Since ancient times, it had been regarded as legitimate to trade in slaves, that is human beings who are regarded as somebody else’s property, owned as forced, unpaid labour. Slaves might be prisoners of war, criminals, people sold to cover a debt, or children born into slavery. Slaves are regarded as a separate class of people in society in the texts of Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Among Mayans and Aztecs, Sumerians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, slaves were a fact of life. The word ‘slave’ comes from ‘slav’, enslaved people in Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages.

© National Maritime Museum

The Transatlantic Slave Trade exceeded in numbers, brutality and organisation anything the world had previously seen.

Between 1450 and 1850, at least 9 - 12 million Africans were shipped from Africa across the Atlantic to colonies in North America, South America, and the West Indies. Of these Africans 80% (at least 7 million) were exported during C18th, with a mortality rate of 10 - 20% on board ship. This was the notorious Middle Passage.

© National Maritime Museum

Ships working the Triangular Trade started and finished in European ports. They carried copper, muskets, manufactured goods, glassware and cloth. They traded them for captives who were loaded into extremely cramped ships and given only minimal amounts of food and water. The demand for the slaves was high in the New World: labour was short, there were insufficient indigenous workers, and they could not withstand the diseases brought in by Europeans or the brutal working conditions. Sugar cane, which needed a hot climate, was becoming popular in Europe and was labour-intensive. So slaves were sold to dealers, and on to plantation owners.

Sugar, rum, rice, coffee, cotton and tobacco from the Caribbean and the southern states of America were loaded onto ships which then returned to Europe completing the Triangle. From the outset Africans defied transatlantic slavery; they fought to avoid capture and resisted to the point of death on board slave ships. Moreover, they continued their struggle against slavery in the Americas through acts of passive and active resistance.

Most Europeans never saw the Middle Passage and remained ignorant of its inhumane and deadly conditions. What Europeans noticed was the mortality rates of their own family members who were sailors on the Triangular route.