African slave trade

16th, 17th, and 18th centuries

Slave trading became a business for privately owned enterprises, reducing international complications. After 1790, captains often compared slave prices in major markets of Kingston, Havana, and Charleston, South Carolina before deciding where to sell. For the last sixteen years of the transatlantic slave trade, Spain was the only transatlantic slave-trading empire. Following the British Slave Trade Act 1807 and U.S. bans on the African slave trade, it declined, but the period thereafter still accounted for a substantial portion of the Atlantic slave trade. Between 1810 and 1860, over 3.5 million slaves were transported, with 850,000 in the 1820s.