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The intensive agriculture of the “New World” (= American colonies) demanded a large workforce. Crops such as sugar cane, tobacco and cotton required an unlimited and cheap supply of strong workers to assure production for the European market. Slaves from Africa offered the solution.

The slave trade started in the seventeenth century and it was part of the triangular trade between Europe, Africa and America. The trade moved Africans along 3000 miles of Africa’s west coast to the New World. Slaves used to be captured by Africans and Europeans for sale or trade. British ships from Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow sailed to Africa and sold British goods to African chiefs in exchange for slaves. And when they returned from America, they brought back tobacco, rum and cotton.

The slave trade between Western Africa and the Americas reached its peak in the mid-18th century when it is estimated that over 80,000 Africans annually used to cross the Atlantic for several months in terrible conditions. It was called the Middle Passage. Forty to fifty hundred people used to be shipped in the same boat with little air and very little food, so there were lots of diseases and dead. Then the slaves who survived the voyage and finally reached their destination, used to spend the rest of their lives in chains.

It was a profitable business. A slave bought on the African coast for the equivalent of 14 English pounds in 1760 could be sold for 45 pounds on the American market. African slaves were chosen because they were resistant to Western diseases, strong and they could work in the hot weather. They mostly used to work in cotton, sugar cane and tobacco plantations in the Southern states such as Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana, etc. Slaves had no rights and were their master’s property. Many tried to escape but there was a risk of being shot or beaten.