slave trade routes
Human cargo passages
Slave trade routes were the established paths—by land and sea—along which enslaved people were transported for sale.
The term most often refers to the transatlantic routes connecting West Africa to the Americas from the 16th through 19th centuries, though slave routes existed across the Sahara, the Indian Ocean, and within continents long before and after.
The Middle Passage was the most deadly leg of the Atlantic slave trade routes.
- Middle PassageTransatlantic slave trade crossing
- human cargoPeople moved as property
- CaribbeanTropical Atlantic region
- Atlantic OceanSecond-largest marine body
- sugar plantationsFarms growing sweetener crops
cash crops · tobacco industry · Bight of Benin · Gulf of Guinea · West Africa · Zanzibar · mercantilism · generational trauma · colonial ports · oral histories · cotton economy · Indian Ocean · resistance movements · freedom seekers · abolition movements · ports · ships · coffin ships
- African historyNubia, Dahomey, Oyo Empire, Scramble for Africa, scramble for Africa
- Historic TrailsFreedom Trail, Camino de Santiago, Via Francigena, pilgrim routes, Mormon Trail
- African explorationDavid Livingstone, Henry Stanley, expeditions, explorers, Richard Burton
- colonial mapscolonial maps, colonial borders, indigenous territories, territorial claims
- Indian Ocean tradedhow, dhows, Swahili coast, monsoon winds, Indian Ocean
- Burkina Fasoprovinces, Po, Leo, French colonization, departments
slave trade routesfree passage
Unhindered right to travel
pilgrimage routes · silk road · spice routes · tourist routes
slave trade routesUnderground Railroad
Covert abolitionist escape network
slave trade routeshumanitarian corridors
Protected evacuation routes during conflict