slave routes
Forced migration corridors
Slave routes are the paths—overland trails, sea passages, and river systems—along which enslaved people were transported.
The term most often refers to the transatlantic slave trade routes connecting West Africa to the Americas, but also encompasses the trans-Saharan routes to North Africa and the East African routes to the Arabian Peninsula.
The slave routes of the Middle Passage claimed millions of lives.
- Atlantic OceanSecond-largest marine body
- trade windsReliable equatorial air currents
- plantation economyAgricultural system exploiting enslaved workers
- sugar plantationsFarms growing sweetener crops
- cotton fieldsFarmland growing fiber crops
sold down the river · Middle Passage · human cargo · triangular trade · diaspora · abolitionists · forced migration · Sahara Desert · Indian Ocean · spirituals · oral traditions · freedom seekers · Zanzibar · human trafficking · folklore · ancestral memory · Caribbean islands · Gulf of Guinea
- historic travelGrand Tour, carriage, pilgrimages, wagon, Silk Road
- African historyNubia, Dahomey, Oyo Empire, Scramble for Africa, scramble for Africa
- slaverybondage, chattel, thrall, Middle Passage, slaveholders
- historic routesancient roads, Silk Road, Appian Way, Camino de Santiago, Via Francigena
- slave tradeleg irons, human cargo, triangle trade, auction block, chattel
- colonial slaveryplantation system, bondage, servitude, manumission, plantation labor