The brutal transatlantic slave system is fueled, in part, by Indian textiles. Now, let us acknowledge that the first enslaved Africans were brought to Virginia in 1619, and that the transatlantic slave system was horribly brutal. I’m not sure that Mughal cotton textiles could be said to have “bankrolled” the transatlantic slave trade. Whatever the case, the exhibit implicates Indian textiles in the slave trade, not the Mughals. The VMFA exhibit has nothing to say about this.