Atlantic Slave Trade System

Timeline

1. 1440–1600West Africa coast–Brazil route · BrazilPortuguese merchants and the crown established posts in West Africa, transporting enslaved people to São Tomé and later to Brazilian sugar plantations, laying the institutional framework and sea routes of the Atlantic slave trade and pioneering a model of African labor supporting colonial production in the Americas.
2. 1600–1670West Africa Gold Coast–Caribbean route · CaribbeanThe Dutch West India Company (founded 1621) and England successively joined the competition, building fortified trading posts on the Gold Coast of West Africa and extending the slave trade to British, French, and Dutch colonies in the Caribbean. The rapid expansion of tobacco, sugar, and cotton plantations greatly stimulated demand for African labor.
3. 1671–1698West Africa Gold Coast–British Caribbean and North American colonies · North AmericaKing Charles II granted the Royal African Company monopoly trading privileges in 1672, making Britain one of the largest slave-carrying nations between 1671 and 1698. Dutch and French colonies simultaneously expanded their plantation economies, and total slave shipments across all nations rose sharply in this period, with the triangular trade system (goods→slaves→sugar/tobacco→Europe) fully taking shape across the Atlantic.
4. 1698–1807Both sides of the Atlantic · AmericasAfter Britain abolished the monopoly in 1698, private merchants entered the slave trade in large numbers, and trade volume reached its historical peak in the 18th century, with an estimated over 6 million people transported across the Atlantic during the century. Britain legislated to abolish the slave trade in 1807 and the United States in 1808, but illegal transport continued into the 1860s.