Middle Passage

slave trade
Also known as: Atlantic Passage

Middle Passage, the forced voyage of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the New World. It was one leg of the triangular trade route that took goods (such as knives, guns, ammunition, cotton cloth, tools, and brass dishes) from Europe to Africa, Africans to work as slaves in the Americas and West Indies, and items, mostly raw materials, produced on the plantations (sugar, rice, tobacco, indigo, rum, and cotton) back to Europe. From about 1518 to the mid-19th century, millions of African men, women, and children made the 21-to-90-day voyage aboard grossly overcrowded sailing ships manned by crews mostly from Great Britain, the Netherlands, Portugal, and France.

Slaver captains anchored chiefly off the Guinea Coast (also called the Slave Coast) for a month to a year to trade for their cargoes of 150 to 600 persons, most of whom had been kidnapped and forced to march to the coast under wretched conditions. While at anchor and after the departure from Africa, those aboard ship were exposed to almost continuous dangers, including raids at port by hostile tribes, epidemics, attack by pirates or enemy ships, and bad weather. Although these events affected the ships’ crews as well as the enslaved, they were more devastating to the latter group, who had also to cope with physical, sexual, and psychological abuse at the hands of their captors. Despite—or perhaps in part because of—the conditions aboard ship, some Africans who survived the initial horrors of captivity revolted; male slaves were kept constantly shackled to each other or to the deck to prevent mutiny, of which 55 detailed accounts were recorded between 1699 and 1845.

formerly enslaved men, women, and children
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slavery: The international slave trade

So that the largest possible cargo might be carried, the captives were wedged belowdecks, chained to low-lying platforms stacked in tiers, with an average individual space allotment that was 6 feet long, 16 inches wide, and perhaps 3 feet high (183 by 41 by 91 cm). Unable to stand erect or turn over, many slaves died in this position. If bad weather or equatorial calms prolonged the journey, the twice-daily ration of water plus either boiled rice, millet, cornmeal, or stewed yams was greatly reduced, resulting in near starvation and attendant illnesses.

In the daytime, weather permitting, slaves were brought on deck for exercise or for “dancing” (forced jumping up and down). At this time, some captains insisted that the sleeping quarters be scraped and swabbed by the crew. In bad weather the oppressive heat and noxious fumes in the unventilated and unsanitary holds caused fevers and dysentery, with a high mortality rate. Deaths during the Middle Passage, caused by epidemics, suicide, “fixed melancholy,” or mutiny, have been estimated at 13 percent. So many bodies of dead or dying Africans were jettisoned into the ocean that sharks regularly followed the slave ships on their westward journey.

The Middle Passage supplied the New World with its major workforce and brought enormous profits to international slave traders. At the same time, it exacted a terrible price in physical and emotional anguish on the part of the uprooted Africans; it was distinguished by the callousness to human suffering it developed among the traders.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica This article was most recently revised and updated by Rick Livingston.
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slave trade

transatlantic slave trade, segment of the global slave trade that transported between 10 million and 12 million enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas from the 16th to the 19th century. It was the second of three stages of the so-called triangular trade, in which arms, textiles, and wine were shipped from Europe to Africa, enslaved people from Africa to the Americas, and sugar and coffee from the Americas to Europe.

Origins of the transatlantic trade of enslaved people

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By the 1480s Portuguese ships were already transporting Africans for use as enslaved labourers on the sugar plantations in the Cape Verde and Madeira islands in the eastern Atlantic. Spanish conquistadors took enslaved Africans to the Caribbean after 1502, but Portuguese merchants continued to dominate the transatlantic slave trade for another century and a half, operating from their bases in the Congo-Angola area along the west coast of Africa. The Dutch became the foremost traders of enslaved people during parts of the 1600s, and in the following century English and French merchants controlled about half of the transatlantic slave trade, taking a large percentage of their human cargo from the region of West Africa between the Sénégal and Niger rivers. In 1713 an agreement between Spain and Britain granted the British a monopoly on the trade of enslaved people with the Spanish colonies. Under the Asiento de negros, Britain was entitled to supply those colonies with 4,800 enslaved Africans per year for 30 years. The contract for this supply was assigned to the South Sea Company, of which British Queen Anne held some 22.5 percent of the stock.

Probably no more than a few hundred thousand Africans were taken to the Americas before 1600. In the 17th century, however, demand for enslaved labour rose sharply with the growth of sugar plantations in the Caribbean and tobacco plantations in the Chesapeake region in North America. The largest numbers of enslaved people were taken to the Americas during the 18th century, when, according to historians’ estimates, nearly three-fifths of the total volume of the transatlantic slave trade took place.

The slave trade had devastating effects in Africa. Economic incentives for warlords and tribes to engage in the trade of enslaved people promoted an atmosphere of lawlessness and violence. Depopulation and a continuing fear of captivity made economic and agricultural development almost impossible throughout much of western Africa. A large percentage of the people taken captive were women in their childbearing years and young men who normally would have been starting families. The European enslavers usually left behind persons who were elderly, disabled, or otherwise dependent—groups who were least able to contribute to the economic health of their societies.

Historians have debated the nature and extent of European and African agency in the actual capture of those who were enslaved. During the early years of the transatlantic slave trade, the Portuguese generally purchased Africans who had been enslaved during tribal wars. As the demand for enslaved people grew, the Portuguese began to enter the interior of Africa to forcibly take captives; as other Europeans became involved in the slave trade, generally they remained on the coast and purchased captives from Africans who had transported them from the interior. Following capture, the abducted Africans were marched to the coast, a journey that could be as many as 300 miles (485 km). Typically, two captives were chained together at the ankle, and columns of captives were tied together by ropes around their necks. An estimated 10 to 15 percent of the captives died on their way to the coast.