How the Trans‑Atlantic Slave Trade Created the African Diaspora

The forced transport of enslaved people from Africa led to populations of Black people throughout North and South America and other parts of the world.

Nicholas Boston

Updated: July 12, 2023 | Original: February 3, 2022

Leg irons once used on enslaved people on display at the Kura Hulanda Museum on the Caribbean island of Curaçao. Credit: Amilcar Abreu / Alamy Stock Photo

The trans-Atlantic slave trade was the capture, forcible transport and sale of native Africans to Europeans for lifelong bondage in the Americas. Lasting from the 16^th to 19^th centuries, it is responsible, more than any other project or phenomenon in the history of the modern world, for the creation of the African diaspora—the dispersal of Black people outside their places of origin on the continent of Africa.

As a result of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, there are presently 51.5 million people of African descent living in North America (United States, Mexico and Canada), approximately 66 million in South America, 1.9 million in Central America, and more than 14.5 million throughout the islands of the Caribbean. Over centuries of transformation and upheaval, these diasporic peoples have developed rich cultural traditions, distinct societies and independent nations—all sharing elements of a common African heritage.

Triangular Trade

The trans-Atlantic slave trade was one leg of a three-part system known as the triangular trade. The forming of the triangle began when European ships, carrying firearms and manufactured goods, sailed to Africa, where the commodities were traded for enslaved men, women and children. Next, the same ships transported the human cargo across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas.

This horrific journey was called the Middle Passage. Completing the triangle, the ships—having disembarked the enslaved Africans—were reloaded with cotton, sugar, tobacco and other cash crops produced by slave labor, and returned to Europe.

DeAgostini/Getty Images

Slave Ship — DeAgostini/Getty Images

The triangular trade generated incredible wealth for the European and American nations that participated in it—at the expense of millions of human lives. An estimated 1.8 million Africans perished during the Middle Passage.

The countries that enslaved the highest number of Africans, from the most to the least, were Portugal, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Spain, the United States and Denmark—shipping a total of 12.5 million enslaved Africans to toil in what was considered the “New World.”

Other European nations, such as Germany and Sweden, took part in the trade indirectly or for a brief period of time. Canada, generally omitted from slavery history, was in fact involved in slaveholding, first as a French colony, then as part of the British Empire.

“Little is known about Canadian slavery, both inside and outside of the nation,” says Charmaine A. Nelson, director of the newly founded Institute for the Study of Canadian Slavery at NSCAD University, in Halifax. “It is a national amnesia.”

Slave Shackles — Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, people were kidnapped from the continent of Africa, forced into slavery in the American colonies and exploited to work as indentured servants and laborers in the production of crops. Shown are iron shackles used on enslaved people prior to 1860.

Slave Ship — Shown is a chart showing the packed positioning of enslaved people on a ship from 1786.READ MORE: The Last Slave Ship Survivor Gave an Interview in the 1930s. It Just Surfaced

Slavery in Jamestown — In late August 1619, the White Lion sailed into Point Comfort and dropped anchor in the James River.Virginia colonist John Rolfe documented the arrival of the ship and “20 and odd” Africans on board. History textbooks immortalized his journal entry, with 1619 often used as a reference point for teaching the origins of slavery in America. READ MORE: America's History of Slavery Began Long Before Jamestown

Shown is an iron mask and collar used by slaveholders to keep field workers from running away and to prevent them from eating crops such as sugarcane, circa 1750. The mask made breathing difficult and, if left on too long, would tear at the person's skin when removed.

The first U.S. president, George Washington, owned enslaved people, along with many of the presidents who followed him.

Isaac Jefferson, enslaved by President Thomas Jefferson — Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and the third president of the United States, was born on a large Virginia estate run on slave labor. His marriage to the wealthy Martha Wayles Skelton more than doubled his property in land and enslaved people. This is a portrait of Isaac Jefferson, enslaved by Jefferson, circa 1847. READ MORE: Why Thomas Jefferson's Anti-Slavery Passage Was Removed from the Declaration of Independence

Slave Auction — The slave auction was the epitome of slavery's dehumanization. Enslaved people were sold to the person who bid the most money, and family members were often split-up.READ MORE: Married Enslaved People Often Faced Wrenching Separations

Slave Auction — Broadside advertising an auction outside of Brooke and Hubbard Auctioneers office, Richmond, Virginia, July 23, 1823.

An enslaved Black male youth is shown in this photo from the 1850s, holding his white master’s child.

Enslaved women and children, circa 1860s — From left to right: William, Lucinda, Fannie (seated on lap), Mary (in cradle), Frances (standing), Martha, Julia (behind Martha), Harriet, and Charles or Marshall, circa 1861.The women and their children were enslaved at the time this photograph was taken on a plantation just west of Alexandria, Virginia, that belonged to Felix Richards. Frances and her children were enslaved by Felix, while Lucinda and her children were enslaved by his wife, Amelia Macrae Richards.

By the start of the American Civil War, the South was producing 75 percent of the world’s cotton and creating more millionaires per capita in the Mississippi River valley than anywhere in the nation. Shown are enslaved people working on sweet potato planting at Hopkinson's Plantation in April 1862.READ MORE: How Slavery Became the Economic Engine of the South

Slavery in America — Enslaved people in the antebellum South constituted about one-third of the southern population. A formerly enslaved man from Louisiana, whose forehead was branded with the initials of his owner, is shown wearing a punishment collar in 1863.

Despite the horrors of slavery, it was no easy decision to flee. Escaping often involved leaving behind family and heading into the complete unknown, where harsh weather and lack of food might await. Shown are two unidentified men who escaped slavery, circa 1861.

The Scourged Back — A man named Peter, who had escaped slavery, reveals his scarred back at a medical examination in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, while joining the Union Army in 1863.READ MORE: The Shocking Photo of 'Whipped Peter' That Made Slavery's Brutality Impossible to Deny

Confederate soldiers rounding up Black people in a church during the American Civil War, Nashville, Tennesee, the 1860s.

HISTORY: Slavery in America — The Emancipation Proclamation, issued on January 1, 1863, established that all enslaved people in Confederate states in rebellion against the Union “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” But for many enslaved people, emancipation took longer to take effect. Shown are a group of enslaved people outside their quarters on a plantation on Cockspur Island, Georgia, circa 1863.READ MORE: What Is Juneteenth?

1 / 16: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture

Fellow Africans' Role in the Slave Trade

Another downplayed factor is the central role played by ruling African states in the capture and sale of fellow Africans to European traders—an estimated 90 percent of all captives. The main motivation behind these transactions was the acquisition of guns for use in inter-ethnic warfare. The enslaved were abducted from as far north as present-day Senegal to as far south as Angola, and transported to destinations as far south as Argentina and as far north as New England.

Dehumanizing in all locations, the practice of slavery still could vary from place to place. This variation accounts for demographic, cultural and even genetic distinctions among modern diasporic Black populations.

A July 2020 genetic study found that enslaved women contributed more than enslaved men to the modern-day gene pool of people of African descent in the Americas. The findings also show that Caucasian men contributed more than Caucasian women, confirming the well-documented practice of sexual violation of enslaved women.

African Communities Beyond the Americas

Predating the trans-Atlantic slave trade were eastward and northbound slave-trading enterprises known broadly as the Arab Slave Trade. They contributed significantly to the creation of an African diasporic presence in the Old World.

“People from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and the Swahili Coast were deported as slaves to the Indian Peninsula,” says Sylviane A. Diouf, a historian of the African diaspora who co-curated the 2013 exhibition, “Africans in India: From Slaves to Generals and Rulers” at New York’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

“From the 1300s, many of these Africans and their descendants became generals, admirals, architects, high-ranking officials, prime ministers and rulers, immortalized in numerous portraits. They also founded the states of Janjira and Sachin, where they ruled over Hindu and Jewish majorities.”

The Arab and trans-Atlantic slave trades inevitably coincided, if not in their commercial dealings, in their human exploitation. It is known that continental Africans were taken to the island of Madagascar by Arab enslavers from as early as the 10^th century. In the 18^th century, European enslavers took up operations on the island, transporting roughly 6,000 people in shackles to U.S. slave markets. Though these Madagascans constituted a tiny percentage of the total enslaved population, their DNA is identifiable to this day among their living descendants, such as the actor Maya Rudolph and director Keenan Ivory Wayans.

To satisfy different European fascinations, enslaved Africans were also taken to Europe.

“Among British royals, nobles, ship captains and merchants, a trend began of keeping Africans as entertainment, curiosities, and sometimes surrogate sons,” says Monica L. Miller, author of Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity. “In almost all cases, these Black men were extravagantly clothed in the latest fashions or liveries—forced foppishness.”

Role of Resistance

For the nearly four centuries before its abolition by all nations involved, “the trans-Atlantic slave trade not only influenced the composition of slave communities in the Americas, it also powerfully shaped slave resistance,” according to Marjoleine Kars, author of Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast.

“Take, for instance, the Berbice slave rebellion of 1763-1764. Lasting more than a year, the rebellion took place in a small Dutch colony on the Caribbean coast of South America in February of 1763. Enslaved people, led by a man named Coffij, or Kofi, rose up, set the Dutch fleeing, and took control of the colony.”

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