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{{Short description|Slave trade between Africa and the Americas}}
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[[File:Slave Auction Ad.jpg|thumb|Reproduction of a handbill advertising a slave auction in [[Charleston, South Carolina|Charleston]], British [[Province of South Carolina]], in 1769|upright=1.1]]

The '''Atlantic slave trade''' or '''transatlantic slave trade''' involved the transportation by slave traders of [[Slavery in Africa|enslaved African people]] to the [[Americas]]. European [[slave ships]] regularly used the [[triangular trade]] route and its [[Middle Passage]]. Europeans established a coastal slave trade in the 15th century and trade to the Americas began in the 16th century, lasting through the 19th century.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Diffie |first=Bailey |title=Prelude to Empire: Portugal Overseas Before Henry the Navigator |publisher=[[University of Nebraska Press]] |year=1963 |pages=58}}</ref> The vast majority of those who were transported in the transatlantic slave trade were from [[Central Africa]] and [[West Africa]] and had been sold by West African slave traders to European slave traders,<ref name="apology">{{Cite news |last=Gates |first=Henry Louis Jr. |author-link=Henry Louis Gates Jr. |date=22 April 2010 |title=Opinion – How to End the Slavery Blame-Game |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/opinion/23gates.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100426120726/https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/opinion/23gates.html |archive-date=26 April 2010 |work=[[The New York Times]]}}</ref>{{sfn|Thornton|1998|p=112}} while others had been captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The transatlantic slave trade |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zy7fr82/revision/3 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200716004107/https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zy7fr82/revision/3 |archive-date=16 July 2020 |access-date=6 May 2021 |publisher=[[BBC]] |quote=* Some of those enslaved were captured directly by the European slave traders. Enslavers ambushed and captured local people in Africa. Most slave ships used European "factors", men who lived full-time in Africa and bought enslaved people from local leaders.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Exchanging People for Trade Goods |url=https://www.nps.gov/ethnography/aah/aaheritage/histContextsB.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221215214335/https://www.nps.gov/ethnography/aah/aaheritage/histContextsB.htm |archive-date=15 December 2022 |access-date=12 January 2024 |website=African American Heritage and Ethnography |publisher=[[National Park Service]]}}</ref> European slave traders gathered and imprisoned the enslaved at [[slave fort|forts]] on the African coast and then brought them to the Americas.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Implications of the slave trade for African societies |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zxt3gk7/revision/7 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200717094706/https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zxt3gk7/revision/7 |archive-date=17 July 2020 |access-date=12 June 2020 |publisher=[[BBC]] |location=London}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=West Africa – National Museums Liverpool |url=https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/history-of-slavery/west-africa#section--the-capture-and-sale-of-enslaved-africans |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201126155135/https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/history-of-slavery/west-africa |archive-date=26 November 2020 |access-date=14 October 2015 |publisher=[[International Slavery Museum]] |location=[[Liverpool]]}}</ref> Some Portuguese and Europeans participated in slave raids. As the [[National Museums Liverpool]] explains: "European traders captured some Africans in raids along the coast, but bought most of them from local African or African-European dealers."<ref>{{cite web |title=The capture and sale of enslaved Africans |url=https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/history-of-slavery/west-africa |website=[[National Museums Liverpool]] |access-date=15 August 2024 }}</ref> European slave traders generally did not participate in [[Slave raiding|slave raids]]. This was primarily because life expectancy for Europeans in [[sub-Saharan Africa]] was less than one year during the period of the slave trade due to [[malaria]] that was [[Endemic (epidemiology)|endemic]] to the African continent.<ref name="Malaria and French Imperialism">{{cite journal |last1=Cohen |first1=William |title=Malaria and French Imperialism |journal=[[The Journal of African History]] |date=1983 |volume=24 |issue=1 |pages=23–36 |doi=10.1017/S0021853700021502 |jstor=181856 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/181856 |access-date=29 April 2024 |archive-date=29 April 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240429141741/https://www.jstor.org/stable/181856 |url-status=live|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Portuguese coastal raiders found that slave raiding was too costly and often ineffective and opted for established commercial relations.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade |url=https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/africanpassageslowcountryadapt/introductionatlanticworld/trans_atlantic_slave_trade |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240627115650/https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/africanpassageslowcountryadapt/introductionatlanticworld/trans_atlantic_slave_trade |archive-date=27 June 2024 |access-date=28 April 2024 |website=Lowcountry Digital History Initiative |publisher=[[College of Charleston]]}}</ref>

The colonial South Atlantic and Caribbean economies were particularly dependent on slave labour for the production of [[Sugar plantations in the Caribbean|sugarcane]] and other commodities.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Rise and Fall of King Sugar |url=https://www.natt.gov.tt/sites/default/files/pdfs/The-Rise-and-Fall-of-King-Sugar.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240625094400/http://natt.gov.tt/sites/default/files/pdfs/The-Rise-and-Fall-of-King-Sugar.pdf |archive-date=25 June 2024 |access-date=24 January 2024 |website=National Archives of Trinidad and Tobago}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Sugar Plantations |url=https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/archaeologyofslavery/sugar-plantations |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240127075115/https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/archaeologyofslavery/sugar-plantations |archive-date=27 January 2024 |access-date=24 January 2024 |website=National Museums Liverpool}}</ref> This was viewed as crucial by those Western European states which were vying with one another to create [[Colonial empire|overseas empires]].<ref name="Mannix 1962 Introduction-1–5">{{Cite book |last=Mannix |first=Daniel |url=https://archive.org/details/blackcargoeshist00mann |title=Black Cargoes |publisher=The Viking Press |year=1962 |pages=Introduction–1–5 |url-access=registration}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Ives Bortolot |first=Alexander |title=The Transatlantic Slave Trade |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/slav/hd_slav.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240117150911/https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/slav/hd_slav.htm |archive-date=17 January 2024 |access-date=17 January 2024 |website=The Metropolitan Museum of Art |publisher=Department of Art History and Archaeology, [[Columbia University]]}}</ref> The Portuguese, in the 16th century, were the first to transport slaves across the Atlantic. In 1526, they completed the first transatlantic slave voyage to [[Brazil]], and other Europeans soon followed.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Weber |first=Greta |date=5 June 2015 |title=Shipwreck Shines Light on Historic Shift in Slave Trade |url=http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/06/150605-shipwreck-slave-trade-south-africa-18th-century-brazil |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150607030319/http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/06/150605-shipwreck-slave-trade-south-africa-18th-century-brazil/ |archive-date=7 June 2015 |access-date=8 June 2015 |publisher=[[National Geographic Society]]}}</ref> Shipowners regarded the slaves as cargo to be transported to the Americas as quickly and cheaply as possible,<ref name="Mannix 1962 Introduction-1–5" /> there to be sold to work on coffee, tobacco, cocoa, sugar, and cotton [[plantation]]s, gold and silver mines, rice fields, the construction industry, cutting timber for ships, as skilled labour, and as domestic servants.<ref name="Covey-Eisnach 2009">{{Cite book |title=What the Slaves Ate: Recollections of African American Foods and Foodways from the Slave Narratives |publisher=[[Greenwood Press]] |year=2009 |isbn=978-0-313-37497-5 |editor-last=Covey |editor-first=Herbert C. |location=[[Santa Barbara, California]] |pages=49–72 |chapter=Slave Cooking and Meals – Arrival in the Americas |lccn=2009003907 |editor-last2=Eisnach |editor-first2=Dwight |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xhpBsIa5yqEC&pg=PA49}}</ref> The first enslaved Africans sent to the [[English overseas possessions|English colonies]] were classified as [[indentured servants]], with legal standing similar to that of contract-based workers coming from Britain and Ireland. By the middle of the 17th century, slavery had hardened as a racial caste, with African slaves and their future offspring being legally the property of their owners, as children born to slave mothers were also slaves (''[[partus sequitur ventrem]]''). As property, the people were considered merchandise or units of labour, and were [[Slave market|sold at markets]] with other goods and services.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Berlin |first=Ira |date=9 April 2012 |title=The Discovery of the Americas and the Transatlantic Slave Trade |url=https://ap.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/imperial-rivalries/essays/discovery-americas-and-transatlantic-slave-trade |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240117153933/https://ap.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/imperial-rivalries/essays/discovery-americas-and-transatlantic-slave-trade |archive-date=17 January 2024 |access-date=17 January 2024 |website=The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History}}</ref>

The major Atlantic slave trading nations, in order of trade volume, were [[Portuguese Empire|Portugal]], [[British Empire|Britain]], [[Spanish Empire|Spain]], [[French colonial empire|France]], the [[Dutch Empire|Netherlands]], the [[United States]], and [[Danish overseas colonies|Denmark]]. Several had established outposts on the African coast, where they purchased slaves from local African leaders.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Klein |first1=Herbert S. |title=The Atlantic Slave Trade |last2=Klein |first2=Jacob |date=1999 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |pages=103–139}}</ref> These slaves were managed by a [[Factor (agent)|factor]], who was established on or near the coast to expedite the shipping of slaves to the New World. Slaves were imprisoned in trading posts known as [[factory (trading post)|factories]] while awaiting shipment. Current estimates are that about 12 million to 12.8&nbsp;million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic over a span of 400 years.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Segal |first=Ronald |author-link=Ronald Segal |title=The Black Diaspora: Five Centuries of the Black Experience Outside Africa |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |year=1995 |isbn=0-374-11396-3 |location=New York |page=4 |quote=It is now estimated that 11,863,000 slaves were shipped across the Atlantic}}, citing {{cite journal |first=Paul E. |last=Lovejoy |title=The Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on Africa: A Review of the Literature |journal=[[Journal of African History]] |volume=30 |year=1989 |issue=3 |page=368 |doi=10.1017/S0021853700024439}}</ref>{{sfn|Meredith|2014|p=194}} The number purchased by the traders was considerably higher, as the passage had a high death rate, with between 1.2 and 2.4&nbsp;million dying during the voyage, and millions more in [[Seasoning (slavery)|seasoning camps]] in the Caribbean after arrival in the New World. Millions of people also died as a result of slave raids, wars, and during transport to the coast for sale to European slave traders.<ref name="online at pp. 119–120">{{Cite book |last=Manning |first=Patrick |author-link=Patrick Manning (historian) |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=abvkqNGSTZ0C&pg=PA119 |title=The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on Economies, Societies and Peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Europe |publisher=[[Duke University Press]] |year=1992 |editor1-last=Inikori |editor1-first=Joseph E. |pages=119–120 |chapter=The Slave Trade: The Formal Demographics of a Global System |isbn=0-8223-8237-7 |editor2-last=Engerman |editor2-first=Stanley L.}}</ref><ref name="ReferenceA">{{Cite book |last=Stannard |first=David |author-link=David Stannard |title=American Holocaust |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=1993}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Eltis |first1=David |title=The Atlantic Slave Trade |last2=Richardson |first2=David |publisher=[[Houghton Mifflin]] |year=2002 |editor-last=Northrup |editor-first=David |edition=2nd |page=95 |chapter=The Numbers Game}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Davidson |first=Basil |title=The African Slave Trade}}{{full citation needed|date=July 2024}}</ref> Near the beginning of the 19th century, various governments acted to ban the trade, although illegal smuggling still occurred. It was generally thought that the transatlantic slave trade ended in 1867, but evidence was later found of voyages until 1873.<ref name=alberge/> In the early 21st century, several governments issued apologies for the transatlantic slave trade.

==Background==
{{See also|History of slavery}}

===Atlantic travel===
{{Main|Age of Discovery|European colonization of the Americas|Population history of Indigenous peoples of the Americas}}
{{Further|British colonization of the Americas|Dutch colonization of the Americas|Danish colonization of the Americas|French colonization of the Americas|Portuguese colonization of the Americas|Spanish colonization of the Americas}}
{{Slavery}}
The Atlantic slave trade developed after trade contacts were established between the "[[Old World]]" ([[Afro-Eurasia]]) and the "[[New World]]" (the Americas). For centuries, [[tidal current]]s had made ocean travel particularly difficult and risky for the ships that were then available. Thus, there had been very little, if any, maritime contact between the peoples living in these continents.{{sfn|Thornton|1998|pp=15–17}} In the 15th century, new European developments in seafaring technologies, such as the invention of the [[caravel]], resulted in ships being better equipped to deal with the tidal currents, and could begin traversing the Atlantic Ocean. The Portuguese set up a [[Escola de Sagres|Navigator's School]], although there is much debate about whether it existed and if it did, just what it was. Between 1600 and 1800, approximately 300,000 sailors engaged in the slave trade visited West Africa.{{sfn|Christopher|2006|p=127}} In doing so, they came into contact with societies living along the west African coast and in the Americas which they had never previously encountered.{{sfn|Thornton|1998|p=13}} Historian [[Pierre Chaunu]] termed the consequences of European navigation "disenclavement", with it marking an end of isolation for some societies and an increase in inter-societal contact for most others.<ref>{{cite book |last=Chaunu |first=Pierre |author-link=Pierre Chaunu |date=1969 |title=Conquête et exploitation des nouveaux mondes (xvie siècles) |language=fr |trans-title=Conquest and exploitation of new worlds (16th centuries) |publisher=Presses Universitaires de France |pages=54–58}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Launching the Portuguese Slave Trade in Africa |url=https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/african_laborers_for_a_new_emp/launching_the_portuguese_slave |website=Lowcountry History Digital Initiative |publisher=Lowcountry Digital Library at the College of Charleston |access-date=18 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240518011824/http://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/african_laborers_for_a_new_emp/launching_the_portuguese_slave |archive-date=18 May 2024}}</ref>

Historian [[John Thornton (historian)|John Thornton]] noted, "A number of technical and geographical factors combined to make Europeans the most likely people to explore the Atlantic and develop its commerce".{{sfn|Thornton|1998|p=24}} He identified these as being the drive to find new and profitable commercial opportunities outside Europe. Additionally, there was the desire to create an alternative trade network to that controlled by the Muslim [[Ottoman Empire]] of the Middle East, which was viewed as a commercial, political and religious threat to European Christendom. In particular, European traders wanted to trade for gold, which could be found in western Africa, and to find a maritime route to "the Indies" (India), where they could trade for luxury goods such as spices without having to obtain these items from Middle Eastern Islamic traders.{{sfn|Thornton|1998|pp=24–26}}

[[File:Caravela de armada of Joao Serrao.jpg|thumb|Portuguese mariners used [[caravel]] ships and traveled south along the West African coast and colonized [[Cape Verde]] in 1462.<ref>{{cite web |title=Caravel |url=https://www.worldhistory.org/Caravel/ |website=World History Encyclopedia |access-date=20 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240705055424/https://www.worldhistory.org/Caravel/ |archive-date=5 July 2024}}</ref>]]

During the [[first wave of European colonization]], although many of the initial Atlantic naval explorations were led by the [[Iberian Peninsula|Iberian]] ''[[conquistador]]s'', members of many European nationalities were involved, including sailors from [[Habsburg Spain|Spain]], [[Kingdom of Portugal|Portugal]], [[Kingdom of France|France]], [[Kingdom of England|England]], the [[Italian city-states|Italian states]], and the [[Dutch Republic|Netherlands]]. This diversity led Thornton to describe the initial "exploration of the Atlantic" as "a truly international exercise, even if many of the dramatic discoveries were made under the sponsorship of the Iberian monarchs". That leadership later gave rise to the myth that "the Iberians were the sole leaders of the exploration".{{sfn|Thornton|1998|p=27}}

European overseas expansion led to the contact between the Old and New Worlds producing the [[Columbian exchange]], named after the Italian explorer [[Christopher Columbus]].<ref name="McNeill 2019">{{cite encyclopedia |last1=McNeill |first1=J. R. |author1-link=J. R. McNeill |last2=Sampaolo |first2=Marco |last3=Wallenfeldt |first3=Jeff |date=30 September 2019 |orig-date=28 September 2019 |title=Columbian Exchange |url=https://www.britannica.com/event/Columbian-exchange |encyclopedia=[[Encyclopædia Britannica]] |location=[[Edinburgh]] |publisher=[[Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200421055242/https://www.britannica.com/event/Columbian-exchange |archive-date=21 April 2020 |url-status=live |access-date=5 September 2021}}</ref> It started the [[global silver trade from the 16th to 18th centuries]] and led to direct European involvement in the [[Chinese export porcelain|Chinese porcelain trade]]. It involved the transfer of goods unique to one hemisphere to another. Europeans brought cattle, horses, and sheep to the New World, and from the New World Europeans received tobacco, potatoes, tomatoes, and maize. Other items and commodities becoming important in global trade were the tobacco, sugarcane, and cotton crops of the Americas, along with the gold and silver brought from the American continent not only to Europe but elsewhere in the Old World.<ref name="oxfordbibliographies1">{{cite web |last=Hahn |first=Barbara |date=31 July 2019 |orig-date=27 August 2018 |title=Tobacco - Atlantic History |url=https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199730414/obo-9780199730414-0141.xml |website=oxfordbibliographies.com |location=[[Oxford]] |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |doi=10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0141 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201028093226/https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199730414/obo-9780199730414-0141.xml |archive-date=28 October 2020 |access-date=4 September 2021}}</ref><ref name="Escudero 2014">{{cite book |last=Escudero |first=Antonio Gutiérrez |year=2014 |chapter=Hispaniola's Turn to Tobacco: Products from Santo Domingo in Atlantic Commerce |editor1-last=Aram |editor1-first=Bethany |editor2-last=Yun-Casalilla |editor2-first=Bartolomé |title=Global Goods and the Spanish Empire, 1492–1824: Circulation, Resistance, and Diversity |location=[[Basingstoke]] |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |pages=216–229 |doi=10.1057/9781137324054_12 |isbn=978-1-137-32405-4}}</ref><ref name="Knight 2010">{{cite book |last=Knight |first=Frederick C. |year=2010 |title=Working the Diaspora: The Impact of African Labor on the Anglo-American World, 1650–1850 |chapter=Cultivating Knowledge: African Tobacco and Cotton Workers in Colonial British America |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZqQUCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA65 |location=New York and London |publisher=[[New York University Press]] |pages=65–85 |doi=10.18574/nyu/9780814748183.003.0004 |isbn=978-0-8147-4818-3 |lccn=2009026860}}</ref><ref name="Nater 2006">{{cite book |last=Nater |first=Laura |year=2006 |chapter=Colonial Tobacco: Key Commodity of the Spanish Empire, 1500–1800 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mnvBYQqpJbQC&pg=PA93 |editor1-last=Topik |editor1-first=Steven |editor2-last=Marichal |editor2-first=Carlos |editor3-last=Frank |editor3-first=Zephyr |title=From Silver to Cocaine: Latin American Commodity Chains and the Building of the World Economy, 1500–2000 |location=[[Durham, North Carolina]] |publisher=[[Duke University Press]] |pages=93–117 |doi=10.1215/9780822388029-005 |isbn=978-0-8223-3753-9 |access-date=5 September 2021 |archive-date=26 July 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726153759/https://books.google.com/books?id=mnvBYQqpJbQC&pg=PA93#v=onepage&q&f=false |url-status=live}}</ref>

===European slavery in Portugal and Spain===
{{See also|Slavery in medieval Europe|Slavery in Al-Andalus|Slavery in Portugal|Slavery in Spain|Saqaliba|Black Sea slave trade|Balkan slave trade}}
[[File:Amaro Pargo.jpg|thumb|The Spanish corsair [[Amaro Pargo]], a well-known privateer of the [[Golden Age of Piracy]], participated in the African slave trade in [[Hispanic America]].]]

By the 15th century, slavery had existed in the [[Iberian Peninsula]] (Portugal and Spain) of Western Europe throughout recorded history. The [[Roman Empire]] had established [[Roman slavery|its system of slavery]] in ancient times. Historian [[Benjamin Isaac]] suggests proto-racism existed in ancient times among [[Greco-Roman world|Greco-Roman people]]. Racial prejudices were based on dehumanizing the foreign peoples they conquered through warfare.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Isaac |first=Benjamin |title=Proto-Racism in Graeco-Roman Antiquity |journal=[[World Archaeology]] |date=2006 |volume=38 |issue=1 |pages=32, 42 |doi=10.1080/00438240500509819 |jstor=40023593?seq=11 |url=https://archive.org/details/569b-9a-1361d-9e-34093c-859718f-6ae-9f-4/mode/2up?q=proto-racism |access-date=16 August 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Isaac |first1=Benjamin |title=The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity |year=2013 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=9781400849567 |pages=26, 142, 175 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eem1AQAAQBAJ&q=racism}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Isaac |first1=Benjamin |title=The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity |year=2013 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=9781400849567 |pages=55–60 |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/267/monograph/chapter/1205947/pdf}}</ref> Since the [[fall of the Western Roman Empire]], various systems of [[Slavery in medieval Europe|slavery continued]] in the successor Islamic and Christian kingdoms of the peninsula through the early modern era of the Atlantic slave trade.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Phillips |first1=William |title=Slavery in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia |date=2014 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press, Incorporated |isbn=9780812244915 |pages=9, 18, 32, 57, 150 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KbboAQAAQBAJ&q=racism}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=18 October 2012 |title=Iberian Roots of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, 1440–1640 |url=https://www.gilderlehrman.org/node/324 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160810140644/http://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/origins-slavery/essays/iberian-roots-transatlantic-slave-trade-1440%E2%80%931640 |archive-date=10 August 2016 |access-date=3 September 2020 |website=The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History |language=en}}</ref> In 1441–1444, Portuguese traders first captured Africans on the Atlantic coast of Africa, in what is today [[Mauritania]], taking their captives to [[Slavery in Portugal|slavery in Europe]], and established a fort for the slave trade at the [[Bay of Arguin]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Caldeira |first=Arlindo |title=Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History |year=2024 |chapter=The Portuguese Slave Trade |chapter-url=https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-903 |access-date=20 May 2024 |doi=10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.903 |series=Oxford Reference |isbn=978-0-19-027773-4 |archive-date=11 May 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240511002522/https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-903 |url-status=live}}</ref>
[[File:Iberian Union Empires.png|thumb|right|A map of the [[Spanish Empire]] (red) and [[Portuguese Empire]]s (blue) in the period of their personal union (1581–1640)]]

In the [[Middle Ages]], religion and not race was a determining factor for who was considered to be a legitimate target of slavery. While Christians did not enslave Christians and Muslims did not enslave Muslims, both allowed the enslavement of people they regarded to be heretics or insufficiently correct in their religion. This allowed Catholic Christians to enslave Orthodox Christians, and Sunni Muslims to enslave Shia Muslims.<ref name="Korpela,&nbsp;J. 2018">Korpela,&nbsp;J.&nbsp;(2018).&nbsp;Slaves from the North: Finns and Karelians in the East European Slave Trade, 900–1600.&nbsp;Nederländerna:&nbsp;Brill. 242</ref> Both Christians and Muslims approved of enslaving [[Paganism|pagans]], who came to be a preferred and comparatively profitable target of the slave trade in the Middle Ages:<ref name="Korpela,&nbsp;J. 2018"/> Spain and Portugal were provided with non-Catholic slaves from Eastern Europe via the [[Balkan slave trade]] and the [[Black Sea slave trade]].<ref name="Roşu, Felicia 2021 p. 35-36">{{cite book |last=Roşu |first=Felicia |year=2021 |title=Slavery in the Black Sea Region, c.900–1900 – Forms of Unfreedom at the Intersection Between Christianity and Islam |series=Studies in Global Slavery |volume=11 |publisher=[[Brill Publishers|Brill]] |pages=35–36}}</ref>

In the 15th century, when the Balkan slave trade was taken over by the [[Ottoman Empire]]<ref>The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 2, AD 500–AD 1420. (2021). (n.p.): Cambridge University Press. 117-120</ref> and the Black Sea slave trade was supplanted by the [[Crimean slave trade]] and closed off from Europe, Spain and Portugal replaced this source of slaves by importing slaves first from the conquered [[Canary Islands]] and then from mainland Africa. This was initially from [[Arab slave trade]]rs, via the [[Trans-Saharan slave trade]] from [[Slavery in Libya|Libya]], and then directly from the African West coast through Portuguese outposts, which developed into the Atlantic slave trade<ref>Roşu, Felicia (2021). Slavery in the Black Sea Region, c.900–1900 – Forms of Unfreedom at the Intersection Between Christianity and Islam. Studies in Global Slavery, Volume: 11. Brill, p. 29-31</ref> and expanded significantly after the establishment of the colonies in the Americas in 1492.<ref>The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 2, AD 500–AD 1420.&nbsp;(2021).&nbsp;(n.p.):&nbsp;Cambridge University Press. 48-49</ref>

In the 15th century, Spain enacted a racially discriminatory law named ''[[limpieza de sangre]],'' which translates as "blood purity" or "cleanliness of blood", a proto-racial law. It prevented people with Jewish and Muslim ancestry from settling in the New World. Limpieza de sangre did not guarantee rights for Jews or Muslims who converted to [[Catholic Church|Catholicism]]. Jews and Muslims who [[Old Christian|converted]] to Catholicism were respectively called [[converso]]s and [[morisco]]s. Some Jews and Muslims converted to Christianity hoping it would grant them rights under Spanish laws. After the discovery of new lands across the Atlantic, Spain did not want Jews and Muslims immigrating to the [[Americas]] because the Spanish Crown worried Muslims and non-Christians might introduce Islam and other religions to Native Americans.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Early Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: Emperor Charles V |url=https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/african_laborers_for_a_new_emp/emperor_charles_v |website=Lowcountry Digital History Initiative |publisher=[[College of Charleston]] |access-date=1 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726153802/https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/african_laborers_for_a_new_emp/emperor_charles_v |archive-date=26 July 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref> The law also led to the enslavement of Jews and Muslims, prevented Jews from entering Spain, and from joining the military, universities and other civil services.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Maria |first1=Martinez |title=Genealogical Fictions Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico |year=2008 |publisher=[[Stanford University Press]] |isbn=9780804756488 |pages=1–10, 11–20, 21–30, 31–40, 41–50 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4cUo8JqYztoC&q=limpieza+de+sangre}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Dunbar-Ortiz |first1=Roxanne |title=An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States |year=2019 |publisher=Beacon Press |isbn=9780807049402 |pages=36–38 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=btpmDwAAQBAJ&q=limpieza%20de%20sangra}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Blood Cleansing Statutes |url=https://pachami.com/Inquisicion/LimpiezaSangre.html |website=Pachami.com |publisher=Center for Research and Dissemination of Sephardic Culture |access-date=23 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240123142530/https://pachami.com/Inquisicion/LimpiezaSangre.html |archive-date=23 January 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Mayeaux |first1=Stephen |title=Limpieza de Sangre: Legal Applications of the Spanish Doctrine of "Blood Purity" |url=https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2021/09/limpieza-de-sangre-legal-applications-of-the-spanish-doctrine-of-blood-purity/ |website=Library of Congress Blogs |date=10 September 2021 |publisher=Library of Congress |access-date=23 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240601050537/https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2021/09/limpieza-de-sangre-legal-applications-of-the-spanish-doctrine-of-blood-purity/ |archive-date=1 June 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Spain and the Human Diaspora in 1492 |url=https://www.brown.edu/Facilities/John_Carter_Brown_Library/exhibitions/islamic/pages/spain.html |website=[[John Carter Brown Library]] |publisher=[[Brown University]] |access-date=23 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240713195143/https://www.brown.edu/Facilities/John_Carter_Brown_Library/exhibitions/islamic/pages/spain.html |archive-date=13 July 2024}}</ref> 

Although Jewish conversos and Muslims experienced religious and racial discrimination, some also participated in the slave trade of Africans. In [[Lisbon]] during the 16th and 17th centuries, Muslims financed by Jewish conversos traded Africans across the [[Sahara|Sahara Desert]] and enslaved Africans before and during the Atlantic slave trade in Europe and Africa.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Thomas |first1=Hugh |title=The Slave Trade The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440-1870 |year=2013 |publisher=[[Simon & Schuster]] |isbn=9781476737454 |pages=12–13 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lzuEzmO81GwC&q=conversos%20Jews |access-date=1 February 2024 |archive-date=26 July 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726155144/https://books.google.com/books?id=lzuEzmO81GwC&q=conversos%20Jews#v=snippet&q=conversos%20Jews&f=false |url-status=live}}</ref> In [[New Spain]], Spaniards applied {{lang|es|limpieza de sangre}} to Africans and Native Americans and created a racial caste system, believing them to be impure because they were not Christian.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Martinez |first1=Maria |title=The Black Blood of New Spain: Limpieza de Sangre, Racial Violence, and Gendered Power in Early Colonial Mexico |journal=The William and Mary Quarterly |date=2004 |volume=61 |issue=3 |pages=479–520 |doi=10.2307/3491806 |jstor=3491806 |url=https://userpages.umbc.edu/~kars/history%20200/martinez.htm |access-date=23 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240123145808/https://userpages.umbc.edu/~kars/history%20200/martinez.htm |archive-date=23 January 2024|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Sweet |first1=James H. |title=The Iberian Roots of American Racist Thought |journal=The William and Mary Quarterly |date=1997 |volume=54 |issue=1 |pages=143–166 |doi=10.2307/2953315 |jstor=2953315 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2953315 |access-date=24 January 2024|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Simms |first1=Ellen Yvonne |title=Miscegenation and Racism: Afro-Mexicans in Colonial New Spain |journal=[[The Journal of Pan African Studies]] |date=2008 |volume=2 |issue=3 |pages=228–254 |url=https://jpanafrican.org/docs/vol2no3/MiscegenationandRacism.pdf |access-date=27 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240227194333/https://jpanafrican.org/docs/vol2no3/MiscegenationandRacism.pdf |archive-date=27 February 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref>

Europeans enslaved Muslims and people practicing other religions as a justification to Christianize them. In 1452, [[Pope Nicholas V#slavery|Pope Nicholas V]] issued [[papal bull]] ''[[Dum Diversas]]'' which gave the King of Portugal the right to enslave non-Christians to perpetual slavery. The clause included Muslims in West Africa and legitimized the slave trade under the Catholic church. In 1454, Pope Nicholas issued ''[[Romanus Pontifex]].'' "Written as a logical sequel to Dum Diversas, Romanus Pontifex allowed the European Catholic nations to expand their dominion over 'discovered' land. Possession of non-Christian lands would be justified along with the enslavement of native, non-Christian 'pagans' in Africa and the 'New World.'"<ref>{{cite book |last1=Mark |first1=Charles |last2=Rah |first2=Soon-Chan |title=Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery |date=2019 |publisher=Intervarsity Press |isbn=9780830887590 |page=16 |url=https://globalhealth.emory.edu/_includes/documents/unsettling-truths_chapter-1.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240715213110/https://globalhealth.emory.edu/_includes/documents/unsettling-truths_chapter-1.pdf |archive-date=15 July 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Thomas |first1=Hugh |title=The Slave Trade The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440-1870 |year=2013 |publisher=[[Simon & Schuster]] |isbn=9781476737454 |page=65 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lzuEzmO81GwC&q=dum%20diversas}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Colonization, Captivity, and Catholic Authority |url=https://www.searchablemuseum.com/1400s-papal-bulls |website=National Museum of African American History and Culture |access-date=20 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230801140128/https://www.searchablemuseum.com/1400s-papal-bulls/ |archive-date=1 August 2023 |url-status=live}}</ref> Dum Diversas and Romanus Pontifex may have had an influence with the creation of doctrines supportive of empire building.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Lind |title=Doctrines of Discovery |journal=Wash. U. Jue. Rev |date=2020 |volume=13 |issue=1 |pages=15–25 |url=https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1223&context=law_jurisprudence |access-date=19 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240630221307/https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1223&context=law_jurisprudence |archive-date=30 June 2024}}</ref>

In 1493, the [[Discovery doctrine#Historical background|Doctrine of Discovery]] issued by [[Pope Alexander VI]], was used as a justification by Spain to take lands from non-Christians West of the [[Azores]]. The Doctrine of Discovery stated that non-Christian lands should be taken and ruled by Christian nations, and Indigenous people (Africans and [[Native Americans in the United States|Native Americans]]) living on their lands should convert to Christianity.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Doctrine of Discovery, 1493 |url=https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/doctrine-discovery-1493?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIz86r6e7pgwMVGWlHAR3vlgo9EAAYASAAEgL66PD_BwE |website=The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History |access-date=19 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240119170040/https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/doctrine-discovery-1493?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIz86r6e7pgwMVGWlHAR3vlgo9EAAYASAAEgL66PD_BwE |archive-date=19 January 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Mark |first1=Joshua |title=Doctrine of Discovery |url=https://www.worldhistory.org/Doctrine_of_Discovery/ |website=World History Encyclopedia |access-date=19 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240705054414/https://www.worldhistory.org/Doctrine_of_Discovery/ |archive-date=5 July 2024}}</ref> In 1493, Pope Alexander VI issued a papal bull called ''[[Inter caetera|Inter Caetera]]'' which gave Spain and Portugal rights to claim and colonize all non-Christian lands in the [[Americas]] and enslave Native Americans and Africans.<ref>{{cite web |title=AD 1493: The Pope asserts rights to colonize, convert, and enslave |url=https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/171.html |website=National Library of Medicine |access-date=20 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231228150254/https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/171.html |archive-date=28 December 2023 |url-status=live}}</ref> Inter Caetera also settled a dispute between Portugal and Spain over those lands. The declaration included a north–south divide 100 leagues West of the Cape Verde Islands and gave the Spanish Crown exclusive rights to travel and trade west of that line.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Modrow |last2=Smith |title=The Papal Bull Inter Caetera of May 4, 1493 |url=https://doctrineofdiscovery.org/assets/pdfs/Inter_Caetera_Modrow&Smith.pdf |website=Doctrineofdiscovery.org |access-date=20 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240326213351/https://doctrineofdiscovery.org/assets/pdfs/Inter_Caetera_Modrow&Smith.pdf |archive-date=26 March 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://digitarq.arquivos.pt/details?id=3907968 |title=The bull of Julius II in Portuguese archives |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220730145139/https://digitarq.arquivos.pt/details?id=3907968 |archive-date=30 July 2022}}</ref>

[[File:Noah-Curses-Ham.jpg|thumb|right|[[Noah]] curses [[Ham (Bible)|Ham]] by [[Gustave Dore|Gustave Doré]] – the [[curse of Ham]] was used as a justification to enslave Africans.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Sweet |first1=James H. |title=The Iberian Roots of American Racist Thought |journal=The William and Mary Quarterly |date=1997 |volume=54 |issue=1 |page=149 |doi=10.2307/2953315 |jstor=2953315 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2953315 |access-date=24 January 2024|url-access=subscription }}</ref>]]

In Portugal and Spain people had been enslaved because of their religious identity, race had not been a developed factor for enslaving people; nonetheless, by the 15th century, Europeans used both race and religion as a justification to enslave [[sub-Saharan]] Africans. An increase of enslaved African people from [[Senegal]] occurred in the Iberian Peninsula in the 15th century. As the number of Senegalese slaves grew larger Europeans developed new terminologies that associated slavery with skin color. The Spanish city of [[Seville]] had the largest [[Afro-Spaniards|African population]]. "The [[Treaty of Alcáçovas|Treaty of Alcacuvas]] in 1479 provided traders the right to supply Spaniards with Africans."<ref>{{cite web |title=Africans in Spanish America |url=https://www.nps.gov/ethnography/aah/aaheritage/SpanishAmA.htm |website=African American Heritage and Ethnography |publisher=[[National Park Service]] |access-date=16 August 2024 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20240831185137/https://www.nps.gov/ethnography/aah/aaheritage/SpanishAmA.htm |archive-date=31 August 2024}}</ref>

In addition, in the 15th century, [[Dominican Order|Dominican]] friar [[Annio da Viterbo|Annius of Viterbo]] invoked the [[Curse of Ham#Racism and slavery|curse of Ham]], from the [[Curse of Ham|biblical story]] of enslavement, to explain the differences between Europeans and Africans in his writings. Annius, who frequently wrote of the "superiority of Christians over the [[Saracens]]", claimed that due to the curse imposed upon [[Black people]], they would inevitably remain permanently subjugated by [[Arabs]] and other [[Muslims]]. He wrote that the fact that so many Africans had been [[Arab slave trade|enslaved even by the heretical Muslims]] was supposed proof of their inferiority. Through these and other writings, European writers established a hitherto unheard of connection between a cursed people, Africa and slavery, which laid the ideological groundwork for justifying the transatlantic slave trade.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Onyemechi Adiele |first1=Pius |title=The Popes, the Catholic Church and the Transatlantic Enslavement of Black Africans 1418-1839 |year=2017 |publisher=Georg Olms Verlag |isbn=9783487312026 |pages=185–188 |url=https://archive.org/details/the-popes-the-catholic-church-and-the-transatlantic-enslavement-of-black-africa/mode/2up?q=curse+of+ham}}</ref><ref name="Whitford 105">{{Cite book |last=Whitford |first=David M. |year=2017 |title=The Curse of Ham in the Early Modern Era |pages=105ff |publisher=[[Routledge]] |doi=10.4324/9781315240367 |isbn=9781315240367}}</ref> The term "race" was used by the English beginning in the 16th century and referred to family, lineage, and breed. The idea of race continued to develop further through the centuries and was used as a justification for the continuation of the slave trade and racial discrimination.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Historical Origins and Development of Racism |url=https://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-02-01.htm |website=[[PBS]] |access-date=16 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240214145648/https://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-02-01.htm |archive-date=14 February 2024 |url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Thomas |first1=Hugh |title=The Slave Trade The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440-1870 |date=2013 |publisher=[[Simon & Schuster]] |isbn=9781476737454 |pages=35–40 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lzuEzmO81GwC&q=christian%20slaves |access-date=23 January 2024 |archive-date=26 July 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726155146/https://books.google.com/books?id=lzuEzmO81GwC&q=christian%20slaves#v=snippet&q=christian%20slaves&f=false |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Rattansi |first1=Ali |title=Racism: A Very Short Introduction (2nd edn) |date=2020 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |isbn=9780198834793 |url=https://academic.oup.com/book/28433/chapter-abstract/228912770?redirectedFrom=fulltext |access-date=16 January 2024 |archive-date=16 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240116155602/https://academic.oup.com/book/28433/chapter-abstract/228912770?redirectedFrom=fulltext |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Barksdale |first1=Dante |last2=Hutton |first2=Shennan |title=Was Slavery Always Racial? |url=https://ucdavis.app.box.com/s/ojtyhrs56f1fqruhe701oo4drhv8r96z |website=[[University of California, Davis Campus]] |publisher=California Historical Society & California History-Social Science Project |access-date=16 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240116162459/https://ucdavis.app.box.com/s/ojtyhrs56f1fqruhe701oo4drhv8r96z |archive-date=16 January 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref>

The Spanish privateer and merchant [[Amaro Pargo]] (1678-1747) managed to transport slaves to the [[Caribbean]], although, it is estimated, to a lesser extent than other captains and figures of the time dedicated to this activity.<ref name="amaropargoesclavitud_1">{{Cite web|url=https://diariodeavisos.elespanol.com/2023/12/amaro-pargo-esclavitud/|title=Los destellos humanistas de Amaro Pargo contra la esclavitud|website=diariodeavisos.elespanol.com|date=17 December 2023 }}</ref> In 1710, the privateer was involved in a complaint by the priest Alonso García Ximénez, who accused him of freeing an African slave named Sebastián, who was transported to [[Venezuela]] on one of Amaro's ships. The aforementioned Alonso García granted a power of attorney on July 18, 1715 to Teodoro Garcés de Salazar so that he could demand his return in [[Caracas]]. Despite this fact, Amaro Pargo himself also owned slaves in his domestic service.<ref name="amaropargoesclavitud_1"/>

===African slavery===
{{Main|Slavery in Africa}}
{{See also|History of slavery in the Muslim world|Trans-Saharan slave trade|Red Sea slave trade|Indian Ocean slave trade|Zanzibar slave trade}}
[[File:Arabslavers.jpg|thumb|A depiction of enslaved people transported across the [[Sahara|Sahara Desert]]]]

Slavery was prevalent in many parts of Africa for many centuries before the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade.<ref name="Britannica">{{cite encyclopedia |url=https://www.britannica.com/blackhistory/article-24157 |title=Historical survey, Slave societies |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141006131931/https://www.britannica.com/blackhistory/article-24157 |archive-date=6 October 2014}}</ref> Slavery was an important part of the economic structure of Africa although its relative importance and the role and treatment of enslaved people varied considerably by society.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lovejoy |first=Paul E. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dXVFnHqhLvcC |title=Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa |date=2011-10-10 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-139-50277-1 |language=en}}</ref>

Millions of enslaved Africans were transported to other parts of Africa, or exported to Europe and Asia prior to the Atlantic slave trade and the [[European colonization of the Americas]].<ref name="Clarence-Smith2006">{{cite book |first=William Gervase |last=Clarence-Smith |date=2006 |title=Islam and the Abolition of Slavery |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |pages=11–12 |isbn=978-0-19-522151-0 |oclc=1045855145 |quote=Ralph Austen originally proposed that 17,000,000 Black slaves crossed the Sahara, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean [...] Paul Lovejoy reworked the data to indicate that over 6,000,000 left between 650 and 1500}}</ref><ref name="Ferro221">{{Cite book |last=Ferro |first=Mark |date=1997 |title=Colonization: A Global History |publisher=[[Routledge]] |page=221 |isbn=978-0-415-14007-2}}</ref> The [[Trans-Saharan slave trade]] across the Sahara had functioned since antiquity, and continued to do so up until the 20th-century; in 652, the [[Rashidun Caliphate]] in Egypt enforced an annual tribute of 400 slaves from the Christian Kingdom of [[Makuria]] by the [[Baqt]] treaty, which was to be in effect for centuries.<ref>{{cite book |last=Manning |first=P. |date=1990 |title=Slavery and African life: occidental, oriental, and African slave trades |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |pages=28–29}}</ref> It supplied Africans for [[slavery in the Rashidun Caliphate]] (632–661), [[slavery in the Rashidun Caliphate|the Umayyad Caliphate]] (661–750), the [[slavery in the Rashidun Caliphate|Abbasid Caliphate]] (750–1258) and the [[slavery in the Mamluk Sultanate|Mamluk Sultanate]] (1258–1517).

The Atlantic slave trade was not the only slave trade from Africa; as Elikia M'bokolo wrote in ''[[Le Monde diplomatique]]'':

{{blockquote|The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the [[Muslim world|Muslim countries]] (from the ninth to the nineteenth) ... Four million enslaved people [[Red Sea slave trade|exported via the Red Sea]], another four million<ref name="afbis"/> through the [[Swahili people|Swahili]] ports [[Indian Ocean slave trade|of the Indian Ocean]], perhaps as many as nine million along the [[Trans-Saharan trade|trans-Saharan]] caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean.<ref>{{cite news |first=Elikia |last=M'bokolo |title=The impact of the slave trade on Africa |work=[[Le Monde diplomatique]] |url=http://mondediplo.com/1998/04/02africa |date=2 April 1998 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240517074917/https://mondediplo.com/1998/04/02africa |archive-date=17 May 2024}}</ref>}}

[[File:Slaves ruvuma.jpg|thumb|Enslaved Africans in chains marched to the East coast of Africa by Arab slavers]]

Slaves were marched in shackles to the coasts of Sudan, Ethiopia and Somali, placed upon [[dhow]]s and trafficked [[Indian Ocean slave trade|across the Indian Ocean]] to the [[Gulf of Aden]]. Others were carried [[Red Sea slave trade|across the Red Sea]] to Arabia and [[Aden]], with sick slaves being thrown overboard, or they were marched across the Sahara desert via the [[Trans-Saharan slave trade]] route to the [[Nile]], many of them dying from exposure or swollen feet along the way.<ref>{{cite book |last=Miers |first=S. |date=2003 |title=Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem |location=UK |publisher=AltaMira Press |page=16}}</ref>

Estimates are imprecise, which can affect comparison between different slave trades. Two rough estimates by scholars of the numbers African slaves held over twelve centuries in the Muslim world are 11.5 million<ref>{{harvnb|Lovejoy|1983|pp=}}: "Total of black slave trade in the Muslim world from Sahara, Red Sea and Indian Ocean routes through the 19th century comes to an estimated 11,500,000, "a figure not far short of the 11,863,000 estimated to have been loaded onto ships during the four centuries of the Atlantic slave trade.""</ref>{{page needed|date=July 2024}} and 14 million,<ref>Raymond Mauny estimates a total of 14 million black slaves were traded in Islam through the 20th century, including 300,000 for part of the 20th century. (p.57, source: "Les Siecles obscurs de l'Afrique Noire (Paris: Fayard, 1970)]</ref><ref name="nyt-2015">{{cite news |last1=Hochschild |first1=Adam |date=4 March 2001 |title=Human Cargo |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/01/03/04/reviews/010304.04hochsct.html |url-status=live |access-date=1 September 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171219112928/http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/03/04/reviews/010304.04hochsct.html |archive-date=19 December 2017 |quote=Early on in ''Islam's Black Slaves,'' his history of slavery in the Muslim world, Ronald Segal cites some estimates. One scholar puts the rough total at 11.5 million slaves during more than a dozen centuries, and another at 14 million.}}</ref> while other estimates indicate a number between 12 and 15 million African slaves prior to the 20th century.<ref name="Beigbeder2006">{{cite book |last=Beigbeder |first=Yves |title=Judging War Crimes and Torture: French Justice and International Criminal Tribunals and Commissions (1940–2005) |date=2006 |publisher=[[Martinus Nijhoff Publishers]] |isbn=978-90-04-15329-5 |location=[[Leiden]] |page=42 |quote=Historian Roger Botte estimates that Arab slave trade of Africans until the 20th century has involved from 12 to 15 million persons, with the active participation of African leaders.}}</ref>

According to [[John K. Thornton]], Europeans usually bought enslaved people who had been captured in [[endemic warfare]] between African states.{{sfn|Thornton|1998|p=112}} Some Africans had made a business out of capturing war captives or members of neighboring ethnic groups and selling them.{{sfn|Thornton|1998|p=310}} A reminder of this practice is documented in debates over the trade in the British Parliament in 1806: "All the old writers ... concur in stating not only that wars are entered into for the sole purpose of making slaves, but that they are fomented by Europeans, with a view to that object."<ref>{{cite book |title=Slave Trade Debates 1806 |series=Colonial History |publisher=Dawsons of Pall Mall |location=London |date=1968 |pages=203–204}}</ref> People living around the [[Niger River]] would be transported from these markets to the coast and sold in European trading ports, in exchange for [[musket]]s and manufactured goods such as cloth or alcohol.{{sfn|Thornton|1998|p=45}} The European demand for slaves provided a new and larger market for the already existing trade.{{sfn|Thornton|1998|p=94}} While those held as slaves in their own region of Africa could hope to escape, those shipped away had little chance of returning to their homeland.<ref>{{cite web |title=Slavery before the Trans-Atlantic Trade |url=https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/africanpassageslowcountryadapt/introductionatlanticworld/slaverybeforetrade |website=Lowcountry History Digital Initiative |publisher=Lowcountry Digital Library at the College of Charleston |access-date=16 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240331202010/https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/africanpassageslowcountryadapt/introductionatlanticworld/slaverybeforetrade |archive-date=31 March 2024}}</ref> 

While European powers orchestrated the transatlantic trade, African kingdoms played complex roles:

* Supplier states: Dahomey (modern Benin) derived 20% of revenue from slave sales 1700–1850 (Harvard study, 2020).<ref>{{Cite web |title=HarvardKey - Sign In |url=https://login.harvard.edu/app/harvard_casprod1_1/exk1tpw3zcijntjVF1d8/sso/saml?SAMLRequest=fVJPb5swFL%2FvUyDfA9iFLLECEW0VLVq3Rg3tYZfIYLdxCzbzMyTbp5%2BBRF0uOdp67%2Ff3LZbHuvI6YUBqlSDsh8gTqtRcqrcEPeeryQwt0y8LYHVFGpq1dq%2BexO9WgPUyAGGs27vTCtpamK0wnSzF89NDgvbWNkCD4HA4%2BI1U2N8z0zHDfcHboGQQVPpNqmVZSaHsTrFaJI%2Ff82xjNEdeZq2RRWvFiOy0nKDXiotjgpzIe6dAKmYH2WeyAfOCiTVNcHrvHGvj4PEOB%2BL4gW1zuPlbyndl319WmM8CAB30PpG30qYUg9cEvbIKBPLW9wnaxaTAES%2BKm7iYR2EYMxZj8ZXxeD6bhmQeTjGPI%2BwMrGHDAGQnPvcBWicfLFM2QSQk8SScTsIox4QSTKOpj0n0C3kuAKtLXd1KNXbQGkU1Awm0DwmoLek2%2B%2FFAiR%2FSYhwC%2Bi3PN5PN4zYfADrJhfnZR4o%2BM305d0z6jl3rCujY6nWO5iQIpeMR0MGJ6TOqmb2%2B2%2F9IPnkdRqkrWto%2FF9zX19n5wFDaj7n%2BqP6wrC%2Fx3OUi%2BF9UenpeHmr6Dw%3D%3D&RelayState=TST-2263262-UWJJZRY3cgBHaT1CdNu74QVQtFkTMYLX |access-date=2025-06-04 |website=login.harvard.edu}}</ref>
* Resistant states: The Kingdom of Benin banned slave exports in 1516 after Portuguese demands (''Journal of African History'', 2018).<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Journal of African History {{!}} Cambridge Core |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-african-history |access-date=2025-06-04 |website=Cambridge Core |language=en}}</ref>

Notable rebellions:

* 1739 Stono Rebellion (South Carolina): 60 enslaved Angolans seized weapons, killing 25 colonists (NPS.gov).<ref>{{Cite web |title=nps.gov |url=https://www.nps.gov/stono}}</ref>
* 1835 Malê Revolt (Brazil): Yoruba Muslims led the largest urban slave uprising in the Americas (''Slavery & Abolition'', 2016).<ref>{{Cite web |title=Slavery & Abolition list of issues |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fsla20 |access-date=2025-06-04 |website=Taylor & Francis |language=en}}</ref>

===European colonization and slavery in West-Central Africa===
[[File:ElMina AtlasBlaeuvanderHem.jpg|thumb|[[Elmina Castle]] in the [[Guinea (region)|Guinea coast]], present-day [[Ghana]], was built in 1482 by Portuguese traders and was the first European-slave trading post in Sub-Saharan Africa.<ref>{{cite web |title=Elmina Castle |url=https://www.pbs.org/wonders/Episodes/Epi3/elmina.htm#:~:text=Located%20on%20the%20western%20coast,British%20ownership%20in%20the%201800s. |website=[[PBS]] |access-date=18 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240118160445/https://www.pbs.org/wonders/Episodes/Epi3/elmina.htm#:~:text=Located%20on%20the%20western%20coast,British%20ownership%20in%20the%201800s. |archive-date=18 January 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Womber |first1=Peter Kwame |title=From Anomansa to Elmina: The Establishment and the Use of the Elmina Castle – From the Portuguese to the British |journal=[[Athens Journal of History]] |date=2020 |volume=6 |issue=4 |pages=349–372 |doi=10.30958/ajhis.6-4-4 |url=https://www.athensjournals.gr/history/2020-6-4-4-Womber.pdf |access-date=18 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240118160446/https://www.athensjournals.gr/history/2020-6-4-4-Womber.pdf |archive-date=18 January 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref>]]

The Atlantic slave trading of Africans began in 1441 with two Portuguese explorers, [[Nuno Tristão]] and António Gonçalves. Tristão and Gonçalves sailed to [[Mauritania]] in [[West Africa]] and kidnapped twelve Africans and returned to Portugal and presented the captive Africans as gifts to [[Prince Henry the Navigator]]. By 1460, seven hundred to eight hundred African people were taken annually and imported into Portugal. In Portugal, the Africans taken were used as domestic servants. From 1460 to 1500, the removal of Africans increased as Portugal and Spain built [[slave fort|forts]] along the coast of West Africa. By 1500, Portugal and Spain had taken about 50,000 thousand West Africans. The Africans worked as domestic servants, artisans, and farmers. Other Africans were taken to work the [[History of sugar|sugar plantations]] on the [[Azores]], [[Madeira]],<ref name="Butel2002">{{cite book |last1=Butel |first1=Paul |title=The Atlantic |year=2002 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1-134-84305-3 |page=38 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sLGIAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA38 |quote=For labour in the plantations and the 80 engeñhos (sugar mills), the Portuguese began to bring slaves from the Canaries and Africa, reaching almost 2,000 in number by the end of the fifteenth century. |access-date=13 July 2024 |archive-date=13 July 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240713165411/https://books.google.com/books?id=sLGIAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA38 |url-status=live}}</ref> Canary, and [[Cape Verde|Cape Verde islands]]. Europeans participated in African enslavement because of their need for labor, profit, and religious motives.<ref>{{cite web |title=Africa, Europe, and the Rise of Afro-America, 1441-1619 |url=https://www.njstatelib.org/research_library/new_jersey_resources/highlights/african_american_history_curriculum/unit_2_rise_of_afro-americans/#:~:text=In%201441%20two%20Portuguese%20explorers,taken%20annually%20into%20Portugal%2C%20for |website=[[New Jersey State Library]] |access-date=16 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240620204329/https://www.njstatelib.org/research_library/new_jersey_resources/highlights/african_american_history_curriculum/unit_2_rise_of_afro-americans/ |archive-date=20 June 2024}}</ref><ref name="The Transatlantic Slave Trade">{{cite web |title=The Transatlantic Slave Trade |url=https://www.nps.gov/ethnography/aah/aaheritage/histcontextsc.htm |website=African American History and Ethnography |publisher=[[National Park Service]] |access-date=16 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240503083908/https://www.nps.gov/ethnography/aah/aaheritage/histcontextsc.htm |archive-date=3 May 2024}}</ref>

Upon discovering new lands through their naval explorations, European colonisers soon began to migrate to and settle in lands outside their native continent. Off the coast of Africa, European migrants, under the directions of the [[Kingdom of Castile]], [[Conquest of the Canary Islands|invaded and colonised]] the [[Canary Islands]] during the 15th century, where they converted much of the land to the production of wine and sugar. Along with this, they also captured native Canary Islanders, the [[Guanches]], to use as slaves both on the Islands and across the Christian Mediterranean.{{sfn|Thornton|1998|pp=28–29}}

[[File:Cannons at Cape Coast Castle.JPG|thumb|Established in [[Ghana]] by the [[Swedish Africa Company|Swedish African Company]], [[Cape Coast Castle]] was built in 1653 as a trading post that later expanded to other European nations. With the arrival of British colonization, Cape Coast Castle became the headquarters of British colonial administration. "Throughout the 18th century, the Castle served as a 'grand emporium' of the [[Bristol slave trade|British slave trade]]."<ref>{{cite web |title=Cape Coast Castle, Cape Coast (1653) |url=https://www.ghanamuseums.org/forts/cape-coast-castle.php#:~:text=Cape%20Coast%20Castle%2C%20Cape%20Coast%20(1653)&text=The%20Swedes%2C%20led%20by%20Krusenstjerna,King%20Charles%20X%20of%20Sweden. |website=Ghana Museums and Monuments Boards |access-date=18 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240709053738/https://www.ghanamuseums.org/forts/cape-coast-castle.php |archive-date=9 July 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Roth |first1=Catherine |title=Cape Coast Castle (1652- ) |url=https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/cape-coast-castle/ |website=Blackpast.org |date=2 December 2009 |access-date=18 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231211111323/https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/cape-coast-castle/ |archive-date=11 December 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Cape Coast Castle History |url=https://www.everycastle.com/Cape-Coast-Castle.html |website=Castles and Places of the World |access-date=18 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240711042755/https://everycastle.com/cape-coast-castle/ |archive-date=11 July 2024}}</ref>]]

After the success of Portugal and Spain in the slave trade other European nations followed. In 1530, an English merchant from Plymouth, [[William Hawkins (died c. 1554)|William Hawkins]], visited the [[Guinea (region)|Guinea Coast]] and left with a few slaves. In 1564, Hawkin's son [[John Hawkins (naval commander)|John Hawkins]], sailed to the Guinea Coast and his voyage was supported by [[Elizabeth I|Queen Elizabeth I]]. John later turned to piracy and stole 300 Africans from a Spanish slave ship after failures in Guinea trying to capture Africans as most of his men died after fights with the local Africans.<ref name="The Transatlantic Slave Trade"/>

As historian John Thornton remarked, "the actual motivation for European expansion and for navigational breakthroughs was little more than to exploit the opportunity for immediate profits made by raiding and the seizure or purchase of trade commodities".{{sfn|Thornton|1998|p=31}} Using the Canary Islands as a naval base, Europeans, at the time primarily Portuguese traders, began to move their activities down the western coast of Africa, performing raids in which slaves would be captured to be later sold in the Mediterranean.{{sfn|Thornton|1998|pp=29–31}} Although initially successful in this venture, "it was not long before African naval forces were alerted to the new dangers, and the Portuguese [raiding] ships began to meet strong and effective resistance", with the crews of several of them being killed by African sailors, whose boats were better equipped at traversing the [[Central Africa|west-central African]] coasts and river systems.{{sfn|Thornton|1998|p=37}}

[[File:Ann Zingha.jpg|thumb|[[Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba]] fought against the expansion of the Portuguese Empire and their slave trade in a thirty-year war in present-day Angola.]]

By 1494, the Portuguese king had entered agreements with the rulers of several West African states that would allow trade between their respective peoples, enabling the Portuguese to "tap into" the "well-developed commercial economy in Africa ... without engaging in hostilities".{{sfn|Thornton|1998|pp=38}} "Peaceful trade became the rule all along the African coast", although there were some rare exceptions when acts of aggression led to violence. For instance, Portuguese traders attempted to conquer the [[Bissagos Islands]] in 1535.{{sfn|Thornton|1998|p=39}} 

In 1571, Portugal, supported by the [[Kingdom of Kongo]], took control of the south-western region of [[Portuguese Angola|Angola]] in order to secure its threatened economic interest in the area. Although Kongo later joined a coalition in 1591 to force the Portuguese out, Portugal had secured a foothold on the continent that it continued to occupy until the 20th century.{{sfn|Thornton|1998|p=40}} Despite these incidents of occasional violence between African and European forces, many African states ensured that any trade went on in their own terms, for instance, imposing custom duties on foreign ships. In 1525, the Kongolese King [[Afonso I of Kongo|Afonso I]] seized a French vessel and its crew for illegally trading on his coast. In addition, Afonso complained to the king of Portugal that Portuguese slave traders continued to kidnap his people, which was causing depopulation in his kingdom.<ref>{{cite web |title=Africa and the Transatlantic Slave Trade |url=https://www.slps.org/cms/lib/MO01001157/Centricity/Domain/9446/BBC%20-%20History%20-%20British%20History%20in%20depth_%20Africa%20and%20the%20Transatlantic%20Slave%20Trade.pdf |website=St. Louis Public Schools |access-date=20 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240330215334/https://www.slps.org/cms/lib/MO01001157/Centricity/Domain/9446/BBC%20-%20History%20-%20British%20History%20in%20depth_%20Africa%20and%20the%20Transatlantic%20Slave%20Trade.pdf |archive-date=30 March 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref>{{sfn|Thornton|1998|p=39}}

[[Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba]], who ruled as queen of the [[Ambundu]] Kingdoms of [[Kingdom of Ndongo|Ndongo]] (1624–1663) and [[Kingdom of Matamba|Matamba]] (1631–1663) in present-day Angola, fought a long war against the Portuguese Empire's expansion. Initially, Nzinga accommodated the Portuguese. She converted to Christianity and repositioned the Ndongo Kingdom as an intermediary in the slave trade instead of as a source for slaves. This also provided her with a valuable ally against hostile neighbouring African Kingdoms, however the Portuguese continued to encroach on her Kingdom to expand the slave trade and establish settlements.<ref>{{cite web |title=Queen Nzinga managed to call a halt to Portuguese slave raids in her kingdom through clever tactics |url=https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/world-changing-women-queen-nzinga |website=The Open University, History and Arts |publisher=[[The Open University]] |access-date=18 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240604172701/https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/world-changing-women-queen-nzinga |archive-date=4 June 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Queen Nzinga(1583-1663) |url=https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/queen-nzinga-1583-1663/ |website=Black Past |date=16 June 2009 |access-date=18 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231203143926/https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/queen-nzinga-1583-1663/ |archive-date=3 December 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Women Leaders in African History: Ana Nzinga, Queen of Ndongo |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pwmn_2/hd_pwmn_2.htm |website=[[Metropolitan Museum of Art]] |access-date=18 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240702032528/https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pwmn_2/hd_pwmn_2.htm |archive-date=2 July 2024}}</ref>

Nzinga called for the end to the raids, however the Portuguese declared war on Ndongo in 1626. Nzinga allowed sanctuary to runaway slaves from Portuguese controlled territory and organized a military called ''kilombo'' against the Portuguese. Within two years, Nzinga's army was defeated and she went into exile. She later conquered the Kingdom of Matamba and entered into an alliance with the [[Dutch West India Company]] and former rival African states. With their help, Nzinga was able to reclaim large parts of Ndongo between 1641 and 1647. Nzinga continued to fight the Portuguese until a peace treaty was signed in 1656.<ref>{{cite web |title=Queen Nzinga managed to call a halt to Portuguese slave raids in her kingdom through clever tactics |url=https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/world-changing-women-queen-nzinga |website=The Open University, History and Arts |publisher=[[The Open University]] |access-date=18 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240604172701/https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/world-changing-women-queen-nzinga |archive-date=4 June 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Queen Nzinga(1583-1663) |url=https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/queen-nzinga-1583-1663/ |website=Black Past |date=16 June 2009 |access-date=18 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231203143926/https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/queen-nzinga-1583-1663/ |archive-date=3 December 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Women Leaders in African History: Ana Nzinga, Queen of Ndongo |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pwmn_2/hd_pwmn_2.htm |website=[[Metropolitan Museum of Art]] |access-date=18 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240702032528/https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pwmn_2/hd_pwmn_2.htm |archive-date=2 July 2024}}</ref>

Historians have widely debated the nature of the relationship between these African kingdoms and the European traders. The Guyanese historian [[Walter Rodney]] (1972) has argued that it was an unequal relationship, with Africans being forced into a "colonial" trade with the more economically developed Europeans, exchanging raw materials and human resources (i.e. slaves) for manufactured goods. He argued that it was this economic trade agreement dating back to the 16th century that led to Africa being underdeveloped in his own time.{{sfn|Rodney|1972|pp=95–113}} These ideas were supported by other historians, including Ralph Austen (1987).{{sfn|Austen|1987|pp=81–108}} This idea of an unequal relationship was contested by John Thornton (1998), who argued that "the Atlantic slave trade was not nearly as critical to the African economy as these scholars believed" and that "African manufacturing [at this period] was more than capable of handling competition from preindustrial Europe".{{sfn|Thornton|1998|p=44}} However, Anne Bailey, commenting on Thornton's suggestion that Africans and Europeans were equal partners in the Atlantic slave trade, wrote:

{{blockquote|[T]o see Africans as partners implies equal terms and equal influence on the global and intercontinental processes of the trade. Africans had great influence on the continent itself, but they had no direct influence on the engines behind the trade in the capital firms, the shipping and insurance companies of Europe and America, or the plantation systems in Americas. They did not wield any influence on the building manufacturing centres of the West.<ref>{{cite book |first=Anne C. |last=Bailey |url=https://archive.org/details/africanvoicesofa00bail |title=African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Beyond the Silence and the Shame |publisher=[[Beacon Press]] |date=2005 |page=62 |isbn=978-0-8070-5512-0 |quote=Africans were equal partners.}}</ref>}}

==16th, 17th, and 18th centuries==
[[File:Map of Meridian Line set under the Treaty of Tordesillas.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|Map of Meridian Line set under the Treaty of Tordesillas]] [[File:The Slave Trade by Auguste Francois Biard.jpg|thumb|''The Slave Trade'' by [[Auguste François Biard]], 1840]]

The Atlantic slave trade is customarily divided into two eras, known as the first and second Atlantic systems. Slightly more than 3% of the enslaved people exported from Africa were traded between 1525 and 1600, and 16% in the 17th century.{{citation needed|date=March 2023}}

The first Atlantic system was the trade of enslaved Africans to, primarily, American colonies of the Portuguese and Spanish empires. Before the 1520s, slavers took Africans to [[Seville]] or the [[Canary Islands]] and then exported some of them from Spain to its colonies in Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, with 1 to 40 slaves per ship. These supplemented enslaved Native Americans. In 1518, the Spanish king gave permission for ships to go directly from Africa to the Caribbean colonies, and they started taking 200–300 per trip.<ref name="little">{{Cite web |last=Little |first=Becky |date=21 March 2019 |title=Details of Brutal First Slave Voyages Discovered |url=https://www.history.com/news/transatlantic-slave-first-ships-details |access-date=18 March 2023 |website=History.com |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210130071041/https://www.history.com/news/transatlantic-slave-first-ships-details |archive-date=30 January 2021}}</ref>{{Better source needed|date=June 2024}}

During the first Atlantic system, most of these slavers were Portuguese, giving them a near-monopoly. Decisive was the 1494 [[Treaty of Tordesillas]] which did not allow Spanish ships in African ports. Spain had to rely on Portuguese ships and sailors to bring slaves across the Atlantic. From 1525, slaves were transported directly from the Portuguese colony of [[Sao Tomé]] across the Atlantic to [[Hispaniola]].{{sfn|Borucki|Eltis|Wheat|2015|pp=446, 457, 460}}

A burial ground in [[Campeche City|Campeche]], Mexico, suggests enslaved Africans had been brought there not long after [[Hernán Cortés]] completed the subjugation of [[Aztecs|Aztec]] and [[Maya civilization|Mayan]] Mexico in 1519. The graveyard had been in use from approximately 1550 to the late 17th century.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.livescience.com/6986-skeletons-discovered-african-slaves-world.html |title=Skeletons Discovered: First African Slaves in New World |date=31 January 2006 |website=LiveScience.com |access-date=27 September 2006 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230410155310/https://www.livescience.com/6986-skeletons-discovered-african-slaves-world.html |archive-date=10 April 2023}}</ref>

In 1562, [[John Hawkins (naval commander)|John Hawkins]] captured Africans in what is now Sierra Leone and took 300 people to sell in the Caribbean. In 1564, he repeated the process, this time using Queen Elizabeth's own ship, [[Jesus of Lübeck]], and numerous English voyages ensued.<ref name="od">{{Cite ODNB |url=https://www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-12672 |title=Hawkins, Sir John (1532–1595), merchant and naval commander |year=2004 |doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/12672}}</ref>

Around 1560, the Portuguese began a regular slave trade to Brazil. From 1580 until 1640, Portugal was temporarily united with Spain in the [[Iberian Union]]. Most Portuguese contractors who obtained the [[Asiento de Negros|asiento]] between 1580 and 1640 were [[converso]]s.<ref>{{cite book |last=Israel |first=Jonathan |author-link=Jonathan Israel |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oO_7EAAAQBAJ&pg=PA103 |title=Diasporas within the Diaspora. Jews, Crypto-Jews and the World Maritime Empires (1510–1740) |date=2002 |publisher=[[Brill Publishers|Brill]] |pages=103|isbn=978-90-04-50096-9 }}</ref> For Portuguese merchants, many of whom were "[[New Christians]]" or their descendants, the union of crowns presented commercial opportunities in the slave trade to Spanish America.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Lockhart |last2=Schwartz |title=Early Latin America |pages=225 and 250}} {{full citation needed|date=June 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Arnold |last=Wiznitzer |title=The Jews of Colonial Brazil |location=New York |publisher=[[Columbia University Press]] |date=1960}}</ref>{{page needed|date=June 2024}}

[[File:Marché aux Negres by Johann Moritz Rugendas 2.jpg|thumb|A slave market in Brazil]]

Until the middle of the 17th century, Mexico was the largest single market for slaves in Spanish America.<ref name=rawley63>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UQcOo4csdzEC&pg=PA63 |title=The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History |first1=James A. |last1=Rawley |first2=Stephen D. |last2=Behrendt |author2-link=Stephen D. Behrendt |date=December 2005 |page=63 |publisher=[[University of Nebraska Press]] |isbn=0-8032-0512-0 |access-date=13 August 2020 |archive-date=26 July 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726155148/https://books.google.com/books?id=UQcOo4csdzEC&pg=PA63 |url-status=live}}</ref> While the Portuguese were directly involved in trading enslaved peoples to Brazil, the Spanish Empire relied on the [[Asiento de Negros]] system, awarding (Catholic) [[Republic of Genoa|Genoese]] merchant bankers the license to trade enslaved people from Africa to their colonies in [[Spanish America]]. [[Cartagena, Colombia|Cartagena]], [[Veracruz (city)|Veracruz]], [[Buenos Aires]], and [[Hispaniola]] received the majority of slave arrivals, mainly from [[Angola]].{{sfn|Borucki|Eltis|Wheat|2015|pp=437, 446}} This division of the slave trade between Spain and Portugal upset the British and the Dutch who invested in the [[British West Indies]] and [[Dutch Brazil]] producing sugar. After the Iberian Union fell apart, Spain prohibited Portugal from directly engaging in the slave trade as a carrier. According the [[Peace of Münster|Treaty of Münster]] the slave trade was opened for the traditional enemies of Spain, losing a large share of the trade to the Dutch, French, and English. For 150 years, Spanish transatlantic traffic was operating at trivial levels. In many years, not a single Spanish slave voyage set sail from Africa. Unlike all of their imperial competitors, the Spanish almost never delivered slaves to foreign territories. By contrast, the British, and the Dutch before them, sold slaves everywhere in the Americas.{{sfn|Borucki|Eltis|Wheat|2015|pp=453–454}}

The second Atlantic system was the trade of enslaved Africans by mostly English, French, and Dutch traders and investors.<ref>P.C. Emmer, ''The Dutch in the Atlantic Economy, 1580–1880. Trade, Slavery and Emancipation'' (1998), p. 17.</ref> The main destinations of this phase were the Caribbean islands [[Curaçao]], Jamaica and [[Martinique]], as European nations built up economically slave-dependent colonies in the New World.<ref>{{cite book |last=Klein |first=Herbert S. |date=2010 |title=The Atlantic Slave Trade |edition=2nd |isbn= |pages=}}
</ref>{{page needed|date=July 2024}}{{sfn|Borucki|Eltis|Wheat|2015|p=443}} In 1672, the [[Royal Africa Company]] was founded. In 1674, the [[Dutch West India Company#New West India Company|New West India Company]] became deeper involved in slave trade.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory/africa_caribbean/docs/account_rac.htm |title=The Royal African Company Trades for Commodities Along the West African Coast |website=[[The National Archives (United Kingdom)|The National Archives]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240615084958/https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/black-presence/ |archive-date=15 June 2024}}</ref> From 1677, the [[Compagnie du Sénégal]], used [[Gorée]] to [[House of Slaves|house the slaves]]. The Spanish proposed to get the slaves from [[Cape Verde]], located closer to the [[demarcation line]] between the Spanish and Portuguese empire, but this was against the WIC-charter".<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HGoyvMF7xw8C&pg=PA41 |title=The Dutch in the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1600–1815 |first=Johannes |last=Postma |date=3 January 2008 |page=40 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-0-521-04824-8}}</ref> The Royal African Company usually refused to deliver slaves to Spanish colonies, though they did sell them to all comers from their factories in [[Kingston, Jamaica]] and [[Bridgetown, Barbados]].{{sfn|Borucki|Eltis|Wheat|2015|p=451}} In 1682, Spain allowed governors from Havana, [[Porto Bello, Panama]], and [[Cartagena, Colombia]] to procure slaves from Jamaica.<ref name=rawley60>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UQcOo4csdzEC&pg=PA60 |title=The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History |first1=James A. |last1=Rawley |first2=Stephen D. |last2=Behrendt |date=December 2005 |page=60 |publisher=[[University of Nebraska Press]] |isbn=0-8032-0512-0 |access-date=13 August 2020 |archive-date=26 July 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726170703/https://books.google.com/books?id=UQcOo4csdzEC&pg=PA60#v=onepage&q&f=false |url-status=live}}</ref>
[[File:Island of Gorée, Senegal.jpg|thumb|Island of Gorée, Senegal]]
[[File:William Hoare of Bath - Portrait of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, (1701-1773).jpg|thumb|upright|''Portrait of [[Ayuba Suleiman Diallo]] (Job ben Solomon)'', painted by [[William Hoare]] in the 18th century]]

By the 1690s, the English were shipping the most slaves from West Africa.{{sfn|Hair|Law|1998|p=257}} By the 18th century, Portuguese Angola had become again one of the principal sources of the Atlantic slave trade.<ref>{{cite journal |title=The Atlantic Slave Trade from Angola: A Port-by-Port Estimate of Slaves Embarked, 1701–1867 |first=Daniel B. |last=Domingues da Silva |date=1 January 2013 |journal=The International Journal of African Historical Studies |volume=46 |issue=1 |pages=105–122 |jstor=24393098}}</ref> After the end of the [[War of the Spanish Succession]], as part of the provisions of the [[Treaty of Utrecht (1713)]], the Asiento was granted to the [[South Sea Company]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ehs.org.uk/ehs/conference2004/assets/paul.doc |title=The South Sea Company's slaving activities |first=Helen |last=Paul |website=Economic History Society |archive-url=https://archive.today/20121209151433/http://www.ehs.org.uk/ehs/conference2004/assets/paul.doc |archive-date=9 December 2012 |url-status=dead}}</ref> Despite the [[South Sea Bubble]], the British maintained this position during the 18th century, becoming the biggest shippers of slaves across the Atlantic.{{sfn|Christopher|2006|p=6}}{{sfn|Meredith|2014|p=191}} It is estimated that more than half of the entire slave trade took place during the 18th century, with the Portuguese, British, and French being the main carriers of nine out of ten slaves abducted in Africa.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Cambridge World History of Slavery |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |first1=Keith |last1=Bradley |first2=Paul |last2=Cartledge |year=2011 |page=583 |isbn=978-0-521-84066-8}}</ref> At the time, slave trading was regarded as crucial to Europe's maritime economy, as noted by one English slave trader: "What a glorious and advantageous trade this is ... It is the hinge on which all the trade of this globe moves."<ref>{{cite news |title=Voyage of the Damned |date=21 October 2007 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/books/review/Hochschild-t.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090417104348/https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/books/review/Hochschild-t.html |archive-date=17 April 2009 |work=[[The New York Times]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WV5iAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA148 |title=Dr H.'s Memoirs of his own Life time |year=1747 |access-date=18 March 2023 |archive-date=6 April 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230406155405/https://books.google.com/books?id=WV5iAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA148 |url-status=live}}</ref>

Meanwhile, it became a business for [[Privately held company#Privately owned enterprise|privately owned enterprises]], reducing international complications.<ref name=rawley63/> After 1790, by contrast, captains typically checked out slave prices in at least two of the major markets of Kingston, Havana, and [[Charleston, South Carolina]] (where prices by then were similar) before deciding where to sell.{{sfn|Borucki|Eltis|Wheat|2015|p=43?}} For the last sixteen years of the transatlantic slave trade, Spain was the only transatlantic slave-trading empire.{{sfn|Borucki|Eltis|Wheat|2015|p=457}}

Following the British [[Slave Trade Act 1807]] and [[Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves|U.S. bans]] on the African slave trade that same year, it declined, but the period thereafter still accounted for 28.5% of the total volume of the Atlantic slave trade.<ref>{{cite book |last=Lovejoy |first=Paul E. |chapter=The Volume of the Atlantic Slave Trade. A Synthesis |editor-last=Northrup |editor-first=David |title=The Atlantic Slave Trade |publisher=D.C. Heath and Company |date=1994 |page=}}</ref>{{page needed|date=July 2024}} Between 1810 and 1860, over 3.5 million slaves were transported, with 850,000 in the 1820s.{{sfn|Meredith|2014|p=193}}

===Triangular trade===
{{Main|Triangular trade}}

The first side of the triangle was the export of goods from Europe to Africa. A number of African kings and merchants took part in the trading of enslaved people from 1440 to about 1833. For each captive, the African rulers would receive a variety of goods from Europe. These included guns, ammunition, alcohol, [[Indigo dye#History|indigo dyed]] Indian textiles, and other factory-made goods.<ref>{{Cite web |date=27 June 2013 |title=Indian cotton textiles in the eighteenth-century Atlantic economy |url=https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/southasia/2013/06/27/indian-cotton-textiles-in-the-eighteenth-century-atlantic-economy/ |access-date=9 September 2020 |website=South Asia@LSE |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240225223959/https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/southasia/2013/06/27/indian-cotton-textiles-in-the-eighteenth-century-atlantic-economy/ |archive-date=25 February 2024}}</ref> The second leg of the triangle exported enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas and the Caribbean Islands. The third and final part of the triangle was the return of goods to Europe from the Americas. The goods were the products of [[slave plantation]]s and included cotton, sugar, tobacco, [[molasses]] and rum.<ref name=Inikori>{{cite book |title=The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on Economies, Societies and Peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Europe |first1=Joseph E. |last1=Inikori |first2=Stanley L. |last2=Engerman}}</ref> Sir [[John Hawkins (naval commander)|John Hawkins]], considered the pioneer of the English slave trade, was the first to run the triangular trade, making a profit at every stop.<ref>{{cite web |title=Who was John Hawkins? |url=https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/john-hawkins-admiral-privateer-slave-trader |website=[[Royal Museums Greenwich]] |access-date=16 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240507144456/https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/john-hawkins-admiral-privateer-slave-trader |archive-date=7 May 2024}}</ref>

===Labour and slavery===
[[File:BLAKE10.JPG|thumb|upright|A [[Wedgwood anti-slavery medallion]], produced in 1787 by [[Josiah Wedgwood]]]]

The Atlantic slave trade was the result of, among other things, [[labour shortage]], itself in turn created by the desire of European colonists to exploit New World land and resources for capital profits. [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Native]] peoples were at first utilized as slave labour by Europeans until a large number died from overwork and [[Old World]] diseases.<ref>{{cite web |title=Smallpox Through History |url=http://encarta.msn.com/media_701508643/Smallpox_Through_History.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091029184350/http://encarta.msn.com/media_701508643/Smallpox_Through_History.html |archive-date=29 October 2009}}</ref> In the mid-16th century, the Spanish [[New Laws]], prohibited slavery of the Indigenous people. A labour shortage resulted. Alternative sources of labour, such as [[indentured servitude]], failed to provide a sufficient workforce. Many crops could not be sold for profit, or even grown, in Europe. Exporting crops and goods from the New World to Europe often proved to be more profitable than producing them on the European mainland. A vast amount of labour was needed to create and sustain plantations that required intensive labour to grow, harvest, and process prized tropical crops. Western Africa (part of which became known as "the [[Slave Coast of West Africa|Slave Coast]]"), Angola and nearby Kingdoms and later [[Central Africa]], became the source for enslaved people to meet the demand for labour.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.africafederation.net/Kongo_History.htm |title=History Kingdom of Kongo |website=www.africafederation.net |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240528152732/https://www.africafederation.net/Kongo_History.htm |archive-date=28 May 2024}}</ref>

The basic reason for the constant shortage of labour was that, with much cheap land available and many landowners searching for workers, free European immigrants were able to become landowners themselves relatively quickly, thus increasing the need for workers.<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Solow |editor-first=Barbara |date=1991 |title=Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System |location=Cambridge |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=}}</ref> Labour shortages were mainly met by the English, French and Portuguese with African slave labour.

[[File:Slaves embarked to America from 1450 until 1866 by country.jpg|thumb|400px|Slaves embarked to America from 1450 until 1866 by country]]

[[Thomas Jefferson]] attributed the use of slave labour in part to the climate, and the consequent idle leisure afforded by slave labour: "For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labour."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefVirg.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=18&division=div1 |title=''Notes on the State of Virginia'' Query 18. }}</ref> In a 2015 paper, economist Elena Esposito argued that the enslavement of Africans in colonial America was attributable to the fact that the American south was sufficiently warm and humid for malaria to thrive; the disease had debilitating effects on the European settlers. Conversely, many enslaved Africans were taken from regions of Africa which hosted particularly potent strains of the disease, so the Africans had already developed natural resistance to malaria. This, Esposito argued, resulted in higher malaria survival rates in the American south among enslaved Africans than among European labourers, making them a more profitable source of labour and encouraging their use.<ref>{{cite thesis |last=Esposito |first=Elena |url=http://eh.net/eha/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Esposito.pdf |title=Side Effects of Immunities: the African Slave Trade |type=Working Paper |date=2015 |publisher=[[Economic History Association]] |access-date=7 May 2019 |archive-date=12 November 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201112014228/https://eh.net/eha/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Esposito.pdf}}</ref>

Historian David Eltis argues that Africans were enslaved because of cultural beliefs in Europe that prohibited the enslavement of cultural insiders, even if there was a source of labour that could be enslaved (such as convicts, prisoners of war and vagrants). Eltis argues that traditional beliefs existed in Europe against enslaving Christians (few Europeans not being Christian at the time) and those slaves that existed in Europe tended to be non-Christians and their immediate descendants (since a slave converting to Christianity did not guarantee emancipation) and thus by the 15th century Europeans as a whole came to be regarded as insiders.

Eltis argues that while all slave societies have demarked insiders and outsiders, Europeans took this process further by extending the status of insider to the entire European continent, rendering it unthinkable to enslave a European since this would require enslaving an insider. Conversely, Africans were viewed as outsiders and thus qualified for enslavement. While Europeans may have treated some types of labour, such as convict labour, with conditions similar to that of slaves, these labourers would not be regarded as chattel and their progeny could not inherit their subordinate status, thus not making them slaves in the eyes of Europeans. The status of chattel slavery was thus confined to non-Europeans, such as Africans.<ref>{{cite book |last=Eltis |first=David |title=The rise of African slavery in the Americas |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |date=2000 |pages=59–84, 224}}</ref>

For the British, slaves were no more than animals and could be treated as commodities, so situations like the [[Zong massacre]] occurred without any justice for the victims.<ref name="Rupprecht 14">{{Cite journal |title=Excessive Memories: Slavery, Insurance and Resistance |last=Rupprecht |first=Anita |date=Autumn 2007 |journal=History Workshop Journal |issue=64 |page=14 |jstor=25472933}}</ref>

===African participation in the slave trade===
[[File:Marchands d'esclaves de Gorée-Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur mg 8526.jpg|thumb|upright|Slave traders in [[Gorée]], Senegal, 18th century]]

African partners, including rulers, traders and military aristocrats, played a direct role in the slave trade. They sold slaves acquired from wars or through kidnapping to Europeans or their agents.<ref name="afbis">{{cite journal |url=http://www.afbis.com/analysis/slave.htm |title=Slave trade: a root of contemporary African Crisis |journal=Africa Economic Analysis |year=2000 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120502172215/http://www.afbis.com/analysis/slave.htm |archive-date=2 May 2012 |last=Obadina |first=Tunde}}</ref> Those sold into slavery were usually from a different ethnic group than those who captured them, whether enemies or just neighbors.<ref name="ldhi"/> These captive slaves were considered "other", not part of the people of the ethnic group or "tribe"; African kings were only interested in protecting their own ethnic group, but sometimes criminals would be sold to get rid of them.<ref name="afbis"/><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Foster |first1=Herbert |title=Partners or Captives in Commerce?: The Role of Africans in the Slave Trade |journal=Journal of Black Studies |date=1976 |volume=6 |issue=4 |pages=421–434 |doi=10.1177/002193477600600408 |jstor=2783771 |s2cid=145541392 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2783771 |access-date=17 January 2024 |archive-date=17 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240117152155/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2783771 |url-status=live|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

Most other slaves were obtained from kidnappings, or through raids that occurred at gunpoint through joint ventures with the Europeans.<ref name="afbis"/><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Foster |first1=Herbert |title=Partners or Captives in Commerce?: The Role of Africans in the Slave Trade |journal=Journal of Black Studies |date=1976 |volume=6 |issue=4 |pages=421–434 |doi=10.1177/002193477600600408 |jstor=2783771 |s2cid=145541392 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2783771 |access-date=17 January 2024 |archive-date=17 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240117152155/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2783771 |url-status=live|url-access=subscription }}</ref> The kingdom of Dahomey supplied war captives to European slave traders.<ref name=":0">{{cite journal |last1=Law |first1=Robin |title=Slave-Raiders and Middlemen, Monopolists and Free-Traders: The Supply of Slaves for the Atlantic Trade in Dahomey c. 1715-1850 |journal=The Journal of African History |date=1989 |volume=30 |issue=1 |pages=45–68 |doi=10.1017/S0021853700030875 |jstor=182694 |s2cid=165485173 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/182694 |access-date=23 January 2024|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Dahomey King [[Agaja]], who ruled from 1718 to 1740, took control of key trade routes for the Atlantic slave trade by conquering the neighbouring kingdoms of [[Allada]] in 1724 and [[Kingdom of Whydah|Whydah]] in 1727.<ref name=":0" /> A decrease in the slave trade in the area was observed after this conquest, however Agaja did create significant infrastructure for the slave trade and actively participated in it towards the end of his reign.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Falola|first1=Toyin|last2=Warnock|first2=Amanda|title=Encyclopedia of the Middle Passage|year=2007|publisher=Greenwood Press|location=Westport, CT|isbn=9780313334801|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UjRYKePKrB8C&q=Agaja|oclc=230753290|pages=129}}</ref>

According to Pernille Ipsen, author of ''Daughters of the Trade: Atlantic Slavers and Interracial Marriage on the Gold Coast,'' Africans from the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana) also participated in the slave trade through intermarriage, or ''[[cassare]]'' (taken from Italian, Spanish, or Portuguese), meaning 'to set up house'. It is derived from the Portuguese word {{lang|pt|'casar'}}, meaning 'to marry'. ''Cassare'' formed political and economic bonds between European and African slave traders. ''Cassare'' was a pre-European-contact practice used to integrate the "other" from a differing African tribe. Early on in the Atlantic slave trade, it was common for the powerful elite West African families to marry off their women to the European traders in alliance, bolstering their syndicate. The marriages were even performed using African customs, which Europeans did not object to, seeing how important the connections were.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Ipsen |first1=Pernille |title=Daughters of the Trade: Atlantic Slavers and Interracial Marriage on the Gold Coast |date=2015 |publisher=[[University of Pennsylvania Press]] |isbn=978-0-8122-4673-5 |pages=1, 21, 31}}</ref>

===African awareness of the conditions of slavery in the Americas===
[[File:FORBES(1851) p1.133 SCENE AT SLAVE MARKET.jpg|thumb|A slave market in Dahomey]]

It is difficult to reconstruct and generalize how Africans residing in Africa understood the Atlantic slave trade, though there is evidence for some societies that African elites and slave traders had awareness of the conditions of the slaves who were transported to the Americas.<ref name="law">{{cite book |last1=Law |first1=Robin |title=Ouidah: the social history of a West African slaving 'port', 1727–1892 |date=2004 |publisher=Ohio University Press |location=Athens, Ohio |isbn=978-0-8214-1572-6 |pages=148–149}}</ref>{{sfn|Sparks|2014|p=243}} According to Robin Law, the royal elites of the kingdom of [[Dahomey]] must have had an "informed understanding" of the fates of the Africans they sold into slavery.<ref name="law"/> Dahomey sent diplomats to Brazil and Portugal who returned with information about their trips.<ref name="law"/> In addition, a few royal elites of Dahomey had experienced slavery for themselves in the Americas before returning to their homeland.<ref name="law"/> The only apparent moral issue that the kingdom had with slavery was the enslavement of fellow Dahomeyans, an offense punishable by death, rather than the institution of slavery itself.<ref name="law"/>

On the Gold Coast, it was common for slave-trading African rulers to encourage their children to learn about Europeans by sending them to sail on European ships, live inside European forts, or travel to Europe or America for an education.{{sfn|Sparks|2014|pp=186–197}} Diplomats also traveled to European capital cities. The elites even rescued fellow elites who were tricked into slavery in the Americas by sending demands to the Dutch and the British governments, who complied due to fears of reduced trade and physical harm to hostages.{{sfn|Sparks|2014|pp=186–197}} An example is the case of [[William Ansah Sessarakoo]], who was rescued from slavery in Barbados after being recognised by a visiting slave trader of the same Fante ethnic group, and later became a slave trader himself.<ref>{{cite web |title=William Ansah Sessarakoo, Slave Trader born |url=https://aaregistry.org/story/william-ansah-sessarakoo-merchant-born/ |website=African American Registry |language=en |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230712111920/https://aaregistry.org/story/william-ansah-sessarakoo-merchant-born/ |archive-date=12 July 2023}}</ref>

[[Fenda Lawrence]] was a slave trader from [[the Gambia]] who lived and traded in [[Georgia (U.S. State)|Georgia]] and [[South Carolina]] as a free person.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Akyeampong |first1=Emmanuel Kwaku |last2=Gates |first2=Henry Louis Jr. |title=Dictionary of African Biography |date=2012 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |location=New York |isbn=978-0-19-538207-5 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=39JMAgAAQBAJ&q=Fenda+Lawrence&pg=RA2-PA475 |access-date=10 August 2022 |archive-date=26 July 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726160701/https://books.google.com/books?id=39JMAgAAQBAJ&q=Fenda+Lawrence&pg=RA2-PA475#v=snippet&q=Fenda%20Lawrence&f=false |url-status=live}}</ref>

A common assumption by Africans who were unaware of the true purpose of the Atlantic slave trade was that the Europeans were cannibals who planned on cooking and eating their captives.{{sfn|Thornton|1998|p=316}} This rumour was a common source of significant distress for enslaved Africans.{{sfn|Thornton|1998|p=316}}

===African opposition to the slave trade===
[[File:Boukary Koutou's Mossi cavalry returning with captives from a raid, Ouagadougou.jpg|thumb|[[Wobgho|Boukary Koutou]]'s [[Mossi people|Mossi]] cavalry returning with captives from a raid, [[Ouagadougou]]-]]

Sometimes trading between Europeans and African leaders was not equal. For example, Europeans influenced Africans to provide more slaves by forming military alliances with warring African societies to instigate more fighting which would provide more war captives to the African rulers to trade as slaves for European consumer goods. Also, Europeans shifted the location of disembarkation points for trade along the African coast to follow military conflicts in West-Central Africa. In areas of Africa where slavery was not prevalent, European slave traders worked and negotiated with African rulers on their terms for trade, and African rulers refused to supply European demands. Africans and Europeans profited from the slave trade; however, African populations, the social, political, and military changes to African societies suffered greatly. For example, [[Mossi Kingdoms]] resisted the Atlantic slave trade and refused to participate in the selling of African people. However, as time progressed more European slave traders entered into West Africa and were having more influence in African nations and the Mossi became involved in slave trading in the 1800s.<ref name="ldhi">{{cite web |title=African Participation and Resistance to the Trade |url=https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/africanpassageslowcountryadapt/introductionatlanticworld/african_participation_and_resi |website=Lowcountry History Digitial Initiative |publisher=Lowcountry Digital Library at the College of Charleston |access-date=17 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240620105658/http://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/africanpassageslowcountryadapt/introductionatlanticworld/african_participation_and_resi |archive-date=20 June 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=The history of the transatlantic slave trade |url=https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/history-transatlantic-slave-trade |website=[[Royal Museums Greenwich]] |access-date=17 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240518095928/https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/history-transatlantic-slave-trade |archive-date=18 May 2024}}</ref>

[[File:Burning of a Village in Africa, and Capture of its Inhabitants (p.12, February 1859, XVI) - Copy.jpg|thumb|Burning of a Village in Africa, and Capture of its Inhabitants. To escape slave raids some Africans escaped into swamp regions or to other areas.]]

Although many African nations participated and profited from the Atlantic slave trade, many African nations also resisted such as the [[Jola people|Djola]] and [[Balanta people|Balanta]].<ref>{{cite web |title=The fight: African resistance |url=http://revealinghistories.org.uk/who-resisted-and-campaigned-for-abolition/articles/the-fight-african-resistance.html |website=Revealing Histories Remembering Slavery |access-date=18 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240118205542/http://revealinghistories.org.uk/who-resisted-and-campaigned-for-abolition/articles/the-fight-african-resistance.html |archive-date=18 January 2024}}</ref> Some African nations organized into military resistance movements and fought African slave raiders and European slave traders entering their villages. For example, the [[Akan people|Akan]], Etsi, Fetu, Eguafo, [[Agona]], and Asebu people organized into the [[Fante people|Fante]] coalition and fought African and European slave raiders and protected themselves from capture and enslavement.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Shumway |first1=Rebecca |title=The Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade |journal=[[The American Historical Review]] |date=2014 |volume=119 |issue=5 |pages=1826–1827 |doi=10.1093/ahr/119.5.1826 |url=https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/119/5/1826/44831?redirectedFrom=fulltext |access-date=19 January 2024 |archive-date=19 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240119194218/https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/119/5/1826/44831?redirectedFrom=fulltext |url-status=live|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Chief Tomba was born in 1700 and his adopted father was a general from the Jalonke-speaking people who fought against the slave trade. Tomba became ruler of the [[Baga people]] in present-day [[Guinea-Bissau|Guinea Bissau]] in West Africa and made alliances with nearby African villages against African and European slave traders. His efforts were unsuccessful: Tomba was captured by African traders and sold into slavery.<ref>{{cite web |title=Slavery and the Natural World, People and the Slave Trade |url=https://www.nhm.ac.uk/resources-www/legacy/slavery-files/chapter-2-people-and-slavery.pdf |website=[[Natural History Museum, London|Natural History Museum]] |access-date=19 January 2024 |ref=Information about Chief Tomba is on page 19 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240330215328/https://www.nhm.ac.uk/resources-www/legacy/slavery-files/chapter-2-people-and-slavery.pdf |archive-date=30 March 2024}}</ref>

[[Kimpa Vita|Donna Beatriz Kimpa Vita]] in [[Kongo people|Kongo]] and Senegalese leader Abd al-Qadir, advocated resistance against the forced exportation of Africans.<ref>{{cite web |title=Africa and the Transatlantic Slave Trade |url=https://www.slps.org/cms/lib/MO01001157/Centricity/Domain/9446/BBC%20-%20History%20-%20British%20History%20in%20depth_%20Africa%20and%20the%20Transatlantic%20Slave%20Trade.pdf |website=St. Louis Public Schools |access-date=20 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240330215334/https://www.slps.org/cms/lib/MO01001157/Centricity/Domain/9446/BBC%20-%20History%20-%20British%20History%20in%20depth_%20Africa%20and%20the%20Transatlantic%20Slave%20Trade.pdf |archive-date=30 March 2024}}</ref> In the 1770s, leader Abdul Kader Khan opposed the Atlantic slave trade through [[Futa Tooro|Futa Toro]], present-day [[Senegal]]. Abdul Kader Khan and Futa Toro nation resisted French slave traders and colonizers who wanted to enslave Africans and Muslims from Futa Toro.<ref>{{cite web |title=African-American Passages: Black Lives in the 19th Century |url=https://www.loc.gov/podcasts/african-american-passages/transcripts/AAPassages-Podcast_Episode2_transcription.pdf |website=Library of Congress |access-date=19 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240119200351/https://www.loc.gov/podcasts/african-american-passages/transcripts/AAPassages-Podcast_Episode2_transcription.pdf |archive-date=19 January 2024}}</ref> Other forms of resistance against the Atlantic slave trade by African nations was migrating to different areas in West Africa such as swamps and lake regions to escape slave raids. In West Africa, [[Efik people|Efik]] slave dealers participated in slave dealing as a form of protection against enslavement.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Diouf Anne |first1=Sylviane |title=Fighting the Slave Trade West African Strategies |date=2003 |publisher=[[Ohio University Press]] |isbn=9780821415160 |pages=42–45, 102–105 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=n0lI5c9trSAC&q=resistance}}</ref> African resistance movements were carried out in every phase of the slave trade to resisting marches to the slave holding stations, resistance at the slave coast, and resistance on slave ships.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Wilsey |first1=Adam |title=A Study of West African Slave Resistance from the Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries |journal=History in the Making |date=2008 |volume=7 |issue=1 |pages=77–91 |url=https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1222&context=history-in-the-making |access-date=18 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726155146/https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1222&context=history-in-the-making |archive-date=26 July 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref>

[[File:Amistad revolt.jpg|thumb|On July 1, 1839, enslaved [[Mende people|Mende]] people aboard the [[La Amistad|Amistad]] revolted and took control of the ship. This incident led to a [[United States v. The Amistad|Supreme Court case in 1841]].<ref>{{cite web |title=The Amistad Case, 1839 |url=https://history.state.gov/milestones/1830-1860/amistad |website=Department of the State United States America |access-date=28 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240313173650/https://history.state.gov/milestones/1830-1860/amistad |archive-date=13 March 2024}}</ref>]]

For example, aboard the slave ship Clare, the enslaved Africans revolted and drove the crew from the vessel and took control of the ship and liberated themselves and landed near [[Cape Coast Castle]] in present-day [[Ghana]] in 1729. On other slave ships enslaved Africans sunk ships, killed the crew, and set fire to ships with explosives. Slave traders and white crewmembers prepared and prevented possible rebellions by loading women, men, and children separately inside slave ships because enslaved children used loose pieces of wood, tools, and any objects they found and passed them to the men to free themselves and fight the crew. According to historical research from the records of slave ship captains, between 1698 and 1807, there were 353 acts of insurrection aboard slave ships. The majority of the rebellions by the Africans were defeated. [[Igbo people|Igbo]] slaves on ships committed suicide by jumping overboard as an act of resistance to enslavement. To prevent further suicides, white crewmen placed nets around slave ships to catch enslaved persons that jumped overboard. White captains and crewmen invested in firearms, [[swivel gun]]s, and ordered ship crews to watch slaves to prevent or prepare for possible slave revolts.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Richardson |first1=David |title=Shipboard Revolts, African Authority, and the Atlantic Slave Trade |journal=The William and Mary Quarterly |date=2001 |volume=58 |issue=1 |pages=72–73 |doi=10.2307/2674419 |jstor=2674419 |pmid=18634185 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2674419 |access-date=29 April 2024 |archive-date=29 April 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240429191919/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2674419 |url-status=live|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Resistance and Rebellion |url=https://understandingslavery.com/themes/resistance-and-rebellion/#:~:text=In%20the%2019th%20century%2C%20slave,theme%20of%20Resistance%20and%20Rebellion. |website=Understanding Slavery Initiative |access-date=21 January 2025}}</ref>

[[John Newton]] was a captain of slave ships and recorded in his personal journal how Africans mutinied on ships, and some were successful in overtaking the crew.<ref>{{cite web |title=Slave Ship Mutinies |url=https://slaveryandremembrance.org/articles/article/?id=A0035 |website=Colonial Williamsburg Foundation |publisher=United Nations, Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization |access-date=27 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240522021426/http://slaveryandremembrance.org/articles/article/?id=A0035 |archive-date=22 May 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Forbes |first1=Ella |title=African Resistance to Enslavement: The Nature and the Evidentiary Record |journal=[[Journal of Black Studies]] |date=1992 |volume=23 |issue=1 |pages=44–46 |doi=10.1177/002193479202300104 |jstor=2784672 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2784672 |access-date=27 February 2024 |archive-date=27 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240227191041/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2784672 |url-status=live|url-access=subscription }}</ref> For example, in 1730 the slave ship ''Little George'' departed from the [[Guinea (region)|Guinea Coast]] in route to [[Rhode Island]] with a cargo of ninety-six enslaved Africans. A few of the slaves slipped out of their iron chains and killed three of the watchmen on deck and imprisoned the captain and the rest of the crew. The Africans received a promise of freedom in a deal made with the captain and his crew. Africans reclaimed the ship and sailed it back to Africa's shore. The captain and crew failed in their attempt to re-enslave the Africans.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bly |first1=Antonio |title=Crossing the Lake of Fire: Slave Resistance during the Middle Passage, 1720-1842 |journal=The Journal of Negro History |date=1998 |volume=83 |issue=3 |page=184 |doi=10.2307/2649014 |jstor=2649014 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2649014 |access-date=28 February 2024 |archive-date=28 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240228160713/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2649014 |url-status=live|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

According to research by historian Jane Landers, more rebellions on slave ships occurred when there were large numbers of African women aboard.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Wills |first1=Matthew |title=Two Women of the African Slave Resistance |url=https://daily.jstor.org/the-women-of-the-african-slave-resistance/ |website=JSTOR Daily |date=25 August 2017 |publisher=JSTOR |access-date=21 January 2025}}</ref>

===European participation in the slave trade===
Europeans provided the market for slaves, rarely traveling beyond the coast or entering the African interior, due to fear of [[Tropical disease|disease]] and native resistance.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.britannica.com/blackhistory/article-24159 |title=Historical survey > The international slave trade. |website=[[Encyclopedia Britannica]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120302231358/http://www.britannica.com/blackhistory/article-24159 |archive-date=2 March 2012}}</ref> They typically resided in fortresses on the coasts, where they waited for Africans to provide them captured slaves from the interior in exchange for goods. Cases of European merchants kidnapping free Africans into slavery often resulted in fierce retaliation from Africans, who could momentarily stop trade and even capture or kill Europeans.{{sfn|Sparks|2014|p=46}} Europeans who desired safe and uninterrupted trade aimed to prevent kidnapping incidents, and the British passed the "Acts of Parliament for Regulating the Slave Trade" in 1750 which outlawed the abduction of free Africans by "fraud, force, or violence".{{sfn|Sparks|2014|p=46}} According to a source from the Lowcountry Digital Library at the [[College of Charleston]], "When Portuguese, and later their European competitors, found that peaceful commercial relations alone did not generate enough enslaved Africans to fill the growing demands of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, they formed military alliances with certain African groups against their enemies. This encouraged more extensive warfare to produce captives for trading."<ref>{{cite web |title=The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade |url=https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/africanpassageslowcountryadapt/introductionatlanticworld/trans_atlantic_slave_trade |website=Lowcountry Digitial History Initiative |publisher=Lowcountry Digital Library at the College of Charleston |access-date=12 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240627115650/https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/africanpassageslowcountryadapt/introductionatlanticworld/trans_atlantic_slave_trade |archive-date=27 June 2024}}</ref>

[[File:The inspection and sale of a slave.jpg|thumb|upright=1.15|A slave being inspected]]

In 1778, [[Thomas Kitchin]] estimated that Europeans were bringing an estimated 52,000 slaves to the Caribbean yearly, with the French bringing the most Africans to the [[French West Indies]] (13,000 out of the yearly estimate).<ref name=Kitchin1>{{cite book |last=Kitchin |first=Thomas |title=The Present State of the West-Indies: Containing an Accurate Description of What Parts Are Possessed by the Several Powers in Europe |year=1778 |publisher=R. Baldwin |location=London |page=21 |url=http://www.wdl.org/en/item/4397/view/1/21/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240511184618/https://www.loc.gov/item/02008613 |archive-date=11 May 2024}}</ref> The Atlantic slave trade peaked in the last two decades of the 18th century,{{sfn|Thornton|1998|p=304}} during and following the [[Kongo Civil War]].{{sfn|Thornton|1998|p=305}} Wars among tiny states along the Niger River's [[Igbo people|Igbo]]-inhabited region and the accompanying banditry also spiked in this period.{{sfn|Thornton|1998|p=310}} Another reason for surplus supply of enslaved people was major warfare conducted by expanding states, such as the [[kingdom of Dahomey]],{{sfn|Thornton|1998|p=311}} the [[Oyo Empire]], and the [[Ashanti Empire]].{{sfn|Thornton|1998|p=122}}

===Slavery in Africa and the New World contrasted===
{{Further|Slavery in Africa}}

Forms of slavery varied both in Africa and in the New World. In general, slavery in Africa was not heritable—that is, the children of slaves were free—while in the Americas, children of slave mothers were considered born into slavery. This was connected to another distinction: slavery in West Africa was not reserved for racial or religious minorities, as it was in European colonies, although the case was otherwise in places such as [[African slave trade#Slavery in Somalia|Somalia]], where [[Bantu people|Bantus]] were taken as slaves for the ethnic [[Somali people|Somalis]].<ref>{{cite book |first=Howard |last=Winant |author-link=Howard Winant |date=2001 |title=The World is a Ghetto: Race and Democracy Since World War II |publisher=[[Basic Books]] |page=58}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Catherine Lowe |last=Besteman |title=Unraveling Somalia: Race, Class, and the Legacy of Slavery |publisher=[[University of Pennsylvania Press]] |date=1999 |pages=83–84}}</ref>

The treatment of slaves in Africa was more variable than in the Americas. At one extreme, the kings of Dahomey routinely slaughtered slaves in hundreds or thousands in sacrificial rituals, and slaves as human sacrifices were also known in [[Cameroon]].<ref>{{cite book |first=Kevin |last=Shillington |date=2005 |title=Encyclopedia of African History |publisher=[[CRC Press]] |volume=1 |pages=333–334}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Nicolas |last=Argenti |date=2007 |title=The Intestines of the State: Youth, Violence and Belated Histories in the Cameroon Grassfields |publisher=[[University of Chicago Press]] |page=42}}</ref> On the other hand, slaves in other places were often treated as part of the family, "adopted children", with significant rights including the right to marry without their masters' permission.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.accessgambia.com/information/slave-treatment-rights-privileges.html |title=Rights & Treatment of Slaves |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101223234940/http://accessgambia.com/information/slave-treatment-rights-privileges.html |archive-date=23 December 2010 |website=Gambia Information Site}}</ref> Scottish explorer [[Mungo Park (explorer)|Mungo Park]] wrote:

{{blockquote|The slaves in Africa, I suppose, are nearly in the proportion of three to one to the freemen. They claim no reward for their services except food and clothing, and are treated with kindness or severity, according to the good or bad disposition of their masters ... The slaves which are thus brought from the interior may be divided into two distinct classes—first, such as were slaves from their birth, having been born of enslaved mothers; secondly, such as were born free, but who afterwards, by whatever means, became slaves. Those of the first description are by far the most numerous ...<ref>{{cite book |first=Mungo |last=Park |author-link=Mungo Park (explorer) |title=Travels in the Interior of Africa |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5305 |volume=II |chapter=XXII – War and Slavery |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240324133100/https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5305 |archive-date=24 March 2024}}</ref>}}

In the Americas, slaves were denied the right to marry freely and masters did not generally accept them as equal members of the family. New World slaves were considered the property of their owners, and slaves convicted of revolt or murder were executed.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/negroplot/plotchronology.html |title=The Negro Plot Trials: A Chronology |website=[[University of Missouri–Kansas City]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100722115800/http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/negroplot/plotchronology.html |archive-date=22 July 2010}}</ref>

===Slave market regions and participation===
[[File:Africa slave Regions.svg|thumb|upright=1.2|Major slave trading regions of Africa, 15th–19th centuries]]

Europeans would buy and ship slaves to the Western Hemisphere from markets across West Africa. The number of enslaved people sold to the New World varied throughout the slave trade. As for the distribution of slaves from regions of activity, certain areas produced far more enslaved people than others. Between 1650 and 1900, 10.2&nbsp;million enslaved Africans arrived in the Americas from the following regions in the following proportions:{{sfn|Lovejoy|2000|pp=}}{{page needed|date=July 2024}}
* [[Senegambia (geography)|Senegambia]] ([[Senegal]] and [[the Gambia]]): 4.8%
* [[Upper Guinea]] ([[Guinea-Bissau]], [[Guinea]] and [[Sierra Leone]]): 4.1%
* [[Pepper Coast|Windward Coast]] ([[Liberia]] and [[Ivory Coast]]): 1.8%
* [[Gold Coast (British colony)|Gold Coast]] ([[Ghana]] and east of [[Ivory Coast]]): 10.4%
* [[Bight of Benin]] ([[Togo]], [[Benin]] and [[Nigeria]] west of the Niger Delta): 20.2%
* [[Bight of Biafra]] ([[Nigeria]] east of the [[Niger Delta]], [[Cameroon]], [[Equatorial Guinea]] and [[Gabon]]): 14.6%
* West Central Africa ([[Republic of Congo|Republic of the Congo]], [[Democratic Republic of Congo|Democratic Republic of the Congo]] and [[Angola]]): 39.4%
* Southeastern Africa ([[Mozambique]] and [[Madagascar]]): 4.7%

Although the slave trade was largely global, there was considerable intracontinental slave trade in which 8 million people were enslaved within the African continent.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |title=The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on Economies, Societies and Peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Europe |last=Inikori |first=Joseph |publisher=[[Duke University Press]] |year=1992 |page=120}}</ref> Of those who did move out of Africa, 8 million were forced out of Eastern Africa to be sent to Asia.<ref name=":2" />

===African kingdoms of the era===
There were over 173 city-states and kingdoms in the African regions affected by the slave trade between 1502 and 1853, when Brazil became the last Atlantic import nation to outlaw the slave trade. Of those 173, no fewer than 68 could be deemed nation-states with political and military infrastructures that enabled them to dominate their neighbours. Nearly every present-day nation had a pre-colonial predecessor, sometimes an [[African empires|African empire]] with which European traders had to barter.

====Ethnic groups====
The different ethnic groups brought to the Americas closely correspond to the regions of heaviest activity in the slave trade. Over 45 distinct ethnic groups were taken to the Americas during the trade. The ten most prominent, according to slave documentation of the era and modern genealogical studies are listed below.<ref name="Hall">{{cite book |last1=Hall |first1=Gwendolyn Midlo |author1-link=Gwendolyn Midlo Hall |title=Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas |url=http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=742 |access-date=24 January 2011 |year=2007 |publisher=[[University of North Carolina Press]] |isbn=978-0-8078-5862-2 |page={{page needed|date=January 2011}} |archive-date=18 January 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170118132059/http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=742}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Zakharia |first1=Fouad |last2=Basu |first2=Analabha |last3=Absher |first3=Devin |last4=Assimes |first4=Themistocles L. |last5=Go |first5=Alan S. |last6=Hlatky |first6=Mark A. |last7=Iribarren |first7=Carlos |last8=Knowles |first8=Joshua W. |last9=Li |first9=Jun |last10=Narasimhan |first10=Balasubramanian |last11=Sidney |first11=Steven |last12=Southwick |first12=Audrey |last13=Myers |first13=Richard M. |last14=Quertermous |first14=Thomas |last15=Risch |first15=Neil |date=22 December 2009 |title=Characterizing the admixed African ancestry of African Americans |journal=[[Genome Biology]] |volume=10 |issue=12 |pages=R141 |doi=10.1186/gb-2009-10-12-r141 |issn=1474-760X |pmc=2812948 |pmid=20025784 |doi-access=free}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Veeramah |first1=Krishna R. |last2=Connell |first2=Bruce A. |last3=Pour |first3=Naser Ansari |last4=Powell |first4=Adam |last5=Plaster |first5=Christopher A. |last6=Zeitlyn |first6=David |last7=Mendell |first7=Nancy R. |last8=Weale |first8=Michael E. |last9=Bradman |first9=Neil |last10=Thomas |first10=Mark G. |date=31 March 2010 |title=Little genetic differentiation as assessed by uniparental markers in the presence of substantial language variation in peoples of the Cross River region of Nigeria |journal=[[BMC Evolutionary Biology]] |volume=10 |issue=1 |page=92 |doi=10.1186/1471-2148-10-92 |issn=1471-2148 |pmc=2867817 |pmid=20356404 |bibcode=2010BMCEE..10...92V |doi-access=free}}</ref>
# The [[Kongo people|BaKongo]] of the [[Democratic Republic of Congo]], the [[Republic of the Congo]] and [[Angola]]
# The [[Mandé peoples|Mandé]] of Upper [[Guinea]]
# The [[Gbe languages|Gbe]] speakers of [[Togo]], [[Ghana]], and [[Benin]] ([[Fon people|Fon]], [[Ewe people|Ewe]], [[Adja people|Adja]], Mina)
# The [[Akan people|Akan]] of Ghana and [[Ivory Coast]]
# The [[Wolof people|Wolof]] of [[Senegal]] and [[the Gambia]]
# The [[The Igbo in the Atlantic slave trade|Igbo]] of southeastern [[Nigeria]]
# The [[Ambundu]] of [[Angola]]
# The [[Yoruba people|Yoruba]] of southwestern [[Nigeria]] and [[Benin]]
# The [[Tikar people|Tikar]] and [[Bamileke people|Bamileke]] of [[Cameroon]]
# The [[Makua people|Makua]] of [[Mozambique]]

==Human toll==
[[File:African Slave Trade.png|thumb|upright=1.2|Slave trade out of Africa, 1500–1900]]

The transatlantic slave trade resulted in a vast and as yet unknown loss of life for African captives both in and outside the Americas. Estimates have ranged from as low as 2 million<ref name="HjLHH">{{cite web |last1=Greenberg |first1=Jon |title=Jon Stewart: Slave trade caused 5 million deaths |url=https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/mar/18/jon-stewart/jon-stewart-slave-trade-caused-5-million-deaths/ |website=Pundit Fact |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230401164051/https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2014/mar/18/jon-stewart/jon-stewart-slave-trade-caused-5-million-deaths/ |archive-date=1 April 2023}}</ref> to as high 60 million.<ref name="egC2A">{{cite book |last1=Stannard |first1=David |author1-link=David Stannard |title=American Holocaust |date=1992 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]], USA |isbn=978-0-19-508557-0 |url=https://archive.org/details/americanholocaus00stan}}</ref> "More than a million people are thought to have died" during their transport to the [[New World]] according to a BBC report.<ref name="news.bbc.co.uk">{{cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6445941.stm |title=Quick guide: The slave trade; Who were the slaves? |work=[[BBC News]] |date=15 March 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230712115442/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6445941.stm |archive-date=12 July 2023}}</ref> More died soon after their arrival. The number of lives lost in the procurement of slaves remains a mystery but may equal or exceed the number who survived to be enslaved.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>

The trade led to the destruction of individuals and cultures. Historian [[Ana Lucia Araujo]] has noted that the process of enslavement did not end with arrival on Western Hemisphere shores; the different paths taken by the individuals and groups who were victims of the Atlantic slave trade were influenced by different factors—including the disembarking region, the ability to be sold on the market, the kind of work performed, gender, age, religion, and language.<ref>''Paths of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Interactions, Identities, and Images''.</ref><ref name="FreedmensInquiry">[[American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission]] report, page 43-44</ref>

[[Patrick Manning (historian)|Patrick Manning]] estimates that about 12 million slaves entered the Atlantic trade between the 16th and 19th centuries, but about 1.5 million died on board ship. About 10.5 million slaves arrived in the Americas. Besides the slaves who died on the Middle Passage, more Africans likely died during the slave raids and wars in Africa and forced marches to ports. Manning estimates that 4 million died inside Africa after capture, and many more died young. Manning's estimate covers the 12 million who were originally destined for the Atlantic, as well as the 6 million destined for Arabian slave markets and the 8 million destined for African markets.<ref name="online at pp. 119–120"/> Of the slaves shipped to the Americas, the largest share went to Brazil and the Caribbean.<ref>{{cite book |last=Maddison |first=Angus |title=Contours of the world economy 1–2030 AD: Essays in macro-economic history |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |date=2007 |page=90}}</ref>

Canadian scholar [[Adam Jones (Canadian scholar)|Adam Jones]] characterized the deaths of millions of Africans during the Atlantic slave trade as [[genocide]]. He called it "one of the worst holocausts in human history", and claims arguments to the contrary such as "it was in slave owners' interest to keep slaves alive, not exterminate them" to be "mostly sophistry" stating: "the killing and destruction were intentional, whatever the incentives to preserve survivors of the Atlantic passage for labour exploitation. To revisit the issue of intent already touched on: If an institution is deliberately maintained and expanded by discernible agents, though all are aware of the hecatombs of casualties it is inflicting on a definable human group, then why should this not qualify as genocide?"<ref>{{cite book |last=Jones |first=Adam |author-link=Adam Jones (Canadian scholar) |date=2006 |title=Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction |publisher=[[Routledge]] |pages=23–24 |isbn=978-0-415-35385-4}}</ref>

[[Saidiya Hartman]] has argued that the deaths of enslaved people was incidental to the acquisition of profit and to the rise of capitalism: "Death wasn't a goal of its own but just a by-product of commerce, which has the lasting effect of making negligible all the millions of lives lost. Incidental death occurs when life has no normative value, when no humans are involved, when the population is, in effect, seen as already dead."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hartman |first=Saidiya V. |title=Lose your mother: a journey along the Atlantic slave route |date=2021 |isbn=978-1-78816-814-4 |publisher=Serpent's Tail |location=London |oclc=1255859695 |page=31}}</ref> Hartman highlights how the Atlantic slave trade created millions of corpses but, unlike the concentration camp or the gulag, extermination was not the final objective; it was a corollary to the making of commodities.

===Destinations and flags of carriers===
Most of the Atlantic slave trade was carried out by seven nations and most of the slaves were carried to their own colonies in the new world. But there was also significant other trading which is shown in the table below.<ref>{{cite web |title=Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade – Estimates |url=https://www.slavevoyages.org/assessment/estimates |website=slavevoyages |access-date=5 February 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240718062916/https://www.slavevoyages.org/assessment/estimates |archive-date=18 July 2024}}</ref> The records are not complete, and some data is uncertain. The last rows show that there were also smaller numbers of slaves carried to Europe and to other parts of Africa, and at least 1.8 million did not survive the journey and were buried at sea with little ceremony.

{| class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align:right;"
|+ Flag of vessels carrying the slaves
|-
!scope="col"| Destination
!scope="col"| Portuguese
!scope="col"| British
!scope="col"| French
!scope="col"| Spanish
!scope="col"| Dutch
!scope="col"| American
!scope="col"| Danish
!scope="col"| Total
|-
!scope="row"| [[Colonial Brazil|Portuguese Brazil]]
| 4,821,127 || 3,804 || 9,402 || 1,033 || 27,702 || 1,174 || 130 || 4,864,372
|-
!scope="row"| [[British West Indies|British Caribbean]]
| 7,919 || 2,208,296 || 22,920 || 5,795 || 6,996 || 64,836 || 1,489 || 2,318,251
|-
!scope="row"| [[French West Indies#French Caribbean|French Caribbean]]
| 2,562 || 90,984 || 1,003,905 || 725 || 12,736 || 6,242 || 3,062 || 1,120,216
|-
!scope="row"| [[Hispanic America|Spanish Americas]]
| 195,482 || 103,009 || 92,944 || 808,851 || 24,197 || 54,901 || 13,527 || 1,061,524
|-
!scope="row"| [[Dutch colonization of the Americas|Dutch Americas]]
| 500 || 32,446 || 5,189 || 0 || 392,022 || 9,574 || 4,998 || 444,729
|-
!scope="row"| [[United States|North America]]
| 382 || 264,910 || 8,877 || 1,851 || 1,212 || 110,532 || 983 || 388,747
|-
!scope="row"| [[Danish West Indies]]
| 0 || 25,594 || 7,782 || 277 || 5,161 || 2,799 || 67,385 || 108,998
|-
!scope="row"| [[Europe]]
| 2,636 || 3,438 || 664 || 0 || 2,004 || 119 || 0 || 8,861
|-
!scope="row"| Africa
| 69,206 || 841 || 13,282 || 66,391 || 3,210 || 2,476 || 162 || 155,568
|-
!scope="row"| ''did not arrive''
| 748,452 || 526,121 || 216,439 || 176,601 || 79,096 || 52,673 || 19,304 || 1,818,686
|-style="font-weight:bold;"
!scope="row"| '''Total'''
| 5,848,266
| 3,259,443
| 1,381,404
| 1,061,524
| 554,336
| 305,326
| 111,040
| 12,521,339
|}

The timeline chart when the different nations transported most of their slaves.
[[File:Slaves transported per 25 year period by 6 nations.png|thumb|center|400px]]
{{clear}}

The regions of Africa from which these slaves were taken is given in the following table, from the same source.<!-- as what? Which source?? -->
{| class="wikitable sortable" style=text-align:right;
|+ Source of slaves, by region
!scope="col"| Region
!scope="col"| Embarked
!scope="col"| Disembarked
!scope="col"| ''did not arrive''
!scope="col"| ''% did not arrive''
|-
!scope="row"| [[Angola|Angola Coast]], [[Loango slavery harbour|Loango Coast]], and [[Saint Helena]]
| 5,694,570
| 4,955,430
| 739,140
| 12.98%
|-
!scope="row"| [[Bight of Benin]]
| 1,999,060
| 1,724,834
| 274,226
| 13.72%
|-
!scope="row"| [[Bight of Biafra]]
| 1,594,564
| 1,317,776
| 276,788
| 17.36%
|-
!scope="row"| [[Gold Coast (region)|Gold Coast]]
| 1,209,322
| 1,030,917
| 178,405
| 14.75%
|-
!scope="row"| [[Senegambia]] and [[Islands of Africa|off-shore Atlantic]]
| 755,515
| 611,017
| 144,498
| 19.13%
|-
!scope="row"| [[Southeast Africa]] and [[Islands of Africa|Indian Ocean islands]]
| 542,668
| 436,529
| 106,139
| 19.56%
|-
!scope="row"| [[Sierra Leone]]
| 388,771
| 338,783
| 49,988
| 12.87%
|-
!scope="row"| [[Windward Coast]]
| 336,869
| 287,366
| 49,503
| 14.70%
|-style="font-weight:bold;"
!scope="row"| '''Total'''
| 12,521,339
| 10,702,652
| 1,818,687
| 14.52%
|}

===African conflicts===
[[File:Slave ship diagram.png|right|thumb|Diagram of a slave ship from the Atlantic slave trade. From an Abstract of Evidence delivered before a select committee of the House of Commons in 1790 and 1791.]]
[[File:Thomas-Clarkson-De-kreet-der-Afrikanen MG 1315.tif|thumb|Diagram of a large slave ship. [[Thomas Clarkson]]: ''The cries of Africa to the inhabitants of Europe'', {{Circa|1822}}]]

According to Kimani Nehusi, the presence of European slavers affected the way in which the legal code in African societies responded to offenders. Crimes traditionally punishable by some other form of punishment became punishable by enslavement and sale to slave traders.<ref>{{cite web |title=West Africa |url=https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/history-of-slavery/west-africa#section--the-capture-and-sale-of-enslaved-africans |website=[[National Museums Liverpool]] |access-date=12 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201026080343/https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/history-of-slavery/west-africa |archive-date=26 October 2020}}</ref><ref name="ldhi"/> According to [[David Stannard]]'s ''American Holocaust'', 50% of African deaths occurred in Africa as a result of wars between native kingdoms, which produced the majority of slaves.<ref name="ReferenceA" /> This includes not only those who died in battles but also those who died as a result of forced marches from inland areas to slave ports on the various coasts.<ref name="Gomez">{{cite book |last=Gomez |first=Michael A. |title=Exchanging Our Country Marks |location=Chapel Hill |year=1998 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |url=https://archive.org/details/exchangingourcou0000gome |url-access=registration |isbn=9780807823873}}{{page needed|date=July 2024}}</ref> The practice of enslaving enemy combatants and their villages was widespread throughout Western and West Central Africa. The slave trade was largely a by-product of tribal and state warfare as a way of removing potential dissidents after victory or financing future wars.{{sfn|Thornton|1998|p=}}{{page needed|date=July 2024}}

In addition, European nations instigated war between African nations and increased the number of war captives by making alliances with warring nations and shifted trade locations in coastal areas to follow patterns of African military conflicts to acquire more slaves.<ref name="ldhi"/> Some African groups proved particularly adept and brutal at the practice of enslaving, such as [[Bono state|Bono State]], [[Oyo Empire|Oyo]], [[Kingdom of Benin|Benin]], [[Igala people|Igala]], [[Kaabu]], [[Ashanti Empire|Ashanti]], [[Dahomey]], the [[Aro Confederacy]] and the [[Imbangala]] war bands.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Peterson |first1=Derek R. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Om12BgAAQBAJ&pg=PA113 |title=The Politics of Heritage in Africa |last2=Gavua |first2=Kodzo |last3=Rassool |first3=Ciraj |date=2 March 2015 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-1-107-09485-7 |language=en |access-date=13 August 2020 |archive-date=26 July 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726160753/https://books.google.com/books?id=Om12BgAAQBAJ&pg=PA113#v=onepage&q&f=false |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Stride |first1=G. T. |first2=C. |last2=Ifeka |title=Peoples and Empires of West Africa: West Africa in History 1000–1800 |publisher=Nelson |date=1986}}</ref>{{page needed|date=June 2024}}

In letters written by the [[Manikongo]], [[Afonso I of Kongo|Nzinga Mbemba Afonso]], to the King [[João III of Portugal]], he writes that Portuguese merchandise flowing in is what is fueling the trade in Africans. He requests the King of Portugal to stop sending merchandise but should only send missionaries. In one of his letters he writes:

{{blockquote|Each day the traders are kidnapping our people—children of this country, sons of our nobles and vassals, even people of our own family. This corruption and depravity are so widespread that our land is entirely depopulated. We need in this kingdom only priests and schoolteachers, and no merchandise, unless it is wine and flour for Mass. It is our wish that this Kingdom not be a place for the trade or transport of slaves ...

Many of our subjects eagerly lust after Portuguese merchandise that your subjects have brought into our domains. To satisfy this inordinate appetite, they seize many of our black free subjects ... They sell them. After having taken these prisoners [to the coast] secretly or at night ... As soon as the captives are in the hands of white men they are branded with a red-hot iron.<ref name="Adam Hochschild 1998">{{cite book |title=King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa |first=Adam |last=Hochschild |author-link=Adam Hochschild |isbn=0-618-00190-5 |year=1998 |pages=13 |publisher=[[Houghton Mifflin Books]] |title-link=King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa}}</ref>}}

Before the arrival of the [[Portuguese people|Portuguese]], slavery had already existed in the [[Kingdom of Kongo]]. [[Afonso I of Kongo]] believed that the slave trade should be subject to Kongo law. When he suspected the Portuguese of receiving illegally enslaved persons to sell, he wrote to King João III in 1526 imploring him to put a stop to the practice.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.millersville.edu/~winthrop/Thornton.html |title=Winthrop, reading by John Thornton, "African Political Ethics and the Slave Trade" |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100316075617/http://www.millersville.edu/~winthrop/Thornton.html |archive-date=16 March 2010 |website=Millersville College}}</ref>

The kings of [[Dahomey]] sold [[POW|war captives]] into transatlantic slavery; they would otherwise have been killed in a ceremony known as the [[The annual customs of Dahomey|Annual Customs]]. As one of West Africa's principal slave states, Dahomey became extremely unpopular with neighbouring peoples.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.museeouidah.org/Theme-Dahomey.htm |title=Museum Theme: The Kingdom of Dahomey |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181001202140/http://www.museeouidah.org/Theme-Dahomey.htm |archive-date=1 October 2018 |website=Musee Ouidah}}</ref><ref>{{cite encyclopedia |url=https://www.britannica.com/eb/topic-149772/Dahomey |title=Dahomey (historical kingdom, Africa) |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica |access-date=2 June 2022 |archive-date=26 April 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080426204252/http://www.britannica.com/eb/topic-149772/Dahomey |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.finalcall.com/national/slave_trade10-08-2002.htm |title=Benin seeks forgiveness for role in slave trade |work=Final Call |date=8 October 2002 |access-date=21 September 2007 |archive-date=14 December 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181214123944/http://www.finalcall.com/national/slave_trade10-08-2002.htm |url-status=live}}</ref> Like the [[Bambara Empire]] to the east, the [[Khasso]] kingdoms depended heavily on the slave trade for their economy. A family's status was indicated by the number of slaves it owned, leading to wars for the sole purpose of taking more captives. This trade led the Khasso into increasing contact with the [[Europe]]an settlements of Africa's west coast, particularly the French.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.histoire-afrique.org/article76.html?artsuite=5 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111201193105/http://www.histoire-afrique.org/article76.html?artsuite=5 |title=Le Mali précolonial |language=fr |trans-title=Precolonial Mali |archive-date=1 December 2011}}</ref> [[Benin Empire|Benin]] grew increasingly rich during the 16th and 17th centuries on the slave trade with Europe; slaves from enemy states of the interior were sold and carried to the Americas in Dutch and Portuguese ships. The Bight of Benin's shore soon came to be known as the "Slave Coast".<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyofafrica/4chapter7.shtml |title=The Story of Africa: West African Kingdoms: Ife and Benin |work=[[BBC News]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230419145124/https://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyofafrica/4chapter7.shtml |archive-date=19 April 2023}}</ref>

King Gezo of [[Dahomey]] said in the 1840s:

{{blockquote|The slave trade is the ruling principle of my people. It is the source and the glory of their wealth ... the mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery ...<ref>{{cite magazine |title=The Editor's Shanty |magazine=The Anglo-American Magazine |date=July–December 1854 |volume=V |page=94 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qDQiAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA94 |access-date=2 July 2014}}</ref><ref name="BBCAfrican" />}}

In 1807, the UK Parliament passed the Bill that abolished the trading of slaves. The King of Bonny (now in [[Nigeria]]) was horrified at the conclusion of the practice:

{{blockquote|We think this trade must go on. That is the verdict of our oracle and the priests. They say that your country, however great, can never stop a trade ordained by God himself.<ref name="BBCAfrican">{{cite news |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyofafrica/9chapter2.shtml |title=The Story of Africa: Slavery: African Slave Owners |work=[[BBC News]] |access-date=20 December 2019 |archive-date=23 December 2001 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20011223090507/https://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyofafrica/9chapter2.shtml |url-status=live}}</ref>}}

===Port factories===
After being marched to the coast for sale, enslaved people were held in large forts called factories. The amount of time in factories varied, but [[Milton Meltzer]] states in ''Slavery: A World History'' that around 4.5% of deaths attributed to the transatlantic slave trade occurred during this phase.<ref name = dup2/> In other words, over 820,000 people are believed to have died in African ports such as [[Benguela]], [[Elmina]], and [[Bonny, Nigeria|Bonny]], reducing the number of those shipped to 17.5&nbsp;million.<ref name=dup2>{{cite book |last=Meltzer |first=Milton |title=Slavery: A World History |publisher=Da Capo Press |date=1993}}</ref>{{page needed|date=July 2024}}

===Atlantic shipment===
[[File:A Liverpool Slave Ship by William Jackson.jpg|thumb|upright|''A Liverpool Slave Ship'' by William Jackson. [[Merseyside Maritime Museum]]]]

After being captured and held in the factories, slaves entered the infamous [[Middle Passage]]. Meltzer's research puts this phase of the slave trade's overall mortality at 12.5%.<ref name="dup2" /> Their deaths were the result of brutal treatment and poor care from the time of their capture and throughout their voyage.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Wolfe |first1=Brendan |title=Slave Ships and the Middle Passage |url=http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Slave_Ships_and_the_Middle_Passage |website=encyclopediavirginia.org |access-date=24 March 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160325130747/http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Slave_Ships_and_the_Middle_Passage |archive-date=25 March 2016 |url-status=live}}</ref> Around 2.2&nbsp;million Africans died during these voyages, where they were packed into tight, unsanitary spaces on ships for months at a time.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Duquette |first=Nicolas J. |date=June 2014 |title=Revealing the Relationship Between Ship Crowding and Slave Mortality |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0022050714000357/type/journal_article |journal=[[The Journal of Economic History]] |language=en |volume=74 |issue=2 |pages=535–552 |doi=10.1017/S0022050714000357 |s2cid=59449310 |issn=0022-0507 |access-date=20 February 2021 |archive-date=26 July 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726160726/https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-economic-history/article/abs/revealing-the-relationship-between-ship-crowding-and-slave-mortality/E978DC4E5FE7CC560734D75A277D4787 |url-status=live|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Measures were taken to stem the onboard mortality rate, such as enforced "dancing" (as exercise) above deck and the practice of force-feeding enslaved persons who tried to starve themselves.<ref name="Gomez" /> The conditions on board also resulted in the spread of fatal diseases. Other fatalities were suicides, slaves who escaped by jumping overboard.<ref name="Gomez" /> The slave traders would try to fit anywhere from 350 to 600 slaves on one ship. Before the African slave trade was completely banned by participating nations in 1853, 15.3&nbsp;million enslaved people had arrived in the Americas.

Raymond L. Cohn, an economics professor whose research has focused on [[economic history]] and [[international migration]],<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.econ.ilstu.edu/vitas/rlcohn.html |title=Raymond L. Cohn |website=[[Illinois State University]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070622201438/http://www.econ.ilstu.edu/vitas/rlcohn.html |archive-date=22 June 2007}}</ref> has researched the [[mortality rate]]s among Africans during the voyages of the Atlantic slave trade. He found that mortality rates decreased over the history of the slave trade, primarily because the length of time necessary for the voyage was declining. "In the eighteenth century many slave voyages took at least 2½ months. In the nineteenth century, 2 months appears to have been the maximum length of the voyage, and many voyages were far shorter. Fewer slaves died in the Middle Passage over time mainly because the passage was shorter."<ref>{{cite journal |last=Cohn |first=Raymond L. |title=Deaths of Slaves in the Middle Passage |journal=[[Journal of Economic History]] |date=September 1985 |volume=45 |issue=3 |pages=685–692 |doi=10.1017/S0022050700034604 |pmid=11617312}}</ref>

Despite the vast profits of slavery, the ordinary sailors on [[slave ship]]s were badly paid and subject to harsh discipline. Mortality of around 20%, a number similar and sometimes greater than those of the slaves,<ref>{{cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/atlanticslavetra0000curt/page/282 |title=The Atlantic slave trade: a census |last=Curtin |first=Philip D. |publisher=University of Wisconsin Press |year=1969 |isbn=0-299-05400-4 |location=Madison, WI |pages=[https://archive.org/details/atlanticslavetra0000curt/page/282 282–286] |oclc=46413}}</ref> was expected in a ship's crew during the course of a voyage; this was due to disease, flogging, overwork, or slave uprisings.<ref name="Edwards(Captain.)2007">{{cite book |first=Bernard |last=Edwards |title=Royal Navy Versus the Slave Traders: Enforcing Abolition at Sea 1808–1898 |year=2007 |publisher=Pen & Sword Books |isbn=978-1-84415-633-7 |pages=26–27}}</ref> Disease ([[malaria]] or [[yellow fever]]) was the most common cause of death among sailors. A high crew mortality rate on the return voyage was in the captain's interests as it reduced the number of sailors who had to be paid on reaching the home port.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Bury the Chains: Prophets, Slaves, and Rebels in the First Human Rights Crusade |last=Hochschild |first=Adam |date=2005 |publisher=[[Houghton Mifflin]] |isbn=0-618-10469-0 |page=[https://archive.org/details/burychainsprophe00hoch/page/94 94] |url=https://archive.org/details/burychainsprophe00hoch/page/94}}</ref>

The slave trade was hated by many sailors, and those who joined the crews of slave ships often did so through coercion or because they could find no other employment.<ref name="Rediker2007">{{cite book |first=Marcus |last=Rediker |title=The Slave Ship: A Human History |date=4 October 2007 |publisher=[[Penguin Publishing Group]] |isbn=978-1-4406-2084-3 |page=138}}</ref>

===Seasoning camps===
Meltzer also states that 33% of Africans would have died in the first year at the [[Seasoning (slave)|seasoning camps]] found throughout the Caribbean.<ref name="dup2" /> [[Jamaica]] held one of the most notorious of these camps. [[Dysentery]] was the leading cause of death.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Kiple |first=Kenneth F. |title=The Caribbean Slave: A Biological History |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=veMLoyrX0BEC&pg=PA65 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |year=2002 |page=65 |isbn=0-521-52470-9 |access-date=26 October 2015 |archive-date=26 July 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726160703/https://books.google.com/books?id=veMLoyrX0BEC&pg=PA65#v=onepage&q&f=false |url-status=live}}</ref> Captives who could not be sold were inevitably destroyed.<ref name="FreedmensInquiry" /> Around 5 million Africans died in these camps, reducing the number of survivors to about 10&nbsp;million.<ref name="dup2" /> The purpose of seasoning camps were to obliterate the Africans' identities and culture and prepare them for enslavement. In seasoning camps, enslaved Africans learned a new language and adopted new customs. This process of seasoning slaves took about two or three years.<ref>{{cite web |title=Arrival in the Americas |url=https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/history-of-slavery/americas |website=[[National Museums Liverpool]] |access-date=20 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210615225641/https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/history-of-slavery/americas |archive-date=15 June 2021}}</ref>

==Conditions of slavery on plantations before and after abolition of the transatlantic slave trade==

===Caribbean===
[[File:The boiling house - Ten Views in the Island of Antigua (1823), plate VI - BL.jpg|thumb|Enslaved people inside a sugar boiling house on the island of [[Antigua]] in 1823]]

Over the colony's hundred-year course, about a million slaves succumbed to the conditions of slavery in [[Haiti]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Abbott |first=E. |date=2011 |title=Haiti: A Shattered Nation |publisher=[[Penguin Books]] |isbn=978-1-4683-0160-1 |page=27}}</ref> A slave imported into Haiti was expected to die, on average, within 3 years of arrival, and slaves born on the island had a life expectancy of only 15 years.<ref name="Marlenedaut">{{cite journal |last1=Daut |first1=Marlene L. |title=All the Devils Are Here – How the visual history of the Haitian Revolution misrepresents Black suffering and death |journal=The University of Edinburgh Race .edu |date=27 October 2020 |url=https://www.race.ed.ac.uk/all-the-devils-are-here-how-the-visual-history-of-the-haitian-revolution-misrepresents-black-suffering-and-death/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231102182008/https://www.race.ed.ac.uk/all-the-devils-are-here-how-the-visual-history-of-the-haitian-revolution-misrepresents-black-suffering-and-death/ |url-status=dead |archive-date=2 November 2023|access-date=2 November 2023}}</ref>

In the Caribbean, Dutch Guiana, and Brazil, the death rate of enslaved people was high, and the birth rates were low, slaveholders imported more Africans to sustain the slave population. The rate of natural decline in the slave population ran as high as 5 percent a year. While the death rate of enslaved populations in the United States was the same on Jamaican plantations. In the [[Danish West Indies]], and for most of the Caribbean, mortality rate was high because of the taxing labor of sugar cultivation. Sugar was a major cash crop and as the Caribbean plantations exported sugar to Europe and North America, they needed an enslaved work force to make its production economically viable, so slaves were imported from Africa. Enslaved Africans lived in inhumane conditions and the mortality rate of enslaved children under the age of five was forty percent. Many enslaved persons died from smallpox and intestinal worms contracted from contaminated food and water.<ref>{{cite web |title=Illness and death among the enslaved |url=https://www.virgin-islands-history.org/en/history/slavery/illness-and-death-among-the-enslaved/ |website=[[Danish National Archives]] |access-date=2 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240621032705/https://www.virgin-islands-history.org/en/history/slavery/illness-and-death-among-the-enslaved/ |archive-date=21 June 2024}}</ref>

The Atlantic slave trade exportation of slaves to Cuba was illegal by 1820; however, Cuba continued to import enslaved Africans from Africa until slavery was abolished in 1886. After the abolition of the slave trade to the United States and British colonies in 1807, Florida imported enslaved Africans from Cuba, many landing in [[Amelia Island affair|Amelia Island]]. A clandestine slave ferry operated between [[Havana|Havana, Cuba]] and [[Pensacola, Florida]]. Florida remained under Spanish control until 1821 which made it difficult for the United States to cease the smuggling of enslaved Africans from Cuba. In 1821, Florida was ceded to the United States and the smuggling of enslaved Africans continued, and from 1821 to 1841 Cuba became a main supplier of enslaved Africans for the United States. Between 1859 and 1862, slave traders made 40 illegal voyages between Cuba and the United States.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Kriple |first1=Kenneth |title=The Case Against a Nineteenth-Century Cuba-Florida Slave Trade |journal=[[Florida Historical Quarterly]] |date=1970 |volume=49 |issue=4 |pages=1–3 |url=https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3200&context=fhq |access-date=2 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240302155343/https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3200&context=fhq |archive-date=2 March 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Amelia Island Pays Homage to Slaves Middle Passage with Marker |url=https://jacksonvillefreepress.com/amelia-island-pays-homage-to-slaves-middle-passage-with-marker/ |access-date=2 March 2024 |agency=The Free Press of Jacksonville |date=2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240302155343/https://jacksonvillefreepress.com/amelia-island-pays-homage-to-slaves-middle-passage-with-marker/ |archive-date=2 March 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref>
[[File:Knackstedt & Näther Stereoskopie 0669 Cuba. Zuckerrohr-Plantage. Bildseite mit Ansicht um 1900 arbeitender Sklaven im Feld auf Kuba (cropped).jpg|thumb|right|Afro Cubans working in a sugar plantation]]
The costs of the shipment of human cargo from Africa and operating costs of the slave trade from Africa into Cuba rose in the mid-19th century. Historian Laird Bergad writes of the Cuban slave trade and slave prices: "Three interacting factors produced the overwhelming demand for slaves responsible for pushing prices to the high levels[...] The first was the uncertainty surrounding the future of the slave trade itself. The long and persistent British campaign to force an end to the Cuban trade had traditionally been circumvented by collusion between Spanish colonial officials and Cuban slave traders. An additional obstacle to British efforts was the unwillingness of the United States to permit the search of U.S.-flag vessels suspected of involvement in the slave trade". By the mid-1860s, prices of Africans in their elderly years decreased while prices of younger Africans increased because they were considered to be of prime working age. According to research, in 1860 in [[Matanzas]], about 39.6 percent of slaves sold were young prime aged Africans of either sex; in 1870 the percentage was 74.3 percent. In addition, as the cost of sugar increased so did the price of slaves.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bergad |first1=Laird |title=Slave Prices in Cuba, 1840-1875 |journal=[[Hispanic American Historical Review]] |date=1987 |volume=67 |issue=4 |pages=631–655 |doi=10.1215/00182168-67.4.631 |url=https://read.dukeupress.edu/hahr/article/67/4/631/148042/Slave-Prices-in-Cuba-1840-1875 |access-date=14 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240314162254/https://read.dukeupress.edu/hahr/article/67/4/631/148042/Slave-Prices-in-Cuba-1840-1875 |archive-date=14 March 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref>

===South America===
[[File:Slaves working on a coffee plantation 02.jpg|thumb|Enslaved people working on a [[Coffee production in Brazil|coffee]] plantation in Brazil]]

The life expectancy for Brazil's slave plantation's for African descended slaves was around 23 years.<ref name="Skidmore">{{cite book |last=Skidmore |first=Thomas E. |url=https://archive.org/details/brazilfivecentur00skid |title=Brazil: Five Centuries of Change |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=1999 |isbn=0-19-505809-7 |location=New York |url-access=registration}}</ref>{{page needed|date=May 2022}} The trans-Atlantic slave trade into Brazil was outlawed in 1831. To replace the demand for slaves, slaveholders in Brazil turned to slave reproduction. Enslaved women were forced to give birth to eight or more enslaved children. Some slaveholders promised enslaved women their freedom if they gave birth to eight children. In 1873 in the village of [[Ceará|Santa Ana, province of Ceará]] an enslaved woman named Macária was promised her freedom after she gave birth to eight children. An enslaved woman Delfina killed her baby because she did not want her enslaver Manoel Bento da Costa to own her baby and enslave her child. Brazil practiced [[partus sequitur ventrem]] to increase the slave population through enslaved female reproduction, because in the 19th century, Brazil needed a large enslaved labor force to work on the sugar plantations in Bahia and the agricultural and mining industries of Minas Gerais, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Santos |first1=Martha |title="Slave Mothers", Partus Sequitur Ventrem, and the Naturalization of Slave Reproduction in Nineteenth-Century Brazil |journal=Temp |date=2016 |volume=22 |issue=41 |pages=1–5 |url=https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/1670/167047720002.pdf |access-date=14 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240518044226/https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/1670/167047720002.pdf |archive-date=18 May 2024}}</ref>

After the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade to Brazil, the inter-provincial trade increased which slaveholders forced and depended on enslaved women to give birth to as many children as possible to supply the demand for slaves. [[Abolitionism|Abolitionists]] in Brazil wanted to abolish slavery by removing partus sequitur ventrem because it was used to perpetuate slavery. For example, historian Martha Santos writes of the slave trade, female reproduction, and abolition in Brazil: "A proposal centered on the 'emancipation of the womb', authored by the influential jurist and politician Agostinho Marques Perdigão Malheiro, was officially endorsed by Pedro II as the most practical means to end slavery in a controlled and peaceful manner. This conservative proposal, a modified version of which became the 'free womb' law passed by Parliament in 1871, did provide for the freedom of children subsequently born of enslaved women, while it forced those children to serve their mothers' masters until age twenty-one, and deferred complete emancipation to a later date".<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Santos |first1=Martha |title="Slave Mothers", Partus Sequitur Ventrem, and the Naturalization of Slave Reproduction in Nineteenth-Century Brazil |journal=Temp |date=2016 |volume=22 |issue=41 |pages=1–5 |url=https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/1670/167047720002.pdf |access-date=14 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240518044226/https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/1670/167047720002.pdf |archive-date=18 May 2024}}</ref>

===United States===
{{Main|Slave trade in the United States|Post-1808 importation of slaves to the United States|History of slavery in the United States by state}}
[[File:Advertisement from J.M. Wilson for sale of Maryland and Virginia Negroes.jpg|thumb|Advertisement from [[Jonathan M. Wilson|J. M. Wilson]] for sale of Maryland and Virginia slaves. Maryland and Virginia sold thousands of enslaved people to the [[Deep South]].]]

The birth rate was more than 80 percent higher in the United States because of a natural growth in the slave population and [[Slave breeding in the United States|slave breeding farms]].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Mintz |first1=Steven |title=Historical Context: Facts about the Slave Trade and Slavery |url=https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/teacher-resources/historical-context-facts-about-slave-trade-and-slavery |website=The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History |access-date=17 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240224234501/https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/teacher-resources/historical-context-facts-about-slave-trade-and-slavery |archive-date=24 February 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Smithers |first1=Gregory |title=Slave Breeding: Sex, Violence, and Memory in African American History |date=2012 |publisher=[[University Press of Florida]] |isbn=978-0-8130-4260-2 |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/book/19461/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210725061427/https://muse.jhu.edu/book/19461 |archive-date=25 July 2021 |access-date=17 January 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=A Guide to the History of Slavery in Maryland |url=http://slavery.msa.maryland.gov/pdf/md-slavery-guide-2020.pdf |website=The Maryland State Archives |access-date=17 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240605182255/http://slavery.msa.maryland.gov/pdf/md-slavery-guide-2020.pdf |archive-date=5 June 2024}}</ref> Birth rates were low for the first generation of slaves imported from Africa, but, in the US, may have increased in the 19th century to some 55 per thousand, approaching the biological maximum for human populations.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hacker |first1=David |title=From '20. and odd' to 10 million: The growth of the slave population in the United States |journal=[[Slavery and Abolition]] |date=2020 |volume=41 |issue=4 |pages=840–855 |doi=10.1080/0144039x.2020.1755502 |pmid=33281246 |pmc=7716878}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Withycomb |first1=Shannon |title=Women and Reproduction in the United States during the 19th Century |url=https://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-426 |website=Oxford Research Encyclopedias / American History |date=2019 |doi=10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.426 |isbn=978-0-19-932917-5 |access-date=3 February 2024 |archive-date=3 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240203151117/https://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-426 |url-status=live}}</ref>

After the prohibition of the [[Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves|trans-atlantic slave trade in 1807]], slaveholders in the [[Deep South]] of the United States needed more slaves to work in the cotton and sugar fields. To fill the demand for more slaves, slave breeding was practiced in Richmond, Virginia. Richmond sold thousands of enslaved people to slaveholders in the Deep South to work the cotton, rice, and sugar plantations. Virginia was known as a "breeder state." A slaveholder in Virginia bragged his slaves produced 6,000 [[children of the plantation|enslaved children]] for sale. About 300,000 to 350,000 enslaved people were sold from Richmond's slave breeding farms.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Edwards |title=The Significance of Richmond's Shockoe Bottom: Why it's the wrong place for a baseball stadium |journal=African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter |date=2015 |volume=15 |issue=1 |page=3 |url=https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2236&context=adan |access-date=17 January 2024 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20240810183831/https://scholarworks.umass.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/fd3e6c80-e1d7-4065-826b-85645e58c301/content |archive-date=10 August 2024}}</ref> Slave breeding farms and forced reproduction on [[Female slavery in the United States|enslaved young girls and women]] caused reproductive health issues. Enslaved women found ways to resist forced reproduction by causing miscarriages and abortions by taking plants and medicines.<ref>{{cite web |title=Reproduction and Resistance |url=https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/hidden-voices/resisting-enslavement/reproduction-and-resistance |website=Lowcountry History Digital Initiative |publisher=Lowcountry Digital Library at the College of Charleston |access-date=17 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240613202829/http://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/hidden-voices/resisting-enslavement/reproduction-and-resistance |archive-date=13 June 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Schwartz |first1=Marie Jenkins |title="Good Breeders" |url=https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/08/how-enslaved-womens-sexual-health-was-contested-in-the-antebellum-south.html |access-date=17 January 2024 |magazine=[[Slate (magazine)|Slate]] |date=August 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726160705/https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/08/how-enslaved-womens-sexual-health-was-contested-in-the-antebellum-south.html |archive-date=26 July 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref>

Slaveholders tried to control enslaved women's reproduction by encouraging them to have relationships with enslaved men. "Some slaveholders took matters into their own hands, however, and paired enslaved men and women together with the intent that they would procreate."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Marks |first1=Katie |title=Exploitation and Resistance, Enslaved Motherhood at the University of Alabama |journal=The Crimson Historical Review |date=2021 |page=54 |url=https://crimsonhistorical.ua.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Exploitation_and_Resistance_Final.pdf |access-date=3 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726160703/https://crimsonhistorical.ua.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Exploitation_and_Resistance_Final.pdf |archive-date=26 July 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=West |first1=Shear |last2=Shearer |first2=Erin |title=Fertility control, shared nurturing, and dual exploitation: the lives of enslaved mothers in the antebellum United States |journal=[[Women's History Review]] |date=2017 |page=6 |url=https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/82964048.pdf |access-date=3 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240203151116/https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/82964048.pdf |archive-date=3 February 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref> Enslaved teenage girls gave birth at the ages of fifteen or sixteen years old. Enslaved women gave birth in their early twenties. To meet the demands of slaveholders' needs to birth more slaves, enslaved girls and women had seven or nine children. Enslaved girls and women were forced to give birth to as many slaves as possible. The mortality rate of enslaved mothers and children was high because of poor nutrition, sanitation, lack of medical care, and overwork.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Carey |first1=Anthony |title=Sold Down the River Slavery in the Lower Chattahoochee Valley of Alabama and Georgia |date=2011 |publisher=[[University of Alabama Press]] |isbn=9780817317416 |page=178 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bOVtRFum5WcC&dq=an+enslaved+woman+gave+birth+to+20+kids&pg=PA178 |access-date=23 January 2024 |archive-date=26 July 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726160736/https://books.google.com/books?id=bOVtRFum5WcC&dq=an+enslaved+woman+gave+birth+to+20+kids&pg=PA178#v=onepage&q=an%20enslaved%20woman%20gave%20birth%20to%2020%20kids&f=false |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Campbell |first1=John |title=Work, Pregnancy, and Infant Mortality among Southern Slaves |journal=[[The Journal of Interdisciplinary History]] |date=1984 |volume=14 |issue=4 |pages=793–812 |doi=10.2307/203466 |jstor=203466 |pmid=11617354 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/203466 |access-date=3 February 2024 |archive-date=3 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240203151116/https://www.jstor.org/stable/203466 |url-status=live|url-access=subscription }}</ref> In the United States a slave's life expectancy was 21 to 22 years, and a black child through the age of 1 to 14 had twice the risk of dying of a white child of the same age.<ref>{{cite web |title=What was Life Like Under Slavery |url=https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=2&psid=3040 |website=Digital History |access-date=2 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231223092420/https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3040 |archive-date=23 December 2023 |url-status=live}}</ref>

Slave breeding replaced the demand for enslaved laborers after the decline of the Atlantic slave trade to the United States which caused an increase in the [[Slave trade in the United States|domestic slave trade]]. The sailing of slaves in the domestic slave trade is known as "sold down the river," indicating slaves being sold from [[History of Louisville, Kentucky#"Sold down the river"|Louisville, Kentucky]] which was a slave trading city and supplier of slaves. Louisville, Kentucky, Virginia, and other states in the [[Upland South|Upper South]] supplied slaves to the Deep South carried on boats going down the [[Mississippi River]] to Southern slave markets.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Sublette |first1=Ned |title=The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry |date=2015 |publisher=[[Chicago Review Press]] |isbn=9781613748237 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iwCKCgAAQBAJ&q=slave+trade&pg=PT11 |access-date=23 January 2024 |archive-date=26 July 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726160706/https://books.google.com/books?id=iwCKCgAAQBAJ&q=slave+trade&pg=PT11#v=snippet&q=slave%20trade&f=false |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Fierce |first1=Mildred |title=Slavebreeding in the South's "Peculiar Institution" |url=https://ourtimepress.com/slavebreeding-in-the-souths-peculiar-institution/ |access-date=17 January 2024 |agency=Our Time Press |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240703062752/https://ourtimepress.com/slavebreeding-in-the-souths-peculiar-institution/ |archive-date=3 July 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Jackson |first1=Kellie |title=The 'Capitalized Womb': A Review of Ned and Constance Sublette's ''The American Slave Coast'' |url=https://www.aaihs.org/the-capitalized-womb/ |website=African American Intellectual History Society |date=31 March 2016 |access-date=17 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240225224735/https://www.aaihs.org/the-capitalized-womb/ |archive-date=25 February 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Gandhi |first1=Lakshmi |title=What Does 'Sold Down The River' Really Mean? The Answer Isn't Pretty |url=https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/01/27/265421504/what-does-sold-down-the-river-really-mean-the-answer-isnt-pretty |publisher=[[NPR]] |work=Code Switch |date=27 January 2014 |access-date=17 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726161242/https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/01/27/265421504/what-does-sold-down-the-river-really-mean-the-answer-isnt-pretty |archive-date=26 July 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Sold Down the River |url=https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/sold-down-the-river/ |first1=Leah Preble |last1=Holmes |date=15 April 2018 |website=Mississippi Encyclopedia |access-date=17 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200706144550/https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/sold-down-the-river/ |archive-date=6 July 2020}}</ref> [[New Orleans|New Orleans, Louisiana]] became a major slave market in the United States domestic slave trade after the prohibition of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807. Between 1819 and 1860, 71,000 enslaved people were transported to the [[slave market#North America|New Orleans slave market]] on slave ships that departed from ports in the United States along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico to New Orleans to supply the demand for slaves in the Deep South.<ref>{{cite web |title=Mapping the Coastal Slave Trade |url=https://www.hnoc.org/virtual/purchased-lives/mapping-coastal-slave-trade |website=The Historic New Orleans Collection |access-date=29 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240229165301/https://www.hnoc.org/virtual/purchased-lives/mapping-coastal-slave-trade |archive-date=29 February 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |title=Before the Civil War, New Orleans Was the Center of the U.S. Slave Trade |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/civil-war-new-orleans-was-center-us-slave-trade-180977532/ |magazine=[[Smithsonian Magazine]] |publisher=[[Smithsonian Institution]] |access-date=29 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240510030022/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/civil-war-new-orleans-was-center-us-slave-trade-180977532/ |archive-date=10 May 2024}}</ref>

[[File:Gulf of Mexico.png|thumb|The Gulf of Mexico was utilized by privateers in Florida, Louisiana, and Texas to smuggle enslaved Africans from Cuba.]]

[[Texas]] participated in the illegal slave trade and imported enslaved persons from Cuba to [[Galveston Island]] which was the main illegal slave port in Texas. Texas was part of Mexico from 1821 until 1836, and Cuba continued to supply African slaves to many Latin American countries. After 1821, the smuggling of slaves into Texas increased because of slaveholders' demand for additional enslaved labor. Galveston Island is located in the Gulf of Mexico and is 800 miles away from the slave ports in Cuba and between 60 and 70 miles away from the Louisiana border. Smugglers utilized these geographic locations to their advantage and illegally imported enslaved Africans from Cuba and made a profit by selling Africans to slaveholders in Texas and Louisiana. For example, French pirate and privateer [[Jean Lafitte]], established a colony on Galveston Island in 1817 and participated in privateering for four years and made a profit by smuggling in slaves and sold over 200 Africans to slaveholders in the United States. Lafitte used intermediaries such as the Bowie brothers, John, Resin, and James who contracted with slave traders and planters from the United States who had an interest in buying slaves. From 1818 to 1820, Lafitte and the Bowie brothers made $65,000 smuggling Africans into the Southern states and selling them to planters in Louisiana and Mississippi.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Robbins |first1=Fred |title=The Origin and Development of the African Slave Trade in Galveston, Texas, and Surrounding Areas from 1816 to 1836 |journal=[[East Texas Historical Journal]] |date=1971 |volume=9 |issue=2 |pages=154–156 |url=https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1231&context=ethj |access-date=9 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180628015504/https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1231&context=ethj |archive-date=28 June 2018}}</ref>

Historian Ernest Obadele-Starks estimated that after 1807 the number of enslaved Africans smuggled into the United States annually averaged as low as 3,500. New Orleans, Louisiana and Florida were centers for the illegal importation of slaves in the United States because of their close proximity to Cuba and the other Caribbean islands that provided Southern states enslaved labor.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Head |first1=David |title=Slave Smuggling by Foreign Privateers: The Illegal Slave Trade and the Geopolitics of the Early Republic |journal=[[Journal of the Early Republic]] |date=2013 |volume=33 |issue=3 |pages=438–439 |doi=10.1353/jer.2013.0061 |jstor=24487048 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24487048 |access-date=7 March 2024 |archive-date=18 May 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240518130357/https://www.jstor.org/stable/24487048 |url-status=live|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

==Diseases==

[[File:Bottle of 100 anti-malarial pills, London, England, 1891-194 Wellcome L0060511.jpg|thumb|These anti-malarial pills were used by travelers or people living in areas where malaria was common. This photo is a bottle of 100 anti-malarial pills from London, England in 1891.]]

Many diseases, each capable of killing a large minority or even a majority of a new human population, arrived in the Americas after 1492. They include [[smallpox]], [[malaria]], [[bubonic plague]], [[typhus]], [[influenza]], [[measles]], [[diphtheria]], [[yellow fever]], and [[whooping cough]].<ref>{{Cite book |title=Epidemics and enslavement: biological catastrophe in the Native Southeast, 1492–1715 |first=Paul |last=Kelton |date=2007 |publisher=[[University of Nebraska Press]] |isbn=978-0-8032-1557-3 |location=Lincoln |oclc=182560175}}</ref> During the Atlantic slave trade following the discovery of the New World, diseases such as these are recorded as causing mass mortality.<ref name=":3">{{Cite book |title=Epidemics in the modern world |last=Krieg |first=Joann P. |date=1992 |publisher=Twayne Publishers |isbn=0-8057-8852-2 |location=New York |oclc=25710386 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/epidemicsinmoder0000krie}}</ref> Due to the many diseases in the African continent, Europeans nicknamed Sierra Leone in West Africa "white man's grave" because of the number of European deaths from diseases.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Curtin |first1=P.D. |title="The White Man's Grave:" Image and Reality, 1780-1850 |journal=Journal of British Studies |date=2017 |volume=1 |issue=1 |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-british-studies/article/abs/white-mans-grave-image-and-reality-17801850/3D5A35C18B1B4D2A4956641007FB4572 |access-date=15 August 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Africa and Europe 1800-1914 |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyofafrica/11generic1.shtml |website=BBC World service |access-date=15 August 2024}}</ref>

From 1819 to 1836, the regions of Africa that had the highest European deaths from malaria were Sierra Leone and Senegal. Out of European deaths per 1,000, 164.66 whites died from malaria in Senegal, and 483 whites died from malaria in Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone had the highest number of whites dying from malaria accounting for 40 percent of deaths each year, because of this it was nicknamed "white man's grave."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Curtin |first1=Philip |title=The End of the "White Man's Grave"? Nineteenth-Century Mortality in West Africa |journal=The Journal of Interdisciplinary History |date=1990 |volume=21 |issue=1 |pages=63, 65, 67 |doi=10.2307/204918 |jstor=204918 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/204918 |access-date=15 August 2024|url-access=subscription }}</ref> The phrase white man's grave was coined in the 1830s. However, Europeans prior to the creation of the phrase considered Africa a dangerous environment due to tropical heat and the high death rates of people dying from diseases, which was why the phrase was created in the 19th century.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Alpern |first1=Stanley |title=Abson & Company Slave Traders in Eighteenth-Century West Africa |date=2019 |publisher=Hurst |isbn=9781787382336 |pages=1–3, 122 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Or-PDwAAQBAJ&q=white%20man%27s%20grave}}</ref>

Malaria thrives in warm and humid climates. In North America malaria did not spread as much because certain climatic regions were not conducive to the disease's survival. European American slaveholders preferred Africans who had immunity to malaria be trafficked to the slave ports. The price of Africans born in regions where malaria was dominate were higher. Historian Elena Esposito explains: "By looking at the historical prices of African slaves in the United States, we find evidence of a malaria premium granted by resistance to the disease. In fact, we show that on Louisiana plantations, more malaria resistant individuals - those born in regions of Africa with a higher prevalence of malaria - commanded significantly higher prices."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Esposito |first1=Elena |title=The Side Effects of Immunity: Malaria and African Slavery in the United States |journal=IRIS Aperto |date=2020 |pages=1–2 |url=https://iris.unito.it/retrieve/c2b2253b-a625-4540-81e9-7f6495d78f1d/esposito_aejapp_slavery_acceptedversion.pdf |access-date=15 August 2024}}</ref>

Evolutionary history may also have played a role in African people's resistance to diseases in the contitent, and [[Native Americans in the United States|Indigenous peoples/Native Americans]] lack of resistance to African borne diseases. Compared to Africans and Europeans, New World populations did not have a history of exposure to diseases such as malaria, and therefore, no genetic resistance had been produced as a result of adaptation through [[natural selection]].<ref name=":5">{{Cite book |title=When Disease Makes History: Epidemics and Great Historical Turning Points |last1=Diamond |first1=Jared |author1-link=Jared Diamond |last2=Panosian |first2=Claire |author2-link=Claire Panosian |publisher=[[Helsinki University Press]] |year=2006 |isbn=951-570-640-8 |editor-last=Hämäläinen |editor-first=Pekka |location=Helsinki |pages=18–19, 25}}</ref>

Levels and extent of immunity varies from disease to disease. For smallpox and measles for example, those who survive are equipped with the immunity to combat the disease for the rest of their life in that they cannot contract the disease again. There are also diseases, such as malaria, which do not confer effective lasting immunity.<ref name=":5" />

===Smallpox===
Epidemics of smallpox were known for causing a significant decrease in the Indigenous population of the New World.<ref name=":4">{{Cite book |title=Epidemics and history: disease, power, and imperialism |last=Watts |first=S. J. |date=1997 |publisher=[[Yale University Press]] |isbn=0-585-35620-3 |location=New Haven |oclc=47009810}}</ref> The effects on survivors included [[Acne scarring|pockmarks]] on the skin which left deep scars, commonly causing significant [[disfigurement]]. Some Europeans, who believed the plague of [[syphilis]] in Europe to have come from the Americas, saw smallpox as the European revenge against the Natives.<ref name=":3" /> Africans and Europeans, unlike the native population, often had lifelong immunity, because they had often been exposed to minor forms of the illness such as [[cowpox]] or [[variola minor]] disease in childhood. By the late 16th century, there existed some forms of inoculation and [[variolation]] in Africa and the Middle East. One practice features Arab traders in Africa "buying-off" the disease in which a cloth that had been previously exposed to the sickness was to be tied to another child's arm to increase immunity. Another practice involved taking pus from a smallpox scab and putting it in the cut of a healthy individual in an attempt to have a mild case of the disease in the future rather than the effects becoming fatal.<ref name=":4"/>

==European competition==
The trade of enslaved Africans in the Atlantic has its origins in the explorations of Portuguese mariners down the coast of West Africa in the 15th century. Before that, contact with African slave markets was made to ransom Portuguese who had been captured by the intense North African [[Barbary pirate]] attacks on Portuguese ships and coastal villages, frequently leaving them depopulated.<ref>{{cite magazine |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/white_slaves_01.shtml |title=British History in depth: British Slaves on the Barbary Coast |magazine=[[BBC History]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240709140805/https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/white_slaves_01.shtml |archive-date=9 July 2024}}</ref> The first Europeans to use enslaved Africans in the New World were the [[Spaniards]], who sought auxiliaries for their conquest expeditions and labourers on islands such as [[Cuba]] and [[Hispaniola]]. The alarming decline in the native population had spurred the first royal laws protecting them ([[Laws of Burgos]], 1512–13). The first enslaved Africans arrived in Hispaniola in 1501.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.ukcouncilhumanrights.co.uk/webbook-chap1.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061003165601/http://www.ukcouncilhumanrights.co.uk/webbook-chap1.html |title=Webbook Chap1 |archive-date=3 October 2006 |website=www.ukcouncilhumanrights.co.uk}}</ref> After Portugal had succeeded in establishing sugar plantations ({{lang|pt|engenhos}}) in northern Brazil {{Circa|1545}}, Portuguese merchants on the West African coast began to supply enslaved Africans to the sugar planters. While at first these planters had relied almost exclusively on the native [[Tupi people|Tupani]] for slave labour, after 1570 they began importing Africans, as a series of [[epidemics]] had decimated the already destabilized Tupani communities. By 1630, Africans had replaced the Tupani as the largest contingent of labour on Brazilian sugar plantations. This ended the European medieval household tradition of [[medieval slavery|slavery]]<!--Explain-->, resulted in Brazil's receiving the most enslaved Africans, and revealed sugar cultivation and processing as the reason that roughly 84% of these Africans were shipped to the New World.

[[File:Charles II.jpg|thumb|upright|Charles II of Spain]]

On November 7, 1693, [[Charles II of Spain|Charles II]] issued a [[royal decree]], providing sanctuary in [[Spanish Florida]] for [[fugitive slaves]] from the British colony of [[South Carolina]].<ref>Alejandra Dubcovsky, ''Informed Power: Communication in the Early American South'' (Harvard University Press, 2016)</ref>

As Britain rose in naval power and settled continental North America and some islands of the [[West Indies]], they became the leading slave traders.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ism/slavery/europe/index.aspx |title=European traders |publisher=International Slavery Museum |access-date=7 July 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141015011331/http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ism/slavery/europe/index.aspx |archive-date=15 October 2014}}</ref> At one stage the trade was the monopoly of the [[Royal African Company]], operating out of London. But, following the loss of the company's monopoly in 1689,<ref>Elkins, Stanley: ''Slavery''. New York: Universal Library, 1963, p. 48.</ref> [[Bristol]] and [[Liverpool]] merchants became increasingly involved in the trade.<ref>{{cite book |last=Rawley |first=James |title=London: Metropolis of the Slave Trade |date=2003}}</ref>{{page needed|date=July 2024}} By the late 18th century, one out of every four ships that left Liverpool harbour was a [[slave ship|slave trading ship]].<ref name="Anstey">{{cite book |last=Anstey |first=Roger |title=The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, 1760–1810 |location=London |publisher=Macmillan |date=1975 |page=}}</ref>{{page needed|date=July 2024}} Much of the wealth on which the city of [[Manchester]], and surrounding towns, was built in the late 18th century, and for much of the 19th century, was based on the processing of slave-picked cotton and manufacture of cloth.<ref>[http://www.revealinghistories.org.uk/how-did-money-from-slavery-help-develop-greater-manchester/articles/slave-grown-cotton-in-greater-manchester-museums.html "Slave-grown cotton in greater Manchester"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201112025209/http://www.revealinghistories.org.uk/how-did-money-from-slavery-help-develop-greater-manchester/articles/slave-grown-cotton-in-greater-manchester-museums.html |date=2020-11-12 }}, Revealing Histories.</ref> Other British cities also profited from the slave trade. [[Birmingham]], the largest [[Gun Quarter, Birmingham|gun-producing]] town in Britain at the time, supplied guns to be traded for slaves.<ref>{{cite journal |title=The Birmingham Gun Trade and The American System of Manufactures |first=David J. |last=Williams |s2cid=110533082 |url=http://www.pubs-newcomen.com/tfiles/75ap085.pdf |archive-url=https://www.webcitation.org/6cRfwedHS?url=http://www.pubs-newcomen.com/tfiles/75ap085.pdf |archive-date=21 October 2015 |journal=Trans. Newcomen Soc. |volume=75 |pages=85–106 |date=2005 |access-date=3 October 2015 |url-status=usurped |doi=10.1179/tns.2005.004}}</ref> 75% of all sugar produced in the plantations was sent to London, and much of it was consumed in the highly lucrative [[coffee house]]s there.<ref name="Anstey" />

==New World destinations==

===Caribbean===
[[File:Cutting Sugar Cane in Trinidad, 1836, lithograph.jpg|thumb|A sugarcane plantation in [[Trinidad and Tobago|Trinidad]], 1836, lithograph. In 1834, Britain abolished slavery in its colonies.<ref>{{cite web |title=Aug. 1, 1834: Britain Passes Slavery Abolition Act |url=https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/britain-slavery-abolition-act/#:~:text=On%20August%201%2C%201834%2C%20Britain,inspiration%20and%20hope%20for%20abolitionists. |website=www.zinnedproject.org |access-date=23 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240703205200/https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/britain-slavery-abolition-act/ |archive-date=3 July 2024}}</ref>]]

The first slaves to arrive as part of a labour force in the New World reached the island of [[Hispaniola]] (now [[Haiti]] and the [[Dominican Republic]]) in 1502. Cuba received its first four slaves in 1513. [[Jamaica]] received its first shipment of 4,000 slaves in 1518.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Wynter |first1=Sylvia |year=1984a |title=New Seville and the Conversion Experience of Bartolomé de Las Casas: Part One |journal=Jamaica Journal |volume=17 |issue=2 |pages=25–32}}</ref> "Between the 1490s and the 1850s, Latin America, including the Spanish-speaking [[Caribbean]] and Brazil, imported the largest number of African slaves to the New World, generating the single-greatest concentration of black populations outside of the African continent."<ref>{{cite web |last1=Vinson |first1=Ben |last2=Graves |first2=Greg |title=The Black Experience in Colonial Latin America |url=https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780199766581/obo-9780199766581-0038.xml |website=Oxford Bibliographies |access-date=29 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240229182855/https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/abstract/document/obo-9780199766581/obo-9780199766581-0038.xml |archive-date=29 February 2024}}</ref> About 4 million enslaved Africans were transported to the Caribbean by way of the transatlantic slave trade.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Caribbean |url=https://slaveryandremembrance.org/articles/article/?id=A0105 |website=Colonial Williamsburg Foundation |publisher=[[UNESCO]] |access-date=29 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726161219/https://slaveryandremembrance.org/articles/article/?id=A0105 |archive-date=26 July 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref> [[Slavery in Cuba|Cuba]], the largest slave colony in Hispanic America, imported 800,000 enslaved Africans and participated in the illegal slave trade longer than any other.<ref>{{cite web |title=Cuba and the United States in the Atlantic Slave Trade (1789–1820) |url=https://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/cuba-us-slave-trade |website=Hutchins Center for African & African American Research |publisher=[[Harvard University]] |access-date=1 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240301185001/https://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/cuba-us-slave-trade |archive-date=1 March 2024}}</ref> Enslaved Africans worked about 16 hours a day on the [[Sugar plantations in the Caribbean|sugarcane plantations]]. They brought their [[Traditional African religions|traditional religions]] from West Africa; these developed in the new world as religions that scholars call [[African diaspora religions]].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Padgett |first1=Jeffries |title=The Christianization of Slaves in the West Indies |url=https://scholar.library.miami.edu/slaves/slave_trade/individual_essays/jeffrey.html |website=Slave Resistance a Caribbean Study |publisher=[[University of Miami Libraries]] |access-date=29 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726161212/https://scholar.library.miami.edu/slaves/slave_trade/individual_essays/jeffrey.html |archive-date=26 July 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref>

===Central America===
Slave exports to [[Honduras]] and [[Guatemala]] started in 1526. Historian Nigel Bolland writes of the slave trade in Central America: "The demand for labor in the early Spanish settlements of Hispaniola, [[Cuba]], [[Panama]], and [[Peru]] resulted in a large-scale [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Indian (Indigenous people)]] slave trade in [[Central America]] in the second quarter of the 16th century. Indeed, the first colonial economy of the region was based on slave trading."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bolland |first1=Nigel |title=Colonization and slavery in central America |journal=Slavery & Abolition |date=1994 |volume=15 |issue=2 |pages=11–25 |doi=10.1080/01440399408575123 |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01440399408575123#:~:text=The%20demand%20for%20labour%20in,was%20based%20on%20slave%20trading. |access-date=29 February 2024 |archive-date=29 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240229181859/https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01440399408575123#:~:text=The%20demand%20for%20labour%20in,was%20based%20on%20slave%20trading. |url-status=live|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

In the 16th century, the majority of Africans imported to Central America came from present-day [[Senegambia]] and other West African regions. Between 1607 and 1640, Portuguese slave traders imported Africans from Angola to [[Honduras]] and were sold in [[Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala|Santiago de Guatemala]] to work in the sugar and indigo plantations. The majority of the Africans working in the plantations were from the Luanda region in Central Africa.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Lokken |first1=Paul |title=From the "Kingdoms of Angola" to Santiago de Guatemala: The Portuguese Asientos and Spanish Central America, 1595–1640 |journal=[[Hispanic American Historical Review]] |date=2013 |volume=93 |issue=2 |pages=171–203 |doi=10.1215/00182168-2077126 |url=https://read.dukeupress.edu/hahr/article-abstract/93/2/171/10778/From-the-Kingdoms-of-Angola-to-Santiago-de?redirectedFrom=fulltext |access-date=1 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726161245/https://read.dukeupress.edu/hahr/article-abstract/93/2/171/10778/From-the-Kingdoms-of-Angola-to-Santiago-de?redirectedFrom=fulltext |archive-date=26 July 2024 |url-status=live|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

===United States===
The first enslaved Africans to reach what would become the United States arrived in July{{citation needed|date=October 2016}} 1526 as part of a Spanish attempt to colonize [[San Miguel de Gualdape]]. By November, the 300 Spanish colonists were reduced to 100, and their slaves from 100 to 70{{why|date = August 2014}}. The enslaved people revolted in 1526 and joined a nearby Native American tribe, while the Spanish abandoned the colony altogether (1527). The area of the future [[Colombia]] received its first enslaved people in 1533. [[El Salvador]], [[Costa Rica]], and [[Florida]] began their stints in the slave trade in 1541, 1563, and 1581, respectively. According to research, about 40 percent of enslaved Africans arrived at [[Gadsden's Wharf]], which was the largest slave port in the United States.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Angeleti |first1=Gabriella |title=Once the US's largest slave port, Charleston will open African American museum next year |url=https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/08/23/once-the-uss-largest-slave-port-charleston-will-open-african-american-museum-next-year |access-date=28 February 2024 |agency=The Art Newspaper |date=2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240302172925/https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/08/23/once-the-uss-largest-slave-port-charleston-will-open-african-american-museum-next-year |archive-date=2 March 2024}}</ref>

In the 17th century in [[History of Boston|colonial Boston]] in Massachusetts, about 166 transatlantic voyages embarked out of Boston. Boston imported enslaved people from Africa and exported rum.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Middle Passage |url=https://www.nps.gov/articles/the-middle-passage.htm |website=Boston African American National Historic Site |publisher=[[National Park Service]] |access-date=28 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240222192707/https://www.nps.gov/articles/the-middle-passage.htm |archive-date=22 February 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref> [[Peter Faneuil]] organized and profited from the trans-Atlantic voyages out of Boston and imported manufactured goods from Europe, and imported enslaved people, rum, and sugar from the Caribbean.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Atlantic Empire of Peter Faneuil |url=https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-atlantic-empire-of-peter-faneuil.htm |website=Boston African American National Historical Park |publisher=[[National Park Service]] |access-date=28 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240414180604/https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-atlantic-empire-of-peter-faneuil.htm |archive-date=14 April 2024}}</ref> Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island were the three New England states with the largest slave populations. The enslaved population in South Kingston, Rhode Island was thirty percent, in Boston the slave population was ten percent, in New London it was nine percent, and in New York it was 7.2 percent.<ref>{{cite web |title=Slaves in New England |url=https://www.medfordhistorical.org/medford-history/africa-to-medford/slaves-in-new-england/#:~:text=Enslaved%20people%20were%20brought%20into,as%20children%20in%20coastal%20cities. |website=Medford Historical Society and Museum |date=25 February 2013 |access-date=29 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240229173105/https://www.medfordhistorical.org/medford-history/africa-to-medford/slaves-in-new-england/ |archive-date=29 February 2024}}</ref> The earliest documentation of enslaved people in New England was 1638. In Northern American British colonies, [[Massachusetts Bay Colony|Massachusetts Bay colonies]] was the center for slave trading and colonial Boston was a major slave port in the North importing slaves directly from Africa.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Importation and Sale of Enslaved People |url=https://www.masshist.org/features/endofslavery/trade |website=Massachusetts Historical Society |access-date=29 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240229173153/https://www.masshist.org/features/endofslavery/trade |archive-date=29 February 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Slavery and the Slave Trade in New England |url=https://www.library.dartmouth.edu/slavery-project/slavery-slave-trade-new-england |website=Dartmouth Libraries |publisher=[[Dartmouth College]] |access-date=29 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726161216/https://www.library.dartmouth.edu/slavery-project/slavery-slave-trade-new-england |archive-date=26 July 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref>

[[File:Bunce Island north-west.JPG|thumb|[[Bunce Island]] in [[Sierra Leone]] exported tens of thousands of Africans to the [[Sea Islands]] of South Carolina and Georgia. [[Gadsden's Wharf]] in Charleston, South Carolina, received the majority of imported slaves from Bunce Island.<ref>{{cite news |title=Freetown City Council Host CEO of the International African American Museum (IAAM) |url=https://thecalabashnewspaper.com/freetown-city-council-host-ceo-of-the-international-african-american-museum-iaam/ |access-date=28 February 2024 |agency=The Calabash Newspaper |date=2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240228182745/https://thecalabashnewspaper.com/freetown-city-council-host-ceo-of-the-international-african-american-museum-iaam/ |archive-date=28 February 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref> [[Gullah|African Americans]] in the Sea Islands can trace their ancestry to Sierra Leone.<ref>{{cite web |title=Bunce Island History |url=https://glc.yale.edu/lectures/evening-lectures/past-lectures/20042005/bunce-island/bunce-island-history |website=Yale Macmillan Center |date=15 June 2015 |publisher=Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition |access-date=28 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240313085856/https://glc.yale.edu/lectures/evening-lectures/past-lectures/20042005/bunce-island/bunce-island-history |archive-date=13 March 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Tracing the Trade in Enslaved Africans back to Bunce Island, Sierra Leone |url=https://artsandculture.google.com/story/tracing-the-trade-in-enslaved-africans-back-to-bunce-island-sierra-leone-world-monuments-fund/awWhsuSPtz5z1A?hl=en |website=Google Arts and Culture |publisher=World Monuments Fund |access-date=28 February 2024 |archive-date=28 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240228175220/https://artsandculture.google.com/story/tracing-the-trade-in-enslaved-africans-back-to-bunce-island-sierra-leone-world-monuments-fund/awWhsuSPtz5z1A?hl=en |url-status=live}}</ref>]]

The 17th century saw an increase in shipments. Africans were brought to Point Comfort – several miles downriver from the English colony of [[Jamestown, Virginia|Jamestown]], Virginia – in 1619. The first kidnapped Africans in English North America were classed as indentured servants and freed after seven years. Virginia law codified chattel slavery in 1656, and in 1662 the colony adopted the principle of ''[[partus sequitur ventrem]]'', which classified children of slave mothers as slaves, regardless of paternity. Under British law, children born of white male slave owners and black female slaves would have inherited the father's status and rights. The change to maternal inheritance for slaves guaranteed that anyone born with any slave ancestors was a slave, with no regard to the nature of the relations between the white father and the black mother, consensual or not.<ref>{{cite web |title=New World Labor Systems: African Slavery |url=https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/africanpassageslowcountryadapt/introductionatlanticworld/the_rise_of_african_slavery |website=Lowcountry History Digital Initiative |publisher=Lowcountry Digital Library at the College of Charleston |access-date=16 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240512112240/http://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/africanpassageslowcountryadapt/introductionatlanticworld/the_rise_of_african_slavery |archive-date=12 May 2024}}</ref>

In addition to African persons, [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas]] were [[Slavery among the Indigenous peoples of the Americas#European enslavement of Indigenous peoples|trafficked]] through Atlantic trade routes. The 1677 work ''[[s:The Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indians|The Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indians]]'', for example, documents [[English overseas possessions#The Americas|English colonial]] [[prisoners of war]] (not, in fact, opposing combatants, but imprisoned members of [[Praying Indian|English-allied forces]]) being enslaved and sent to Caribbean destinations.<ref name="Gookin">{{cite book |last=Gookin |first=Daniel |author-link=Daniel Gookin |year=1836 |orig-date=1677 |title=The Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indians |title-link=s:The Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indians |publisher=Worcester, etc. |hdl=2027/mdp.39015005075109?urlappend=%3Bseq=459 |oclc=3976964 |id=[[iarchive:archaeologiaame02amer/page/423/mode/1up|archaeologiaame02amer]]|quote=But this shows the prudence and fidelity of the [[Praying Indian|Christian Indians]]; yet notwithstanding all this service they were, with others of our Christian Indians, through the harsh dealings of some English, in a manner constrained, for want of shelter, protection, and encouragement, to fall off to the enemy at [[Hassanamesit Indian Reservation|Hassanamesit]], the story whereof follows in its place; and one of them, viz. Sampson, was slain in fight, by some scouts of our praying Indians, about [[Mount Wachusett|Watchuset]]; and the other, Joseph, taken prisoner in [[Plymouth Colony]], and sold for a slave to some merchants at [[Boston]], and sent to Jamaica, but upon the importunity of [[John Eliot (missionary)|Mr. Elliot]], which the master of the vessel related to him, was brought back again, but not released. His two children taken prisoners with him were redeemed by Mr. Elliot, and afterward his wife, their mother, taken captive, which woman was a sober Christian woman and is employed to teach school among the Indians at [[Concord, Massachusetts|Concord]], and her children are with her, but her husband held as before, a servant; though several that know the said Joseph and his former carriage, have interceded for his release, but cannot obtain it; some informing authority that he had been active against the English when he was with the enemy.}}</ref><ref name="Bodge1">{{cite book |last=Bodge |first=George Madison |author-link=George Madison Bodge |year=1906 |title=Soldiers in King Philip's War: Being a Critical Account of that War, with a Concise History of the Indian Wars of New England from 1620–1677 |title-link=iarchive:soldiersinkingph1906bodg |chapter=Capt. Thomas Wheeler and his Men; with Capt. Edward Hutchinson at Brookfield |edition=Third |location=[[Boston]] |publisher=The Rockwell and Churchill Press |page=109 |lccn=08003858 |hdl=2027/bc.ark:/13960/t4hn31h3t |oclc=427544035 |quote=Sampson was killed by some English scouts near Wachuset, and Joseph was captured and sold into slavery in the West Indies.}}</ref> Captive Indigenous opponents, including women and children, were also sold into slavery at a substantial profit, to be transported to [[West Indies]] colonies.<ref name="Bodge2">{{cite book |last=Bodge |first=George Madison |author-link=George Madison Bodge |year=1906 |title=Soldiers in King Philip's War: Being a Critical Account of that War, with a Concise History of the Indian Wars of New England from 1620–1677 |title-link=iarchive:soldiersinkingph1906bodg |chapter=Appendix A |edition=Third |location=[[Boston]]|publisher=The Rockwell and Churchill Press |page=479 |lccn=08003858 |hdl=2027/bc.ark:/13960/t4hn31h3t |oclc=427544035 |quote={{smallcaps|Captives.}} The following accounts show the harsh custom of the times, and reveal a source of Colonial revenue not open to our country since that day. {{smallcaps|Account of Captives sold by Mass. Colony.}} ''August 24th, 1676.'' [[John Hull (merchant)|John Hull's]] Journal page 398.}}</ref><ref name="Winiarski2004">{{cite journal |last=Winiarski |first=Douglas L. |date=September 2004 |editor-last=Rhoads |editor-first=Linda Smith |title=A Question of Plain Dealing: Josiah Cotton, Native Christians, and the Quest for Security in Eighteenth-Century Plymouth County |url=https://scholarship.richmond.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1030&context=religiousstudies-faculty-publications |format=PDF |journal=[[The New England Quarterly]] |volume=77 |issue=3 |pages=368–413 |jstor=1559824 |oclc=5552741105 |issn=0028-4866 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200322224607/https://scholarship.richmond.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1030&context=religiousstudies-faculty-publications |archive-date=22 March 2020 |url-status=live |quote=While Philip and the vast majority of hostile Natives were killed outright during the war or sold into slavery in the West Indies, the friendly Wampanoag at [[Manomet, Massachusetts|Manomet Ponds]] retained their lands.}}</ref>

===South America===
[[File:Le Tour du monde-04-p016a.jpg|thumb|A slave sale transaction in [[Rio de Janeiro]]]]

The Spanish and Portuguese colonized South America and enslaved the [[Indigenous peoples of South America|Indigenous people]]. They later enslaved Africans brought from West and Central Africa in ships by way of the Atlantic slave trade. Brazil imported 4.8 million enslaved Africans.<ref>{{cite web |title=What It Means To Be 'Black In Latin America' |url=https://www.npr.org/2011/07/27/138601410/what-it-means-to-be-black-in-latin-america |website=[[NPR]] South Carolina Public Radio |date=27 July 2011 |access-date=29 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726161820/https://www.npr.org/2011/07/27/138601410/what-it-means-to-be-black-in-latin-america |archive-date=26 July 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref> Africans who escaped slavery there formed ''[[quilombo]]s'', [[Maroons|maroon communities]] with degrees of self-governance. [[Palmares (quilombo)|Palamares]], a quilombo community, lasted for 100 years while other communities were quickly removed by the Dutch and Portuguese.<ref>{{cite web |title=The African Slave Trade and Slave Life |url=https://library.brown.edu/create/fivecenturiesofchange/chapters/chapter-2/african-slavery/ |website=[[Brown University Library]] |access-date=29 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230604195902/http://library.brown.edu/create/fivecenturiesofchange/chapters/chapter-2/african-slavery/ |archive-date=4 June 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Werner |first1=Amy |title=The Practicality of Slavery in Latin America |journal=Constructing the Past |date=2013 |volume=14 |issue=1 |pages=1–6 |url=https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1202&context=constructing |access-date=29 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230618070504/https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1202&context=constructing |archive-date=18 June 2023 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Newson |first1=Linda |last2=Minchin |first2=Susie |title=From Capture to Sale: The Portuguese Slave Trade to Spanish South America in the Early Seventeenth Century |date=2007 |publisher=[[Brill Publishers|BRILL]] |pages=101–135 |jstor=10.1163/j.ctv29sfpzt.10 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctv29sfpzt.10 |access-date=29 February 2024 |archive-date=16 December 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231216120307/https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctv29sfpzt.10 |url-status=live}}</ref> The Africans imported to Brazil were [[Yoruba people|Yoruba]], [[Fon people|Fon]], [[Bantu peoples|Bantu]] and others. Their religions from Africa developed into new world religions in Brazil called [[Candomblé]], [[Umbanda]], Xango, and [[Macumba]].<ref>{{cite web |title=African-Derived Religions in Brazil |url=https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/faq/african-derived-religions-brazil#:~:text=African%2Dderived%20religions%20in%20Brazil%20include%2C%20most%20prominently%2C%20Candombl%C3%A9,identities%2C%20both%20historically%20and%20today. |website=Harvard Divinity School |publisher=[[Harvard University]] |access-date=1 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210904114645/https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/faq/african-derived-religions-brazil#:~:text=African%2Dderived%20religions%20in%20Brazil%20include%2C%20most%20prominently%2C%20Candombl%C3%A9,identities%2C%20both%20historically%20and%20today. |archive-date=4 September 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref>

Historian Erika Edwards writes of the slave trade in Argentina: "In 1587 the first slaves arrived in [[Buenos Aires]] from Brazil. From 1580 to 1640, the main commercial activity for Buenos Aires was the slave trade. More than 70 percent of the value of all imports arriving in Buenos Aires were enslaved Africans. Slaves came primarily from Brazil via the Portuguese slave trade from [[Angola]] and other [[West Africa|western states in Africa]]. Once arriving in Buenos Aires, they could be sent as far as [[Lima|Lima, Peru]]; slaves were provided to [[Mendoza, Argentina|Mendoza]], Tucuman, and Salta Jujuy as well as to Chile, Paraguay, and what is today [[Bolivia]] and southern Peru."<ref>{{cite web |last1=Edwards |first1=Erika |title=Slavery in Argentina |url=https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780199766581/obo-9780199766581-0157.xml |website=Oxford Bibliographies |access-date=29 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221209040232/https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780199766581/obo-9780199766581-0157.xml |archive-date=9 December 2022 |url-status=live}}</ref>

===Russia===
By 1802, Russian colonists noted that "Boston" (U.S.-based) skippers were trading African slaves for otter pelts with the [[Tlingit people]] in [[Southeast Alaska]].<ref name=Dauenhauer>{{Cite book |last1=Dauenhauer |first1=Nora Marks |first2=Richard |last2=Dauenhauer |first3=Lydia T. |last3=Black |title=''Anóoshi Lingít Aaní Ká'', Russians in Tlingit America: The Battles of Sitka, 1802 and 1804. |publisher=[[University of Washington Press]] |year=2008 |location=Seattle |pages=XXVI |isbn=978-0-295-98601-2}}</ref>
[[File:Atlantic Ocean slave location map by source and destination.png|thumb|upright=1.3|West Central Africa was the most common source region of Africa, and Portuguese America (Brazil) was the most common destination.]]
{| class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align:right;"
|+ Distribution of slaves (1519–1867)<ref>Stephen D. Behrendt, [[W. E. B. Du Bois Institute|W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research]], [[Harvard University]]. Based on "records for 27,233 voyages that set out to obtain slaves for the Americas". {{cite book |last=Behrendt |first=Stephen |title= Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience |year=1999 |publisher=Basic Civitas Books |location=New York |isbn=0-465-00071-1 |chapter=Transatlantic Slave Trade |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/africanaencyclop00appi}}</ref>
|-
!scope="col"| Destination
!scope="col"| Percent
|-
!scope="row"| [[Portuguese America]]
| 38.5%
|-
!scope="row"| [[British West Indies]]
| 18.4%
|-
!scope="row"| [[Spanish Empire]]
| 17.5%
|-
!scope="row"| [[French West Indies]]
| 13.6%
|-
!scope="row"| [[English overseas possessions#The Americas|English]]/[[British America|British North America]] / [[United States]]
| 9.7%
|-
!scope="row"| [[Dutch West Indies]]
| 2.0%
|-
!scope="row"| [[Danish West Indies]]
| 0.3%
|}
'''Notes:'''
* Before 1820, the number of enslaved Africans transported across the Atlantic to the New World was triple the number of Europeans who reached North and South American shores. At the time this was the largest oceanic [[Forced displacement|displacement or migration]] in history,<ref name="VoyagesIntro">{{cite web |url=https://slavevoyages.org/voyage/about#methodology/introduction/0/en/ |title=Understanding the Database - Methodology - Introduction |last=Eltis |first=David |author-link=openlibrary:authors/OL2767993A |year=2018 |department=Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade |work=[[Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database]] |quote=But what is often overlooked is that, before 1820, perhaps three times as many enslaved Africans crossed the Atlantic as Europeans. This was the largest transoceanic migration of a people until that day, and it provided the Americas with a crucial labour force for their own economic development. |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201211022128/https://slavevoyages.org/voyage/about#methodology/introduction/0/en/ |archive-date=11 December 2020 |access-date=11 December 2020 |url-status=live}}</ref> eclipsing even the far-flung, but less-dense, expansion of [[Austronesian peoples#Geographical distribution|Austronesian]]-[[Māori migration canoes#"Great fleet" hypothesis|Polynesian]] explorers.
* The number of Africans who arrived in each region is calculated from the total number of slaves imported, about 10,000,000.<ref>Curtin, ''The Atlantic Slave Trade'', 1972, p. 88.</ref>
* Includes [[British Guiana]] and [[British Honduras]]

<gallery widths="160px" heights="130px">
File:Punishing negroes at Cathabouco, Rio de Janeiro.png|Punishing slaves at Calabouço, in [[Rio de Janeiro]], {{circa|1822}}
File:Slaves resting by Rugendas 01.jpg|Recently bought slaves in Brazil on their way to the farms of the landowners who bought them {{Circa|1830}}
File:Tropenmuseum Royal Tropical Institute Objectnumber 3581-33h Ingekleurde litho voorstellende de oo.jpg|A 19th-century lithograph showing a sugarcane plantation in Suriname
</gallery>

==Economics of slavery==
[[File:1670 virginia tobacco slaves.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|Slaves processing tobacco in 17th-century Virginia]]

In 18th-century France, returns for investors in plantations averaged around 6%; as compared to 5% for most domestic alternatives, this represented a 20% profit advantage. Risks—maritime and commercial—were important for individual voyages. Investors mitigated it by buying small shares of many ships at the same time. In that way, they were able to diversify a large part of the risk away. Between voyages, ship shares could be freely sold and bought.<ref>Daudin 2004.</ref>

By far the most financially profitable West Indian colonies in 1800 belonged to the United Kingdom. After entering the sugar colony business late, British naval supremacy and control over key islands such as [[Jamaica]], [[Trinidad]], the [[Leeward Islands]], and [[Barbados]] and the territory of [[British Guiana]] gave it an important edge over all competitors; while many British did not make gains, a handful of individuals made small fortunes. This advantage was reinforced when France lost its most important colony, [[St. Domingue]] (western Hispaniola, now Haiti), to a slave revolt in 1791<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.fsmitha.com/h3/h34-np2.html |title=Haiti, 1789 to 1806 |website=www.fsmitha.com |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090212182348/http://www.fsmitha.com/h3/h34-np2.html |archive-date=12 February 2009 |access-date=14 September 2007 |url-status=live}}</ref> and supported revolts against its rival Britain, in the name of liberty after the 1793 French revolution. Before 1791, British sugar had to be protected to compete against cheaper French sugar.

After 1791, the British islands produced the most sugar, and the British people quickly became the largest consumers. West Indian sugar became ubiquitous as an additive to Indian tea. It has been estimated that the profits of the slave trade and of [[West Indies|West Indian]] plantations created up to one-in-twenty of every pound circulating in the [[Economic history of Britain|British economy]] at the time of the [[Industrial Revolution]] in the latter half of the 18th century.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/topic_display.cfm?tcid=104 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090226181840/http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/con_economic.cfm |title=Digital History |archive-date=26 February 2009 |website=www.digitalhistory.uh.edu}}</ref>

Following the [[Slavery Abolition Act 1833]] which gradually abolished slavery in the British Empire, the UK government took out a loan of £15 million ($4.25 billion in 2023) to compensate former slave owners for the loss of their "property" after their slaves were freed. Compensation was not given to the formerly enslaved people.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Britain's Slave Owner Compensation Loan, reparations and tax havenry |date=9 June 2020 |url=https://www.taxjustice.net/2020/06/09/slavery-compensation-uk-questions/,%20https://www.taxjustice.net/2020/06/09/slavery-compensation-uk-questions/ |access-date=18 June 2020 |language=en-GB |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210729021319/https://www.taxjustice.net/2020/06/09/slavery-compensation-uk-questions/,%20https:/www.taxjustice.net/2020/06/09/slavery-compensation-uk-questions/ |archive-date=29 July 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-04/benedict-cumberbatch-slavery-reparations/101822368 |title=His parents urged him to keep their 'dodgy' family history quiet. Now Benedict Cumberbatch could pay |work=[[ABC News (Australia)|ABC News]] |date=3 January 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240609061854/https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-04/benedict-cumberbatch-slavery-reparations/101822368 |archive-date=9 June 2024}}</ref>

==Effects==
{{col-begin}}{{col-2}}
{| class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align:right;"
|+World population (in millions)<ref>{{Cite report |url=https://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/sixbillion/sixbilpart1.pdf |title=The World at Six Billion |publisher=[[United Nations]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160101220025/http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/sixbillion/sixbilpart1.pdf |archive-date=1 January 2016}}</ref>
|-
!scope="col"| Year
!scope="col"| 1750
!scope="col"| 1800
!scope="col"| 1850
!scope="col"| 1900
!scope="col"| 1950
!scope="col"| 1999
|-
!scope="row"| World
| 791
| 978
| 1,262
| 1,650
| 2,521
| 5,978
|-
!scope="row"| Africa
| 106
| 107
| 111
| 133
| 221
| 767
|-
!scope="row"| Asia
| 502
| 635
| 809
| 947
| 1,402
| 3,634
|-
!scope="row"| Europe
| 163
| 203
| 276
| 408
| 547
| 729
|-
!scope="row"| Latin America and the Caribbean
| 16
| 24
| 38
| 74
| 167
| 511
|-
!scope="row"| Northern America
| 2
| 7
| 26
| 82
| 172
| 307
|-
!scope="row"| Oceania
| 2
| 2
| 2
| 6
| 13
| 30
|}

{{col-break}}

{| class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align:right;"
|+World population (by percentage distribution)
|-
!scope="col"| Year
!scope="col"| 1750
!scope="col"| 1800
!scope="col"| 1850
!scope="col"| 1900
!scope="col"| 1950
!scope="col"| 1999
|-
!scope="row"| World
| 100
| 100
| 100
| 100
| 100
| 100
|-
!scope="row"| Africa
| 13.4
| 10.9
| 8.8
| 8.1
| 8.8
| 12.8
|-
!scope="row"| Asia
| 63.5
| 64.9
| 64.1
| 57.4
| 55.6
| 60.8
|-
!scope="row"| Europe
| 20.6
| 20.8
| 21.9
| 24.7
| 21.7
| 12.2
|-
!scope="row"| Latin America and the Caribbean
| 2.0
| 2.5
| 3.0
| 4.5
| 6.6
| 8.5
|-
!scope="row"| Northern America
| 0.3
| 0.7
| 2.1
| 5.0
| 6.8
| 5.1
|-
!scope="row"| Oceania
| 0.3
| 0.2
| 0.2
| 0.4
| 0.5
| 0.5
|}
{{col-end}}

Historian [[Walter Rodney]] has argued that at the start of the slave trade in the 16th century, although there was a technological gap between Europe and Africa, it was not very substantial. Both continents were using Iron Age technology. The major advantage that Europe had was in ship building. During the period of slavery, the populations of Europe and the Americas grew exponentially, while the population of Africa remained stagnant. Rodney contended that the profits from slavery were used to fund economic growth and technological advancement in Europe and the Americas. Based on earlier theories by Eric Williams, he asserted that the industrial revolution was at least in part funded by agricultural profits from the Americas. He cited examples such as the [[Timeline of historic inventions|invention]] of the steam engine by [[James Watt]], which was funded by plantation owners from the Caribbean.<ref name="WalterRodney">[[Walter Rodney]], ''[[How Europe Underdeveloped Africa]]''. {{ISBN|0-9501546-4-4}}.</ref>

Other historians have attacked both Rodney's methodology and accuracy. [[Joseph C. Miller]] has argued that the social change and demographic stagnation (which he researched on the example of West Central Africa) was caused primarily by domestic factors. Joseph Inikori provided a new line of argument, estimating counterfactual demographic developments in case the Atlantic slave trade had not existed. Patrick Manning has shown that the slave trade did have a profound impact on African demographics and social institutions, but criticized Inikori's approach for not taking other factors (such as famine and drought) into account, and thus being highly speculative.<ref>Manning, Patrick: "Contours of Slavery and Social change in Africa". In: Northrup, David (ed.): ''The Atlantic Slave Trade''. D.C. Heath & Company, 1994, pp. 148–160.</ref>

===Effect on the economy of West Africa===
[[File:Different cowries.jpg|thumb|[[Cowrie]] shells were used as money in the slave trade.]]

The effect of the trade on African societies is much debated, due to the influx of goods to Africans. Proponents of the slave trade, such as [[Archibald Dalzel]], argued that African societies were robust and not much affected by the trade. In the 19th century, European [[Abolitionism|abolitionists]], most prominently [[David Livingstone]], took the opposite view, arguing that the fragile local economy and societies were being severely harmed by the trade.<ref>{{cite web |title=Riches & misery: the consequences of the Atlantic slave trade |url=https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/riches-misery-the-consequences-the-atlantic-slave-trade |website=OpenLearn |publisher=[[The Open University]] |access-date=14 April 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240518060443/https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/riches-misery-the-consequences-the-atlantic-slave-trade |archive-date=18 May 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bertocchi |title=The legacies of slavery in and out of Africa |journal=IZA Journal of Migration |date=2016 |volume=5 |issue=24 |doi=10.1186/s40176-016-0072-0 |doi-access=free |hdl=11380/1201574 |hdl-access=free}}</ref> According to research from historian [[Nathan Nunn]], the underdeveloped infrastructure and economy in Africa is a result of colonization and the slave trade. Nunn wrote: "...Africa's poor economic performance is a result of postcolonial state failure, the roots of which lie in the underdevelopment and instability of precolonial polities..., because of a lack of significant political development during colonial rule, the limited precolonial political structures continued to exist after independence. As a result, Africa's postindependence leaders inherited nation states that did not have the infrastructure necessary to extend authority and control over the whole country. Many states were, and still are, unable to collect taxes from their citizens, and as a result they are also unable to provide a minimum level of public goods and services".<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Nathan |first1=Nunn |title=The Long-Term Effects of Africa's Slave Trades |journal=The Quarterly Journal of Economics |date=2008 |page=166 |url=https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/nunn/files/empirical_slavery.pdf |access-date=14 April 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210322215339/https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/nunn/files/empirical_slavery.pdf |archive-date=22 March 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Nathan |first1=Nunn |title=Chapter 5. Shackled to the Past: The Causes and Consequences of Africa's Slave Trades |url=https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/nunn/files/hup_africa_slave_trade10.pdf |publisher=[[Harvard University]] |access-date=14 April 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240518081755/https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/nunn/files/hup_africa_slave_trade10.pdf |archive-date=18 May 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=M'baye |title=The Economic, Political, and Social Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on Africa |journal=The European Legacy |date=2006 |volume=11 |issue=6 |pages=607–622 |doi=10.1080/10848770600918091 |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10848770600918091?src=recsys |access-date=14 April 2024|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=The effect of slavery in Africa |url=https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/history-of-slavery/west-africa |website=[[National Museums Liverpool]] |access-date=14 April 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240412182329/https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/history-of-slavery/west-africa |archive-date=12 April 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref>

[[File:Birmingham History Galleries - Birmingham its people, its history - A Stranger's Guide to 18th Century Birmingham - gun barrels (8165019515).jpg|thumb|Slaving guns (Birmingham History Galleries). In the second half of the 18th century, Europeans sold 300,000 rifles a year in Africa, maintaining the endemic state of war in which men, who were taken prisoner, were sold to supply the demand for slaves.<ref>{{Cite book |last=François Hubert, Christian Block and Jacques de Cauna |title=Bordeaux in the 18th century: trans-Atlantic trading and slavery |publisher=Le Festin |page=92 |year=2010 |isbn=978-2-36062-009-8 |location=Bordeaux}}</ref>]]

Some African rulers saw an economic benefit from trading their subjects with European slave traders. With the exception of Portuguese-controlled Angola, coastal African leaders "generally controlled access to their coasts, and were able to prevent direct enslavement of their subjects and citizens".<ref name="Thornton 2012">{{cite book |last=Thornton |first=John |author-link=John Thornton (historian) |title=A Cultural History of the Atlantic World 1250–1820 |date=2012 |page=64}}</ref> Thus, as African scholar John Thornton argues, African leaders who allowed the continuation of the slave trade likely derived an economic benefit from selling their subjects to Europeans. The Kingdom of Benin, for instance, participated in the African slave trade, at will, from 1715 to 1735, surprising Dutch traders, who had not expected to buy slaves in Benin.<ref name="Thornton 2012" />

The benefit derived from trading slaves for European goods was enough to make the Kingdom of Benin rejoin the trans-Atlantic slave trade after centuries of non-participation. Such benefits included military technology (specifically guns and gunpowder), gold, or simply maintaining amicable trade relationships with European nations. The slave trade was, therefore, a means for some African elites to gain economic advantages.<ref name=":1">{{cite journal |last=Fage |first=J. D. |title=Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Context of West African History |journal=[[The Journal of African History]] |volume=10 |number=3 |date=1969 |page=400 |doi=10.1017/S0021853700036343}}</ref> Historian [[Walter Rodney]] estimates that by {{circa|1770}}, the King of [[Dahomey]] was earning an estimated £250,000 per year by selling captive African soldiers and enslaved people to the European slave-traders. Many West African countries also already had a tradition of holding slaves, which was expanded into trade with Europeans.

The Atlantic trade brought new crops to Africa and more efficient currencies which were adopted by the West African merchants. This can be interpreted as an institutional reform which reduced the cost of doing business. But the developmental benefits were limited as long as the business including slaving.<ref>{{cite book |last=Baten |first=Jörg |title=A History of the Global Economy: From 1500 to the Present |date=2016 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |page=321 |isbn=978-1-107-50718-0}}</ref>

Both Thornton and Fage contend that while African political elite may have ultimately benefited from the slave trade, their decision to participate may have been influenced more by what they could lose by not participating. In Fage's article "Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Context of West African History", he notes that for West Africans "...{{nbsp}}there were really few effective means of mobilizing labour for the economic and political needs of the state" without the slave trade.<ref name=":1" />

===Effects on the British economy===
{{Further|Historiography of the British Empire#Slavery}}
[[File:Joseph Cross, The Impolicy of Slavery, 1823 Cornell CUL PJM 1039 01.jpg|thumb|upright=1.5|This map argues that import prohibitions and high duties on sugar were artificially inflating prices and inhibiting manufacturing in England. 1823]]

Historian [[Eric Williams]] in 1994 argued that the profits that Britain received from its sugar colonies, or from the slave trade between Africa and the Caribbean, contributed to the financing of Britain's industrial revolution. However, he says that by the time of the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, and the emancipation of the slaves in 1833, the sugar plantations of the British West Indies had lost their profitability, and it was in Britain's economic interest to emancipate the slaves.{{sfn|Williams|2021|pp=100–107, 167–170}}

Other researchers and historians have strongly contested what has come to be referred to as the "Williams thesis" in academia. David Richardson has concluded that the profits from the slave trade amounted to less than 1% of domestic investment in Britain.<ref>David Richardson, "The British Empire and the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1660–1807," in P. J. Marshall, ed. ''The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume II: The Eighteenth Century'' (1998), pp. 440–464.</ref> Economic historian [[Stanley Engerman]] finds that even without subtracting the associated costs of the slave trade (e.g., shipping costs, slave mortality, mortality of British people in Africa, defense costs) or reinvestment of profits back into the slave trade, the total profits from the slave trade and of West Indian plantations amounted to less than 5% of the [[Economic history of the United Kingdom|British economy]] during any year of the [[Industrial Revolution]].<ref name="The Slave Trade and British Capital Formation in the Eighteenth Century">{{cite journal |first=Stanley L. |last=Engerman |title=The Slave Trade and British Capital Formation in the Eighteenth Century |journal=The Business History Review |jstor=3113341 |volume=46 |issue=4 |pages=430–443 |year=1972 |doi=10.2307/3113341 |s2cid=154620412}}</ref>

Engerman's 5% figure gives as much as possible in terms of benefit of the doubt to the Williams argument, not solely because it does not take into account the associated costs of the slave trade to Britain, but also because it carries the full-employment assumption from economics and holds the gross value of slave trade profits as a direct contribution to Britain's national income.<ref name="The Slave Trade and British Capital Formation in the Eighteenth Century"/> Historian [[Richard Pares]], in an article written before Williams' book, dismisses the influence of wealth generated from the West Indian plantations upon the financing of the Industrial Revolution, stating that whatever substantial flow of investment from West Indian profits into industry there occurred after emancipation, not before. However, each of these works focus primarily on the slave trade or the Industrial Revolution, and not the main body of the Williams thesis, which was on sugar and slavery itself. Therefore, they do not refute the main body of the Williams thesis.<ref name="The Economic Factors in the History of the Empire">{{cite journal |first=Richard |last=Pares |title=The Economic Factors in the History of the Empire |journal=The Economic History Review |jstor=2590147 |volume=7 |issue=2 |pages=119–144 |year=1937 |doi=10.2307/2590147}}</ref>{{sfn|Williams|2021|pp=1–21}}

[[Seymour Drescher]] and Robert Anstey argue the slave trade remained profitable until the end, and that moralistic reform, not economic incentive, was primarily responsible for abolition. They say slavery remained profitable in the 1830s because of innovations in agriculture. However, Drescher's ''Econocide'' wraps up its study in 1823, and does not address the majority of the Williams thesis, which covers the decline of the sugar plantations after 1823, the emancipation of the slaves in the 1830s, and the subsequent abolition of sugar duties in the 1840s. These arguments do not refute the main body of the Williams thesis, which presents economic data to show that the slave trade was minor compared to the wealth generated by sugar and slavery itself in the British Caribbean.<ref>{{cite book |first=J. R. |last=Ward |chapter=The British West Indies in the Age of Abolition |editor-first=P. J. |editor-last=Marshall |title=The Oxford History of the British Empire |volume=II: The Eighteenth Century |date=1998 |pages=415–439}}</ref>{{sfn|Williams|2021|pp=1–21}}<ref>{{cite book |first=Seymour |last=Drescher |title=Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition |location=Chapel Hill |publisher=[[University of North Carolina Press]] |date=2010 |page=}}</ref>{{page needed|date=July 2024}}

[[Karl Marx]], in his influential economic history of capitalism, ''[[Das Kapital]]'', wrote that "...{{nbsp}}the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signaled the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production". He argued that the slave trade was part of what he termed the "primitive accumulation" of capital, the 'non-capitalist' accumulation of wealth that preceded and created the financial conditions for Britain's industrialisation.<ref>{{cite book |last=Marx |first=Karl |author-link=Karl Marx |chapter=Chapter Thirty-One: Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist |chapter-url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch31.htm |title=Capital |title-link=Das Kapital |volume=One |access-date=21 February 2014 |quote=the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation. |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]] |archive-date=19 March 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200319174100/https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch31.htm |url-status=live}}</ref>

===Demographics===
[[File:Agostino Brunias - A Linen Market with a Linen-stall and Vegetable Seller in the West Indies - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|A Linen Market with enslaved Africans. West Indies, {{Circa|1780}}]]

The demographic effects of the slave trade is a controversial and highly debated issue. Although scholars such as Paul Adams and Erick D. Langer have estimated that sub-Saharan Africa represented about 18 percent of the world's population in 1600 and only 6 percent in 1900,<ref>{{Cite book |title=Experiencing World History |last1=Adams |first1=Paul |last2=Hwa |first2=Lily |publisher=[[New York University Press]] |year=2000 |location=New York |page=334 |display-authors=1}}</ref> the reasons for this demographic shift have been the subject of much debate. In addition to the depopulation Africa experienced because of the slave trade, African nations were left with severely imbalanced gender ratios, with females comprising up to 65 percent of the population in hard-hit areas such as Angola.<ref name=":2" /> Moreover, many scholars (such as Barbara N. Ramusack) have suggested a link between the prevalence of prostitution in Africa today with the temporary marriages that were enforced during the course of the slave trade.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Women in Asia: Restoring Women to History |last=Ramusack |first=Barbara |publisher=[[Indiana University Press]] |year=1999 |page=89}}</ref>

[[Walter Rodney]] argued that the export of so many people had been a demographic disaster which left Africa permanently disadvantaged when compared to other parts of the world, and it largely explains the continent's continued poverty.<ref name="WalterRodney"/> He presented numbers showing that Africa's population stagnated during this period, while those of Europe and Asia grew dramatically. According to Rodney, all other areas of the economy were disrupted by the slave trade as the top merchants abandoned traditional industries in order to pursue slaving, and the lower levels of the population were disrupted by the slaving itself.

Others have challenged this view. [[J. D. Fage]] compared the demographic effect on the continent as a whole. David Eltis has compared the numbers to the rate of [[emigration]] from Europe during this period. In the 19th century alone over 50 million people left Europe for the Americas, a far higher rate than were ever taken from Africa.<ref>David Eltis, ''Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade''.</ref>

Other scholars accused Walter Rodney of mischaracterizing the trade between Africans and Europeans. They argue that Africans, or more accurately African elites, deliberately let European traders join in an already large trade in enslaved people and that they were not patronized.{{sfn|Thornton|1998|p=}}{{page needed|date=July 2024}}

As Joseph E. Inikori argues, the history of the region shows that the effects were still quite deleterious. He argues that the African economic model of the period was very different from the European model, and could not sustain such population losses. Population reductions in certain areas also led to widespread problems. Inikori also notes that after the suppression of the slave trade Africa's population almost immediately began to rapidly increase, even prior to the introduction of modern medicines.<ref>Joseph E. Inikori, "Ideology versus the Tyranny of Paradigm: Historians and the Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on African Societies", ''African Economic History'', 1994.</ref>

===Cultural effects===
The cultural effects of the transatlantic slave trade in Africa are the reduction of traditional African religious practices. According to research in a 2021 census of religions practiced in Ghana published by the Office of International Religious Freedom, in 2021 the Ghana Embassy reported "71 percent of the population are Christian, 20 percent Muslim, 3 percent adhere to indigenous or animistic religious beliefs, and 6 percent belong to other religious groups or have no religious beliefs". Historian Nana Osei Bonsu argued that the transatlantic slave trade not only took millions of Africans from the continent but also caused a decline of [[traditional African religions]] and Ghanaian indigenous culture as Europeans believed African people's culture and religions were irrelevant and inferior. The slave trade resulted in the colonization of Africa and its people forcing many Africans to convert to Christianity.<ref>{{cite web |title=Ghana 2022 International Religious Freedom Report |url=https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/441219-GHANA-2022-INTERNATIONAL-RELIGIOUS-FREEDOM-REPORT.pdf |website=www.state.gov |publisher=Office of International Religious Freedom |access-date=15 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231010112500/https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/441219-GHANA-2022-INTERNATIONAL-RELIGIOUS-FREEDOM-REPORT.pdf |archive-date=10 October 2023 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bonsu |first1=Nana Osei |title=The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: An Examination of the Incorrectness of the Ghana Senior High School History Syllabus |journal=Africology: The Journal of Pan African Studies |date=2016 |volume=9 |issue=4 |pages=375, 378 |url=https://jpanafrican.org/docs/vol9no4/JuneJuly-23-Bonsu.pdf |access-date=15 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200714052655/https://jpanafrican.org/docs/vol9no4/JuneJuly-23-Bonsu.pdf |archive-date=14 July 2020}}</ref>

[[File:Castle Elmina.jpg|thumb|[[Elmina Castle]] was a slave fort in Ghana built in 1482 by the Portuguese and later used by the British colonial administration as its headquarters from 1872 into the 20th century, following which they used it as a prison to incarcerate African citizens.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Womber |first1=Peter Kwame |title=From Anomansa to Elmina: The Establishment and the Use of the Elmina Castle – From the Portuguese to the British |journal=[[Athens Journal of History]] |date=2020 |volume=6 |issue=4 |pages=368–369 |url=https://www.athensjournals.gr/history/2020-6-4-4-Womber.pdf |access-date=15 April 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240710084707/https://www.athensjournals.gr/history/2020-6-4-4-Womber.pdf |archive-date=10 July 2024}}</ref>]]

The transatlantic slave trade affected traditional trade routes in West-Central Africa. Africans traded goods and slaves using trade routes in the interior of Africa that connected to the [[Sahara|Sahara Desert]] and the [[Mediterranean Basin|Mediterranean]] coast where other commodities and enslaved people were traded. These trade routes were used by Africans for centuries and societies and kingdoms developed as a result. Europeans chose to trade primarily along the Atlantic coast because they did not have immunity to [[malaria]] that was endemic to the region and "they could not dominate further than their guns could fire, from ship or fort". The slave trade also left warlords in charge in African societies as they wanted to trade with Europeans to obtain guns to defeat their enemies and sell them to Europeans.<ref>{{cite web |title=The development of foreign colonies |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zxt3gk7/revision/6 |website=[[BBC]] |access-date=15 April 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240416190849/https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zxt3gk7/revision/6 |archive-date=16 April 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Read |first1=Sean |title=The Archaeology of Slavery in Atlantic West Africa, 1450–1900 |journal=African History |date=2023 |doi=10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.837 |isbn=978-0-19-027773-4 |url=https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-837?d=%2F10.1093%2Facrefore%2F9780190277734.001.0001%2Facrefore-9780190277734-e-837&p=emailAWL4gsirLpkag |access-date=20 April 2024 |archive-date=26 July 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726161720/https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-837?d=%2F10.1093%2Facrefore%2F9780190277734.001.0001%2Facrefore-9780190277734-e-837&p=emailAWL4gsirLpkag |url-status=live|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

The European system of monetization implemented with the slave trade replaced cowrie shells, the currency traditionally used among Africans. According to research from the [[National Park Service]]: "European trade goods supplanted former African reliance on indigenous material goods, natural resources and products as the economic basis of their society. At the same time Europeans increasingly required people in exchange for trade goods. Once this stage was reached an African society had little choice but to trade human lives for European goods and guns; guns that had become necessary to wage wars for further captives in order to trade for goods upon which an African society was now dependent".<ref>{{cite web |title=The Transatlantic Slave Trade |url=https://www.nps.gov/ethnography/aah/aaheritage/histcontextsc.htm |website=Park Ethnography Program |publisher=[[National Park Service]] |access-date=20 April 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240503083908/https://www.nps.gov/ethnography/aah/aaheritage/histcontextsc.htm |archive-date=3 May 2024}}</ref>

[[File:Scramble-for-Africa-1880-1913-v2.png|thumb|Africa before and after colonization]]

As the European slave trade grew more profitable, the demand for slaves increased, which affected African coastal societies in the following ways: "Commerce with the world outside Africa changed from overland to sea and coastal villages whose main trades had been fishing and salt production became ports and trading posts". The trans-Atlantic slave trade resulted in the colonization of Africa. Colonization in Africa continues to have negative effects as some traditional African cultures are erased, along with traditional languages and traditional African religions. After the trans-Atlantic slave trade had ceased, European colonial powers fought over the land and resources in Africa. The development of the [[Antimalarial medication|antimalarial drug]] [[quinine]] in 1820 enabled Europeans to colonize the interior of Africa.<ref name="Malaria and French Imperialism"/><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Achan |first1=Jane |display-authors=etal |title=Quinine, an old antimalarial drug in a modern world: role in the treatment of malaria |journal=Malaria Journal |date=2011 |volume=10 |page=144 |doi=10.1186/1475-2875-10-144 |doi-access=free |pmid=21609473 |pmc=3121651}}</ref>

By the end of the 19th century, European powers laid claim to 90 percent of land in [[Sub-Saharan Africa]] during the "[[Scramble for Africa]]". In this invasion and subsequent colonization, the seven European powers (Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, and Italy) removed African kingdoms of power, created national borders that did not align with the already existing ethnic borders in Africa and forced diverse tribal ethnic groups to coexist and be controlled under one colonial power. This caused an unnatural division of people and was the groundwork for the instability in the African continent beginning in the 20th century into the present day.<ref>{{cite web |title=Implications of the slave trade for African societies |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zxt3gk7/revision/6 |website=www.bbc.co.uk |publisher=[[BBC]] |access-date=15 April 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240518105335/https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zxt3gk7/revision/6 |archive-date=18 May 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=European and African interaction from the 15th through the 18th century |url=https://www.britannica.com/place/Southern-Africa/European-and-African-interaction-from-the-15th-through-the-18th-century |website=Britannica |publisher=Encyclopedia Britannica |access-date=15 April 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240416190849/https://www.britannica.com/place/Southern-Africa/European-and-African-interaction-from-the-15th-through-the-18th-century |archive-date=16 April 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Learning from Slavery– The Legacy of the Slave Trade on Modern Society |url=https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/learning-slavery-legacy-slave-trade-modern-society |website=www.un.org |publisher=[[United Nations]] |access-date=15 April 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220318224828/https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/learning-slavery-legacy-slave-trade-modern-society |archive-date=18 March 2022}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Colonial Powers in Sub-Saharan Africa |url=https://geopoliticalfutures.com/colonial-powers-in-sub-saharan-africa/ |website=www.geopoliticalfutures.com |date=3 June 2016 |publisher=GeoPolitical Futures |access-date=15 April 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240520125511/https://geopoliticalfutures.com/colonial-powers-in-sub-saharan-africa/ |archive-date=20 May 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Scramble for Africa |url=https://learn.saylor.org/mod/book/view.php?id=67316&chapterid=60954 |website=saylor.org |publisher=Saylor Academy |access-date=15 April 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240416191012/https://learn.saylor.org/mod/book/view.php?id=67316&chapterid=60954 |archive-date=16 April 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref>

The slave forts built along the [[Gold Coast (region)|Gold Coast]] in Ghana during the years of the slave trade were owned and used by the British colonial administration as their headquarters well into the 20th century.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Apter |first1=Andrew |display-authors=etal |title=Hidden Histories of Ghana's Slave Forts and Castles 1482-2022 |url=https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/58a14ac530fa48c7be9f50f25651a62b |website=www.storymaps.arcgis.com |date=2 June 2021 |publisher=Story Maps |access-date=20 April 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240420190558/https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/58a14ac530fa48c7be9f50f25651a62b |archive-date=20 April 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref> British forts in Ghana were vacated after Ghana gained independence in 1957. The placement of these forts dislocated African societies that lived and fished along the coast. British colonists used the fort to imprison African resistance leaders who organized resistance movements against colonization. In 1900, [[Yaa Asantewaa]] (Queen mother and war leader of the [[Asante people|Ashanti people]]), was imprisoned at [[Elmina Castle]] because she led a war against the British for possession of the [[Golden Stool]], or Ashanti royal throne.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hove |first1=Jon |title=Forts and Castles in the Colonial Period: Uses and Understandings of the Pre-colonial Fortifications |journal=Forts, Castles and Society in West Africa |date=2018 |volume=7 |pages=243–264 |doi=10.1163/9789004380172_011 |hdl=11250/2596833 |isbn=978-90-04-38014-1 |url=https://brill.com/display/book/edcoll/9789004380172/BP000010.xml |access-date=15 April 2024 |hdl-access=free}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Womber |first1=Peter Kwame |title=From Anomansa to Elmina: The Establishment and the Use of the Elmina Castle – From the Portuguese to the British |journal=[[Athens Journal of History]] |date=2020 |volume=6 |issue=4 |pages=368–369 |url=https://www.athensjournals.gr/history/2020-6-4-4-Womber.pdf |access-date=15 April 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240710084707/https://www.athensjournals.gr/history/2020-6-4-4-Womber.pdf |archive-date=10 July 2024}}</ref>

===Legacy of racism===
{{Main|anti-black racism}}
[[File:Agostino Brunias - West Indian Creole woman, with her Black Servant - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|West Indian [[Creole peoples|Creole]] woman, with her black servant, circa 1780]]

[[Walter Rodney]] states:

<blockquote>The role of slavery in promoting racist prejudice and ideology has been carefully studied in certain situations, especially in the USA. The simple fact is that no people can enslave another for four centuries without coming out with a notion of superiority, and when the colour and other physical traits of those peoples were quite different it was inevitable that the prejudice should take a racist form.<ref name="WalterRodney"/></blockquote>

[[Eric Williams]] argued that "A racial twist [was] given to what is basically an economic phenomenon. Slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of slavery."{{sfn|Williams|2021|p=4}}

Similarly, John Darwin writes, "The rapid conversion from white indentured labour to black slavery ... made the English Caribbean a frontier of civility where English (later British) ideas about race and slave labour were ruthlessly adapted to local self-interest.... Indeed, the root justification for the system of slavery and the savage apparatus of coercion on which its preservation depended was the ineradicable barbarism of the slave population, a product, it was argued, of its African origins".<ref>Darwin, John (2013) ''Unfinished Empire'', p40</ref>

[[File:Scientific racism irish.jpg|thumb|[[Scientific racism#Racial theories in physical anthropology (1850–1918)|Scientific racism]]]]

Although slavery was practiced in ancient times in various cultures, it did not have a global effect like the transatlantic slave trade and slavery in the Americas created by Europeans. The transatlantic slave trade's legacy is [[institutional racism]] on an international scale that led to racial discrimination in educational institutions and public places. In addition, [[scientific racism]] was taught in schools and some colleges in the United States and Europe in the 19th century and early 20th centuries that was used as a justification to enslave Africans.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Edmondson |first1=Locksley |title=Trans-Atlantic Slavery and the Internationalization of Race |journal=Caribbean Quarterly |date=1976 |volume=22 |issue=2 |pages=5–25 |doi=10.1080/00086495.1976.11671898 |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00086495.1976.11671898 |access-date=13 January 2024|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Shad |first1=Muhammad |title=The Transatlantic Slave Trade Led to the Birth of Racism |url=https://www.fairobserver.com/region/europe/muhammad-aslam-shad-transatlantic-slave-trade-slavery-world-history-europeans-slavery-americas-68184/# |access-date=13 January 2024 |agency=American News |date=2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Pierre |first1=Jemima |title=Slavery, Anthropological Knowledge, and the Racialization of Africans |journal=The University of Chicago Press Journals |date=2020 |volume=61 |issue=22 |pages=141–339 |doi=10.1086/709844 |s2cid=225302155 |url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10.1086/709844 |access-date=13 January 2024|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Confronting Anti-Black Racism Resource Scientific Racism |url=https://library.harvard.edu/confronting-anti-black-racism/scientific-racism |website=Harvard Library |publisher=Harvard University |access-date=13 January 2024}}</ref>

The [[Canadian Museum for Human Rights]] explained how European slavery differed from the slavery practiced by Africans and [[Slavery among Native Americans in the United States|Native Americans]]. "Europeans brought a different kind of slavery to North America, however. Many Europeans saw enslaved people merely as property to be bought and sold. This 'chattel slavery' was a dehumanizing and violent system of abuse and subjugation. Importantly, Europeans viewed slavery in racist terms. [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Indigenous]] and African peoples were seen as less than human. This [[white supremacy]] justified the violence of slavery for hundreds of years."<ref>{{cite web |last1=McCullough |first1=Steve |last2=McRae |first2=Matthew |title=The story of Black slavery in Canadian history |url=https://humanrights.ca/story/story-black-slavery-canadian-history |website=Canadian Museum for Human Rights |access-date=13 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240519071321/https://humanrights.ca/story/story-black-slavery-canadian-history |archive-date=19 May 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Drescher |first1=Seymour |title=The Ending of the Slave Trade and the Evolution of European Scientific Racism |journal=[[Social Science History]] |date=1990 |volume=14 |issue=3 |pages=415–450 |doi=10.2307/1171358 |jstor=1171358 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1171358 |access-date=13 January 2024|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Roediger |first1=David |title=Historical Foundations of Race |url=https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/historical-foundations-race |website=National Museum of African American History and Culture |publisher=[[Smithsonian Institution]] |access-date=13 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240712071956/https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/historical-foundations-race |archive-date=12 July 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Olusoga |first1=David |title=The roots of European racism lie in the slave trade, colonialism – and Edward Long |url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/08/european-racism-africa-slavery |access-date=13 January 2024 |newspaper=[[The Guardian]] |date=8 September 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240314202752/https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/08/european-racism-africa-slavery |archive-date=14 March 2024}}</ref> Another example from an article from ''[[The Wall Street Journal]]'' explained, "New World slavery was a racialized institution in which slaves were black and slave owners were white. In contrast, owners and slaves in the Old World were generally of the same race. Distinctions between enslaved and freeborn people were often framed not in racial terms but in terms of language, culture and religion."<ref>{{cite news |last1=Harms |first1=Robert |title=An Ancient Practice Transformed by the Arrival of Europeans Slavery existed in Africa long before Columbus, but the trans-Atlantic trade turned it into a very different institution |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/an-ancient-practice-transformed-by-the-arrival-of-europeans-11568993153 |access-date=13 January 2024 |work=[[The Wall Street Journal]] |date=2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240113155842/https://www.wsj.com/articles/an-ancient-practice-transformed-by-the-arrival-of-europeans-11568993153 |archive-date=13 January 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Skulls in print: scientific racism in the transatlantic world |url=https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/skulls-in-print-scientific-racism-in-the-transatlantic-world |website=[[University of Cambridge Research]] |date=19 March 2014 |publisher=[[University of Cambridge]] |access-date=16 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240415035401/https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/skulls-in-print-scientific-racism-in-the-transatlantic-world |archive-date=15 April 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Gates |first1=Henry Louis |last2=Curran |first2=Andrews |title=Inventing the Science of Race |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/12/16/inventing-the-science-of-race/ |website=The New York Review |access-date=16 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240224124121/https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/12/16/inventing-the-science-of-race/ |archive-date=24 February 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Hanlon |first1=Aaron |title=The use of dubious science to defend racism is as old as the Founding Fathers |url=https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/use-dubious-science-defend-racism-old-founding-fathers-ncna823116 |access-date=16 January 2024 |work=[[NBC News]] |date=2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240116161809/https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/use-dubious-science-defend-racism-old-founding-fathers-ncna823116 |archive-date=16 January 2024}}</ref> Scientific racism and the history of enslaving [[sub-Saharan Africa]]ns led to [[Negrophobia#Overview|anti-black racism]] that is seen worldwide.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Sherwood |first1=Merika |title=After Abolition Britain and the Slave Trade Since 1807 |date=2007 |publisher=I.B.Tauris |isbn=9780857710130 |pages=143–145 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eRGJDwAAQBAJ&q=scientific%20racism}}</ref>

==End of the Atlantic slave trade==
{{Main|Abolitionism}}
{{See also|Blockade of Africa}}
[[File:SisterSlave.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|right|"Am I not a woman and a sister?" antislavery medallion from the late 18th century]]

Abolitionists of African, European, and American descent campaigned against the Atlantic slave trade.<ref>{{cite web |title=How did the Abolition Acts of 1807 and 1833 affect the slave trade? |url=https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/slavery/ |website=The National Archives / United Kingdom |access-date=14 January 2025}}</ref> Black abolitionists took a more radical approach to abolition than their white counterparts, encouraging strikes, slave rebellions aboard slave ships and on plantations, circulating petitions, telling personal narratives about the horrors of slavery, and advocating for freedom and equal rights for Black people in the [[African diaspora]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Black Abolition |url=https://www.searchablemuseum.com/black-abolition |website=National Museum of African American History and Culture |publisher=Smithsonian Institution |access-date=15 January 2025}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=African Abolitionism: The Rise and Transformations of Anti-Slavery in Africa |url=https://www.ucl.ac.uk/history/research/african-abolitionism-rise-and-transformations-anti-slavery-africa |website=University College London |date=23 February 2021 |publisher=UCL |access-date=15 January 2025}}</ref>

===African abolitionists===
{{See also|Sons of Africa|Ottobah Cugoano}}
According to [[Sociology|sociologist]] José Lingna Nafafé, the first movement against slavery and the Atlantic slave trade started in the 17th century among Africans in the Portuguese empire. [[Lourenço da Silva de Mendouça]], a royal from [[Angola]]'s [[Kingdom of Ndongo|Ndongo Kingdom]], campaigned against the slave trade while traveling through Italy, Spain, and the Vatican in Rome. Mendonça petitioned the Vatican, Portugal, Italy, and Spain in 1684 to end the enslavement of Africans, presenting his case to [[Pope Innocent XI]], and demanded the abolition for Africans, New Christians (Jews converted to Christianity) and American Indians. This was a century before  abolitionists [[William Wilberforce]] and Thomas Buxton emerged.<ref name="theconversation.com">{{cite news |title=Angolan prince started campaign to end Atlantic slave trade long before Europeans did – new book |url=https://theconversation.com/angolan-prince-started-campaign-to-end-atlantic-slave-trade-long-before-europeans-did-new-book-242839 |access-date=14 January 2025 |agency=The Conversation |date=2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Nafafe |first1=Jose Lingna |title=Lourenço da Silva Mendonça and the Black Atlantic Abolitionist Movement in the Seventeenth Century |series=Cambridge Studies on the African Diaspora |date=2022 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-108-83823-8 |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/lourenco-da-silva-mendonca-and-the-black-atlantic-abolitionist-movement-in-the-seventeenth-century/lourenco-da-silva-mendonca-and-the-black-atlantic-abolitionist-movement-in-the-seventeenth-century/8D5F0B9097B131DD66ED53FB9C43F395}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Nafafe |first1=Joseph Lingna |title=Lourenço Da Silva Mendonça and the Black Atlantic Abolitionist Movement in the Seventeenth Century |date=2022 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=9781108976534 |pages=1–10, 11–20, 21–30 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8Uv_EAAAQBAJ}}</ref>

[[File:Olaudah Equiano - Project Gutenberg eText 15399 (cropped).png|thumb|left|[[Olaudah Equiano]] was a member of the '[[Sons of Africa]]' an abolitionist group of 12 African men that campaigned against slavery and the slave trade.<ref>{{cite web |title=Olaudah Equiano (c.1745 - 1797) |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/equiano_olaudah.shtml |website=BBC History |access-date=15 January 2025}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Brain |first1=Jessica |title=The Sons of Africa |url=https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Sons-Of-Africa/ |website=Historic UK |access-date=15 January 2025}}</ref>]]

Slavery's supporters cited Africans enslaving each other and claimed this as evidence of African's inferior nature. A common narrative of the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade portrays European Christians as morally superior and saviors of Africans from enslavement. In addition, Christian narratives also justified the slave trade, and the colonialism that followed British abolition.<ref name="theconversation.com"/>

Historian and author Benedetta Rossi states that some African societies implemented laws that prohibited the slave trade and slavery before European contact. Rossi writes: "...the actions of African critics of slavery were informed by cultural representations and normative traditions that varied from society to society. Second, at the individual level, what actors thought and did about slavery and abolition depended on their position in society: wealthy slaveowners, political rulers, religious authorities, and enslaved persons had different interests and tactics, which they developed in the political and economic circum stances of their times." African rulers who passed anti-slavery laws only abolished certain forms of slavery. African nations who opposed the slave trade did so for various reasons including cultural, religious, political, and economic motivations.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Rossi |first1=Benedetta |title=The Abolition of Slavery in Africa's Legal Histories |journal=Law and History Review |date=2024 |volume=42 |pages=1–5, 9–12 |doi=10.1017/S0738248023000585 |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/47A74EA1672DB9EF11881137DB43796A/S0738248023000585a.pdf/abolition_of_slavery_in_africas_legal_histories.pdf |access-date=15 January 2025}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Greene |first1=Sandra |title=Minority Voices: Abolitionism in West Africa |journal=Slavery & Abolition |date=2015 |volume=36 |issue=4 |pages=642–661 |doi=10.1080/0144039X.2015.1008213 |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0144039X.2015.1008213 |access-date=21 January 2025}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=How West African Religions Adapted to the TA Slave Trade The Adaptations Made by Various West African Religions to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade |url=https://journeys.dartmouth.edu/marcanovicoff22/how-west-african-religions-adapted-to-the-ta-slave-trade/ |website=Dartmouth College |access-date=21 January 2025}}</ref>

In addition, African resistance to enslavement on slave ships and various [[slave rebellion|rebellions]] in the Americas sparked debates about abolishing the slave trade and slavery.<ref>{{cite web |title=How did the Abolition Acts of 1807 and 1833 affect the slave trade? |url=https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/slavery/ |website=The National Archives / United Kingdom |access-date=14 January 2025}}</ref> Abolitionist [[Olaudah Equiano]] was a former slave who was kidnapped from present day [[Nigeria]] and wrote an autobiography about his life published in 1789 that discussed the horrors of slavery, and gave lectures in Britain advocating abolition of the Atlantic slave trade and [[Slavery|chattel slavery]]. In 1788, Equiano participated in the House of Commons debates about slavery and abolition of the slave trade, wrote letters to the government, and corresponded with parliamentarians.<ref>{{cite web |title=Olaudah Equiano |url=https://artsandculture.google.com/story/olaudah-equiano-black-cultural-archives/HwWh3RaNNXTfIg?hl=en |website=Black Cultural Archives |publisher=Google Arts and Culture |access-date=15 January 2025}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=The Transatlantic Slave Trade |url=https://heritagecollections.parliament.uk/stories/the-transatlantic-slave-trade/ |website=UK Parliament |access-date=21 January 2025}}</ref>

Author and historian Bronwen Everill writes the British were not the first to abolish the slave trade and African leaders in Sierra Leone had a role in ending the transatlantic slave trade. Formerly enslaved [[Black British people|Black Britons]] founded [[Sierra Leone]] in West Africa in 1787, on land inhabited by the [[Temne people]]. Over the years, [[Black Loyalist]]s from North America moved to the colony. The Temne, [[Susu people|Susu]], and [[Freedman|freedmen]] opposed the slave trade. The [[Sierra Leone Company]] in London managed the colony, and Africans and freedmen wanted to establish trade with the Sierre Leone Company without selling people. Sierra Leone's story reveals the British navy's reliance on African entities opposing the slave trade to achieve abolition. Britain took control of the Sierra Leone colony from the Sierra Leone Company, establishing a court and naval patrol to combat the slave trade by seizing ships.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Everill |first1=Bronwen |title=African leaders in Sierra Leone played a key role in ending the transatlantic slave trade |url=https://theconversation.com/african-leaders-in-sierra-leone-played-a-key-role-in-ending-the-transatlantic-slave-trade-207382 |access-date=21 January 2025 |agency=The Conversation |date=2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Bilow |first1=Ali |title=Founding of Sierra Leone, 1787 |url=https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/founding-sierra-leone/ |website=BlackPast |date=26 February 2009 |access-date=21 January 2025}}</ref>

===American and European abolitionists===
{{Events leading to US Civil War}}
{{See also|Society of the Friends of the Blacks}}
[[File:Wilberforce john rising.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|[[William Wilberforce]] (1759–1833), politician and philanthropist who was a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade]]
In Britain, America, Portugal, and in parts of Europe, opposition developed against the slave trade. [[David Brion Davis]] says that abolitionists assumed "that an end to slave imports would lead automatically to the amelioration and gradual abolition of slavery".<ref>David Brion Davis, ''The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution: 1770–1823'' (1975), p. 129.</ref> In Britain and America, opposition to the trade was led by members of the [[Religious Society of Friends]] (Quakers), [[Thomas Clarkson]] and establishment Evangelicals such as [[William Wilberforce]] in Parliament. Many people joined the movement and they began to protest against the trade, but they were opposed by the owners of the colonial holdings.<ref>Library of Society of Friends Subject Guide: Abolition of the Slave Trade.</ref> Following [[Lord Mansfield]]'s decision in 1772, many abolitionists and slave-holders believed that slaves became free upon entering the British isles.{{sfn|Lovejoy|2000|p=290}} However, in reality occasional instances of slavery continued in Britain right up to abolition in the 1830s. The Mansfield ruling on ''[[Somerset v Stewart]]'' only decreed that a slave could not be transported out of England against his will.{{sfn|Schama|2006|p=61}}

Under the leadership of [[Thomas Jefferson]], the new [[U.S. state]] of [[Virginia]] in 1778 became the first slave-owning state and one of the first jurisdictions anywhere to stop the importation of new slaves for sale; it made it a crime for traders to bring in slaves from out of state or from overseas for sale; migrants from within the United States were allowed to bring their own slaves. The new law freed all slaves brought in illegally after its passage and imposed heavy fines on violators.<ref>John E. Selby and Don Higginbotham, ''The Revolution in Virginia, 1775–1783'' (2007), p. 158.</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Erik S. |last=Root |title=All Honor to Jefferson?: The Virginia Slavery Debates and the Positive Good Thesis |date=2008 |page=19}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-02-02-0019 |title=Founders Online: Bill to Prevent the Importation of Slaves, &c., [16 June 1777] |website=founders.archives.gov |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231019014813/https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-02-02-0019 |archive-date=19 October 2023}}</ref> All the other states in the United States followed suit, although [[South Carolina]] reopened its slave trade in 1803.<ref>{{cite book |first=Lacy K. |last=Ford |title=Deliver Us from Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xEC9K7quBoEC&pg=PA105 |year=2009 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |pages=104–107 |isbn=978-0-19-975108-2}}</ref>

Denmark, which had been active in the slave trade, was the first country to ban the trade through legislation in 1792, which took effect in 1803.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.virgin-islands-history.org/en/danish-prohibition-on-transatlantic-slave-trade-in-1792/ |title=Danish decision to abolish transatlantic slave trade in 1792 |access-date=21 September 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160921070732/http://www.virgin-islands-history.org/en/danish-prohibition-on-transatlantic-slave-trade-in-1792/ |archive-date=21 September 2016}}</ref> Britain banned the slave trade in 1807, imposing stiff fines for any slave found aboard a British ship (''see [[Slave Trade Act 1807]]''). The [[Royal Navy]] moved to stop other nations from continuing the slave trade and declared that slaving was equal to piracy and was punishable by death. The [[United States Congress]] passed the [[Slave Trade Act of 1794]], which prohibited the building or outfitting of ships in the U.S. for use in the slave trade. The U.S. Constitution (Article I, section 9, clause 1) barred a federal prohibition on importing slaves for 20 years; at that time the [[Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves]] prohibited imports on the first day the Constitution permitted: January 1, 1808. It was generally thought that the transatlantic slave trade ended in 1867, but evidence was later found of voyages until 1873.<ref name=alberge>{{cite news |last=Alberge |first=Dalya |title=Transatlantic slavery continued for years after 1867, historian finds |newspaper=[[The Guardian]] |date=4 January 2024 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/04/transatlantic-slavery-continued-for-years-after-1867-historian-finds |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240611231817/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/04/transatlantic-slavery-continued-for-years-after-1867-historian-finds |archive-date=11 June 2024}}</ref>

===British abolitionism===
{{Main|Abolitionism in the United Kingdom}}
{{See also|Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade}}
[[Quakers]] began to campaign against the [[British Empire]]'s slave trade in the 1780s, and from 1789 [[William Wilberforce]] was a driving force in the British Parliament in the fight against the trade. The abolitionists argued that the trade was not necessary for the economic success of sugar in the British West Indian colonies. This argument was accepted by wavering politicians, who did not want to destroy the valuable and important sugar colonies of the British Caribbean. Parliament was also concerned about the success of the [[Haitian Revolution]], and they believed they had to abolish the trade to prevent a similar conflagration from occurring in a British Caribbean colony.<ref>Christer Petley, ''White Fury: A Jamaican Slaveholder and the Age of Revolution'' (Oxford: [[Oxford University Press]], 2018), pp. 200–209.</ref>

On 22 February 1807, the House of Commons passed a motion by 283 votes to 16 to abolish the Atlantic slave trade. Hence, the slave trade was abolished, but not the still-economically viable institution of slavery itself, which provided Britain's most lucrative import at the time, sugar. Abolitionists did not move against sugar and slavery itself until after the sugar industry went into terminal decline after 1823.{{sfn|Williams|2021|pp=105–106, 120–122}}

The United States passed its own [[Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves]] the next week (March 2, 1807), although probably without mutual consultation. The act only took effect on the first day of 1808; since a compromise clause in the [[Article One of the United States Constitution#Clause 1: Slave trade|US Constitution (Article 1, Section 9, Clause 1)]] prohibited federal, although not state, restrictions on the slave trade before 1808. The United States did not, however, abolish its [[Slavery in the United States#Internal slave trade|internal slave trade]], which became the dominant mode of US slave trading until the 1860s.<ref>{{cite book |first=Marcyliena H. |last=Morgan |year=2002 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mhJcsiydNe8C&pg=PA20 |title=Language, Discourse and Power in African American Culture |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |page=20 |isbn=978-0-521-00149-6}}</ref> In 1805 the British Order-in-Council had restricted the importation of slaves into colonies that had been captured from France and the Netherlands.{{sfn|Lovejoy|2000|p=290}} Britain continued to press other nations to end its trade; in 1810 an Anglo-Portuguese treaty was signed whereby Portugal agreed to restrict its trade into its colonies; an [[Treaty of Stockholm (1813)|1813 Anglo-Swedish treaty]] whereby Sweden outlawed its [[Swedish slave trade|slave trade]]; the [[Treaty of Paris (1814)|Treaty of Paris 1814]] where France agreed with Britain that the trade is "repugnant to the principles of natural justice" and agreed to abolish the slave trade in five years; the [[Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814|1814 Anglo-Dutch treaty]] where the Dutch outlawed its slave trade.{{sfn|Lovejoy|2000|p=290}}

===Castlereagh and Palmerston's diplomacy===
[[File:Abolition of Slavery The Glorious 1st of August 1838.jpg|thumb|Abolition of Slavery The Glorious 1st of August 1838]]

Abolitionist opinion in Britain was strong enough in 1807 to abolish the slave trade in all [[British possessions]], although slavery itself persisted in the colonies until 1833.<ref>Drescher, Seymour, "Whose abolition? Popular pressure and the ending of the British slave trade." ''Past & Present'' 143 (1994): 136–166. {{JSTOR|651164}}.</ref> Abolitionists after 1807 focused on international agreements to abolish the slave trade. Foreign Minister [[Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh|Castlereagh]] switched his position and became a strong supporter of the movement. Britain arranged treaties with Portugal, Sweden and Denmark in the period between 1810 and 1814, whereby they agreed to end or restrict their trading. These were preliminary to the Congress of Vienna negotiations that Castlereagh dominated and which resulted in a general declaration condemning the slave trade.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Jerome |last=Reich |title=The Slave Trade at the Congress of Vienna{{snd}}A Study in English Public Opinion |journal=Journal of Negro History |volume=53 |number=2 |date=1968 |pages=129–143 |doi=10.2307/2716488 |jstor=2716488}}</ref>

The problem was that the treaties and declarations were hard to enforce, given the very high profits available to private interests. As Foreign Minister, Castlereagh cooperated with senior officials to use the Royal Navy to detect and capture slave ships. He used diplomacy to make search-and-seize agreements with all the governments whose ships were trading. There was serious friction with the United States, where the southern slave interest was politically powerful. Washington recoiled at British policing of the high seas. Spain, France and Portugal also relied on the international slave trade to supply their colonial plantations.

As more and more diplomatic arrangements were made by Castlereagh, the owners of slave ships started flying false flags of nations that had not agreed, especially the United States. It was illegal under American law for American ships to engage in the slave trade, but the idea of Britain enforcing American laws was unacceptable to Washington. [[Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston|Lord Palmerston]] and other British foreign ministers continued the Castlereagh policies. Eventually, in 1842 in 1845, an arrangement was reached between London and Washington. With the arrival of a staunchly anti-slavery government in Washington in 1861, the Atlantic slave trade was doomed. In the long run, Castlereagh's strategy on how to stifle the slave trade proved successful.<ref>{{cite journal |first=James C. |last=Duram |title=A Study of Frustration: Britain, the USA, and the African Slave Trade, 1815–1870 |journal=[[Social Science (journal)|Social Science]] |date=1965 |volume=40 |issue=4 |pages=220–225 |jstor=41885111}}</ref>

Prime Minister Palmerston detested slavery, and in [[Colonial Nigeria|Nigeria]] in 1851 he took advantage of divisions in native politics, the presence of Christian missionaries, and the maneuvers of British consul [[John Beecroft]] to encourage the overthrow of King Kosoko. The new King Akitoye was a docile non-slave-trading puppet.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Giles D. |last=Short |title=Blood and Treasure: The reduction of Lagos, 1851 |journal=ANU Historical Journal |date=1977 |volume=13 |pages=11–19 |issn=0001-2068}}</ref>

===British Royal Navy===
The Royal Navy's [[West Africa Squadron]], established in 1808, grew by 1850 to a force of some 25 vessels, which were tasked with combating slavery along the African coast.<ref>Huw Lewis-Jones, [https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/abolition/royal_navy_article_02.shtml "The Royal Navy and the Battle to End Slavery"], BBC, 17 February 2011.</ref> Between 1807 and 1860, the Royal Navy's Squadron seized approximately 1,600 ships involved in the slave trade and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard these vessels.<ref>Jo Loosemore, [https://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/content/articles/2007/03/20/abolition_navy_feature.shtml "Sailing against slavery"], [[BBC]], 24 September 2014.</ref> Several hundred slaves a year were transported by the navy to the British colony of [[Sierra Leone]], where they were made to serve as "apprentices" in the colonial economy until the [[Slavery Abolition Act 1833]].<ref>{{cite news |first=Caroline |last=Davies |url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/aug/02/wilberforce-condoned-slavery-files-claim |title=William Wilberforce 'condoned slavery', Colonial Office papers reveal...Rescued slaves forced into unpaid 'apprenticeships' |newspaper=[[The Guardian]] |date=2 August 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240306113624/https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/aug/02/wilberforce-condoned-slavery-files-claim |archive-date=6 March 2024}}</ref>
[[File:HMS Black Joke (1827).jpg|thumb|Capture of slave ship {{lang|es|El Almirante}} by the British Royal Navy in the 1800s. {{HMS|Black Joke|1827|6}} freed 466 slaves.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://publishing.yudu.com/An8w/navynewsjune2007/resources/36.htm |title=Navy News |date=June 2007 |access-date=9 February 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240315050053/http://publishing.yudu.com/An8w/navynewsjune2007/resources/36.htm |archive-date=15 March 2024}}</ref>]]

===Last slave ship to the United States===
{{See also|Post-1808 importation of slaves to the United States}}

Even though it was prohibited, in response to the North's reluctance or refusal to enforce the [[Fugitive Slave Act of 1850]], the Atlantic slave trade was "re-open[ed] ... by way of retaliation".<ref name=bugle>{{cite news |title=How to Oppose Slavery with Effect |newspaper=[[Anti-Slavery Bugle]] ([[Lisbon, Ohio]]) |date=29 October 1859 |page=1 |via=[[newspapers.com]] |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/63975588/chattel-slavery-is-the-root-of-the/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240727151420/https://www.newspapers.com/article/anti-slavery-bugle-chattel-slavery-is-th/63975588/ |archive-date=27 July 2024}}</ref> In 1859, "the trade in slaves from Africa to the Southern coast of the United States is now carried on in defiance of Federal law and of the Federal Government."<ref name=bugle/>

The last ''known'' slave ship to land on U.S. soil was the [[Clotilda (slave ship)|''Clotilda'']], which in 1859 illegally smuggled a number of Africans into the town of [[Mobile, Alabama]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/question/july05/ |title=Cudjo Lewis: Last African Slave in the U.S.? |access-date=12 October 2007 |archive-date=25 May 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170525130501/http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/question/july05/ |website=Jim Crow Museum |publisher=[[Ferris State University]]}}</ref> The Africans on board were sold as slaves; however, slavery in the U.S. was [[abolitionism in the United States|abolished]] five years later following the end of the [[American Civil War]] in 1865. [[Cudjoe Lewis]], who died in 1935, was long believed to be the last survivor of ''Clotilda'' and the last surviving slave brought from Africa to the United States,<ref>{{cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/dreamsofafricain0000diou |title=Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America |isbn=978-0-19-531104-4 |first=Sylvianne |last=Diouf |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=2007 |url-access=registration}}</ref> but recent research has found that two other survivors from ''Clotilda'' outlived him, [[Redoshi]] (who died in 1937) and [[Matilda McCrear]] (who died in 1940).<ref name="Durkin-2019">{{cite journal |last=Durkin |first=Hannah |s2cid=150975893 |title=Finding last middle passage survivor Sally 'Redoshi' Smith on the page and screen |journal=Slavery & Abolition |date=2019 |volume=40 |issue=4 |pages=631–658 u|doi=10.1080/0144039X.2019.1596397}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Durkin |first=Hannah |date=19 March 2020 |title=Uncovering The Hidden Lives of Last Clotilda Survivor Matilda McCrear and Her Family |journal=Slavery & Abolition |volume=41 |issue=3 |pages=431–457 |doi=10.1080/0144039X.2020.1741833 |s2cid=216497607 |issn=0144-039X}}</ref>

However, according to Senator [[Stephen Douglas]], Lincoln's opponent in the [[Lincoln–Douglas debates]]:

{{blockquote|In regard to the slave trade, Mr. Douglas stated that there was not the shadow of doubt but that it had been carried on quite extensively for a long time back, and that there had been more slaves imported into the Southern States during the last year [1858] than had ever been imported before in any one year, even when the slave trade was legal. It was his confident belief that over 15,000 slaves had been brought into this country during the past year. He had seen, with his own eyes, three hundred of these recently-imported, miserable beings, in a slave-pen in [[Vicksburg, Mississippi]], and also large numbers at [[Memphis, Tennessee]].<ref>{{cite news |title=Mr. Douglas' position |newspaper=[[Richmond Enquirer]] |location=[[Richmond, Virginia]] |date=30 August 1859 |page=4 |via=[[newspapers.com]] |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/93416794/stephen-douglas-slavery-presidential/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240728110322/https://www.newspapers.com/article/richmond-enquirer-stephen-douglas-slave/93416794/ |archive-date=28 July 2024}}</ref>}}

[[File:Union and Liberty! Union and Slavery!.jpg|thumb|The image contrasts two scenes: [[Abraham Lincoln]] advocating equality with a worker, while [[George B. McClellan|McClellan]] shakes hands with Jefferson Davis, representing the Southern slave system.]]

Abraham Lincoln faced significant constitutional challenges in his fight to abolish slavery, as the U.S. Constitution had provided protections for slavery. Despite these challenges, Lincoln's leadership and the creation of a strong federal government allowed for the eventual abolition of slavery through the [[Emancipation Proclamation]] and the passage of the [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|13th Amendment]].<ref>Eric Foner, "Lincoln's Evolving Thoughts On Slavery, And Freedom," National Public Radio, October 11, 2010, https://www.npr.org/2010/10/11/130489804/lincolns-evolving-thoughts-on-slavery-and-freedom. Accessed September 19, 2024.</ref>

===Brazil ends the Atlantic slave trade===
The last country to ban the Atlantic slave trade was Brazil; a first law was approved in 1831, however it was only enforced in 1850 through the new [[Eusébio de Queirós Law]]. Despite the prohibition, it took another three years for the trade to effectively end. Between the first law in 1831 and the effective ban of transatlantic trade in 1850, an estimated 500,000 Africans were enslaved and illegally trafficked to Brazil,<ref>{{Cite news |url=https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/noticias/2015/11/151120_brasil_escravidao_reparacoes_fd |title=O polêmico debate sobre reparações pela escravidão no Brasil |trans-title=The controversial debate on reparations for slavery in Brazil |access-date=2 December 2023 |work=[[BBC News Brasil]] |first=Fernando |last=Duarte |date=20 November 2015 |language=pt |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231203020441/https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/noticias/2015/11/151120_brasil_escravidao_reparacoes_fd |archive-date=3 December 2023}}</ref> and until 1856, the year of the last recorded seizure of a slave ship by the Brazilian authorities, around 38,000 Africans still entered the country as slaves.<ref>{{Cite news |title=É hora de falar sobre escravidão mercantil e moderna |trans-title=It's time to talk about commercial and modern slavery |url=https://www.nexojornal.com.br/colunistas/2018/%C3%89-hora-de-falar-sobre-escravid%C3%A3o-mercantil-e-moderna |publisher=Nexo Jornal |language=pt-BR |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231203020440/https://www.nexojornal.com.br/colunistas/2018/%C3%89-hora-de-falar-sobre-escravid%C3%A3o-mercantil-e-moderna |archive-date=3 December 2023}}</ref>

Historians João José Reis, Sidney Chalhoub, Robert W. Slenes and Flávio dos Santos Gomes proposed that another reason for the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade to Brazil was the [[Malê revolt|Malê Revolt]] in 1835. On January 25, 1835, an estimated 600 free and enslaved Africans armed with guns ran through the streets of Salvador murdering whites and slaveholders. Abolitionists argued that if the slave trade and slavery continued, slave resistance movements would increase, resulting in more deaths. Seventy three percent of the Africans in the Malê revolt were Yoruba men who converted to Islam; some white Brazilians believed they had a spirit of resistance against enslavement.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Graden |first1=Dale |title=Slave resistance and the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade to Brazil in 1850 |journal=História Unisinos |date=2010 |volume=14 |issue=3 |pages=283–284 |doi=10.4013/htu.2010.143.05 |url=https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/5798/579866831005.pdf |access-date=7 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240715210720/https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/5798/579866831005.pdf |archive-date=15 July 2024}}</ref>

===Economic motivation to end the slave trade===
[[File:Haitian Revolution.jpg|thumb|Haitian Revolution]]

The historian Walter Rodney contends that it was a decline in the profitability of the triangular trades that made it possible for certain basic human sentiments to be asserted at the decision-making level in a number of European countries—Britain being the most crucial because it was the greatest carrier of African captives across the Atlantic. Rodney states that changes in productivity, technology, and patterns of exchange in Europe and the Americas informed the decision by the British to end their participation in the trade in 1807.<ref name="WalterRodney" />

Nevertheless, [[Michael Hardt]] and [[Antonio Negri]]<ref>Hardt, M. and A. Negri (2000), ''Empire'', Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 114–128.</ref> argue that it was neither a strictly economic nor a moral matter. First, because slavery was (in practice) still beneficial to capitalism, providing not only an influx of capital but also disciplining hardship into workers (a form of "apprenticeship" to the capitalist industrial plant). The more "recent" argument of a "moral shift" (the basis of the previous lines of this article) is described by Hardt and Negri as an "ideological" apparatus in order to eliminate the sentiment of guilt in western society. Although moral arguments did play a secondary role, they usually had major resonance when used as a strategy to undercut competitors' profits. This argument holds that Eurocentric history has been blind to the most important element in this fight for emancipation, precisely, the constant revolt and the antagonism of slaves' revolts. The most important of those being the [[Haitian Revolution]].

The shock of this 1804 revolution introduced an essential political argument into the end of the slave trade as slaveholders in North America feared a similar situation could happen in the United States, where enslaved people in the Southern states might free themselves through an armed resistance movement and free all enslaved people. The success of enslaved and free blacks in Haiti in freeing themselves through revolt invoked fear among many whites in North America. [[St. George Tucker]], a Virginian jurist, said this about the Haitian Revolution: "enough to make one shudder in fear of similar calamities in this country". Some white Americans and whites in the Caribbean suggested ending the slave trade and slavery to prevent an uprising like the one in Haiti.<ref>{{cite web |title=Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the U. S. |url=https://www.brown.edu/Facilities/John_Carter_Brown_Library/exhibitions/haitian/pages/part8.html |website=[[John Carter Brown Library]] |publisher=[[Brown University]] |access-date=29 April 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240518132659/https://www.brown.edu/Facilities/John_Carter_Brown_Library/exhibitions/haitian/pages/part8.html |archive-date=18 May 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=The United States and the Haitian Revolution, 1791–1804 |url=https://history.state.gov/milestones/1784-1800/haitian-rev |website=[[Office of the Historian]] |publisher=[[United States Department of State|Department of State]] |access-date=29 April 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240710022605/https://history.state.gov/milestones/1784-1800/haitian-rev |archive-date=10 July 2024}}</ref> A Jamaican [[Planter class|planter]], [[Bryan Edwards (politician)|Bryan Edwards]], observed the Haitian revolution and argued that the enslaved people who revolted were newly imported slaves from Africa. Edwards and other planters believed the [[Slave rebellion|slave revolts]] in the Caribbean were instigated by these new slaves, and some abolitionists suggested ending the slave trade to prevent further slave insurrections.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Bromley |first1=Jason |title=Resistance and the Haitian Revolution |url=https://scholar.library.miami.edu/slaves/san_domingo_revolution/individual_essay/jason.html |website=Archives and Special Collections of Richter Library |publisher=University of Miami Library |access-date=17 May 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240605204234/http://scholar.library.miami.edu/slaves/san_domingo_revolution/individual_essay/jason.html |archive-date=5 June 2024}}</ref> In Charleston, South Carolina, in 1822, [[Denmark Vesey]] and [[Gullah Jack]] planned a slave insurrection inspired by the Haitian Revolution.<ref>{{cite web |title=Denmark Vesey |url=https://www.nps.gov/people/denmark-vesey.htm |website=[[National Park Service]] |access-date=29 April 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240718070434/https://www.nps.gov/people/denmark-vesey.htm |archive-date=18 July 2024}}</ref>

The Haitian Revolution affected France's colonial economy. Saint Domingue (Haiti) was France's wealthiest colony and the world's top producer of sugar and coffee; it was also a global leader in cacao and indigo. Enslaved labor made Saint Domingue the wealthiest colony in the world and furnished two-thirds of France's overseas trade—because of Saint Domingue's wealth it was nicknamed "''Pearl of the Antilles.''" After free and enslaved people gained their independence from France, France and French slaveholders wanted financial compensation from Haiti in the amount of 150 million francs to compensate for their lost wealth, calling it an "Independence Debt" because France had lost its wealthiest colony when Haiti gained independence.<ref>{{cite web |last1=DelGrande |first1=Joe |title=France's Overdue Debt to Haiti |url=https://www.nyujilp.org/frances-overdue-debt-to-haiti/ |website=Journal of International Law and Politics |date=27 January 2022 |publisher=[[New York University]] |access-date=3 May 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240503153005/https://www.nyujilp.org/frances-overdue-debt-to-haiti/ |archive-date=3 May 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Economy |url=https://www.brown.edu/Facilities/John_Carter_Brown_Library/exhibitions/remember_haiti/economy.php |website=[[John Carter Brown Library]] |publisher=[[Brown University]] |access-date=3 May 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240720165859/https://www.brown.edu/Facilities/John_Carter_Brown_Library/exhibitions/remember_haiti/economy.php |archive-date=20 July 2024}}</ref> 

Haitians defeated the French, British, and Spanish during the revolution. Prior to the revolution, the United States was a major trade partner with Saint Domingue. After the revolution, the [[United States and the Haitian Revolution|United States]] refused to recognize Haiti as an independent Black nation.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Crawford-Roberts |first1=Ann |title=A History of United States Policy Towards Haiti |url=https://library.brown.edu/create/modernlatinamerica/chapters/chapter-14-the-united-states-and-latin-america/moments-in-u-s-latin-american-relations/a-history-of-united-states-policy-towards-haiti/ |website=Brown University Library |publisher=[[Brown University]] |access-date=3 May 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240709035552/https://library.brown.edu/create/modernlatinamerica/chapters/chapter-14-the-united-states-and-latin-america/moments-in-u-s-latin-american-relations/a-history-of-united-states-policy-towards-haiti/ |archive-date=9 July 2024}}</ref> Haiti was no longer the main exporter of sugar after the revolution, Cuba became the main supplier of sugar to foreign nations, and Louisiana became a center of sugar production in the United States. Slave revolts affected the economy of the slave trade as slaveholders lost property in enslaved people through death, running away, and a decrease in the production of cash crops resulting in a shift in trade to other nations.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Topik |first1=Steven |title=A Global History of Trade and Conflict since 1500 |chapter=An Explosion of Violence: How the Haitian Revolution Rearranged the Trade Patterns of the Western Hemisphere |date=2013 |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |isbn=9781349459988 |pages=62–86 |doi=10.1057/9781137326836_4 |chapter-url=https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137326836_4}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Hancock |first1=James |title=Sugar & the Rise of the Plantation System |url=https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1784/sugar--the-rise-of-the-plantation-system/#:~:text=After%20the%20Haitian%20revolution%2C%20many,Louisiana%2C%20where%20slavery%20still%20existed. |website=World History Encyclopedia |access-date=17 May 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240705062733/https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1784/sugar--the-rise-of-the-plantation-system/ |archive-date=5 July 2024}}</ref>

However, both [[James Stephen (British politician)|James Stephen]] and [[Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux]], wrote that the slave trade could be abolished for the benefit of the British colonies, and the latter's pamphlet was often used in parliamentary debates in favour of abolition. [[William Pitt the Younger]] argued on the basis of these writings that the British colonies would be better off, in their economic position as well as in their security, if the trade was abolished. Consequently, according to historian Christer Petley, abolitionists argued, and even some absentee plantation owners accepted, that the trade could be abolished "without substantial damage to the plantation economy". [[William Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville]] argued that "the slave population of the colonies could be maintained without it". Petley points out that government took the decision to abolish the trade "with the express intention of improving, not destroying, the still-lucrative plantation economy of the British West Indies."<ref>Petley, ''White Fury'', pp. 190–209.</ref>{{full citation needed|date=July 2024}}

==Legacy==

===Sierra Leone===
{{Main|Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor|Sierra Leone Creole people}}

In 1787, the British helped 400 freed slaves, primarily African Americans freed during the [[American Revolutionary War]] who had been evacuated to London, to relocate to [[Sierra Leone]]. Most of the first group of settlers died due to disease and warfare with Indigenous peoples. About 64 survived to establish the second "[[Province of Freedom]]" following the failed first attempt at colonization between 1787 and 1789.{{sfn|Schama|2006|p=?}}{{page needed|date=July 2024}}<ref>{{cite book |first=Cassandra |last=Pybus |title=Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and Their Global Quest for Liberty |publisher=[[Beacon Press]] |location=Boston |date=2006 |page= |isbn=}}{{page needed|date=July 2024}}; {{cite journal |jstor=2947159 |title=The Black Loyalist Directory: African Americans in Exile After the American Revolution |first1=Graham Russell |last1=Hodges |first2=Susan Hawkes |last2=Cook |first3=Alan Edward |last3=Brown |journal=The William and Mary Quarterly
|volume=53 |number=4 |date=October 1996}}</ref><ref>{{cite thesis |last=Sivapragasam |first=Michael |title=Why Did Black Londoners not join the Sierra Leone Resettlement Scheme 1783–1815? |type=Unpublished master's dissertation |location=London |publisher=[[Open University]] |date=2013 |pages=40–43}}</ref>

In 1792, 1200 [[Nova Scotian Settlers]] from Nova Scotia settled and established the [[Colony of Sierra Leone]] and the settlement of [[Freetown]]; these were newly freed African Americans and their descendants. Many of the adults had left [[Patriot (American Revolution)|Patriot]] owners and fought for the British in the Revolutionary War. The Crown had offered slaves freedom who left rebel masters, and [[Black Loyalist|thousands joined the British lines]]. More than 1,200 volunteered to settle and establish the new colony of Freetown, which was established by British abolitionists under the [[Sierra Leone Company]].{{sfn|Schama|2006|p=?}}{{page needed|date=July 2024}}<ref>{{cite book|last=Walker |first=James W. |year=1992 |chapter=Chapter Five: Foundation of Sierra Leone |title=The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, 1783–1870 |location=Toronto |publisher=University of Toronto Press |pages=[https://archive.org/details/blackloyalistsse0000walk/page/94 94]–114 |url=https://archive.org/details/blackloyalistsse0000walk |url-access=registration |isbn=978-0-8020-7402-7}} Originally published by Longman & Dalhousie University Press (1976).</ref>

===Liberia===
{{Main|American Colonization Society|Americo-Liberian people}}

In 1816, a group of wealthy European-Americans, some of whom were abolitionists and others who were racial segregationists, founded the [[American Colonization Society]] with the express desire of sending liberated African Americans to West Africa. In 1820, they sent their first ship to [[Liberia]], and within a decade around two thousand African Americans had been settled there. Such resettlement continued throughout the 19th century, increasing following the deterioration of race relations in the Southern states of the US following [[Reconstruction Era of the United States|Reconstruction]] in 1877.{{sfn|Handley|2006|p=21}}

The American Colonization Society's proposal to send African Americans to Liberia was not universally popular among African Americans, and the proposal was seen as a plot to weaken the influence of the abolitionist movement.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Egerton |first=Douglas R. |date=June 1997 |title=Averting a Crisis: The Proslavery Critique of the American Colonization Society |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/421411/pdf |journal=[[Civil War History]] |volume=43 |pages=142–156 |doi=10.1353/cwh.1997.0099 |via=[[Project MUSE]] |number=2 |s2cid=143549872 |access-date=24 July 2019 |archive-date=24 July 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190724144305/https://muse.jhu.edu/article/421411/pdf |url-status=live|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref name=Hubbard>{{cite news |title=Jeremiah Hubbard's letter |newspaper=[[Middlebury Free Press]] |location=[[Middlebury, Vermont]] |date=23 Jun 1834 |first=Orson S. |last=Murray |page=1 |via=[[newspapers.com]] |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/96901719/colonization-of-freed-slaves/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240728110759/https://www.newspapers.com/article/middlebury-free-press-1831-1837-coloniz/96901719/ |archive-date=28 July 2024}}</ref> The scheme was widely rejected by prominent African-American abolitionists such as [[James Forten]]<ref>{{Cite book |last=Wesley |first=Dorothy Porter |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gaUFeuToWhwC&pg=PA250 |title=Early Negro Writing, 1760–1837 |date=1995 |publisher=Black Classic Press |isbn=978-0-933121-59-1 |page=250 |language=en |access-date=8 March 2020 |archive-date=19 August 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200819151300/https://books.google.com/books?id=gaUFeuToWhwC&pg=PA250 |url-status=live}}</ref> and [[Frederick Douglass]].<ref name="apology"/>

===Rastafari movement===
The [[Rastafari movement]], which originated in Jamaica, where 92% of the population are descended from the Atlantic slave trade, has made efforts to publicise the slavery and to ensure it is not forgotten, especially through [[reggae]] music.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/rastafari/history/reggae.shtml |title=Reggae and slavery |website=[[BBC]] |date=9 October 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240205095013/https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/rastafari/history/reggae.shtml |archive-date=5 February 2024}}</ref>

===Apologies===

====Worldwide====
{{Unreferenced section|date=December 2021}}

[[File:Slave Dungeon - Osu Castle.jpg|thumb|Slave dungeon inside [[Osu Castle]] in Ghana]]

In 1998, [[UNESCO]] designated 23 August as [[International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition]]. Since then there have been a number of events recognizing the effects of slavery.

At the 2001 [[World Conference Against Racism]] in [[Durban]], South Africa, African nations demanded a clear apology for slavery from the former slave-trading countries. Some nations were ready to express an apology, but the opposition, mainly from the United Kingdom, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, and the United States blocked attempts to do so. A fear of monetary compensation might have been one of the reasons for the opposition. As of 2009, efforts are underway to create a [[UN Slavery Memorial]] as a permanent remembrance of the victims of the Atlantic slave trade.

====Benin====
In 1999, President [[Mathieu Kerekou]] of [[Benin]] (formerly the Kingdom of [[Dahomey]]) issued a national apology for the role Africans played in the Atlantic slave trade.<ref name="apology"/> [[Luc Gnacadja]], minister of environment and housing for Benin, later said: "The slave trade is a shame, and we do repent for it."<ref name="dahomey">{{cite news |url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/2000/05/01/benin-officials-apologize-for-role-in-us-slave-trade/ |title=Benin Officials Apologize For Role In U.S. Slave Trade |work=[[Chicago Tribune]] |date=1 May 2000 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210515162152/https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2000-05-01-0005010158-story.html |archive-date=15 May 2021}}</ref> Researchers estimate that 3&nbsp;million slaves were exported out of the [[Slave Coast of West Africa|Slave Coast]] bordering the [[Bight of Benin]].<ref name="dahomey"/>

====Denmark====
Denmark had a foothold in Ghana for more than 200 years and trafficked as many as 4,000 enslaved Africans per year.<ref>{{cite book |last=Andrews |first=Kehinde |year=2021 |title=The New Age of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World |place=London |publisher=Allen Lane |page=98 |isbn=978-0-241-43744-5}}</ref>
Danish Foreign Minister, Uffe Ellemann-Jensen declared publicly in 1992:
"I understand why the inhabitants in the [[Danish West Indies|West Indian Islands]] celebrate the day they became part of the U.S. But for Danish people and Denmark the day is a dark chapter. We exploited the slaves in the West Indian Islands during 250 years and made good money on them, but when we had to pay wages, we sold them instead, without even asking the inhabitants (...) That really wasn't a decent thing to do. We could at least have called a referendum, and asked people which nation they wanted to belong to. Instead we just let down the people."<ref>{{cite journal |last=Andersen |first=Astrid Nonbo |title="We Have Reconquered the Islands": Figurations in Public Memories of Slavery and Colonialism in Denmark 1948–2012 |journal=International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society |volume=26 |number=1 |year=2013 |pages=57–76 |doi=10.1007/s10767-013-9133-z |jstor=42636435 |s2cid=189952970}}</ref>{{rp|69}}

====France====
On 30 January 2006, [[Jacques Chirac]] (the then French President) said that 10 May would henceforth be a national day of remembrance for the victims of slavery in France, marking the day in 2001 when France passed a law recognising slavery as a [[crime against humanity]].<ref>{{cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4662442.stm |title=Chirac names slavery memorial day |work=[[BBC News]] |date=30 January 2006 |access-date=22 July 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230408141716/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4662442.stm |archive-date=8 April 2023}}</ref>

====Ghana====

[[File:Cape Coast Slave Castle - panoramio.jpg|thumb|Cape Coast slave castle in Ghana]]

President [[Jerry Rawlings]] of [[Ghana]] apologized for his country's involvement in the slave trade.<ref name="apology"/>

====Netherlands====
At a UN conference on the Atlantic slave trade in 2001, the Dutch Minister for Urban Policy and Integration of Ethnic Minorities [[Roger van Boxtel]] said that the Netherlands "recognizes the grave injustices of the past." On 1 July 2013, at the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the Dutch West Indies, the Dutch government expressed "deep regret and remorse" for the involvement of the Netherlands in the Atlantic slave trade. The municipal government of Amsterdam, which co-owned the [[Surinam (Dutch colony)|colony of Surinam]], and [[De Nederlandsche Bank]], which was involved in slavery between 1814 and 1863, apologized for their involvement on 1 July 2021 and 1 July 2022, respectively.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.amsterdam.nl/bestuur-organisatie/college/burgemeester/speeches/toespraak-slavernijherdenking-2021/ |title=Toespraak slavernijherdenking 2021 |language=nl |trans-title=Slavery commemoration speech 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240225210602/https://www.amsterdam.nl/bestuur-organisatie/college/burgemeester/speeches/toespraak-slavernijherdenking-2021/ |archive-date=25 February 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.dnb.nl/over-ons/slavernijverleden-dnb/excuses-voor-betrokkenheid-en-maatregelen/ |title=Excuses voor betrokkenheid en maatregelen |language=nl |trans-title=Apologies for involvement and measures |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230712115543/https://www.dnb.nl/over-ons/slavernijverleden-dnb/excuses-voor-betrokkenheid-en-maatregelen/ |archive-date=12 July 2023}}</ref>

A formal apology on behalf of the Dutch government was issued by Prime Minister [[Mark Rutte]] in 2022 following a review by an advisory committee. Government ministers were sent to seven former colonies to reiterate the Dutch state's formal apology. Some activists continued to call for [[Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands]] to issue an apology.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Henley |first=Jon |date=19 December 2022 |title=Dutch PM apologises for Netherlands' role in slave trade |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/19/dutch-pm-apologises-for-netherlands-role-in-slave-trade |access-date=16 February 2024 |work=[[The Guardian]] |language=en-GB |issn=0261-3077 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240224000453/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/19/dutch-pm-apologises-for-netherlands-role-in-slave-trade |archive-date=24 February 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.government.nl/latest/news/2022/12/19/government-apologises-for-the-netherlands-role-in-the-history-of-slavery |title=Government apologises for the Netherlands' role in the history of slavery |website=[[Government of the Netherlands]] |date=19 December 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240515203249/https://www.government.nl/latest/news/2022/12/19/government-apologises-for-the-netherlands-role-in-the-history-of-slavery |archive-date=15 May 2024}}</ref>

====Nigeria====

[[File:Slave Port, Badagry, Lagos.jpg|thumb|Slave Port in Badagry, Lagos State Nigeria]]

In 2009, the Civil Rights Congress of [[Nigeria]] wrote an open letter to all [[Tribal chief|African chieftains]] who participated in trade calling for an apology for their role in the Atlantic slave trade: "We cannot continue to blame the white men, as Africans, particularly the traditional rulers, are not blameless. In view of the fact that the Americans and Europe have accepted the cruelty of their roles and have forcefully apologized, it would be logical, reasonable and humbling if African traditional rulers ... [can] accept blame and formally apologize to the descendants of the victims of their collaborative and exploitative slave trade."<ref name=SmithGuardian>{{cite news |last=Smith |first=David |title=African chiefs urged to apologise for slave trade |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/18/africans-apologise-slave-trade |work=[[The Guardian]] |access-date=1 March 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240329020129/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/18/africans-apologise-slave-trade |archive-date=29 March 2024}}</ref>

====United Kingdom====
In December 1999, [[Liverpool City Council]] passed a formal motion apologising for the [[Liverpool slave trade|city's part]] in the slave trade. It was unanimously agreed that [[Liverpool]] acknowledges its responsibility for its involvement in three centuries of the slave trade. The city council has made an unreserved apology for Liverpool's involvement and the continual effect of slavery on Liverpool's black communities.<ref>{{cite web |website=[[National Museums Liverpool]] |url=http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ism/srd/liverpool.aspx |title=Liverpool and the transatlantic slave trade |access-date=31 August 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200929132116/https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/history-of-slavery/transatlantic-slave-trade |archive-date=29 September 2020}}</ref>

In November 2006, British Prime Minister [[Tony Blair]] made a partial apology for Britain's role in the African slavery trade. However African rights activists denounced it as "empty rhetoric" that failed to address the issue properly. They feel his apology stopped shy to prevent any legal retort.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6185176.stm |title=Blair 'sorrow' over slave trade |work=[[BBC News]] |date=27 November 2006 |access-date=15 March 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240508233451/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6185176.stm |archive-date=8 May 2024}}</ref> Blair again apologized on 14 March 2007.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6451793.stm |title=Blair 'sorry' for UK slavery role |work=[[BBC News]] |date=14 March 2007 |access-date=15 March 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230326085934/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6451793.stm |archive-date=26 March 2023}}</ref>

In August 2007, [[Ken Livingstone]] ([[Mayor of London]]) apologized publicly for London's role in the [[History of slavery|slave trade]]. "You can look across there to see the institutions that still have the benefit of the wealth they created from slavery," he said, pointing towards the financial district, before breaking down in tears. He said that London was still tainted by the horrors of slavery. [[Jesse Jackson]] praised Mayor Livingstone and added that reparations should be made.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Muir |first1=Hugh |title=Livingstone weeps as he apologises for slavery |url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/aug/24/london.humanrights |newspaper=[[The Guardian]] |date=24 August 2007 |access-date=30 July 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230404134610/https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/aug/24/london.humanrights |archive-date=4 April 2023}}</ref>

In 2020, the [[Bank of England]] apologized for the role of directors in the Atlantic slave trade and pledged to remove pictures and statues of the 25 bank leaders who owned or traded in slavery.<ref>{{Cite news |date=19 June 2020 |title=Bank of England says sorry for slave links as UK faces past |url=https://apnews.com/article/england-london-ap-top-news-slavery-international-news-c2b6149374a9532a748fd9cf0fbcc8e4 |access-date=10 July 2023 |work=[[AP News]] |language=en |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240131062908/https://apnews.com/article/england-london-ap-top-news-slavery-international-news-c2b6149374a9532a748fd9cf0fbcc8e4 |archive-date=31 January 2024}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Jolly |first=Jasper |date=18 June 2020 |title=Bank of England apologises for role of former directors in slave trade |language=en-GB |newspaper=[[The Guardian]] |url=https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/18/bank-of-england-apologises-for-role-of-former-directors-in-slave-trade |access-date=10 July 2023 |issn=0261-3077 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231107215914/https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/18/bank-of-england-apologises-for-role-of-former-directors-in-slave-trade |archive-date=7 November 2023}}</ref>

====United States====
In February 2007, the [[Virginia General Assembly]] passed House Joint Resolution Number 728<ref>{{cite web |url=http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?071+ful+HJ728H2 |title=House Joint Resolution Number 728 |website=[[Virginia|Commonwealth of Virginia]] |access-date=22 July 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230712111919/http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?071+ful+HJ728H2 |archive-date=12 July 2023}}</ref> acknowledging "with profound regret the involuntary servitude of Africans and the exploitation of Native Americans, and call for reconciliation among all Virginians". With the passing of that resolution, Virginia became the first of the 50 United States to acknowledge through the state's governing body their state's involvement in slavery. The passing of this resolution came on the heels of the 400th-anniversary celebration of the city of [[Jamestown, Virginia]], which was the first permanent [[English colonial empire|English colony]] to survive in what would become the United States. Jamestown is also recognized as one of the first slave ports of the [[Thirteen Colonies|American colonies]]. On 31 May 2007, the [[List of governors of Alabama|Governor of Alabama]], [[Bob Riley]], signed a resolution expressing "profound regret" for Alabama's role in slavery and apologizing for slavery's wrongs and lingering effects. Alabama is the fourth state to pass a slavery apology, following votes by the legislatures in [[Maryland]], Virginia, and [[North Carolina]].<ref>{{cite news |agency=[[Associated Press]] |url=https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna18961394 |title=Ala. governor signs bill apologizing for slavery |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210510080339/https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna18961394 |archive-date=10 May 2021 |work=[[NBC News]] |date=31 May 2007}}</ref>

On 30 July 2008, the [[United States House of Representatives]] passed a resolution apologizing for American slavery and subsequent discriminatory laws. The language included a reference to the "fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow" segregation.<ref>{{cite news |last=Fears |first=Darryl |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/29/AR2008072902279.html |title=House Issues An Apology For Slavery |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |date=30 July 2008 |page=A03 |access-date=22 July 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240218052756/https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/29/AR2008072902279.html |archive-date=18 February 2024}}</ref> On 18 June 2009, the [[United States Senate]] issued an apologetic statement decrying the "fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery". The news was welcomed by [[President of the United States|President]] [[Barack Obama]].<ref>[[Agence France-Presse]]. [https://web.archive.org/web/20090624144341/http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iyMeHvk7WyJys7iAyehSzik11Yqg "Obama praises 'historic' Senate slavery apology"]. [[Google News]], 18 June 2009. Accessed 22 July 2009.</ref>

==See also==
{{div col|colwidth=18em}}
* [[Amerindian slave ownership]]
* [[Atlantic history]]
* [[Atlantic slave trade to Brazil]]
* [[Balkan slave trade]]
* [[Barbary slave trade]]
* ''[[Biography and the Black Atlantic]]''
* [[Blackbirding]]
* [[Black Sea slave trade]]
* [[Bristol slave trade]] (UK)
* [[Edward Colston]]
* [[European enslavement of Indigenous Americans]]
* [[Indian indenture system]]
* [[Indian Ocean slave trade]]
* [[Liverpool slave trade]]
* [[Piracy]]
* [[Red Sea slave trade]]
* [[The Slave Route Project]]
* [[Slave Trade Acts]]
* [[Slavery in Brazil]]
* [[Slavery in Britain]]
* [[Slavery in Canada]]
* [[Slavery in contemporary Africa]]
* [[Slavery in pre-Columbian America]]
* [[Slavery in South Africa]]
* [[Slavery in the British and French Caribbean]]
* [[Slavery in the colonial United States]]
* [[Slavery in the Ottoman Empire]]
* [[Slavery in the Spanish New World colonies]]
* [[Slavery in the United States]]
* ''[[Tobacco and Slaves]]'' (1986 book)
* [[Trans-Saharan slave trade]]
* [[United States labor law]]
* [[Zephaniah Kingsley]]
{{div col end}}

==References==

===Citations===
{{reflist|30em}}

===General bibliography===

====Academic books====
{{refbegin}}
* {{cite book |last=Austen |first=Ralph |year=1987 |title= African Economic History: Internal Development and External Dependency |publisher=James Currey |location=London |isbn=978-0-85255-009-0}}
* {{cite book |last=Christopher |first=Emma |year=2006 |title= Slave Ship Sailors and Their Captive Cargoes, 1730–1807 |location=Cambridge |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=0-521-67966-4}}
* {{cite book |last1=Hair |first1=Paul |last2=Law |first2=Robin |chapter=The English in western Africa to 1700 |pages=241–263 |editor=Nicholas Canny |title=Oxford History of the British Empire volume 1: The Origins of Empire. British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth century |date=1998 |location=Oxford |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |isbn=978-0-19-164734-5}}
* {{cite book |first=Paul E. |last=Lovejoy |author-link=Paul Lovejoy |date=1983 |title=Transformations in Slavery - A History of Slavery in Africa |series=African Studies |number=36 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=0-521-78430-1}}
* {{cite book |last=Lovejoy |first=Paul E. |date=2000 |title=Transformations in Slavery: a history of slavery in Africa |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]]}}
* {{cite book |last=Rodney |first=Walter |author-link=Walter Rodney |year=1972 |title=How Europe Underdeveloped Africa |publisher=Bogle L'Ouverture |location=London |isbn=978-0-9501546-4-0}}
* {{cite book |last1=Schama |first1=Simon |year=2006 |author1-link=Simon Schama |title=Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution |title-link=Rough Crossings |publisher=[[HarperCollins]] |isbn=978-0-06-053916-0}}
* {{cite book |last1=Sparks |first1=Randy J. |title=Where the Negroes are masters: an African port in the era of the slave trade |date=2014 |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |isbn=978-0-674-72487-7}}
* {{cite book |last=Thornton |first=John |author-link=John Thornton (historian) |year=1998 |title=Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800 |edition=2nd |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |location=New York |isbn=978-0-521-62217-2}}
* {{cite book |last=Williams |first=Eric |author-link=Eric Williams |year=2021 |orig-date=1944 |title=[[Capitalism and Slavery]] |edition=Third |location=Chapel Hill |publisher=[[University of North Carolina Press]] |isbn=978-1-4696-6369-2}}
{{refend}}

====Academic articles====
{{refbegin}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Borucki |first1=Alex |last2=Eltis |first2=David |last3=Wheat |first3=David |title=Atlantic History and the slave Trade to Spanish America |journal=[[The American Historical Review]] |volume=120 |issue=2 |date=1 April 2015 |pages=433–461 |issn=1937-5239 |doi=10.1093/ahr/120.2.433 |doi-access=free |url=https://www.institutomora.edu.mx/Documentos_RHITMO/Atlantic-History-and-the-Slave-Trade-to-Spanish-America.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240619035246/https://www.institutomora.edu.mx/Documentos_RHITMO/Atlantic-History-and-the-Slave-Trade-to-Spanish-America.pdf |archive-date=19 June 2024}}
* {{cite journal |title= Back to Africa: Issues of hosting 'Roots' tourism in West Africa |last=Handley |first=Fiona J. L. |year=2006 |journal=African Re-Genesis: Confronting Social Issues in the Diaspora |location=London |publisher=[[University College London Press]] |pages=20–31}}
* {{cite journal|title= Contested Monuments: African-Americans and the commoditization of Ghana's slave castles |last= Osei-Tutu, Brempong |year= 2006|journal= African Re-Genesis: Confronting Social Issues in the Diaspora |location= London: UCL Press |pages=9–19 |ref=Ose06}}
{{refend}}

====Non-academic sources====
{{refbegin}}
* {{cite book |last1=Meredith |first1=Martin |author-link=Martin Meredith |title=The Fortunes of Africa |date=2014 |publisher=PublicAffairs |location=New York |isbn=978-1-61039-635-6}}
{{refend}}

==Further reading==
{{refbegin|30em}}
* {{Cite book |last=Anstey |first=Roger |title=The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, 1760–1810 |publisher=Macmillan |year=1975 |isbn=0-333-14846-0 |location=London}}
* {{Cite book |last=Araujo |first=Ana Lucia |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kymzngEACAAJ |title=Public Memory of Slavery: Victims and Perpetrators in the South Atlantic |publisher=[[Cambria Press]] |year=2010 |isbn=978-1-60497-714-1}}
* {{Cite book |last=Bailey |first=Anne |title=African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Beyond the Silence and the Shame |publisher=[[Beacon Press]] |year=2006 |isbn=978-0-8070-5513-7 |location=Boston}}
* {{Cite book |last=Blackburn |first=Robin |author-link=Robin Blackburn |title=The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights |publisher=[[Verso Books]] |year=2011 |isbn=978-1-84467-569-2 |location=London & New York}}
* {{Cite journal |last1=Boruki |first1=David Eltis |last2=Wheat |first2=David |date=April 2015 |title=Atlantic History and the Slave Trade to Spanish America |journal=[[American Historical Review]] |volume=120 |issue=2}}
* {{Cite book |last=Clarke |first=John Henrik |author-link=John Henrik Clarke |title=Christopher Columbus and the Afrikan Holocaust: Slavery and the Rise of European Capitalism |publisher=A & B Books |year=1992 |isbn=1-881316-14-9 |location=Brooklyn, NY}}
* {{Cite book |last=Curtin |first=Philip D. |url=https://archive.org/details/atlanticslavetra0000curt |title=The Atlantic Slave Trade |date=1969 |publisher=[[University of Wisconsin Press]] |isbn=978-0-299-05400-7 |location=Madison |oclc=46413 |url-access=registration}}
* {{Cite journal |last=Daudin |first=Guillaume |date=2004 |title=Profitability of Slave and Long-Distance Trading in Context: The Case of Eighteenth-Century France |url=http://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8fbd/65cbaf8c100207702a7442256ece292d43bd.pdf |journal=The Journal of Economic History |volume=64 |issue=1 |pages=144–171 |doi=10.1017/S0022050704002633 |issn=1471-6372 |s2cid=154025254 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200809134718/http://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8fbd/65cbaf8c100207702a7442256ece292d43bd.pdf |archive-date=9 August 2020}}
* {{Cite book |last=Domingues da Silva |first=Daniel B. |title=The Atlantic Slave Trade from West Central Africa, 1780–1867 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |year=2017 |isbn=978-1-107-17626-3 |location=Cambridge}}
* {{Cite book |last=Drescher |first=Seymour |title=From Slavery to Freedom: Comparative Studies in the Rise and Fall of Atlantic Slavery |date=1999 |publisher=[[New York University Press]] |isbn=0-333-73748-2 |location=New York |oclc=39897280}}
* {{Cite journal |last=Eltis |first=David |year=2001 |title=The volume and structure of the transatlantic slave trade: a reassessment |journal=William and Mary Quarterly |volume=58 |issue=1 |pages=17–46 |doi=10.2307/2674417 |jstor=2674417 |pmid=18630381}}
* {{Cite book |last=Eltis |first=David |title=The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2000 |isbn=9780521652315 |location=New York}}
* {{Cite book |title=Extending the Frontiers: Essays on the New Transatlantic Slave Trade Database |publisher=Yale University Press |year=2008 |isbn=9780300134360 |editor-last=Eltis |editor-first=David |location=New Haven |editor-last2=Richardson |editor-first2=David}}
* {{Cite book |last=Emmer |first=Pieter C. |title=The Dutch in the Atlantic Economy, 1580–1880. Trade, Slavery and Emancipation |publisher=Variorum |year=1998 |isbn=9780860786979 |series=Variorum Collected Studies Series |volume=CS614 |location=Aldershot}}
* {{Cite book |last=French |first=Howard |title=Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War |publisher=Liveright Publishing |year=2021 |isbn=978-1-63149-582-3 |location=New York |oclc=1268921040}}
* {{Cite book |last=Green |first=Toby |title=The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 1300–1589 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |year=2012 |isbn=9781107014367 |location=New York}}
* {{Cite book |last=Guasco |first=Michael |title=Slaves and Englishmen: Human Bondage in the Early Modern Atlantic |publisher=[[University of Pennsylvania Press]] |year=2014 |isbn=9780812245783 |location=Philadelphia}}
* {{Cite book |last=Hall |first=Gwendolyn Midlo |author-link=Gwendolyn Midlo Hall |title=Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas: Restoring the Links |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |year=2006 |isbn=0-8078-2973-0 |location=Chapel Hill, NC}}
* {{Cite book |last1=Heywood |first1=Linda |title=Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585–1660 |last2=Thornton |first2=John K. |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |year=2007 |location=New York}}
* {{Cite book |last=Horne |first=Gerald |title=The Deepest South: The United States, Brazil, and the African Slave Trade |publisher=[[New York University Press]] |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-8147-3688-3 |location=New York}}
* {{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=abvkqNGSTZ0C |title=The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on Economies, Societies and Peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Europe |publisher=[[Duke University Press]] |year=1992 |isbn=0-8223-8237-7 |editor-last=Inikori |editor-first=Joseph E. |editor-last2=Engerman |editor-first2=Stanley L.}}
* {{Cite journal |last1=Jensen |first1=Niklas Thode |last2=Simonsen |first2=Gunvor |year=2016 |title=Introduction: The historiography of slavery in the Danish-Norwegian West Indies, c. 1950–2016 |journal=[[Scandinavian Journal of History]] |volume=41 |issue=4–5 |pages=475–494 |doi=10.1080/03468755.2016.1210880 |doi-access=free}}
* {{Cite journal |last=Landers |first=Jane |date=1984 |title=Spanish Sanctuary: Fugitives in Florida, 1687–1790 |journal=Florida Historical Quarterly |volume=62 |issue=3 |pages=296–313 |jstor=30146288}}
* {{Cite book |last=Lindsay |first=Lisa A. |title=Captives as Commodities: The Transatlantic Slave Trade |publisher=[[Prentice Hall]] |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-13-194215-8}}
* {{Cite book |last=McMillin |first=James A. |title=The Final Victims: Foreign Slave Trade to North America, 1783–1810 |date=2004 |publisher=[[University of South Carolina Press]] |isbn=978-1-57003-546-3}} {{endash}} Includes database on CD-ROM.
* {{Cite book |last=Meltzer |first=Milton |title=Slavery: A World History |publisher=Da Capo Press |year=1993 |isbn=0-306-80536-7 |location=New York}}
* {{Cite book |last=Miller |first=Christopher L. |title=The French Atlantic Triangle: Literature and Culture of the Slave Trade |publisher=[[Duke University Press]] |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-8223-4127-7 |location=Durham, NC}}
* {{Cite book|title=Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery|last=Morgan|first=Jennifer L.|publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press|year=2004|isbn=9780812218732|location=Philadelphia, PA}}
* {{Cite book |last1=Nimako |first1=Kwame |title=The Dutch Atlantic: Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation |last2=Willemsen |first2=Glenn |publisher=[[Pluto Press]] |year=2011 |isbn=978-0-7453-3108-9 |location=London}}
* {{Cite book |last1=Newson |first1=Linda |title=From Capture to Sale: The Portuguese Slave Trade to Spanish South America in the Early Seventeenth Century |last2=Minchin |first2=Susie |publisher=[[Brill Publishers|Brill]] |year=2007 |isbn=9789004156791 |location=Leiden}}
* {{Cite book |title=The Atlantic Slave Trade |publisher=Wadsworth Cengage |year=2010 |isbn=978-0-618-64356-1 |editor-last=Northrup |editor-first=David |location=Independence, KY}}
* {{Cite book |last1=Rawley |first1=James A. |title=The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History |last2=Behrendt |first2=Stephen D. |publisher=[[University of Nebraska Press]] |year=2005 |isbn=9780803239616 |edition=Rev.}}
* {{Cite book |last=Rediker |first=Marcus |title=The Slave Ship: A Human History |publisher=[[Penguin Books]] |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-14-311425-3 |location=New York}}
* {{Cite book |last=Rodney |first=Walter |title=How Europe Underdeveloped Africa |publisher=[[Howard University Press]] |year=1981 |isbn=0-88258-096-5 |edition=Revised |location=Washington, DC}}
* {{Cite book |title=Encyclopedia of Emancipation and Abolition in the Transatlantic World |publisher=[[M. E. Sharpe]] |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-7656-1257-1 |editor-last=Rodriguez |editor-first=Junius P. |location=Armonk, NY}}
* {{Cite book |last=Smallwood |first=Stephanie E. |title=Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-674-03068-8 |location=Cambridge, MA}}
* {{Cite journal |last=Schultz |first=Kara |year=2015 |title=The Kingdom of Angola is not very far from here: The South Atlantic Slave Port of Buenos Aires, 1585–1640 |journal=Slavery & Abolition |volume=36 |issue=3|pages=424–444 |doi=10.1080/0144039X.2015.1067397}}
* {{Cite book |title=Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |year=1991 |isbn=0-521-40090-2 |editor-last=Solow |editor-first=Barbara |location=Cambridge}}
* {{Cite book |last=Thomas |first=Hugh |title=The Slave Trade: The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440–1870 |publisher=Picador |year=1997 |isbn=0-330-35437-X |location=London}}
* {{Cite book |last=Wheat |first=David |title=Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570–1640 |publisher=[[University of North Carolina Press]] |year=2016 |isbn=9781469623412 |location=Chapel Hill}}
* {{Cite journal |last=Wheat |first=David |date=March 2011 |title=The First Great Waves: African Provenance Zones for the Transatlantic Slave Trade to Cartagena de Indias |journal=[[Journal of African History]] |volume=52 |issue=1 |pages=1–22 |doi=10.1017/S0021853711000119 |jstor=23017646}}
* {{Cite web |last=Poulter |first=Emma |title=Slave-grown cotton in Greater Manchester museums |url=http://www.revealinghistories.org.uk/how-did-money-from-slavery-help-develop-greater-manchester/articles/slave-grown-cotton-in-greater-manchester-museums.html |website=Revealing Histories, Remembering Slavery}}
* {{Cite web |title=Afro Atlantic Histories resource |url=https://www.nga.gov/learn/teachers/lessons-activities/afro-atlantic-histories.html |website=National Gallery of Art |location=Washington, DC}}
{{refend}}

==External links==
{{sisterlinks|d=Q105993844|c=Category:Atlantic slave trade|n=no|b=no|v=no|voy=Atlantic slave trade|m=no|mw=no|s=On the Horrors of the Slave Trade|wikt=no|species=no}}
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* [http://digitalscholarship.emory.edu/projects/featured/voyages-slave-trade.html Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190705223316/http://digitalscholarship.emory.edu/projects/featured/voyages-slave-trade.html |date=2019-07-05 }}
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6445941.stm Quick guide: The slave trade]&nbsp;– [[BBC News]]
* [http://www.blackhistory4schools.com/slavetrade/ Slave Trade and Abolition of slavery]&nbsp;– Teaching resources at Black History 4 Schools
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20100612112047/http://fax.libs.uga.edu/HT857xA1/stamenu.html British documents on slave holding and the slave trade, 1788–1793]

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