Atlantic Slave Trade, 1451–1870

From 1619, when a Dutch frigate sold several dozen slaves to English colonists at Jamestown, until 1808, when Congress abolished the African slave trade, nearly 400,000 Africans were brought against their will to what is now the United States. Approximately 8 million more were taken to the sugar or coffee plantations in Brazil and the Caribbean and to the mines and farms of Spanish America. Although most of the slaves came from western Africa and central Africa, some (not shown on this map) came from Africa’s eastern coast as well.