Question

port used for slave trade

Answer 1

Introduction

In this paper I want to look at the European ports which were involved in the transatlantic slave trade. I want to examine the characteristics of the trade, why particular ports became involved and what the consequences were for them. What made a so-called slave port? Why did some ports specialising in slaving? Did the nature of the slave trade encourage such specialisation? I shall be concentrating on the pre-nineteenth century period when slaving was still an officially countenanced activity (whilst acknowledging that the trade continued for more than six decades after it was first made illegal and that nearly a quarter of all those Africans enslaved were transported in this later period).