Discusses the different interpretations that historians have had of the slave trade. It includes a video of Interpretations of the abolition of slavery, questions with answers, and a link to an assessment.

Newberry Library lesson using digitized primary source explores how Aphra Behn's novel, Oroonoko, compares to other representations of race, slavery, and colonialism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Questions to consider are...

The issue of slavery was a contentious one during debates in the Constitutional Convention. Read about the various issues, the quotes of several of the delegates, and see how the word "slave" is not even mentioned in the Constitution....

In this lesson, 5th graders learn about the many societal structures that developed in colonial days, including the conditions for self-government in America, the free-market economy, and the slavery system. Background information for...

A detailed look at the trans-Atlantic slave trade that lasted from the 1500s to the 1800s.

Easy-to-read, colorful maps that show the triangular slave trade routes from 1451 to 1870.

This section of a chapter on "The Antebellum South" explains the labor-intensive processes of cotton production and describes the importance of cotton to the Atlantic and American antebellum economy.

The year 1492 marks a watershed in modern world history. Columbus's voyage of discovery inaugurated a series of developments that would have vast consequences for both the Old World and the New. It transformed the diets of both the...

Find out about the first mass human rights movement in history when African monarchs, enslaved Africans, freed slaves, and millions of other ordinary people campaigned against the slave trade and fought for the abolition of slavery.

Read eye-witness accounts of the brutality and cruelty suffered by enslaved Africans as they traveled across the Atlantic on slave ships.

Discover the period some refer to as "Middle Passage," when enslaved Africans were transported across the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean or America. Read first-hand accounts of the torture and deprivation experienced by thousands of...

This short but good article examines the state of trade as it existed in 1800 between Europe, the Americas and Africa. There is a nice discussion on the slave trade as well as the need for the Europeans to acquire more markets for their...

Read about the transit of Africans from their homeland to the American British colonies to work on plantations in the south as part of leg in the triangular trade.

The number of Africans who died or were enslaved as a result of slave trading both across the Atlantic and into the Arabian peninsula is truly shocking. Read about the Middle Passage which brought millions of slaves to the New World, see...

This site has thousand of photos, drawings and prints dealing with slavery, most of them dating from the period of Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the Americas.

Salutary neglect was a long-standing British policy in the thirteen colonies which allowed the colonists to flout, or violate, the laws associated with trade. There were no effective enforcement agencies and it was expensive to send...

Find out about the four ways African men, women, and children became enslaved: criminals sold by chiefs, free Africans captured, domestic slaves resold, and prisoners of war sold to other slave owners.

Find out about the disparity between the castle-like headquarters of slave forts and the deplorable conditions in which enslaved Africans lived while waiting to be transported by slave ship to the Americas.

Read a very brief description of slavery in the New England and Middle colonies.

A West African map and three accounts of the development of slave acquisition display the process and the brutality of the Atlantic slave trade.

Encyclopedia account of Olaudah Equiano.