Expansion of the Atlantic Slave Trade

Timeline

1. 1560–1569Caribbean and Brazil · CaribbeanThe expansion of sugar in Brazil and the Caribbean islands, and deepening reliance of Spanish American silver mines and estates on African forced labor, drove colonial authorities and merchants to increase the number and frequency of enslaved people imported from Africa.
2. 1562–1569Gulf of Guinea coast · Gulf of GuineaPortuguese merchants maintained and expanded slave purchasing and transshipment networks at São Tomé, Angola, and ports of the Gulf of Guinea, trading with local rulers and middlemen and loading captives and trafficked people onto ships bound for the Americas.
3. 1565–1570Atlantic sea routes · AtlanticIn the later 1560s, the frequency and carrying capacity of Middle Passage voyages across the Atlantic continued to rise; the slave trade formed a triangular circulation with European goods and American raw materials, laying the foundation for even larger-scale transatlantic forced migration in the 17th–18th centuries.