Atlantic slave trade (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade#Economics_of_slavery)

The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the transatlantic slave trade, was the trading, primarily of African people, to the colonies of the New World that occurred in and around the Atlantic Ocean. It lasted from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Most enslaved people were shipped from West Africa and Central Africa and taken to North and South America^[1] to work as unpaid labor on sugar, coffee, cocoa andcotton plantations, in gold and silver mines, in rice fields, or in houses to work as servants. The shippers were, in order of scale, the Portuguese (and Brazilians), the English, the French, the Spanish, the Dutch, and the North Americans.^[1] Enslaved people were generally obtained through coastal trading with Africans, though some were captured by European slave traders through raids and kidnapping.^[2][3] Most contemporary historians estimate that between 9.4 and 12 million^[4][5] Africans arrived in the New World,^[6][7] although the actual number of people taken from their homestead is considerably higher.^[8][9][10]

The slave trade is sometimes called the Maafa by African and African-American scholars, meaning "holocaust" or "great disaster" in Swahili. Some scholars use the terms African Holocaust or Holocaust of Enslavement. Slavery was one element of a three-part economic cycle—the Triangular Trade and itsMiddle Passage—which ultimately involved four continents, four centuries and millions of people.^[11]

^Origins

^{Slavery was practiced in Africa before the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade.[12] Slavery and the slave trade were an integral part of African societies and states which supplied the Arab world with enslaved people for centuries before the arrival of the Europeans.[13] The African slave trade provided a large number of slaves to Europeans and their African agents.[14][15]}

The Atlantic slave trade is customarily divided into two eras, known as the First and Second Atlantic Systems.

The First Atlantic system was the trade of enslaved Africans to, primarily, South American colonies of the Portuguese and Spanish empires; it accounted for only slightly more than 3% of all Atlantic slave trade. It started (on a significant scale) in about 1502^[16] and lasted until 1580, when Portugal was temporarily united with Spain. While the Portuguese traded enslaved people themselves, the Spanish empire relied on theasiento system, awarding merchants (mostly from other countries) the license to trade enslaved people to their colonies. During the first Atlantic system most of these traders were Portuguese, giving them a near-monopoly during the era, although some Dutch, English, Spanishand French traders also participated in the slave trade.^[17] After the union, Portugal was weakened, with its colonial empire being attacked by the Dutch and English.

The Second Atlantic system was the trade of enslaved Africans by mostly English, Brazilian, French and Dutch traders. The main destinations of this phase were the Caribbean colonies, Brazil and North America, as a number of European countries built up economically slave-dependent colonial empires in the New World. Amongst the pioneers of this system were Francis Drake and John Hawkins.

Only slightly more than 3% of the enslaved people exported were traded between 1450 and 1600, 16% in the 17th century. More than half of them were exported in the 18th century, the remaining 28.5% in the 19th century.^[18]