African Studies (Volume-2) Part-1, Slave Trade
VOLUME II: THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE, RESISTANCE, AND THE MAKING OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA (1441–1888)
- Part 1 of 5 Sub-Part
- Part 2 of 5 Sub-Part
- Part 2 of 5 Sub-Part
General Introduction to Volume II
Volume II of the Encyclopedia of African Studies covers the most traumatic and transformative period in the history of the African diaspora: the Atlantic slave trade. Between 1441 and 1888, more than twelve million Africans were forcibly transported across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas. Nearly two million died during the crossing. Those who survived were sold into a system of chattel slavery — a legal regime that defined them as property, not persons, and that stripped them of their names, languages, religions, and family ties.
But this volume is not only a catalog of suffering. It is also a chronicle of resistance at every stage: from the shipboard revolts of the Middle Passage to the maroon societies that established independent African communities in the mountains and swamps of the Americas, to the Haitian Revolution — the only successful slave revolt in world history — to the legal and political struggles of the abolitionist movement. It is also a chronicle of cultural survival: the ways in which enslaved Africans and their descendants retained, adapted, and transformed their languages, religions, music, and kinship systems under the most brutal conditions imaginable.
The volume ends in 1888, the year Brazil became the last country in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery. By that date, the transatlantic slave trade had been illegal for decades, but its legacies — anti‑Black racism, economic underdevelopment, political instability, and the ongoing struggle for justice — were only beginning to be confronted.
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The volume is organized thematically and chronologically. Part One traces the origins of the slave trade and the role of African polities. Part Two describes the Middle Passage. Part Three examines the plantation complex in Brazil, the Caribbean, and the United States. Part Four focuses on resistance, including the Haitian Revolution. Part Five covers abolition and emancipation. Part Six analyzes cultural retention and the making of diaspora religions, music, and languages. Part Seven introduces the early Pan‑Africanist movement and the back‑to‑Africa settlements of Sierra Leone and Liberia.
A note on terminology. We use “enslaved person” rather than “slave” wherever possible, to emphasize that enslavement was a condition imposed on human beings, not an identity. We use “captive” for those being transported across the Atlantic. We use “freedom seeker” rather than “runaway” or “fugitive” for those who escaped enslavement, to emphasize their agency. These are not mere euphemisms; they are political and ethical choices about how we represent the past.
A note on numbers. The estimates for the slave trade are constantly being refined. We rely primarily on the Voyages Database (www.slavevoyages.org), the most comprehensive dataset of transatlantic slave voyages, compiled by scholars at Emory University, Harvard University, and other institutions. The database records over 36,000 voyages and continues to grow. All numbers in this volume are drawn from that source unless otherwise noted.
A note on silence. Much of the history of the slave trade is lost — not because it did not happen, but because the enslaved left few written records. Their voices come to us filtered through ship logs, plantation records, court documents, and the writings of abolitionists who had their own agendas. We have tried to center the voices that do survive: the slave narratives of Olaudah Equiano, Ottobah Cugoano, Frederick Douglass, and others. We have also drawn on oral traditions collected in Africa and the diaspora, and on archaeological evidence from slave quarters, shipwrecks, and maroon settlements.
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Let us begin.
Part One: The Beginnings of the Atlantic Slave Trade (1441–1600)
The Portuguese Pioneers and the Capture of Ceuta
The Atlantic slave trade did not emerge from nowhere. It grew out of earlier systems of forced labor and human trafficking that existed in Europe, Africa, and the Americas before 1441. The trans‑Saharan slave trade had been sending enslaved Africans northward across the desert for over a thousand years, supplying the markets of North Africa, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean. The Indian Ocean slave trade had been sending enslaved East Africans to Arabia, Persia, India, and even China for centuries. The European slave trade within the Mediterranean (capturing Muslims and pagans for sale in Christian lands, and vice versa) was also centuries old.
What was new about the Atlantic slave trade was its scale, its racialization, and its connection to the plantation complex — a system of large‑scale, slave‑based, export‑oriented agriculture that would transform the economies of the Americas and, eventually, the world.
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The Portuguese were the pioneers. In 1415, King John I of Portugal and his sons (including the famous Prince Henry the Navigator) captured the North African city of Ceuta (on the Strait of Gibraltar, opposite Spain). Ceuta was a wealthy trading port, a terminus of the trans‑Saharan gold and slave routes. The Portuguese were eager to tap into that wealth.
From Ceuta, the Portuguese learned about the gold trade of West Africa — the legendary source of the gold that had funded the empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhay. They also learned about the existence of sub‑Saharan Africa — the “Land of the Blacks” — and its potential for trade.
Prince Henry sponsored a series of expeditions down the West African coast. His captains were motivated by a mixture of religious zeal (to find the legendary Christian kingdom of Prester John, who was rumored to be somewhere in Africa), commercial ambition (to find gold and other valuable goods), and curiosity (to map the unknown coastline).
The First Slave Raids (1441)
In 1441, two Portuguese captains, Antão Gonçalves and Nuno Tristão, carried out the first recorded European slave raid on the coast of West Africa. Gonçalves had been sent to hunt seals (for their skins) and to collect ambergris (a valuable whale secretion used in perfumes). Instead, he and Tristão captured twelve or thirteen Africans near Cabo Branco (Cape Blanc, in present‑day Mauritania) and brought them back to Portugal.
The captured Africans included a man named Adahu (or Adoho), who was taken to Portugal and presented to Prince Henry. Adahu was reportedly well treated, learned Portuguese, and converted to Christianity, taking the name João (John). He later returned to Africa as an interpreter for the Portuguese — a small illustration of the complex, ambiguous relationships that characterized the early trade.
In 1444, the first slave market in Europe was established in Lagos, Portugal (not to be confused with Lagos, Nigeria). By 1446, Portuguese captains had captured or traded for over a thousand Africans. The trade was still small, and it was still mixed with other goods: gold, ivory, pepper, and malagueta (a type of pepper also called “melegueta” or “grains of paradise”).
The Forts of the Gold Coast: Arguin and Elmina
As Portuguese trade along the West African coast increased, they built forts (called feitorias or factories) to protect their trading posts, store goods, and intimidate rivals. The first major fort was at Arguin (off the coast of present‑day Mauritania), built in 1448. Arguin was a small, fortified island that controlled the trade in gold, slaves, and gum arabic.
The most important Portuguese fort was São Jorge da Mina (St. George of the Mine), built in 1482 at Elmina (present‑day Ghana). Elmina was located near the gold‑producing regions of the Akan forest. The Portuguese called the region the Gold Coast (a name later adopted by the British for their colony there). Elmina became the hub of Portuguese trade in West Africa. It was a massive stone fortress, with battlements, a chapel, a slave dungeon, and a trading hall. It still stands today, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
From Elmina, the Portuguese traded for gold, ivory, and slaves with the local Akan states, especially the Denkyira and later the Asante. The Portuguese crown claimed a monopoly on the trade, but the profits were so enormous that smugglers — Spanish, Italian, German, and later English, Dutch, and French — soon joined the trade, often with the connivance of Portuguese officials.
The First African Slaves in the Americas (1502–1518)
The first enslaved Africans reached the Americas in the early sixteenth century. In 1502, the Spanish governor of Hispaniola (present‑day Haiti and the Dominican Republic) requested permission to import enslaved Africans, because the indigenous Taíno population was dying from disease, overwork, and violence. The Spanish crown agreed, and the first documented shipment of enslaved Africans arrived in Hispaniola in 1503 or 1504 — though the numbers were small.
A more systematic trade began in 1518, when the Spanish crown granted a license (an asiento) to a Flemish merchant to import 4,000 enslaved Africans to the Spanish colonies over eight years. The asiento system — a monopoly contract to supply slaves to the Spanish empire — would become a major prize for European powers over the next two centuries. The Dutch, the English, the French, and the Portuguese all competed for asientos.
In the Portuguese colony of Brazil, the first enslaved Africans arrived in the 1530s, when the Portuguese began to establish sugar plantations. The Brazilian sugar industry was modeled on the Portuguese plantations of São Tomé and Príncipe (islands in the Gulf of Guinea), which had been using enslaved African labor since the late fifteenth century. São Tomé was the world’s largest sugar producer in the 1520s and 1530s, and its methods — the slave‑based engenho (sugar mill) — were transferred directly to Brazil.
African Polities and the Slave Trade
One of the most persistent and damaging myths about the Atlantic slave trade is that Europeans simply raided Africa, kidnapping millions of people. This is false. African rulers, merchants, and military leaders were active participants in the slave trade — not because they were “evil” or “backward,” but because the trade offered immense wealth, military advantage (in the form of European firearms), and political leverage.
The majority of enslaved Africans were not captured by Europeans in coastal raids. They were taken in wars between African states, judicial condemnations (for crimes or debts), kidnappings by African slave traders operating in the interior, or organized raids by African states that specialized in slaving.
The Asante Empire (present‑day Ghana) was one of the most powerful states on the Gold Coast. The Asante supplied slaves to the British, Dutch, and Danish forts at Elmina, Accra, and Christiansborg in exchange for firearms. The Asante used these guns to conquer neighboring states (Denkyira, Akyem, Fante) and expand their empire. The trade created a vicious cycle: more guns meant more captives, which meant more guns, which meant more captives. By the eighteenth century, the Asante had become the dominant power in the region, and the slave trade was central to their economy.
The Dahomey Kingdom (present‑day Benin) became notorious for its annual slave raids. The king of Dahomey (the Ahosu) led a yearly military campaign against neighboring peoples, capturing thousands of prisoners. Some were enslaved and sold to European traders at the port of Ouidah (Whydah). Others were sacrificed in the annual Annual Customs ceremony, where the king displayed his power and honored his ancestors. The royal art of Dahomey — elaborate reliefs on the palace walls — depicted the king with severed heads and chained captives.
The Oyo Empire (present‑day Nigeria) was a powerful Yoruba state that controlled much of the slave trade from the Bight of Benin (the “Slave Coast”). Oyo supplied slaves to the Portuguese and Brazilian traders at Ouidah and at Lagos (a different Lagos — the one in Nigeria, not Portugal). Oyo’s power was based on its cavalry (horses, imported from North Africa) and its control of trade routes from the interior to the coast.
The Aro Confederacy (present‑day southeastern Nigeria) was a network of Igbo and Ibibio trading clans centered on the Arochukwu oracle (the Long Juju). The oracle was a cave with a complex acoustic system that produced eerie sounds. People who were accused of crimes, or who owed debts, or who were simply inconvenient to their communities, were brought to the oracle for judgment. The oracle would “condemn” them to slavery, and they would be sold to European traders at the ports of the Bight of Biafra (Bonny, Calabar, Old Calabar). The Aro Confederacy was not a state but a commercial network, and it controlled a significant portion of the slave trade from the Bight of Biafra.
African participation in the slave trade does not excuse the trade. The scale of demand came from Europe and the Americas. The guns that fueled African wars came from Europe. The ideology that justified enslaving Black people as a permanent, hereditary, racial condition was a European invention. And many Africans — including some rulers, and many ordinary people — resisted the slave trade. But to understand the slave trade, we must see it as a shared crime — a crime in which Africans were both victims and, in some cases, collaborators. That is uncomfortable, but it is the truth.
Part Two: The Middle Passage – The Crossing
The Scale of the Trade (1525–1866)
Between 1525 and 1866, approximately 12.5 million Africans were loaded onto slave ships on the African coast. Of these, about 10.7 million survived the Middle Passage to arrive in the Americas. The remaining 1.8 million died during the crossing — a mortality rate of about 14 percent overall.
These numbers come from the Voyages Database, which is still being updated. The actual numbers may be higher, because many voyages (especially illegal ones after the abolition of the trade) were not recorded. Some scholars estimate that the total number of captives loaded in Africa may have been as high as 15 million, with deaths correspondingly higher.
The mortality rate varied by time period, route, and nationality. In the early centuries (1500s–1600s), mortality rates could reach 20 to 25 percent. Ships were small, crowded, poorly ventilated, and the crews had little knowledge of tropical diseases. By the late eighteenth century, improvements in ship design (more space, better ventilation), better food and water, and the profit motive (dead slaves could not be sold) reduced mortality to around 5 to 10 percent.
The direction of the trade shifted over time:
- Sixteenth century – Portuguese and Spanish ships carried most captives to Brazil and the Spanish Caribbean.
- Seventeenth century – The Dutch, English, and French entered the trade. The Dutch captured Elmina from the Portuguese in 1637 and became major players. The English established colonies in Barbados (1627) and Jamaica (1655), creating a huge demand for enslaved labor.
- Eighteenth century – The trade peaked. British ships carried the largest number of captives (about 2.5 million), followed by Portuguese (2 million), French (1.3 million), and Dutch (500,000). The majority of captives went to Brazil (about 40 percent) and the Caribbean (about 45 percent).
- Nineteenth century – The trade declined after the British abolition of the slave trade in 1807, but it continued illegally, especially to Brazil and Cuba. An estimated 1.5 million captives were transported illegally between 1808 and 1866.
The largest single destination was Brazil (4.9 million captives), followed by the British Caribbean (2.2 million), the French Caribbean (1.4 million), the Spanish Caribbean (1 million), and the United States (305,000). The relatively small number of captives imported directly to the United States is often surprising. The reason is that the enslaved population in the United States grew through natural reproduction — because the sex ratio was more balanced (more women were imported), because nutrition was better, and because the climate was less deadly for tropical diseases. By 1860, the enslaved population of the United States had grown to nearly 4 million — the largest enslaved population in the Americas, despite the smallest direct imports.
The Experience of Capture and the March to the Coast
The Middle Passage did not begin at the coast. It began in the interior of Africa, often hundreds of miles from the sea.
A person could become a captive in several ways:
- War – Captives taken in battle were the most common source. African states fought wars for many reasons (territory, resources, dynastic succession, revenge), and captives were part of the spoils.
- Judicial condemnation – People convicted of serious crimes (murder, theft, witchcraft, adultery) could be sold into slavery. In some societies, the family of a murderer could be sold collectively.
- Kidnapping – Professional slave traders (often African) would kidnap people from villages, especially women and children, and sell them to coastal brokers.
- Pawning – People could be given as collateral for debts. If the debt was not repaid, the pawn (and sometimes their family) could be sold.
Once captured, the person was marched to the coast in a coffle — a long line of captives chained together at the neck or ankle. The coffle was guarded by armed men, often on horseback. The march could take weeks or months. Many captives died on the way — from exhaustion, disease, starvation, or violence.
At the coast, the captives were held in barracoons (slave prisons) — enclosures made of stone, wood, or thorn bushes. The barracoons were often located near the European forts. Here, the captives were examined by European and African traders. The traders looked for signs of health: strong teeth, clear eyes, smooth skin, no evidence of disease. Young adults (ages 15–30) were most valued. Children and the elderly were less valuable. People with visible scars, injuries, or illnesses were often rejected — and their fate was uncertain (they might be killed, released, or sold into local slavery).
The captives were then branded with hot irons — usually on the chest, shoulder, or buttocks — with the mark of the European company that would transport them. The branding was a form of property marking — it identified who owned the captive. It was also a form of dehumanization — a physical inscription of the captive’s new status as a thing, not a person.
The Ship
The slave ship was a specialized vessel. It was designed to carry as many captives as possible in the hold, while still allowing enough space for them to survive the voyage.
The ship was divided into decks. The lower deck (the hold) was where the captives were packed. The space was often less than 1.5 meters (5 feet) high — not enough for an adult to stand upright. The captives were arranged in “spoon” fashion — lying on their sides, one behind the other, like spoons in a drawer. Men were usually shackled (chains around their ankles, sometimes with iron bars between their legs). Women and children were sometimes allowed more freedom of movement on the upper deck, but they were often subjected to sexual abuse by the crew.
The ship carried a crew of about 30 to 50 men: captain, officers, sailors, surgeons, and “slave minders” (guards). The crew was outnumbered by the captives (a typical ship might carry 300 to 500 captives). The crew was armed with muskets, cutlasses, and sometimes small cannons.
The ship also carried supplies: water (stored in barrels), food (yams, rice, beans, sometimes meat or fish), medicine (mostly useless against the diseases that killed captives), and trade goods (textiles, guns, gunpowder, beads, alcohol, iron bars) for the next voyage.
The Voyage (The Middle Passage)
The Middle Passage took six to ten weeks, depending on the winds, the currents, and the destination. The route from West Africa to Brazil was shorter (five to seven weeks) than the route to the Caribbean (seven to ten weeks) or the United States (eight to twelve weeks).
The conditions in the hold were horrific. The captives lay in their own feces, urine, and vomit. The smell was described as “almost unbearable.” Dysentery (“the flux”) was the leading cause of death. Smallpox, measles, and typhus also swept through the holds. The captives were brought on deck once a day for exercise (forced to dance or jump) and to eat. But even on deck, they were often chained together.
The ship’s surgeon kept a log of deaths. The entries are brief, clinical, and devastating: “Died: a man of the flux. Died: a woman of melancholy. Died: two children of smallpox.”
“Melancholy” was the term for depression — the refusal to eat or drink, the loss of will to live. Captives who refused food were forced to eat: a speculum (a metal device) was used to force open the mouth, and a tube was inserted down the throat. Food was poured into the tube. Sometimes the captives would bite through the tube.
Suicide was common. Captives jumped overboard, strangled themselves with their chains, or refused food. The crew tried to prevent suicide by placing nets over the ship’s sides and by watching the captives closely. But suicide was a form of resistance — a final refusal of enslavement.
Shipboard Revolts
Approximately one in ten slave ships experienced some form of revolt. Most were unsuccessful. The captives were chained, outnumbered by armed crew, and often did not share a common language (which made coordination difficult). But some revolts succeeded.
The most famous successful revolt was on the Amistad (1839), though it was not a typical slave ship (the Amistad was a coastal schooner, not a transatlantic vessel). The captives — 53 Mende people from present‑day Sierra Leone — had been illegally captured and were being transported from Havana to Puerto Príncipe, Cuba. Under the leadership of Joseph Cinqué (Sengbe Pieh), the captives broke their chains, killed the captain and the cook, and ordered the surviving crew to sail back to Africa. The crew tricked them, sailing north along the coast of North America instead. The ship was captured by the U.S. Navy off Long Island, and the case went to the Supreme Court, where former president John Quincy Adams defended the captives. The Court ruled that the captives had been illegally enslaved and were free to return to Africa.
Other successful revolts include the Creole case (1841), in which 135 enslaved people on a U.S. ship bound from Virginia to New Orleans seized control, killed one of the slave traders, and forced the crew to sail to Nassau, Bahamas (then a British colony, where slavery had been abolished). The British authorities freed the captives.
But for every successful revolt, there were dozens of failed ones. The punishment for revolt was brutal: flogging, amputation, burning, or execution. In some cases, the crew would kill a captive in front of the others as a warning. In other cases, the crew would throw the leaders of the revolt overboard — alive.
The Experience of the Captive: Olaudah Equiano’s Narrative
The most famous first‑hand account of the Middle Passage is The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789). Equiano claimed to have been born in the Igbo region of present‑day Nigeria (now southeastern Nigeria). He was captured as a child, marched to the coast, and shipped to Barbados, then to Virginia, then to England. He bought his freedom, became a sailor, an abolitionist, and a writer. (Some scholars question whether Equiano was actually born in Africa — they argue that he may have been born in the Americas and invented his African origins to make his narrative more compelling. The debate continues, but the power of his narrative is undeniable.)
His description of the Middle Passage is searing and unforgettable:
“I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life: so that with the loathsomeness of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste any thing. I now wished for the last friend, death, to relieve me.”
He continues:
“The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. This produced copious perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died… The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable.”
Equiano also describes the fear of the captives, who had never seen white men, ships, or the ocean before. They believed they were being taken to be eaten by cannibals:
“I asked [another captive] if the white people had no country, but if they lived in the sea? He answered me that they had a country, but that it was a distant one, and that they sometimes visited our country for the purpose of trade. I then asked him how the white people could live in the sea? He replied that they could not, but that the sea was the road to their country.”
Equiano’s narrative was translated into multiple languages (Dutch, German, French, Russian) and became a bestseller. It was a powerful weapon for the abolitionist movement, because it gave a face and a voice to the millions of anonymous captives.