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African Slave Trade

Definition

The African Slave Trade, also known as the Transatlantic Slave Trade, was a system where Africans were captured in Africa and forcibly transported across the Atlantic to work as slaves in the Americas from the 15th to 19th centuries.

Analogy

Think of it like a horrific one-way conveyor belt. On one end, you have Africa where people are being taken against their will. They're put on this "conveyor belt" (ships) and sent across an ocean to a completely different continent (the Americas). Once there, they're forced into labor with no way back home.

Related terms

Middle Passage: This term refers to the part of the trade where Africans were densely packed onto ships and transported across the Atlantic Ocean under brutal conditions.

Triangular Trade: This is a term describing how colonial trade routes among Europe, Africa, and America formed a triangle on the map. Goods would be shipped from Europe to Africa in exchange for slaves; these slaves were then shipped from Africa to America (Middle Passage); finally goods produced by slave labor would be shipped back from America to Europe.

Plantation System: A socio-economic system based on large-scale agriculture that relies heavily on slave labor. In America, plantations were developed primarily for growing tobacco, rice, sugar cane and cotton.