A Brief Overview of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

Notes

1 The Portuguese delivered slaves through two separate trading networks, one rooted in the Iberian Peninsula that supplied the early Spanish Americas and Amazonia, and a second, much larger, network based in Brazil, which brought slaves directly from Africa to northeast Brazil and Rio de Janeiro. See Daniel B. Domingues da Silva, “The Atlantic Slave Trade to Maranhão, 1680-1846: Volume, Routes and Organization,” Slavery and Abolition (forthcoming).

2 A.C. de C. M. Saunders, A Social History of Black Slaves and Freedmen in Portugal, 1441-1555, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 59.

3 For the full account, see Antione Edme Pruneau de Pommegorge, Description de la Nigritie, (Paris: Chez Maradan, 1789), 104-118.