The Slave Trade
The forced movement of millions of enslaved Africans to the Americas over a span of 4 centuries. It is estimated that as many as 15 million people were transported as slaves, with unknown numbers dying en route. Most of the enslaved people ended up in South America or the Caribbean, while nearly 500,000 were transported to North America.
Almost all of the enslaved Africans worked as plantation labourers or else in mining, and most of those in the Caribbean and Central and South America died from the harshness of the work and the brutality of their living conditions. Only in North America did the slave population reproduce itself, with individuals having a life expectancy equal to that of the white population.
In Africa, European traders dealt with African suppliers, seldom capturing the slaves themselves. Importantly, the practice of slavery had been in operation in Africa and in central Europe for centuries prior to the redirection of the trade to the Americas. Muslim slave traders from Arabia and Turkey, for example, had transported enslaved Africans and Europeans into South East Asia and the Iberian Peninsula for centuries. Nothing in the past, however, equalled the Atlantic slave trade in size or in the extent and depth of its impact on the world.
Source: macquirelatory.com