The Atlantic Slave Trade

In three and a half centuries some twelve million people will be carried across the ocean. With the rise of sugar plantations, and later tobacco and cotton, European companies organise a steady export of captives from West and Central Africa. A triangular route takes shape: goods to Africa, people across the ocean, colonial produce to Europe; the crossing lasts weeks, and a substantial share of the people die in the holds. The trade reshapes African societies themselves, strengthening the coastal states that serve it. Britain outlaws the traffic in 1807, but shipments to Brazil and Cuba continue into the 1860s.