Where African Enslaved People Came From

Today is the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition. The day, dedicated by UNESCO, marks the start of the uprising of Haiti, which played a pivotal role in the abolition of the Transatlantic slave trade, and is intended to acknowledge and pay respect to the millions of innocent people whose lives were destroyed by the greed of colonial powers between the 15th and 19th centuries.

It is estimated that more 20 million people were forced to leave Africa enslaved – almost 11 million of those in the trans-Atlantic slave trade -, which amounted to a death sentence for many. Slavery also changed the social fabric of the African continent by cutting in half the population it would have had in 1800 had slavery not occurred. According to database project SlaveVoyages.com, this was especially true for parts of West and Southwest Africa, where millions of Africans were enslaved. 300,000 of them disembarked in the U.S. but more arrived via the inter-American slave trade. 4.5 million enslaved Africans disembarked in the Caribbean and 3.2 million in present-day Brazil.