The mores were different then ... One of the earliest and largest revolts by enslaved people in Atlantic history took place in the Portuguese sugar colony of Sao Tome in July 1595 (Seibert 2011) … see also: colonialvoyage.com/revolt-slaves-…
In the late 1600s, an Afro-Brazilian man, Lourenço da Silva de Mendonça, travelled to Rome from Brazil to petition the Pope to abolish the institution of perpetual slavery (Gray 1987) … 
José Lingna Nafafé argues further that Mendonça brought a criminal case against nations involved in Atlantic slavery for committing a crime against humanity … as such, the legal debate against slavery was begun by Africans, & not Europeans ... mmppf.wordpress.com/2019/03/12/lou…
Quilombo dos Palmares in Brazil (ca. 1605-1694) was 'a multi-faceted quasi state' created by people who had self-emancipated themselves from Portuguese colonization ...
blackpast.org/global-african…
blackpast.org/global-african…
This is before we even get to Haiti & the remarkable Toussaint L’Ouverture who, as CLR James says, ‘incarnated the determination of his people never, never to be slaves again’ & laid the ground for the most extraordinary of anti-colonial political victories ...
By making freedom from enslavement & racial discrimination the bedrock of political understandings and de-linking citizenship from race, the Haitian constitution universalized the idea of equality long before any European nation (Fischer 2004) faculty.webster.edu/corbetre/haiti…
Riots, rebellions, resistance, revolutions have always characterized the response of those who were colonized ... the above are a few examples from the Atlantic world. Europeans also extended their reach eastwards & were met with similar responses there ...
In not acquiescing to oppression, it should be clear that the mores of the time were contested... if some didn't heed those other voices, preferring the pursuit of profit, that was a choice made in the knowledge of different mores. There are no excuses.
