The profit motive of slavery was concealed behind religious justifications.

Evidence

For convincing readers, successive popes, and the reading European world that Prince Henry’s Portugal did not engage in the slave trade for money, Zurara was handsomely rewarded as Portugal’s chief royal chronicler, and he was given two more lucrative commanderships in the Military Order of Christ. Zurara’s bosses quickly reaped returns from their slave trading. In 1466, a Czech traveler noticed that the king of Portugal was making more selling captives to foreigners “than from all the taxes levied on the entire kingdom.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 56

Categorization

• XREF: Zurara’s self-interested chronicling is an early, concrete case of Kendi’s thesis that racist ideas are produced by self-interested parties to justify slave policy. — connects to: A leading theologian declared selling slaves aroused no more guilt than selling a horse — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 105; White slaveholding Christianity subsidized and sanctified the slave trade. — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 244