Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (1525-1867) (jan 1, 1525 – jan 1, 1867)

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The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage and existed from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The vast majority of those who were enslaved and transported in the transatlantic slave trade were Africans from central and western Africa, who had been sold by other West Africans to Western European slave traders (with a small number being captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids), who brought them to the Americas. The South Atlantic and Caribbean economies especially were dependent on the supply of secure labor for the production of commodity crops, making goods and clothing to sell in Europe. This was crucial to those western European countries which, in the late 17th and 18th centuries, were vying with each other to create overseas empires.

Eltis describes the ending of the slave trade as a process. It doesn't all end after the first action in 1792. The Dutch abolished slavery in 1802 then later in 1807 the British and US governments followed in the Dutch’s footsteps. The first action after acknowledgement was in 1810 when the British Naval ships were allowed to detain slavery ships. Slave ships were sought out like pirate ships. However, this great solution didn’t solve the problem completely. It wasn’t until 1850-1860 that traffic really started to decline. It took the cooperation of all of the countries for traffic to start declining. The Spanish and Portuguese were the only ones by 1860 that hadn’t abolished the slave trade, in addition, to a few ships without allegiance.

Questions about (im)morality of slavery only began in the Enlightenment era (1715-1789)

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