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Unlike
most twentieth-century cases of premeditated mass
killing, the African slave trade was not undertaken by a
single political force or military entity during the
course of a few months or years. The transatlantic slave
trade lasted for 400 years, from the 1450s to the 1860s,
as a series of exchanges of captives reaching from the
interior of sub-Saharan Africa to final purchasers in
the Americas. It has been estimated that in the Atlantic
slave trade, up to 12 million Africans were loaded and
transported across the ocean under dreadful conditions.
About 2 million victims died on the Atlantic voyage (the
dreaded "Middle Passage") and in the first year in the
Americas. |
