Transatlantic Slave Trade

The Slave Trade

Watch Rosemary Brown speak about slavery

Cip from Leila Sujir’s, For Jackson: A Time Capsule, 2004

Slave Voyages Project

Our Society supports the Slave Voyages Project out of Emory University. One of our very own local BC talent, Professor David Eltis, adjunct professor of history at University of British Columbia. Professor Eltis is also a Robert W. Woodruff Professor Emeritus of History and principal investigator, Electronic Slave Trade Database Project, Emory University. David Richardson is former director, Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation, and professor emeritus of economic history, University of Hull, England. Together, the authors coedited Extending the Frontiers: Essays on the New Transatlantic Slave Trade Database..

The Trans-Atlantic and Intra-American slave trade databases are the culmination of several decades of independent and collaborative research by scholars drawing upon data in libraries and archives around the Atlantic world. The new Voyages website itself is the product of three years of development by a multi-disciplinary team of historians, librarians, curriculum specialists, cartographers, computer programmers, and web designers, in consultation with scholars of the slave trade from universities in Europe, Africa, South America, and North America.

The below slides are from www.slavevoyages.org

Map 1

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The Slave Trades from Africa, 1501-1900

Of the many routes that captive Africans followed from their homelands to other parts of the world, the Atlantic crossing was by far the largest after 1500. About the same number of captives traveled across the Atlantic Ocean as left Africa by all other routes combined from the end of the Roman Empire to 1900.

Map2

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The Diffusion of Sugar Cultivation from Asia into the Atlantic, 600BCE-1650CE

Sugar is the one of keys to understanding why the transatlantic slave trade happened, given that most slaves arrived in sugar-producing areas of the Americas. Cultivation began in the Pacific islands in the pre-Christian era and gradually spread across Asia to the eastern Mediterranean, Sicily, the Atlantic Islands, the Gulf of Guinea, and Brazil before entering the Caribbean in the mid-sixteenth century and eventually returning – with greatly changed cultivation practices – to the Pacific Islands (see inset). Eighty percent of all captives carried from Africa to the Americas during the slave-trade era were taken to sugar-growing areas.

Map3

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The Old World Salve Trade in the Eastern Atlantic, 1441-1760

Before the Atlantic slave trade began and for nearly three centuries thereafter, some African slaves were taken to Lisbon and Seville, to the Atlantic islands, and between African ports. They began their voyages either in Upper Guinea and Mauritania shown in the first map, or the Gulf of Guinea and West Central Africa shown in the second. After 1500 many such captives were subsequently carried to the New World. After 1559 the slave traffic between Old World ports was much smaller than the transatlantic slave trade.

Map4

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Winds and Ocean Currents of the
Atlantic Basins

Tradewinds and ocean currents shaped the direction of the transatlantic slave trade, determining which Africans arrived in which parts of the Americas, as well as which slave-trading nations would dominate. The tradewinds and currents effectively created two systems of routes, or circuits – one in the north with voyages originating in Europe and North America, and the other in the south with voyages originating in Brazil and the Rio de la Plata. For slave traders using the northern circuit, the Guinea Current that carried vessels to West Africa was also important.

Map5

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Voyage of the Laurence Frigate, 1730-31

The logbooks of many slave vessels have survived and some have been published. Before a way of measuring longtitude came into wide use in the 19th century, a daily record of the vessels’ position depended mainly on latitude measurements. According to its logbook, the Laurence Frigate (the Lawrence in some sources), one of 117 English South Sea Company vessels that supplied slaves to the Spanish Americas, sailed from London to Loango in West Central Africa, then to the Rio de la Plata and back to London. a figure-eight route dictated by ocean currents (see map 4).

Map7

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Regions where Slave Voyages were Outfitted 1501-1867

Slave voyages were organized, financed, fitted out, loaded with trade goods, insured, and dispatched to Africa in all major Atlantic ports at some point during the transatlantic slave trade. Vessels from Brazil, England, France, Portugal, and the Netherlands carried off 90 percent of all transatlantic captives removed from Africa.

Map8

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Modern Africa and the Coastal Regions from which Slaves were Carried

In the course of nearly four centuries of Atlantic slave trading, slaves left from five major coastal regions of sub-Saharan Africa – Upper Guinea, the Gold Coast, the Bight of Benin, the Bight of Biafra, West Central Africa and Southeast Africa. At times in this atlas, Upper Guinea is broken down into three sub regions, Senegambia, Sierra Leone, and the Windward Coast. These were in no sense political or ethnoliguistic regions. Rather they were simply ranges of the coast separated from each other either by major physical features or areas in which little slave trading occurred. They are constantly referred to in the contemporary record as well as in this Atlas, especially Section C. Map 8 shows the limits of these coastal regions as well their alignment with modern African political groupings.

Map9

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Regions from which Slaves left Africa
1501-1867

West Central Africa was the largest regional departure point for captives through most of the slave trade era. As voyage length was determined as much by wind and ocean currents as by distance, routes were not necessarily quicker from regions closer to the Americas and Europe. Regions west of the Gold Coast generated a relatively small share of the total slaves carried across the Atlantic.

Map10

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Regions in Which Slaves Landed
1501-1867

The Caribbean and South America accounted for 95 percent of the captives arriving in the Americas; less than 4 percent disembarked in North America. A very small share of slaves disembarked in Africa after their ships were diverted as a result of a slave rebellion or, in the nineteenth century, because the slave trade became illegal and vessels were subject to capture and condemnation.

UNESCO Slave Routes

ADSBC is working with Canada Council on UNESCO in Ottawa to promote and raise Awareness of UNESCO Slave Routes Project and the UNESCO General History of Africa.

The Slave Routes Project, was launched in 1994 in Ouidah, Benin, on a proposal from Haiti. It pursues the following objectives:

Contribute to a better understanding of the causes, forms of operation, stakes and consequences of slavery in the world (Africa, Europe, the Americas, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, Middle East and Asia);
Highlight the global transformations and cultural interactions that have resulted from this history;
Contribute to a culture of peace by promoting reflection on inclusion, cultural pluralism, intercultural dialogue and the construction of new identities and citizenships

The UNESCO Slave Route project website is a rich resource for publications and further resources in understanding and paying respect to the victims of the slave trade and the ongoing struggles people of African descent encounter in society today.

Additional Resources

A comprehensive grade 9-12 lesson plan, “Researching the Transatlantic Slave Trade,” from Kadonsky and Eltis can be found here for download

United Nations. “Remember Slavery: Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.“ un.org. This is the official United Nations website dedicated to remembering the Translatlantic slave trade. This site is full of exhibits, films and discussions dedicated to remembering the slave trade and combatting racism.

This site is the result of Resolution 62/122 of the General Assembly on 17 December 2007 passed to commemorate the memory of the victims and declare “25 March the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, to be observed annually.” The Resolution also called for the establishment of an outreach programme to mobilize educational institutions, civil society and other organizations to inculcate in future generations the “causes, consequences and lessons of the transatlantic slave trade, and to communicate the dangers of racism and prejudice.”

Emory University. “Slave Voyages.” Slave Voyages, 2019.www.slavevoyages.org. This is a digital memorial and interactive website put together by Emory University’s Libraries and Information Technology. This site is full of maps, images, lesson plans, an African name database and even a 3D reconstruction of a slave vessel.