Knowra Atlantic slave trade Atlantic slave trade The forced transportation and sale of millions of Africans across the Atlantic, chiefly to the Americas, from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. It formed the central passage of a wider system of enslavement and colonial commerce.
Middle Passage : The forced Atlantic voyage of enslaved Africans to the Americas, marked by confinement, disease, violence, and high mortality. This brutal ocean crossing was the trade’s defining transport stage.
Portuguese colonization of the Americas : Portugal’s establishment of colonies in the Americas, especially Brazil, beginning in the sixteenth century. Portuguese plantation colonies became an early, extensive destination for enslaved Africans.
African diaspora : The global dispersal of African peoples and their descendants through migration, forced displacement, and settlement. The Atlantic trade produced one of the diaspora’s largest and most enduring dispersals.
Indian Ocean slave trade : The long-running movement and sale of enslaved people across the Indian Ocean and adjoining regions. It was a separate network with different routes, chronology, and political settings.
Zong massacre : The 1781 killing of more than one hundred enslaved Africans aboard the British ship Zong. The killings and subsequent insurance litigation exposed the treatment of enslaved people as commercial property.
Triangular trade : A model of Atlantic commerce linking Europe, Africa, and the Americas through connected shipping routes. It maps the trade onto wider circuits of colonial exchange, though actual routes varied.
Sugar plantations in the Caribbean : Colonial estates that produced sugar using the coerced labor of enslaved people, especially in the Caribbean. The expanding sugar economy intensified demand for captive African labor.
Chattel slavery : A system in which enslaved people were treated as property and their status was generally inherited. The trade supplied people to hereditary slave systems across the Americas.
Domestic slave trade in the United States : The forced sale and movement of enslaved people within the United States, especially from the Upper South to the Deep South. It expanded after the United States ended legal transatlantic imports in 1808.
Ouidah : A port in present-day Benin that became a major center of the Atlantic slave trade. Its forts and markets linked regional powers and European traders to ocean transport.
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