Expansion of the West African Slave Trade (1630s)

Name: Expansion of the West African Slave Trade (1630s)
Start: 1630
End: 1640

Type Event Region West Africa Time 1630–1640

In the 1630s the transatlantic slave trade in West Africa expanded markedly, with the Dutch West India Company seizing Portuguese posts including Elm…

Timeline

1630–1637Gold Coast (present-day Ghana) · West AfricaThrough the 1630s the Dutch West India Company continued to pressure Portuguese posts in West Africa, establishing trading factories along the Gold Coast and signing trade agreements with local chiefs, building infrastructure for large-scale slave exports. After seizing Elmina in 1637, the Dutch at once gained control of the Gold Coast's largest slave transshipment port.
1630–1640West African interior · West AfricaStrong European demand for slaves prompted inland kingdoms such as Dahomey and Oyo to widen the scope of their military plunder, with prisoners of war and captured civilians shipped continuously to coastal trading points. It is estimated that the number of slaves exported annually from West Africa in the 1630s grew by about thirty percent over the previous decade, inflicting severe damage on West Africa's population and social structure.

Sources

The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440–1870 — Hugh Thomas (1997)
The Dutch in the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1600–1815 — Johannes Menne Postma (1990)