World history concepts · AP World History: Modern
Atlantic slave trade
Atlantic slave trade: The forced transport of millions of enslaved Africans to the Americas from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries.
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What it means
The demand for labor on sugar, tobacco and cotton plantations drove European traders to purchase enslaved Africans, who were shipped across the Atlantic in the brutal Middle Passage. The trade reshaped African societies, built American plantation economies and enriched European merchants.
Resistance took many forms, from shipboard revolts to maroon communities and the Haitian Revolution.
Example
Brazil received a larger share of enslaved Africans than any other region in the Americas.
On the exam
The slave trade is a Unit 4 topic and connects to Unit 5's revolutions and abolition movements.
Lessons and practice questions
Related terms
- Columbian ExchangeThe transfer of plants, animals, diseases, people and ideas between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres after 1492.
- Encomienda systemA Spanish colonial labor system that granted colonists the right to demand labor or tribute from Indigenous people in exchange for supposed protection and religious instruction.
- Atlantic revolutionsThe revolutions in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in North America, France, Haiti and Latin America, inspired by Enlightenment ideas.