Introduction
The major European slave trade began with Portugal’s exploration of the west coast of Africa in search of a trade route to the East. By 1444, slaves were being brought from Africa to work on the sugar plantations of the Madeira Islands, off the coast of modern day Morocco. The slave trade then expanded greatly as European colonies in the New World demanded an ever-increasing number of workers for the extensive plantations growing tobacco, sugar, and eventually rice and cotton.
European Colonization and Slavery in West Africa
Upon discovering new lands through their naval explorations, Europeans soon began to migrate to and settle in lands outside their native continent. In the 15th century, the Spanish invaded and colonized the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa under the direction of the Kingdom of Castille. They also captured indigenous Canary Islanders to use as slaves both on the Islands and across the Christian Mediterranean.
In the 16th century, the Portuguese settlers found that the Canary Islands were ideal for growing sugar, and they forcefully converted much of the land to the production of wine and sugar. Sugar growing is a labor-intensive undertaking, and Portuguese settlers were difficult to attract due to the heat, lack of infrastructure, and hard life. To cultivate the sugar, the Portuguese turned to large numbers of enslaved Africans. Elmina Castle on the Gold Coast, originally built by African labor for the Portuguese in 1482 to control the gold trade, became an important depot for slaves that were to be transported to the New World.
As historian John Thornton remarked, "the actual motivation for European expansion and for navigational breakthroughs was little more than to exploit the opportunity for immediate profits made by raiding and the seizure or purchase of trade commodities." European traders, mostly the Portuguese, began to move their activities down the western coast of Africa. Using the Canary Islands as a naval base, they performed raids to capture slaves and sell them in the Mediterranean.
Although initially successful in this venture, Portuguese raiding ships soon met with resistance from African naval forces. The crews of several European ships were killed by African sailors whose boats were better equipped at traversing the West African coasts and river systems. Many African peoples already practiced various forms of slavery (all of which differed significantly from the racial slavery that would ultimately develop in the New World), and eventually, deals were struck with some peoples of Africa to participate in the enslavement and subsequent trade for profit.
Slavery in the New World
The Spanish were the first Europeans to use enslaved Africans in the New World on islands such as Cuba and Hispaniola. The alarming death rate experienced by the indigenous population had spurred the first royal Spanish laws protecting them, and consequently, the first enslaved Africans arrived in Hispaniola in 1501.
Increasing penetration into the Americas by the Portuguese created more demand for labor in Brazil—primarily for farming and mining. Slave-based economies quickly spread to the Caribbean and the southern portion of what is today the United States. There, Dutch traders brought the first enslaved Africans in 1619. These areas all developed an insatiable demand for slaves.
Growth of the Atlantic Slave Trade
As European nations grew more powerful—especially Portugal, Spain, France, Great Britain, and the Netherlands—they began vying for control of the African slave trade, with little effect on local African and Arab trading. Great Britain's existing colonies in the Lesser Antilles and its effective naval control of the Mid-Atlantic forced other countries to abandon their enterprises due to inefficiency in cost. The English crown provided a charter giving the Royal African Company monopoly over the African slave routes until 1712.
The Atlantic slave trade peaked in the late 18th century, when the largest number of slaves was captured on raiding expeditions into the interior of West Africa. The expansion of European colonial powers to the New World increased the demand for slaves and made the slave trade much more lucrative to many West African powers, leading to the establishment of a number of West African empires that thrived on the slave trade.
Historians have widely debated the nature of the relationship between the African kingdoms and the European traders. Some researchers argue that it was an unequal relationship in which Africans were forced into a colonial trade with the more economically developed Europeans, exchanging raw materials and slaves for manufactured goods, and one that led to Africa being underdeveloped. Other researchers claim the Atlantic slave trade was not as detrimental to various African economies as some historians purport, and that African nations at the time were well-positioned to compete with pre-industrial Europe.
The African Slave Trade
This map shows the routes that were used in the course of the slave trade and the number of enslaved people who traveled each route. As the figures indicate, most African slaves were bound for Brazil and the Caribbean. While West Africans made up the vast majority of the enslaved, the east coast of Africa, too, supplied slaves for the trade.