The Transatlantic Slave Trade and Its Abolition (16th Century–1888)

Portuguese explorers Antao Goncalves and Nuno Tristao captured a small group of Africans near Cape Bojador and brought them to Portugal, initiating the European direct involvement in the African slave trade. Over the following decades, Portuguese traders established a pattern of raiding and later purchasing captives from African kingdoms along the West African coast, laying the foundation for the transatlantic slave trade that would transport over 12 million Africans to the Americas over the next four centuries.

Location: Cape Bojador, West African coast

The Portuguese constructed Sao Jorge da Mina (Elmina Castle), the first European slave-trading post on the West African coast, in present-day Ghana. The castle became a major hub for the slave trade, holding captive Africans in its dungeons before they were shipped across the Atlantic. Over the centuries, rival European powers — including the Dutch, who captured Elmina in 1637, and the British — built similar forts along the Gold Coast, creating a network of fortified trading posts that facilitated the mass enslavement of Africans.

Location: Elmina, Gold Coast (present-day Ghana)

Spanish colonists transported the first shiploads of enslaved Africans to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, initiating the transatlantic slave trade to the Americas. The enslaved Africans were put to work in gold mines and sugar plantations, replacing the rapidly declining Indigenous population decimated by European diseases. This marked the beginning of the system of racialized chattel slavery that would become the economic foundation of the European colonies in the Americas for the next 350 years.

Location: Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and Dominican Republic)

English naval commander John Hawkins undertook the first English slave-trading voyage, capturing approximately 300 Africans from Sierra Leone and selling them to Spanish colonists in the Caribbean. Queen Elizabeth I provided ships and weapons for the voyage and profited from the venture, despite her public expressions of moral concern. Hawkins's successful voyages demonstrated the profitability of the slave trade and established England's participation in the triangular trade that would expand dramatically in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Location: Sierra Leone / Caribbean

A Dutch warship brought approximately 20 enslaved Africans to Point Comfort, Virginia, marking the first recorded arrival of enslaved Africans in the English colonies that would become the United States. The Africans were initially treated as indentured servants, some gaining their freedom after a period of service, but the institution rapidly hardened into hereditary chattel slavery as the tobacco economy expanded. This event is widely considered the beginning of slavery in what would become the United States.

Location: Point Comfort, Virginia, British America

In 1672, King Charles II granted a royal charter to the Royal African Company, giving it a monopoly over English trade with West Africa, including the slave trade. The company transported approximately 100,000 enslaved Africans to the Americas between 1672 and 1713, making it the largest single participant in the slave trade during that period. The RAC built and maintained forts along the Gold Coast and established the infrastructure that made the British slave trade the most extensive in the Atlantic world by the 18th century.

Location: London, England

Enslaved people in the French colony of Saint-Domingue launched the largest slave uprising in history, beginning the Haitian Revolution in August 1791. Led by Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and others, the rebellion grew into a full-scale war of independence that ultimately resulted in the abolition of slavery in the colony and the establishment of Haiti as the first independent Black republic in 1804. The Haitian Revolution was the only successful slave revolt in history and sent shockwaves through the slaveholding societies of the Americas.

Location: Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti)

On 1 January 1804, the former French colony of Saint-Domingue declared its independence as Haiti, becoming the first independent Black republic in the Americas and the second independent nation in the Western Hemisphere after the United States. The Haitian Revolution, led by former enslaved people, had defeated three European powers — France, Spain, and Britain — and established a nation founded on the principle of universal freedom. The revolution terrified slaveholding societies and inspired enslaved people throughout the Americas.

Location: Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti)

After a decades-long campaign led by William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, and the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, the British Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act, abolishing the trading of slaves in the British Empire. The Royal Navy established the West Africa Squadron to enforce the ban, intercepting thousands of slave ships and liberating tens of thousands of captives. Britain then used its diplomatic influence to pressure other nations to abolish the slave trade, signing treaties with Spain, Portugal, and other powers.

Location: London, United Kingdom

The Slavery Abolition Act passed by Parliament abolished slavery throughout most of the British Empire, with the exception of territories controlled by the East India Company. The Act provided for a period of apprenticeship (effectively a transition period of forced labor) and allocated £20 million in compensation to slave owners — but nothing to the enslaved. An estimated 800,000 enslaved people in the British Caribbean were freed. The British precedent put pressure on other slaveholding nations to follow suit.

Location: London, United Kingdom

In July 1839, 53 enslaved Africans being transported aboard the Spanish schooner La Amistad staged a rebellion, killing the captain and cook and demanding to be returned to Africa. The ship was captured off the coast of Long Island, and the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, where former President John Quincy Adams successfully argued for the Africans' freedom. The Amistad case became a major symbol of the abolitionist movement in the United States, highlighting the brutality of the slave trade and the legal contradictions of slavery.

Location: Atlantic Ocean / United States

The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, formally abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude throughout the United States. The amendment was the culmination of the Civil War (1861-1865) and President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, which had freed enslaved people in Confederate states. The abolition of slavery in the United States, the largest remaining slaveholding nation in the Americas, marked a decisive turning point in the global struggle against slavery, though it was followed by the brutal era of Jim Crow segregation.

Location: Washington, D.C., United States

Princess Isabel of Brazil signed the Lei Aurea (Golden Law), abolishing slavery in the last nation in the Americas to maintain the institution. Brazil had been the largest single destination for enslaved Africans, receiving approximately 4.9 million captives — nearly 40% of all Africans forcibly transported to the Americas. The abolition came after decades of gradual emancipation laws and a growing abolitionist movement. Brazil's abolition marked the end of the transatlantic slave trade's legal legacy, though forms of forced labor and racial discrimination persisted.

Location: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

The League of Nations adopted the Slavery Convention, the first international treaty to define and prohibit slavery as a legal institution. The convention committed signatory nations to suppress the slave trade and bring about the complete abolition of slavery in all its forms. While largely symbolic at the time — many colonial powers continued exploitative labor practices — the treaty established an international legal framework for the prohibition of slavery that later informed the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights and subsequent anti-slavery conventions.

Location: Geneva, Switzerland