-a-kind institution that had no precedent. In what ways? Certainly any kind of slavery is horrible but I want to know what features distinguished it from other forced labor before. For example, slavery was widespread in ancient Rome and Egypt, where they could be prisoners of war or just children of poor farmers, sold to pay of debts. Similarly, the Mongols enslaved thousands of Ukrainians (my own peoples) as well as other nations, forcing them to fight and farm, as well as selling them on markets as commodities. And yes, they were slaves for life. Even the Code of Hammurabi refers to treatment of slaves.
So my question is, in what ways was the Atlantic unique? And, could it be argued that this uniqueness is a 'modern world myth', if seen from a sociological point of view? Perhaps it's recency and very apparent modern effects give it its specialness ex post facto?
Thank you all.
Whilst you are waiting for an answer, there are previous threads that can give some explanations. It seems most historians (at least on this subreddit) consider the Transatlantic slave trade to be different from other forms of slavery, due to the ideology of racism and the negative effects it had on Africa. In this answer, which might be the closest to your question, u/sunagainstgold and others compare the Transatlantic and the Barbary slave trades. For comparisons with the Arab/Transsaharan slave trade, here u/Iguana_on_a_stick and others link to yet more earlier answers and discuss the question. And in this thread u/Zooasaurus explains how the Ottoman system of slavery worked.