Tacoma Community College Library: African American History: The Transatlantic Slave Trade

Africa & the Transatlantic slave trade

The Transatlantic Slave Trade

"The Middle Passage and the transatlantic slave trade are conventionally regarded as one event, an event that was ended by the mid-19th-century activities of the British and American governments. However, this view fails to acknowledge that the Middle Passage continued to be used by the slave trade after legislation prohibited it in 1807 and 1830. Slave traders continued throughout the 19th century to refine their methods for ever greater profits by sacrificing the health and lives of the millions of Africans who were brought to the Americas"

- From "Middle Passage" in the Encyclopedia of Black Studies

(Click on image to enlarge, image & text cited below)

Featured websites & collections

Linked below are websites, online exhibits, and other digital collections with resources on topics related to African American history in the US

The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record
A collection of images related to the experiences of Africans in the Americas, and their descendants, this is a searchable database which is also arranged by eighteen subject categories.
EJI: The Transatlantic Slave Trade
From the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), this online report/exhibit has 13 topical sections and features information about the Slave trade, includes linked resources, images, and more.
Library of Congress: Atlantic Slave Trade
Article and resources from a research guide at the Library of Congress website, for "Colonies in America: Commerce, Business, and the Economy"
Slavery and Remembrance
"A collaboration of UNESCO’s Slave Route Project, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and dozens of sites and museums across the globe, Slavery and Remembrance aims to broaden our understandings of a shared past shaped by slavery and slave trade, the ways in which we collectively remember and forget, and the power of legacies to forge our present and future."
more...less...
Explore articles, images, and primary source content, find information and images of notable museums, plantations, and other places of importance; find articles about the events, people, and circumstances around slavery, including the British Slave Trade, Atlantic Slave Trade, and chattel slavery in the US
Slavery and Remembrance: Culture & Artifacts
"Investigate the history and legacy of slavery and slave trade by examining objects, structures, landscapes, and culture of institutions and sites of memory in Europe, Africa, and the Americas."
Slavery and Remembrance: History & Memory
In this section of the Slavery and Remembrance website, created in partnership with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and UNESCO’s Slave Route Project, you can find overview articles with embedded primary source content, such as images and documents, with the following sections: The Making of an Atlantic World, Transatlantic Slave Trade, Africans in the Americans, Slavery in the Age of Revolutions, Emancipation Movements, and Slavery Remembered
Slave Voyages
Emory University, 2019. "This digital memorial raises questions about the largest slave trades in history and offers access to the documentation available to answer them....Analyze these slave trades and view interactive maps, timelines, and animations to see the dispersal in action." Includes Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, Intra-American Slave Trade Database, African Names Database, and Image Galleries. CC BY-NC (Creative Commons - Attribution - NonCommercial) license.
Voyage of the Echo: The Trials of an Illegal Trans-Atlantic Slave Ship
From the Lowcountry Digital Library at the College of Charleston - this "online exhibition examines the illegal trans-Atlantic slave trade through the voyage and capture of the slave ship Echo in 1858. "
Voyage of the Sally
From Brown University, search records from this collection looking at Slave trading voyages of the 1764 ship Sally

Background articles

Linked below are articles that give a general overview of the topic, largely coming from subject-specific books or other reference sources. Find more articles like this by searching in Gale Ebooks, linked on the "Library Resources" tab of this guide.

An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery
From American Eras: Primary Sources
Middle Passage
From the Encyclopedia of Black Studies
Precolonial African Enslavement
Encyclopedia of Race and Racism
Slave Trade
From the Encyclopedia of American Immigration
Triangular Trade Pattern
Europe, 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World
Transatlantic Slave Trade: Was the Transatlantic Slave Trade Profitable?
From "History in Dispute"

The Transatlantic Slave Trade

Featured videos

Linked below are videos both freely online through websites like YouTube or TED, as well as from the library's collection in such databases as Kanopy, Films on Demand, or Academic Video Online. Click or hover your cursor over the icon to learn more about each item.

"Why Did Europeans Enslave Africans?"
A video from the Origins of Everything from PBS
The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, Episode 1, The Black Atlantic: 1500-1800
Streaming on Alexander Street
America Explained, 1619: The Legacy of Slavery in America
A short video from Untold History - streaming on Alexander Street
The Atlantic Slave Trade: What Schools Never Told You
A video from Black Culture Unlocked
Aug. 20, 1619 - First Enslaved Africans Arrive in New World
From the "Voices of the Civil Right's Movement"
Great Britain And The Slave Trade | Britain's Slave Trade
From Timeline History
How Britain Glossed Over Their Role In Slavery | Britain's Slave Trade
A documentary from Timeline History
Life Aboard a Slave Ship
From the History Channel
Nikole Hannah-Jones on “The 1619 Project,” Teaching Critical Race Theory & White Supremacy on Trial
From Democracy Now
TED Ed: The Atlantic slave trade: What too few textbooks told you
A short video from TED Ed
The Transatlantic Slave Trade
A short video from the Equal Justice Initiative
Transatlantic Slave Trade
A short video from Black History in Two Minutes

The Transatlantic Slave Trade

Featured podcasts

Linked here are full podcasts or podcast episodes, as well as short audio recordings from news programs such as National Public Radio (NPR) and the like.

The 1619 Project
"1619 is a New York Times audio series, hosted by Nikole Hannah-Jones, that examines the long shadow of American slavery. "
Bittersweet: Sugar, Slavery, Empire and Consumerism in the Atlantic World [Podcast]
An episode of Dig: A History Podcast
The History of Slavery, Part 1: Shackled and Chained in the Ancient World [Podcast]
An episode of the podcast, History Unplugged
more...less...
"When asked “what is slavery?” most Americans or Westerners would respond with a description of an African slave in the antebellum South, picking cotton and suffering under the whip of a cruel master. But if you asked an Irishman in 1650, he would have answered differently. He would recount the horrors of Barbary Muslim pirates invading the town of Baltimore, dragging his kinsmen off to the slave markets of Algeria. A medieval Arab would have still answered differently. He would talk about the African slave trade, albeit the one that went east to Arabia instead of the one that went west to the New World. A Roman would answer differently again, describing slavery as the rightful spoils of war and what brought a Greek to his household that tutors his children."
The History of Slavery, Part 2: The Medieval Slave Trade to Arabia
An episode of History Unplugged
more...less...
"But such massive levels of slavery did not begin with the European discovery of the New World. In the Middle Ages, Vikings went on numerous slave raids of England and Eastern Europe, selling those capture on Volga slave markets. Arab slave traders purchased millions of Africans and sent them to the Middle East to work on cotton and sugar cane plantations in Iraq."
The History of Slavery, Part 3: Christian Slaves and Muslim Masters—Barbary Pirates in the Mediterranean, 1500-1800 [Podcast]
An episode of the podcast, History Unplugged
more...less...
"As the trans-Atlantic slave trade from sub-Saharan Africa to the Americas began to grow in the 1500s, there was another slave trade that operated on an even larger scale in the same time period. It was the capture of Europeans by north-African Muslims. Barbary Pirates enslaved an estimated 1 million Europeans in the period from 1500 to 1800."
The History of Slavery, Part 4: African Slavery in the New World, 1500-1865 [Podcast]
An episode of the podcast, History Unplugged
more...less...
"Slavery predates European entry into the Atlantic world in the Age of Exploration, but the system that developed during the 16th and 17th centuries was arguably a more inhumane and racially tinged institution than anything that had previously existed. The first English colonists in the Americas believed they could become wealthy through mutual trade with Native Americans. This system failed and was replaced by chattel enslavement of Africans to work on cash-crop plantations. American slavery grew and metastasized until it swallowed up over 10 million lives in the Atlantic Slave Trade."
Inside the Slave Ship [Podcast]
An episode of the SLate podcast, "The History of American Slavery" | "The Atlantic slave trade during its heyday and the remarkable life of Olaudah Equiano."
Into the Depths [Podcast]
"Join National Geographic Explorer Tara Roberts on a historic journey as she documents some of the thousand slave ships that wrecked in the Atlantic Ocean during the transatlantic slave trade and follows a group of Black divers who are dedicated to finding and helping document the wrecks. A new six-part podcast series, Into the Depths, and National Geographic Magazine explore the complex history of the global slave trade and the stories of the estimated 12.5-million Africans forced to make the Middle Passage."
Rebel Slaves and Resistance in the Revolutionary Caribbean [Podcast]
An episode of Dig: A History Podcast
Slavery & Resistance: A Global Nightmare [Podcast]
Part one of a two part series, from the podcast Humanity Archive.
Slavery and its Legacies [Podcast]
The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition is pleased to announce “Slavery and Its Legacies,” a podcast series featuring visiting scholars, activists, and others about their contributions to the understanding of slavery past and present and its ongoing role in the development of the modern world.
Slavery & Resistance II: The Middle Passage [Podcast]
An episode of the Humanity Archive podcast