Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE
VOLUME AND DESTINATIONS
1701-1810
NORTH
AMERICA
Bri
A
m
20
°
C
AFRICA
Da
Equator
0
°
SOUTH
AMERICA
12,000,000
10,000,000
8,000,000
6,000,000
4,000,000
2,000,000
1,000,000
B
VOLUME
0
1000
2000
3000 Kilometers
0
1000
2000 Miles
100
°
80
°
60
°
40
°
20
°
0
°
20
°
40
°
(after P. D. Curtin)
Figure 3.6
The Atlantic Slave Trade
.
Adapted with permission from
: Philip D. Curtin,
The Atlantic Slave
Trade
. University of Wisconsin Press, 1969, p. 57 and Donald K. Fellows,
Geography
. John Wiley &
Sons, Inc., 1967, p. 121.
earn less than men in the jobs they fi nd at the destina-
tion. One study of migration in Mexican households
found that strongly patriarchal households shield young
women from migration, sending young men out to work.
Mexican households without a strong patriarchy send
young, unmarried women to the city or another country
to gain employment.
Thus, geographers cannot easily describe migration
fl ows in terms of men and women or forced and voluntary.
Ultimately, the decision or directive to migrate happens to
an individual migrant within a household, place, country,
region, and world, each of which has its own dynamics.
The key difference between voluntary and forced migra-
tion, however, is that voluntary migrants have an option—
at the very least, where to go or what to do once there;
forced migrants do not.
South America, the Caribbean, and North America, with
huge loss of life. The number of Africans sold into slavery
will never be known, but estimates range from 12 million
to 30 million. Figure 3.6 shows an approximation of the
numbers involved, as well as the destinations of the trans-
Atlantic African deportees.
Because slavery plays a major role in U.S. history,
many students in the United States assume the vast major-
ity of African slaves were forced across the Atlantic and
into the southeastern United States. However, as the map
shows, a considerable majority of Africans were forced
across the Atlantic to the Caribbean region, to coastal
Central America, and to Brazil.
The Atlantic slave trade began early in the sixteenth
century, when Spain and Portugal brought Africans to the
Caribbean. In the early decades of the seventeenth century,
African slaves arrived in small numbers on plantations in
coastal eastern North America. Wealth promised through
plantation agriculture from the southeastern United States
to Brazil created a demand for slaves by plantation owners,
who paid European shippers for slaves, who in turn paid
African raiders for slaves.
Forced Migration
The largest and most devastating forced migration in the
history of humanity was the Atlantic slave trade, which
carried tens of millions of Africans from their homes to
