Middle Passage

This article is about the slave trade route. For other uses, see Middle Passage (disambiguation).

Cross-sections of the Brookes, a 1781 British slave ship involved in the triangular Atlantic slave trade, loaded with enslaved Africans

The Middle Passage was the stage of the Atlantic slave trade in which millions of Africans sold for enslavement were forcibly transported to the Americas as part of the triangular slave trade. Ships departed Europe for African markets with manufactured goods (first side of the triangle), which were then traded for captive Africans. Slave ships transported the African captives across the Atlantic (second side of the triangle). The proceeds from selling these enslaved people were then used to buy products such as furs and hides, tobacco, sugar, rum, and raw materials, which would be transported back to Europe (third side of the triangle, completing it).

The Atlantic slave trade developed through European slave-raiding, commerce, and expanding networks connecting European traders with African societies. European actors directly seized Africans at the beginning of the Atlantic trade: in 1441, Portuguese raiders captured people from coastal communities in Senegambia and transported them across the Atlantic. Portuguese forceful capture was later resumed in west-central Africa following the establishment of Portuguese Angola. The expansion of European-controlled plantation economies in the Americas created a rapidly increasing demand for enslaved African labor, transforming the scale and character of the Atlantic trade. European traders subsequently obtained large numbers of captives through relationships with African political and commercial authorities, while European demand contributed to warfare, raiding, and other forms of coercion in parts of Africa. The processes by which people were enslaved and transported to Atlantic ports varied by region and period. African rulers and communities also resisted the seizure and export of people, including through laws and treaties prohibiting the slave trade and the removal of people for enslavement.

The Final Passage was the journey from the port of disembarkation in the Americas to the plantation or other destination for enslavement into forced labor. The Middle Passage across the Atlantic joined these two. Voyages on the Middle Passage were large financial undertakings, generally organized by companies or groups of investors rather than individuals.

The first European slave ship transported African captives from São Tomé to New Spain in 1525. Portuguese and Dutch traders dominated the trade in the 16th and 17th centuries, though by the 18th century they were supplanted by the British and French. Other European nations involved were Spain, Denmark–Norway, Sweden, Prussia, and various Italian city-states as well as traders from the United States. The enslaved Africans came mostly from the regions of Senegambia, Upper Guinea, Windward Coast, Gold Coast, Bight of Benin, Bight of Biafra, and Angola. With the growing abolitionist movements in the United Kingdom and in the United States, the transatlantic slave trade gradually declined until being fully abolished in the second half of the 19th century.

Most contemporary historians estimate that between 9.4 and 12.6 million Africans were forcefully taken to the New World. During the Middle Passage, an estimated two million enslaved Africans died (about 14%). Ship logs indicate a mortality rate of up to 47-58% on some voyages. Captive Africans were transported in wretched conditions, men and women separated, across the Atlantic. The Middle Passage was considered a time of in-betweenness where captive Africans forged bonds of kinship, which then created forced transatlantic communities.