The slave trade, like the colonizing of the New World, began in the fifteenth century, and the two expanded side by side. This period coincided with the rise of mercantilism in Europe and the race for European powers to extend their political and economic influence in the Americas. Slavery played an important role in both, and many traders who initially went to Africa to buy gold or ivory soon found slave-trading more profitable.
The agricultural system of the Caribbean and the Southern colonies, and later the Southern states, in America fed the demand for large numbers of slaves to be brought from Africa to work on the plantations, where cash crops such as sugar, cotton, and tobacco were cultivated on a large scale. The Transatlantic slave trade was initially controlled by the Portuguese, but when the opportunity for large profits became clear, first the Spanish, then the British and the French became involved.
The process of becoming a slave in the Americas was a long and arduous one, and many died before they ever saw a plantation. The slaves were captured, usually by other Africans in the interior, and sometimes faced forced marches of hundreds of miles, changing hands several times, before they arrived on the West coast, where they were usually imprisoned in forts. There they would be sold to slave traders who would ship them across the Atlantic in terrible conditions, before they were sold again to other traders or to their final owners in markets such as the one that still stands (and is now a museum) in Charleston, South Carolina.
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