The Atlantic Slave Trade (known in English as the Atlantic Slave Trade) was a period in world history from roughly the 15th century to the 19th century, during which merchants from European countries bought people from Africa as slaves, taking them to the Americas and Europe to be enslaved.
As students of history know, by the early 1500s—during what is historically called the "Age of European Exploration," when Europeans intensified their efforts to discover travel routes, especially maritime ones—European countries, particularly Portugal and Spain, had acquired the knowledge to understand world maps and to navigate shipping routes that would connect them to the eastern and western hemispheres. Furthermore, they made efforts to discover new regions around the world, including the American continent, which they had not known before. It was during these efforts that Portuguese merchant ships, in their quest for a sea route to connect them to India and China for trade, succeeded in discovering the Atlantic coast of West Africa. Consequently, this enabled the establishment of trade relations between Portuguese merchants and the coastal kingdoms, such as the Kingdom of Benin, Asante, and Dahomey.
A little while later, in 1526, the Portuguese began buying Black Africans as slaves from slave-trading merchants in the Kingdom of Benin (which is now part of present-day Nigeria). They loaded them onto ships and took them to the Americas to work on their large plantations there. A small number of these slaves were also taken to Europe to become domestic servants, or "home servants."
Therefore, historians confirm that from this year of 1526, when the Portuguese bought slaves in Africa, other European merchants from countries such as Spain, Britain, France, and the Netherlands also became heavily involved in the slave trade.
The Origin of the Atlantic Slave Trade
The origin of the Atlantic Slave Trade itself dates back to the 15th century, when European nations like Portugal and Spain led the successful discovery of the American region, which no European country had known about before. This, in turn, gave them the opportunity to establish large plantations for sugarcane, coffee, cotton, and other crops. There was, however, a need for laborers who could endure the hard work on these plantations.
On the other hand, by the early 16th century, Portuguese merchant ships had already begun arriving on the West African coast, bringing trade goods such as mirrors, guns, clothing, and alcohol. In return, African merchants sold them gold, palm oil, cocoa, and a small number of slaves.
This initial commercial relationship between European and African merchants was what gave Europeans the opportunity to begin buying Africans as slaves to work on their large plantations in the Americas. It was the Portuguese merchants who first bought slaves in 1526 from the slave-trading merchants of the Kingdom of Benin, and later, other European merchants from Spain, Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Denmark also joined in.
As this slave trade became accepted among other European merchant nations, the trade became profitable for both parties. European countries found it easy to obtain labor for their large plantations and domestic work, while the African merchants selling slaves also made money from this commerce.
The Methods of Capturing Slaves
It is well established that during the Atlantic Slave Trade, Europeans could not penetrate deep into the African continent; they only stayed on the coast. Therefore, they relied on slave-raiding merchants within Africa to capture and sell the slaves to them. There were three known methods of capturing slaves, as follows:
1. Some slaves were captured through inter-tribal wars, which the coastal kingdoms were well known for waging. For example, wars could be organized specifically to capture slaves.
2. Others were obtained through raiding parties against other people. Most slave raiders would attack a village or groups of travelers to capture them as slaves.
3. Others were obtained when they committed a major crime within their own society, and as part of their punishment, they were sold into slavery.
4. Thus, when slave raiders obtained slaves through any of these mentioned methods—or other methods—they would gather them, chain them together, or bind them with a single rope in a line. Then they would bring them to the coast, where the Europeans were waiting to buy them.
In the trading system, there were slave trading posts along the African coast where African merchants brought the slaves, and European buyers would come to purchase them or trade by barter using their goods, such as guns, clothing, mirrors, and alcohol.