Transatlantic Slave Trade: Ports, Forts, and Kingdoms

The transatlantic slave trade exposes a ruthless and devastating chapter in history, spanning from the 16th to the 19th century. It involved the forced transportation of millions of African captives to the Americas, where they were sold into slavery. This trade not only had a profound impact on the lives of countless individuals but also shaped the economies and societies of the involved regions. In this document, we will explore the major European ports and cities, the significant slave ports in the United States and Brazil, and the influential African kingdoms that played pivotal roles in this chapter of history.

Africa

Bight of Benin

Ethnic group/Kingdom	Items traded	Number of slaves embarked	Slave traders
Aja		80,309

Historically known as Great Ardra; Grand Ardra; Allada; and the Kingdom of Ardra, Allada, was a coastal West African kingdom in southern Benin. In 1600, the settlement was the most prominent of Aja states, bordering the nearby Oyo Empire, to which the King of Allada was vassal and tributary. Although it was an inland kingdom, Allada maintained control of some seaports such as Offra, Jaquin (also known as Jakin), and Whydah, making Allada important in the growing slave trade business. Between 1640 and 1690, about 125,000 slaves were sold from Allada, peaking at about 55,000 during the 1680s.

Originally a part of the Allada Kingdom, the city of Abomey went on to become the capital of the Kingdom of Dahomey, which grew strong enough to challenge the nearby Oyo Kingdom; In the early 17th century, a succession dispute led to emigration out of Allada. By the late 1690s, the growth of Dahomey had severely restricted Allada's supply of slaves from the north, while simultaneously Whydah surpassed Allada as a primary source of slaves from West Africa. This greatly weakened Allada's comparative power in the region. In 1724, Dahomey invaded Allada; in three days, the King of Dahomey's troops slaughtered thousands of Allada's warriors and citizens. In the aftermath, more than 8,000 of Allada's population, primarily Aja people, were captured and sold into slavery in the New World.

Ethnic group/Kingdom	Items traded	Number of slaves embarked	Slave traders
Ane	slaves	13,705	Portuguese

Historically known as Petit Popo; Little Popo; Klein Popo; Popou; and Anecho, Aného was founded in the late 17th century by Ane people fleeing from Denkyira attacks in Elmina, Aného developed as a Portuguese slave market and commercial center. Little Popo was the westernmost post on the Slave Coast and faced competition from the Danish Africa Company, based on the Danish Gold Coast. The town sheltered Ofori, the king of Accra, after his kingdom was conquered by the Akwamu Kingdom.  The Akwamu Kingdom later conquered Little Popo in April 1702.

Ethnic group/Kingdom	Items traded	Number of slaves embarked	Slave traders
	Slaves	29,425	Dutch

Historically known as: Jakin; Jaqui;, Jaquin; Jakri; and Jaquim, Godomey was a major post for the Dutch on the “Slave Coast”. In the early 18th century, it became the head slave post for the Dutch after they abandoned their post at Ouidah in 1725. In 1733, the Dutch Fort Zeelandia was built, but two years later, the directors of the Dutch West India Company decided to shift the slave trade to Elmina Castle, where slaves were cheaper.

Ethnic group/Kingdom	Items traded	Number of slaves embarked	Slave traders
Edo, Awori	Cloth, slaves,	97,968	Portuguese, English

Lagos Island was originally known as 'Oko' to the native Awori, a sub-group of the Yoruba people, and later as 'Eko' when taken by the Benin Kingdom. The island was known as ‘Onmi’ to the Portuguese.

In the 17th century, the trade with the Portuguese began to increase, as Onim became a center of the Atlantic slave trade. The local obas developed good relations with the Portuguese. 1652 is the first recorded purchase of slaves at Lagos by English slavers.

It was not until the 1760s that Lagos became an important port in the slave trade. According to tradition, a dispute with his brother Gabaro had driven prince Akinsemoyin into exile in Badagry. There, he made contacts among the European slave-traders. When Akinsemoyin took the throne of Eko in the 1760s, he opened his new kingdom to the slave trade. The trade grew staggeringly in the 1780s, and then further with Dahomey's wars against Porto Novo and the collapse of the Oyo Empire in the early 19th century. By then, Eko was the largest slave exporter in the northern hemisphere, trading 73,240 slaves between 1814–1863 as compared to 41,830 slaves traded at Ouidah.

Ethnic group/Kingdom	Items traded	Number of slaves embarked	Slave traders
Xwela-Xweda, fon	slaves, rifles, gunpowder, fabrics, cowrie shells, tobacco, pipes, alcohol	406,381	British, French, Dutch, Portuguese

Kingdom of Whydah

Savi has historically been known as Sabee, Xavier, Savy, Savé, Sabi, Xabier.

Ouidah has historically been known as Whydah, Juida and Juda by the French; Ajudá by the Portuguese; Fida by the Dutch; and Hueda.

The Kingdom of Whydah was centered in Savi. Whydah, known locally as Glexwe, was the chief port of the Kingdom of Whydah, serving as a major slave trading port which exported more than one million captives to the United States, the Caribbean, and Brazil until the 1860s.

According to one European, who visited in 1692–1700, Whydah was a center of the ancient African slave trade, selling some thousand slaves a month that were mainly taken captive from villages in the interior of Africa. When the great chief, called ‘king’ by Europeans, could not supply the traders with sufficient slaves, he would supplement them with his own wives.

Ouidah saw its role in international trade rise when the Royal African Company constructed a fort there in 1650. Whydah troops captured millions of people from the African interior through wars, selling them to European and Arab slave traders. By 1716, the Kingdom of Whydah had become the second largest slave port in the triangular trade, as noted by the crew of the slave ship Whydah Gally when it arrived to purchase 500 slaves from King Haffon to sell in Jamaica.

Kingdom of Dahomey

In 1727, Whydah was conquered by King Agaja of the Kingdom of Dahomey. This incorporation of Whydah into Dahomey transformed Dahomey into a significant regional power. Nevertheless, constant warfare with the Oyo Empire from 1728 to 1740 resulted in Dahomey becoming a tributary state of the Oyo.

The slave trade continued from Whydah until about 1863, with 260,602 slaves being traded from 1714–1813, and 41,830 slaved traded from 1814–1863.

In 1860, Whydah was the port that sent the last recorded shipment of slaves to the United States, even though that country had prohibited the transatlantic slave trade in 1808. This illegal shipment was aboard the Clotilda and went to Mobile, Alabama. The last shipment of slaves to Spanish Cuba occurred as late as 1873.

Ethnic group/Kingdom	Items traded	Number of slaves embarked	Slave traders
Awori/Yoruba	Palm oil, ivory, cloth, slaves, whiskey, gunpowder, cannon	44,241	Portugal/Brazil, Netherland

Badagry was known as: Badagri, Pattackerie to the Dutch.

Apa, a historic community in Badagry Division of Lagos State, is one of the oldest settlements in Badagry. Founded around the fifteenth century by Awori migrants, the community along with Ekpe grew in the early 1700s when both settlements became centers of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade along the Porto-Novo and Badagry creeks. Circa 1730, Yovo Hontokonu (Hendrik Hertog), a European slave trader originally settled at Apa before moving to Badagry. Badagry soon eclipsed Apa as a center of commerce in the region.

In 1736, Yovo Huntɔkono, a European trader, set up a trading post in Badagry. This is when Badagry emerged as a slave port, serving as an outlet for Oyo and displacing Apa politically and commercially. However, slave trading did not take place on the same massive scale in Badagry as occurred in Bonny, Angola, Ouidah, and Calabar. The peak of the trade in the city state was between 1736 and 1789, but the trade continued into the early nineteenth century, with Portuguese or Brazilian traders taking over from the Dutch.

Badagry served as a corridor for Europeans to carry slaves to new destinations in the early eighteen century. Its port on Gberefu Island is called “Point of No Return”. Badagry was one of the routes that benefited from the ongoing slave trade conflict between Port-Novo and Dahomey at the end of the eighteenth century. Slaves taken during inter-village conflict were auctioned off at Badagry.

Gulf of Guinea

Ethnic group/Kingdom	Items traded	Number of slaves embarked	Slave traders
Efik, Efut, Ekoi	Palm oil, slaves	272,463	Portuguese, British

Since the 16th century, goods such as palm oil have been exported from Calabar. During the centuries of the Atlantic slave trade, Calabar became a major port for shipment of African slaves to the Americas.

Tribes around that region were taken in as slaves for slave trade. Minority tribes were subject to slave raids by more powerful tribes or ethnic groups in the region.

Akwa Akpa—also known as Duke Town and Old Calabar—and Creek Town, 10 miles northeast, was crucial towns in the trade of slaves in that era. Akwa Akpa was founded by Efik families who had left Creek Town, further up the Calabar river, settling on the east bank in a position where they were able to dominate the slave trade with European vessels that anchored in the river. They soon became the most powerful presence in the region and a center of the Atlantic slave trade.

Igbo people formed the most of captives that were sold as slaves from Calabar, despite forming a minority among the ethnic groups in the region. From 1725 to 1750, roughly 17,000 enslaved African captives were sold from Calabar to European slave traders; from 1772 to 1775, the number soared to over 62,000.

In 1767, six British slave ships arrived in Calabar during; a period when Duke Town and Old Town were in the midst of a feud. The leaders of Duke Town made a secret arrangement with the slave traders whereby the leaders of Old Town would be invited onboard their ships to settle the dispute; guarantees of their safety were made. When the leaders of Old Town came aboard the ships, they were seized, with some being kept as slaves while others were handed over to the leaders of Duke Town, who ordered their execution.

Ethnic group/Kingdom	Items traded	Number of slaves embarked	Slave traders
Kalabari Kingdom, Ijaw	slaves, ivory, palm oil, cotton clothing, hardware, guns, gunpowder	90,992

A ruler named King Owerri Daba was said to have brought the slave trade to Kalabari and Bonny, sometime before 1699.

Kalabari, historically known as New Calabar, became a trading post of the Atlantic slave trade, mainly selling slaves purchased from Igboland, further to the north.

The Kalabari trade involved trading slaves, ivory and palm oil, for which cotton clothing, hardware, guns and gunpowder were given in exchange. Salt, made by evaporation, was an important article of trade in the interior.

Kalabari rivaled the Nembe Kingdom to the west, the Kingdom of Bonny to the southeast and Okrika to the northeast. The main rival was Okrika, which had the potential to block Kalabari's access to the interior.

Ethnic group/Kingdom	Items traded	Number of slaves embarked/traded	Slave traders
	sugar	96,916 18,487	Portugal

Slaves in São Tomé were bought from the Slave Coast of West Africa, the Niger Delta, the island of Fernando Po, and later from the Kongo and Angola. In the 16th century, the slaves were exported from Elmina, the Kingdom of Kongo, and Angola, and imported to Portugal and the Spanish Americas; In 1510, reportedly 10,000 to 12,000 slaves were imported by Portugal. In 1516, São Tomé received 4,072 slaves with the purpose of re-exportation. From 1519 to 1540, the island was the center of the slave trade between Elmina and the Niger Delta. Throughout the early to mid-sixteenth century, São Tomé traded in slaves intermittently with Angola and the Kingdom of Kongo.

In 1525, the Portuguese at São Tomé began trafficking slaves to the Spanish Americas, mainly to the Caribbean and Brazil. From 1532 to 1536, São Tomé sent an annual average of 342 slaves to the Antilles. Prior to 1580, the island accounted for 75 percent of Brazil's imports, mainly slaves. The slave trade remained a cornerstone of São Tomé's economy until after 1600.

São Tomé and Príncipe's strategic position in the Gulf of Guinea made the islands ideal staging points for the capture and transport of enslaved Africans. The Portuguese initially used the islands' fertile land to establish sugar plantations, which required a large labor force. Enslaved Africans were brought to work on these plantations under inhumane conditions, and the islands became notorious for their harsh slavery practices.

As the demand for labor in the Americas grew, São Tomé and Príncipe transitioned from being merely sites of plantation slavery to crucial nodes in the broader transatlantic network. They served as transit points where enslaved Africans were held in forts and warehouses before being shipped across the Atlantic. The islands' ports saw countless ships loaded with human cargo, embarking on the perilous Middle Passage to various colonies in the New World.

The legacy of São Tomé and Príncipe's involvement in the transatlantic slave trade is still evident today, with the islands bearing the scars of this dark period. Monuments and museums on the islands now serve as somber reminders of the immense suffering endured by those who were forced into slavery and the enduring impact on their descendants.

Gold Coast

Ethnic group/Kingdom	Items traded	Number of slaves embarked	Slave traders
Fante	Gold, grain, slaves	167,004	British, Dutch

Anomabu had long been a coastal trading center. Before it was established as a slave trading port, the Fante merchants there traded primarily in gold and grain. The slave trade caused the town to rise to prominence in the 17th century; After inviting the Dutch to build a factory in the town, the merchants turned increasingly towards the slave trade. Wealthy Fante merchants supported the building of an English fort to further this cause.

Anomabu Castle, renamed Fort William in the 1830s, was constructed between 1753 and 1760 on the same site as the Dutch factory, which had seen many exchanges in war between European traders. The Anomabu fort, about 10 miles from the Cape Coast Castle, became the center of British involvement in the Atlantic slave trade along the Gold Coast until it was abolished in 1807.

Since the economy of Anomabu's society was so dependent on the institution of slavery up to that point, after 1807, Anomabu declined significantly in its power as an economic commercial space.

Ethnic group/Kingdom	Items traded	Number of slaves embarked	Slave traders
Fetu	Spices, sugar, silk, cloth, slaves, gold	117,946	Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Portuguese, British

In 1653, a timber fort was constructed by the Swedish Africa Company. It originally was a center for timber and gold trade and then was later used in the Atlantic slave trade. The large quantity of gold dust found in Ghana was what primarily attracted European traders to the Cape Coast. In exchange for gold; mahogany; other locally produced goods; and enslaved people, local Africans received clothing, blankets, spices, sugar, silk and many other items.

As a result of enslaved Africans becoming a valuable commodity in the Americas and captive people being the main thing traded in Cape Coast, many European nations flocked to the area in order to get a foothold in the slave trade.

To accommodate the shift from trading commodities to the increasing demand for the slave trade, many changes were made to the fort; one notable change was the addition of large, underground dungeon that could hold as many as a thousand enslaved people awaiting export. In Cape Coast Castle, the underground dungeon was a space of terror, death, and darkness. This stood as a direct juxtaposition to the European living quarters and commanding heights of the administrative quarters above, whose occupants lived relatively luxuriously. The basement of this imposing fortress was often the last experience enslaved people had of their homeland before being shipped off across the Atlantic, as this signified the beginning of their journey.

Ethnic group/Kingdom	Items traded	Number of slaves embarked	Slave traders
	gold, slaves, ivory, melegueta pepper, textiles, horses	93,907	Portugal

The Portuguese in 1471 were the first Europeans to visit the Gold Coast as such, but not necessarily the first sailors to reach the port.

Elmina grew around São Jorge da Mina Castle, built by the Portuguese in 1482 on the site of a town or village called Amankwakurom or Amankwa. It was Portugal's West African headquarters for trade and exploitation of African wealth. The Portuguese were originally interested in gold, with 8,000 ounces shipped to Lisbon between 1487 to 1489, 22,500 ounces from 1494 to 1496, and 26,000 ounces by the start of the sixteenth century.

By 1479, the Portuguese were importing slaves from as far away as Benin, who accounted for 10 percent of the trade in Elmina. Between 1500 and 1535, ten to twelve thousand captives were transported through Elmina.

By the seventeenth century, most trade in West Africa concentrated on the sale of captives. São Jorge da Mina played an important part in the West African slave trade; the castle acted as a depot where enslaved Africans were brought in from different Kingdoms in West Africa. The captives, often captured from interior regions by the slavecatchers from coastal regions, were sold to the Portuguese, and later to Dutch traders in exchange for goods such as textiles and horses.

Ethnic group/Kingdom	Items traded	Number of slaves embarked	Slave traders
Gonja kingdom, Asante	Kola, beads, ostrich feathers, animal hides, textiles, gold, slaves, cowrie

Salaga was the largest slave market in west Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries. From the 16th century, Salaga was one of leading market centers in West Africa. Kola, beads, ostrich feathers, animal hides, textiles and gold were among the goods traded in the market. In the 18th century, the market became a key center in the trading of humans. People from the Upper west, upper east, and northern regions served as sources for slaves. Slaves from the market were mostly exchanged for Kola nuts, cowries, and gold.

Salaga was founded by the Mande leader Dyakpa Ndewura in 16th century kingdom Gonja before being overrun by Asante forces in 1744. During the Third Anglo-Ashanti War in 1874, the British defeat of the Asante ended the Asante rule over Salaga. Though Salaga remained as an integral source of the slave market, the defeat of the Asante was followed by a shift from Salaga as the main slave market to other markets in the Gold Coast; Caravans of slaves became frequent from Salaga to Kintampo slave market, then to southern or coastal areas. After the town Kete-Krachi took over the slave trade, slave caravans —some of which were ordered by the slave raider Babatu—came to Kete-Krachi directly from Bole, Wa, Bonotuku, and Upper Volta.

Senegambia

Ethnic group/Kingdom	Items traded	Number of slaves embarked	Slave traders
Papels	Slaves	118,414

 

Before the arrival of Europeans, namely the Portuguese, in the 16th century, the island of Bissau was governed as a kingdom and inhabited by the Papel people. When the Portuguese began to trade there in the 16th century, the king of Bissau was among the most supportive monarchs of the region.

The city of Bissau was founded in 1687 as a Portuguese trading post. During this same period French activities in the area were increasing. Although the king of Bissau Bacompolco refused permission to build a fort, he did grant them a trading factory, from which they shipped thousands of slaves, among other things. In response the Portuguese Conselho Ultramarino established the captaincy-general of Bissau, and by 1696 the town had a fort, a church, and a hospital. It was the main emporium for trade on and south of the Geba river and was rivaling if not eclipsing Cacheu in importance.

Bacompulco died in 1696. King Incinhate emerged from the ensuing succession dispute despite tacit Portuguese opposition, and relations rapidly deteriorated. When Captain-General Pinheiro tried to enforce Portugal's monopoly in defiance of the Papel policy of free trade, Incinhate surrounded the incomplete fort and threatened to massacre the inhabitants. Pinheiro later died in Papel custody. Unable to enforce a trading monopoly or collect duties from foreign shipping, the Portuguese soon abandoned the fort, and the fortress was later destroyed. The Portuguese returned in 1753 but faced with determined Papel resistance. The fort was rebuilt sometime between 1753 and 1775 to better project Portuguese power and store more slaves for shipment to Brazil.

Ethnic group/Kingdom	Items traded	Number of slaves embarked	Slave traders
	peanuts, peanut oil, gum arabic, ivory, slaves, beeswax, hides, grain	33,729	Portugal, Netherlands, France

 

The island of Gorée was one of the first places in Africa to be frequented by European traders, as Portuguese traders had established themselves on the island in 1444. After the decline of the slave trade from Senegal in the 1770s and 1780s, the town became an important port for the shipment of peanuts, peanut oil, gum arabic, ivory, and other products of the "legitimate" trade.

Gorée is known as the location of the House of Slaves—in French: Maison des esclaves—built by an Afro-French Métis family between 1780 and 1784. The House of Slaves is one of the oldest houses on the island. It is now used as a tourist destination to show the horrors of the slave trade throughout the Atlantic world.

West Central Africa

Ethnic group/Kingdom	Items traded	Number of slaves embarked	Slave traders
Akan	slaves	760,000	Portuguese

 

Benguela was founded in 1617 as São Felipe de Benguela by the Portuguese under Manuel Cerveira Pereira, 8th Governor of Angola (1604–1607). It was long the center of an important trade, especially in slaves to Brazil and Cuba.

Ethnic group/Kingdom	Items traded	Number of slaves embarked	Slave traders
Imbangala, Mbundu	Palm oil, peanut oil, wax, copal, timber, ivory, cotton, coffee, cocoa, Maize, tobacco, dried meat, cassava flour, slaves	5,000–10,000/year	Portugal

 

Among the oldest colonial cities of Africa, it was founded in January 1576 as São Paulo da Assunção de Loanda by Portuguese explorer Paulo Dias de Novais.

Luanda was Portugal's bridgehead from 1627, except during the Dutch rule of Luanda from 1640 to 1648, as Fort Aardenburgh. The city served as the center of slave trade to Brazil from 1550 to 1836. The slave trade was conducted mostly with the Portuguese colony of Brazil; Brazilian ships were the most numerous in the port of Luanda. The slave trade in Luanda also involved local merchants and warriors who profited from the trade.  In the 17th century, the Imbangala became the main rivals of the Mbundu in supplying slaves to the Luanda market. In the 1750s, between 5,000 and 10,000 slaves were annually sold. 

Ethnic group/Kingdom	Items traded	Number of slaves embarked	Slave traders
Kingdom of Kongo	slaves, ivory, copper	Estimated 4,000 per year	Portugal

 

Soyo (originally spelled "Sonho" and pronounced Sonyo) was already an administrative entity whose ruler or govern bore the title Mwene Soyo or "lord of Soyo" when the Portuguese arrived in 1482. The ruler was the first Kongo lord to be baptized when Christian missionaries came to the kingdom of Kongo in 1491.

Soyo’s port of Mpinda became an important port in the sixteenth century trade with Kongo. A community of Portuguese who had been allowed to establish a settlement at the port, established a trade in slaves, ivory and copper. A Kongo royal inquest of 1548 revealed that as many as 4,000 slaves passed through Mpinda enroute to the island colony of São Tomé, and then to Brazil each year.

During the 1580s Alvaro, king of Congo, on occasion blocked people working with the Portuguese government from coming through Mpinda.

Windward Coast

Ethnic group/Kingdom	Items traded	Number of slaves embarked	Slave traders
	slaves	15,221	British

 

Bunce Island was abandoned until the mid-1740s. It was later operated by the London-based firm Grant, Oswald & Company, who took over in 1748. In 1773, Henry Smeathman, a Swedish botanist visited the island and recorded how 6 members of the Company played golf on the island, "attended by African caddies, draped in loincloths of a tartan design made from wool that had been woven in one of the partners' industrial ventures, a wool factory near Glasgow".

In 1785 Bunce and several other dependent islands were conveyed to the company of John and Alexander Anderson. Throughout the late 18th century, it was a highly profitable enterprise. During the second half of the eighteenth century, the companies sent thousands of slaves from Bunce Island to plantations on the British and French colonies in the West Indies and Britain's North American colonies.

Bunce Island is best known as one of the chief processing points for slaves to be sold to planters in Lowcountry of the British colonies of South Carolina and Georgia, including the Sea Islands, where they developed extensive rice plantations.

As rice cultivation requires a great deal of technical knowledge, South Carolinian and Georgian planters were willing to pay premium prices for slave labor brought from what they called the "Rice Coast" of West Africa, the traditional rice-growing region stretching from what is now Senegal and Gambia in the north down to present-day Sierra Leone and Liberia in the south.

Bunce Island was the largest British slave castle on the Rice Coast; Records of the port of Charleston show that nearly 40 percent of the slaves came from Angola. African farmers with rice-growing skills were kidnapped from inland areas and sold at the castle or at one of its many "outfactories", which were trading posts setup along the coast, before being transported to North America. Slave auction advertisements in Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia often announced slave cargoes arriving from "Bance" or "Bense" Island.

Bunce Island was also linked to the Northern colonies in America. Slave ships based in northern ports frequently called at Bunce Island came from Newport, Rhode Island); London, Connecticut; Salem, Massachusetts; and New York City.

Caribbean/West Indies

Number of slaves received	Items traded	Number of slaves traded		Number of voyages
371,809	Sugar, tobacco, slaves	Embarked	disembarked	348
		59,779	48,613

 

During the 1930s, tobacco was the cash crop of the island, and most of the English arrivals were indentured servants who after five years of labor, were given "freedom dues" of about £10, usually in goods. Before the mid-1630s, they also received 5 to 10 acres of land. Eventually, the island became full and there was no more free land, and tobacco prices eventually fell in the 1630s as Chesapeake’s production expanded.  

The introduction of sugar cane from Dutch Brazil in 1640 completely transformed society, the economy and the physical landscape. During the 1950s, known as the “Cromwellian era”, many prisoners-of-war, vagrants and people who were illicitly kidnapped were forcibly transported to the island and sold as servants. These last two groups were predominantly Irish, as several thousand were infamously rounded up by English merchants and sold into servitude in Barbados and other Caribbean islands during the period, a practice that came to be known as being “Barbadosed”.

Barbados eventually had one of the world's biggest sugar industries, and as the demand for the new crop increased, so did the shift in the ethnic composition of Barbados and surrounding islands. In 1644 the population of Barbados was estimated at 30,000, of which about 800 were of African ancestry, with the remainder mainly of English ancestry. These English smallholders were eventually bought out and the island filled up with large sugar plantations worked by African slaves. By 1660 there was near parity with 27,000 Black people and 26,000 White people. By 1666, at least 12,000 white smallholders had been bought out, died, or left the island, many choosing to emigrate to Jamaica or the American Colonies (notably the Carolinas). As a result, Barbados enacted a slave code as a way of legislatively controlling its enslaved Black population. The law's text was influential in laws in other colonies.

By 1680 there were 20,000 free whites and 46,000 enslaved Africans; by 1724, there were 18,000 free whites and 55,000 enslaved Africans. 

Number of slaves received	Items traded	Number of slaves traded		Number of voyages
326,602	sugar	Embarked	Disembarked	1147
		324,020	285,145

 

Of the estimated 767,776 imported to Cuba, most of these slaves were imported between 1814–1866, with forty to fifty percent being imported through Havana, according to slaveryvoyages.com.

Slaves in Cuba did not begin to experience the harsh conditions of plantation agriculture until after the 1770s, once the international plantation economy had expanded into Western Cuba. In 1740, the Havana Company was formed to stimulate the sugar industry by encouraging the importation of slaves into Cuba, although it largely unsuccessful. In 1762, British forces under the Earl of Albemarle captured Havana during the Seven Years' War. During their year-long occupation of Havana and surrounding regions, the British expanded the Cuban plantation system and imported 4,000 slaves from the British West Indies to work on them. This substantially expanded the number of slaves in Cuba, as just over 40,000 slaves had been imported to the island over the previous 250 years. Spain regained control of British-occupied regions of Cuba in 1763 by ceding Spanish Florida to Britain in exchange.

The British had also freed 90 Cuban slaves who had sided with them during the invasion, in recognition of their contribution to the Spanish defeat. Given their role in the Seven Years' War, Spanish colonial official Julián de Arriaga realized that Cuban slaves could support foreign nations that offered them freedom. He thus began to issue cartas de libertad and emancipated some two dozen slaves who had defended Havana against the British. The Spanish Crown increased slave imports to ensure the loyalty of European Cuban planters and to increase revenues from the lucrative sugar trade, as the crop was then in high demand in Europe.

In 1791, slaves in the French colony of Saint-Domingue rose up in rebellion. In 1803, ships carrying white and free people of color refugees arrived in Cuba from Saint-Domingue. Though all the passengers on board had been legally free under French law for years, and many of the mixed-race people had been born free, upon their arrival the Cubans classified those of even partial African descent as slaves. The white passengers were allowed entry into Cuba while African and mulatto passengers were restrained on the ships. Some of the white passengers had additionally claimed some of the Black passengers as slaves during the journey. The women of African descent and their children were particularly subject to being pressed into slavery.

The Haitians finally gained their independence in 1804. They declared the new Republic of Haiti, making it second Republic in the Western Hemisphere and the first founded by former slaves. Cuban slaveholders watched these events closely but took comfort in thinking the rebellion was the result of the radical politics of the French Revolution, during which the French government had abolished slavery in the colonies before Napoleon attempted to reintroduce it shortly afterwards. As the new freedmen set up small subsistence farms in Haiti, Cuba's planters gained much of the sugar market formerly held by Saint-Domingue's large plantations. As sugar expanded to dominate the economy in Cuba, planters greatly expanded their importation of slaves from Africa. As a result, between 1789 to 1813, 100,532 slaves entered the island with 92,425 through Havana.

In the early 19th century, Cuban planters, who relied almost exclusively on foreign slave traders, closely followed debates on abolishing slavery in both Britain and the United States. In 1807, the British and American governments abolished the Atlantic slave trade, with the British ban taking effect in 1807 and the American ban taking effect in 1808. Unlike in the rest of the Americas, the 19th-century European-descended Cuban elite did not form an anti-colonial movement. They worried that such action would encourage enslaved Cubans to revolt. Cuban elites petitioned the Spanish Crown to create an independent Cuban slave-trading company, and smugglers continued to ship slaves to the island when they could evade British and American anti-slavery patrols around West Africa.

By 1817, Britain and Spain were making a concerted effort to reform their diplomatic ties and negotiate the legal status of the Atlantic slave trade. An Anglo-Spanish treaty in 1817 formally gained Spanish agreement to immediately end the slave trade north of the Equator and expand enforcement against illegal slave ships. But, as recorded by legal trade documents of the era, 372,449 slaves were imported to Cuba before the slave trade legally ended, and at least 123,775 were imported between 1821 and 1853.

Due to growing pressure to stop the Cuban slave trade throughout the 19th century, more than 100,000 Chinese indentured workers were imported to Cuba to replace dwindling African labor.

Even as the slave trade ceased in other parts of the Atlantic, the Cuban slave trade continued until 1867. The ownership of human beings as chattel slaves remained legal in Cuba until 1880. The slave trade in Cuba would not systematically end until chattel Cuban slavery was abolished by Spanish royal decree in 1886, making it one of the last countries in the Western Hemisphere (preceding only Brazil) to formally abolish slavery.

Number of slaves received	Items traded	Number of slaves traded		Number of voyages
460,064	sugar	Embarked	Disembarked	14
		2,711	2,523

 

Spain introduced the first African slaves into the island of Jamaica. By the early 17th century, when most of the Taino had died out, the population of the island was about 3,000, including a small number of African slaves. In May 1655, around 7,000 English soldiers landed near Jamaica's capital, named Spanish Town, and soon overwhelmed the small number of Spanish troops; at the time, Jamaica's entire population only numbered around 2,500.

Although the African slave population in the 1670s and 1680s never exceeded 10,000, by the end of the 17th century imports of African slaves increased the black population to at least five times greater than the white population; At the beginning of the 18th century, the number of slaves in Jamaica did not exceed 45,000, but by 1800, Jamaica’s Black population had increased to over 300,000.

The sugar boom of Jamaica would change the dynamics of the slave market and the economics of the West Indies. Towards the end of the 18th century, Jamaica became the leader of sugar production for the British empire, producing up to sixty-six percent of the empire's sugar in 1796. The price of sugar would rise tremendously as the market for sugar in Great Britain was large, especially with the rich. From 1748 to 1755, the value of sugar exportations from Jamaica increased by nearly three times, going from £688,000 to £1,618,000 over the period.

Number of slaves received	Items traded	Number of slaves traded		Number of voyages
176,151	Coffee, sugar	Embarked	Disembarked	66
		13,738	11,886

 

In 1635, Spain formally ceded Martinique to France after 133 years of Spanish rule. On 15 September 1635, Pierre Belain d'Esnambuc, French governor of the island of St. Kitts, landed in the harbor of St. Pierre with eighty to one-hundred and fifty French settlers after being driven off St. Kitts by the English.

At the time the Dictionnaire universel was written, likely between 1670s–1680s, the cost of a slave in a French colony was £19.

Of the estimated 174,151 slaves imported to Martinique, 99,969 or fifty-seven percent were imported between 1714 and 1763, and 137,254 or seventy-nine percent having been imported between 1714 and 1813.

Despite the introduction of successful coffee plantations to Martinique, in the 1720s, making it the first coffee-growing area in the Western hemisphere, the planter class lost political influence as sugar prices declined in the early 1800s. Slave rebellions in 1789, 1815, and 1822; plus the campaigns of abolitionists such as Cyrille Bissette and Victor Schœlcher, persuaded the French government to end slavery in the French West Indies in 1848. Martinique was the first French overseas territory in which the abolition decree came into force, on 23 May 1848.

As a result, some plantation owners imported workers from India and China. Despite the abolition of slavery, life scarcely improved for most Martinicans; class and racial tensions exploded into rioting in southern Martinique in 1870 following the arrest of Léopold Lubin, a trader of African ancestry who retaliated after he was beaten by a Frenchman. After several deaths, the revolt was crushed by French militia.

Europe

England

	Items traded	Number of slaves traded		Number of voyages
	sugar, tobacco, rum, rice, cotton, slaves	Embarked	Disembarked	2,082
		568,541	471,799

 

Bristol was the slave capital of England; In 1755, it had the largest number of slave traders in the country with 237, as against London's 147. It was a major supplier of slaves to South Carolina before 1750.

The eighteenth century saw an expansion of Bristol's population, 45,000 in 1750, and its role in the Atlantic slave trade to the Americas. Bristol and later Liverpool became major centers of the Triangular Trade; Manufactured goods were shipped to West Africa and exchanged for African slaves. The enslaved captives were transported across the Atlantic to the Americas via the so called “Middle Passage” under brutal conditions. Plantation goods—such as sugar, tobacco, rum, rice, cotton and a few slaves that were sold to the aristocracy as house servants—were circulated back across the Atlantic to England. Some household slaves were baptized in the hope this would lead them to be freed. The Somerset Case of 1772 clarified that slavery was illegal in England. At the height of the Bristol slave trade from 1700 to 1807, more than 2,000 slave ships carried over an estimated 500,000 people from Africa to slavery in the Americas.

	Items traded	Number of slaves traded		Number of voyages
	mahogany, sugar, dyes, rice, spices, coffee, rum, cotton, slaves	Embarked	Disembarked	125
		23,494	20,099

 

Lancaster’s part in the trade developed in the 17th century, peaked in the 1750s and 1760s, and was linked to that of Liverpool, which is also in northwest England. Lancaster became the fourth largest slave-trading center in England with local merchants involved in the capture and transport of around 30, and the most prominent in Lancashire. Lancaster slave traders became influential within the city and also played a role in getting parliamentary support for the development of the Port of Lancaster.

	Items traded	Number of slaves traded		Number of voyages
	tobacco, cotton, sugar cane, tools, nails, slaves	Embarked	Disembarked	4,973
		1,337,723	1,157,567

 

Liverpool, a port city in north-west England, was involved in the transatlantic slave trade. Trade developed in the eighteenth century, as Liverpool slave traders took part in the highly profitable triangular trade. Trade goods, e.g. tools, nails, etc., were sent to the Bight of Biafra, sold there for a profit and slaves bought; the ships then crossed the Atlantic to the Americas, and the slaves were sold there for a profit and agricultural products, e.g. tobacco, cotton, sugar cane, bought, before the ships returned to Liverpool.

By the mid-1740s, Liverpool was the largest slave trading port in Britain, overtaking Bristol. Thereafter Liverpool’s control of the industry continued to grow. In the period between 1793 and 1807, when the slave trade was abolished, Liverpool accounted for 84.7 percent of all slave voyages, with London accounting for twelve percent and Bristol 3.3 percent.

Liverpool slave traders bought captives across the whole of West Africa; though, they specialized in the Bight of Biafra and West Central Africa. From 1740 to 1810, Liverpool traders took 427,000 people from the Bight of Biafra and 197,000 from West Central Africa.

Liverpool also specialized in their delivery areas, having sold 391,000 enslaved people to Jamaica alone between 1741 and 1810 and in the same period 85,000 enslaved people to Barbados. Traders from Liverpool were dominant in most slave markets except Chesapeake where Bristol remained the biggest importer.

France

	Items traded	Number of slaves traded		Number of voyages
	Cotton, coffee, sugar, slaves	Embarked	Disembarked	455
		135,534	116,311

 

The slave trade in Bordeaux refers to the deportation, between 1672 and 1837, of nearly 150,000 African slaves. Organized for economic purposes from the port of Bordeaux, the first slave voyage from Bordeaux was made in 1672; the Saint-Étienne set sail for Saint-Domingue, via "Guinea”; With an estimated 508 shipments, accounting for 11.4 percent of French slave trades, the city is the third largest French port, behind Nantes, responsible for 41.3 percent, and La Rochelle, 33.5 percent.

At the end of the eighteenth century, thanks to colonial trade and the slave trade, Bordeaux became the second largest port in the world after London.

Bordeaux slave traders mainly embarked captives on what was then called the Slave Coast—the coasts of present-day Ghana; Togo; Benin; and Nigeria, and Congo, Angola, and Mozambique. Slaves were mostly disembarked in French possessions in America with seventy percent going to Saint-Domingue.

From 1783 to 1792, avoiding competition, Bordeaux's ships concentrated on the eastern coast of Africa, i.e. Mozambique, Zanzibar, to supply labor not only to the French islands in the Indian Ocean but also to Santo Domingo.

	Items traded	Number of slaves traded		Number of voyages
	linen, copper, iron, glass, haberdashery, leather, ivory, gold, slaves, sugar, coffee, cotton, textiles	Embarked	Disembarked	138
		37,358	32,405

 

From the early seventeenth century, Honfleur’s trade flourished with the growth of connections to Canada, Louisiana, the West Indies, the African coast, and the Azores, making the town one of the five main slave-trading ports in France.

The port also played an important role in the Western slave trade, becoming, with 142 organized expeditions and approximately 50,000 captives deported, the seventh largest French slave-trading port. In 1717, recognizing the importance of Honfleur’s location, the Senegal Company established itself there, and work began on the construction of a new basin on the western side. Honfleur also served as a backup port when Le Havre became congested, particularly during its peak in the slave trade between 1783 and 1791. Among the names of the Honfleur slave-trading captains and shipowners involved were Prémord, Picquefeu de Bermon, and Lacoudrais. A distinctive feature of this port was that shipping companies increasingly established their trading posts on the shores of Sierra Leone, where new markets were to be tapped. To shorten voyages, some companies obtained slaves directly from English firms. They also favored Saint-Domingue, where planters from Honfleur had settled.

	Items traded	Number of slaves traded		Number of voyages
	Slaves, textiles, brandy, weapons, metals, tobacco, cowrie shells	Embarked	Disembarked	485
		165,368	136,338

 

La Rochelle’s hand in the slave trade stretched from 1594 to 1787. In 1594, La Rochelle became the first French slave trading port when the slave ship L'Espérance left La Rochelle for the Portuguese colony of Brazil to look for slaves.

La Rochelle’s coastal trading begins on the Gold Coast. Later La Rochelle ships traded captives primarily on the Slave Coast where wars and conflict between multiple African kingdoms and ethnic groups, including Dahomey; Ouidah; Ardres; etc., had intensified in the eighteenth century.

Slave trade activity in La Rochelle was the most important in the eighteenth century where between 1717 and 1783, 427 trading voyages departed from La Rochelle, representing 12.65 percent of French national traffic—Nantes accounting for 42.68 percent. La Rochelle was the second largest French slave port after Nantes.

	Items traded	Number of slaves traded		Number of voyages
	sugar, cotton, tobacco, coffee, spices, slaves, linen, copper, iron, glass, haberdashery, leather, ivory, gold, textiles	Embarked	Disembarked	459
		142.341	125,309

 

In Le Havre, the slave trade was practiced for a long time, but irregularly. This trade extended from the end of the 17th century to the mid-nineteenth century but was irregularly embarked. This history can be divided into five periods: The first phase, from 1666 to 1721, corresponds to a period during which the triangular trade was practiced under the control of monopoly companies. This was followed by a second phase, lasting more than half a century, from 1721 to 1783, during which Le Havre merchants engaged relatively little in the slave trade and favored direct trade. This latter trade, which consisted of direct round trips between the metropolis and the American colonies, without going through Africa to acquire captives, presented less financial risk than the slave trade expeditions, which were longer and required more capital. The third phase, lasting less than a decade, from 1783 to 1791, corresponds to the takeoff and massification of the slave-trading activity of shipowners in Le Havre.

In 1791, the slave revolt in Saint-Domingue marked the beginning of the fourth phase, during which the number of expeditions fell dramatically, notably thanks to the first abolition of slavery in 1794 by the National Convention. Finally, from 1815, the date of Napoleon’s prohibition of the slave trade, after having reinstated it along with slavery in 1802, began the fifth and final period of the Le Havre slave trade, which had become illegal and less profitable, ending with the capture of the last French slave ship in 1840. Paradoxically, the port of Le Havre entered a long period of moderate activity, explained by the limited capital available to Le Havre merchants, who favored direct trade, which also required smaller vessels. From 1722 to 1745, there were only one or two expeditions per year, then three to five per year until 1763, and four to eight until 1773, the beginning of the American Revolutionary War. It was only at the end of this war that Le Havre shipowners fully engaged in the slave trade.

For the port of Le Havre, this surge in the slave trade only occurred at the end of the American Revolutionary War in 1783, with 16 ships outfitted for the trade that year. From then on, Le Havre merchants outfitted ships for the slave trade at a rate of about twenty expeditions per year. A peak was reached in 1787 and 1788, the two years during which the record was set for the number of expeditions, 30 in 1787, and then for the number of captives traded, 7,500 in 1788. From 1783 to 1791, a total of 191 slave-trading expeditions departed from the port city.

	Items traded	Number of slaves traded		Number of voyages
	Indiennes, money cowries, slaves	Embarked	Disembarked	137
		49,294	42,230

 

The town experienced a period of growth when John Law formed the Perpetual Company of the Indies by absorbing other chartered companies, including the French East India Company. Despite the economic bubble caused by the Company in 1720, the city was still growing as it took part in the Transatlantic triangular slave trade. From 1720 to 1790, 156 ships deported an estimated 43,000 slaves.

Nantes benefits from its proximity with Lorient, the home of the French East India Company, which allowed the supply of Indiennes and money cowries that were highly appreciated by slave merchants.

	Items traded	Number of slaves traded		Number of voyages
	sugar, coffee, cotton, indigo, slaves, flour, wine, salt	Embarked	Disembarked	1,744
		529,277	452,604

 

Nantes shipowners began trading African slaves in 1706. Nantes traders were not only capable of adapting to market conditions in both America and Africa but were also capable of changing the point of sale, according to competition. It was, nevertheless, in Saint-Domingue that they sold the majority of their human cargo. Making use of a network of relations across the island, it became the exclusive domain of Loire slave traders. Cap Français, now Cap-Haïtien, and Port-au-Prince were the main points of sale and welcomed, respectively, thirty to twenty-five percent of Nantes slave-ships. The latter dealt with 46.8 percent of the supply of provisions to Port-au-Prince, 60.7 percent in Léogâne, 64.7 percent in Cayes, and 81.6 percent in Saint-Marc.

Between 1763 and 1793, the number of slaves transported by Nantes ships numbered 195,608. These slaves were taken mainly from the Gulf of Guinea—principally the region of Calabar, on the southeast coast of what is now Nigeria—and the "Angola coast"—now part of Angola and the Republic of the Congo. Between 1789 and 1793, the port of Nantes accounted for 36.1 percent of slave trade traffic with 152 ships: as much as the output of their main rivals, Bordeaux and Le Havre, put together.

The August 1793 decree for the abolition of slavery put an end to all slave trade activity across all French territory for nine years. The re-establishment of slavery by Napoléon Bonaparte in 1802, revived slave trade activity for fifteen years—accounting for 70 percent of national trade, with more than three hundred expeditions—however, this was achieved illegally, as the French Royal Navy fought successfully against illegal traffickers throughout the 1820s until the prohibition of the trade in 1831, which eventually led to the definitive abolition of slavery instigated by Victor Schlœlcher on 27 April 1848.

From 1707 to 1793, Nantes was responsible for forty-two percent of the French slave trade; its merchants sold about 450,000 African slaves in the West Indies.

North America

United States

Number of slaves received	Items traded	Number of slaves traded		Number of voyages
2,467		Embarked	Disembarked	177
		27,263	22,931

 

While English colonists in Massachusetts were establishing a consistent trade in indigenous slaves in the 17th century, they also began purchasing enslaved Africans. These processes were deeply intertwined; In 1638, the slave ship Desire carried indigenous captives to the Caribbean for sale into slavery and returned with the first documented shipment of enslaved Africans in New England. This reciprocal trade continued throughout the 17th century as merchants and colonial governments exported enslaved Native Americans and traded them for more desirable African laborers. Large slaving ships rarely sailed directly from Africa to Massachusetts, as they occasionally did to Charleston, South Carolina. Instead, merchant ships travelling between the port towns of Salem and Boston frequently returned with enslaved Africans. This continuous flow of enslaved laborers benefitted colonists by simultaneously removing indigenous populations and meeting the expanding labor needs.

In addition to bringing enslaved Africans to New England, residents of Massachusetts and Plymouth participated in the broader Atlantic slave trade where at least 19 voyages, in the 17th century, departed from New England, purchased or captured slaves in Africa, and carried them to the Caribbean for sale. While these slave traders usually sold the majority of their human cargo in the Caribbean, many brought small numbers back to New England. One Rhode Island merchant, in 1717, reminded his brother of this profitable trade, writing: "if you cannot sell all your slaves [in the West Indies] ... bring some of them home; I believe they will sell well".

Given the sparse records, lack of a regulatory regime and general indifference to the presence of slavery, it is impossible to know exactly how many enslaved Africans were brought to Massachusetts throughout the colonial period. Gregory O'Malley has estimated that around 9,813 Africans were brought directly to New England between 1638 and 1770, in addition to 3,870 who arrived through the Caribbean, but this is a rough estimate.

Number of slaves received	Items traded	Number of slaves traded		Number of voyages
	Sugar, molasses, slaves	Embarked	Disembarked	84
		10,076	8,893

 

The DeWolfs of Bristol, Rhode Island, and most notably James De Wolf, who was the largest slave-trading family in all of North America, mounting more than 80 transatlantic voyages, most of them illegal. The Rhode Island slave trade was broadly based.

The DeWolf family was among the earliest settlers of Bristol. Bristol and Rhode Island became a center of slave trading. James DeWolf, a leading slave trader, later became a United States Senator from Rhode Island. Beginning in 1769 and continuing until 1820 (over a decade after the slave trade was outlawed in the Atlantic), the DeWolf family trafficked people out of West Africa, enslaving them and bringing them to work on DeWolf-owned plantations, or selling them to be auctioned at ports in places such as Havana, Cuba and Charleston, South Carolina. In Cuba, sugar and molasses, harvested/created by enslaved Africans, was brought back to Rhode Island to DeWolf-owned distilleries. By the end of 1820, the DeWolf family had trafficked and enslaved over 10,000 African people. James DeWolf died as the second wealthiest person in the United States.

Number of slaves received	Items traded	Number of slaves traded		Number of voyages
103,477	Tobacco, slaves	Embarked	Disembarked	24
		4,819	3,998

 

Virginia

The first African slaves of what became the United States were first brought to colony of Virginia in 1619, when 20 Africans from present-day Angola arrived in Virginia aboard the ship The White Lion.

As the slave trade grew, enslaved people generally were forced to labor at large plantations, where their free labor made plantation owners rich. Colonial Virginia became an amalgamation of Algonquin-speaking Native Americans, English, other Europeans, and West Africans, each bringing their own language, customs, and rituals. By the eighteenth century, plantation owners were the aristocracy of Virginia. There were also a class of white people who oversaw the work of enslaved people, and a poorer class of whites that competed for work with freed blacks.

Tobacco was the key export of the colony in the seventeenth century. Slave breeding and trading gradually became more lucrative than exporting tobacco during the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth century. Black human beings were the most lucrative and profitable export from Virginia, and black women were bred to increase the number of enslaved people for the slave trade.

Maryland

In 1642 when the first Africans were brought as slaves to St. Mary's City. Maryland developed similarly to neighboring Virginia; however, slavery as an institution declined earlier in Maryland, resulting in Maryland having the largest free black population by 1860 of any state. The early settlements and population centers of the province tended to cluster around rivers and other waterways that empty into Chesapeake Bay. Maryland planters cultivated tobacco as the chief commodity crop, as the market for cash crops was strong in Europe. Tobacco was labor-intensive in both cultivation and processing, and planters struggled to manage workers as tobacco prices declined in the late 17th century, even as farms became larger and more efficient. At first, indentured servants from England supplied much of the necessary labor but, as England's economy improved, fewer came to the colonies. Maryland colonists turned to importing indentured and enslaved Africans to satisfy the labor demand.

By the 18th century, Maryland had developed into a plantation colony and slave society, requiring extensive numbers of field hands for the labor-intensive commodity crop of tobacco. In 1700, the province had a population of about 25,000, and by 1750 that number had grown more than five times to 130,000. By 1755, about 40 percent of Maryland's population was black enslaved people, with African Americans slaves concentrated in the Tidewater counties where tobacco was grown. Planters relied on the extensive system of rivers to transport their produce from inland plantations to the Atlantic coast for export. Baltimore was the second-most important port in the eighteenth-century South, after Charleston, South Carolina.

Number of slaves received	Items traded	Number of slaves traded		Number of voyages
389	Sugar, molasses, rum, slaves	Embarked	Disembarked	236
		26,796	22,659

 

Newport was a major center of the slave trade in colonial and early America, active in the "triangle trade" in which slave-produced sugar and molasses from the Caribbean were carried to Rhode Island and distilled into rum that was then carried to West Africa and exchanged for captives.

Number of slaves received	Items traded	Number of slaves traded		Number of voyages
7,209	Slaves, cotton, sugar	Embarked	Disembarked
		37,400	31,054	188

The Dutch West India Company trafficked eleven enslaved Africans to New Amsterdam in 1626, with the first slave auction held in New Amsterdam in 1655, making the beginning of institutionalized slavery in what would become New York City. With the second-highest proportion of any city in the colonies—after Charleston, South Carolina—more than 42% of New York City households enslaved African people by 1703, often as domestic servants and laborers. Despite Northern geography, New York developed one of the largest enslaved populations outside the South.

After the American Revolution, the New York Manumission Society was founded in 1785 to work for the abolition of slavery and to aid free Black people. The state passed a 1799 law for gradual abolition, a law which freed no living slave. After that date, children born to enslaved mothers were required to work for the mother's enslaver as indentured servants until age 28 for men and 25 for women. The last enslaved people were freed of this obligation on July 4, 1827, 28 years after 1799.

Number of slaves received	Items traded	Number of slaves traded		Number of voyages
146,934	Rice, tobacco, peanuts, sugar, indigo	Embarked	Disembarked	232
		36,397	29,193

An estimated forty to fifty percent of imported Africans slave In the United States disembarked at Sullivans’s Island—or historically known as O'Sullivan's Island—making it the largest port of disembarkation in North America.

Similar to Virginia, numerous enslaved people in South Carolina were imported from the West Indies, with the majority from the British colony of Barbados; In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Barbados served as a major port for England's trans-Atlantic slave trade. Charleston was a major hub of both the transatlantic and interstate slave trades. During the early eighteenth century, Charles Town—renamed Charleston in 1783—started to receive large numbers of enslaved people directly from Africa. By 1710, African arrivals to Charles Town were typically fewer than 300 annually; by 1720, there were more than 1,000 annual arrivals, and by 1770, over 3,000. The South Carolina General Assembly reopened the port of Charleston to the transatlantic slave trade between 1803 and 1807, during which time, some 50,000 enslaved Africans were imported to the state. The trade was finally cut off by the 1808 federal law Prohibiting Importation of Slaves.

South Carolina was the only English colony in North America that favored African labor over White indentured servitude and Indigenous labor. South Carolina had the highest ratio of Black slaves to White colonists in English North America, with the Black population reaching sixty percent of the total population by 1715.

South Carolina Lowcountry differentiated itself by utilizing a task system; it allowed enslaved people time to work on their own projects after their assigned work had been completed, and they were also allowed to accumulate a small amount of property where "they planted corn, potatoes, tobacco, peanuts, sugar and watermelons, and pumpkins and bottle pumpkins." This labor system contrasted with the "gang system" which was commonplace in most Anglo-American plantation societies.

South America

Brazil

Number of slaves received	Items traded	Number of slaves traded		Number of voyages
1,220,264	Cotton, coffee, sugar, tobacco, diamonds, gold	Embarked	Disembarked	4,483
		1,368,233	1,231,176

Bahia was a center of sugarcane cultivation from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries and contains a number of historic towns, such as Cachoeira. Integral to the sugar economy was the importation of a vast number of African slaves: more than a third of all slaves taken from Africa were sent to Brazil, mostly to be processed in Bahia before being sent to work in plantations elsewhere in the country.

Slave labor was the driving force behind the growth of the sugar economy in Brazil, and sugar was the primary export of the colony from 1600 to 1650. Gold and diamond deposits, discovered in Brazil in 1690, sparked an increase in the importation of enslaved African people to power this newly profitable mining.

Slaves were brought from Africa to Bahia beginning in 1549, and to Sao Felix and Cachoeira in 1615. Salvador, founded as the fortress of São Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos ("Holy Savior of the Bay of All Saints") in 1549 by Portuguese settlers, is one of the oldest cities founded by Europeans in the Americas. It served as Brazil's first capital and quickly became a major port for its slave trade and sugarcane industry.

Number of slaves received	Items traded	Number of slaves traded		Number of voyages
1,104,279	sugar	Embarked	Disembarked	2,545
		1,045,552	939,650

From the colonial period until the first independent era, Rio de Janeiro was a city of slaves. There was a large influx of African slaves to Rio de Janeiro. In 1819, there were 145,000 slaves in the captaincy. In 1840, the number of slaves reached 220,000 people. Between 1811 and 1831, 500,000 to 900,000 slaves arrived in Rio de Janeiro through Valongo Wharf, which is now a World Heritage Site. The Port of Rio de Janeiro was the largest port of slaves in America.