The transatlantic slave trade - the forcible removal of African slaves from Africa to plantations and mines in the colonies of the New World and some other colonies of the European powers - lasted more than 400 years. Its beginning dates back to the middle of the 15th century, when the first Portuguese sailors reached the West African coast. The end of the era of the European-American slave trade - the 70s of the 19th century - coincides with the beginning of the colonial division of the African continent. The slave trade was one of the “main points” of the initial accumulation of capital; it had a great influence on the development of capitalism in the countries of Europe and America. The slave trade, before its official prohibition at the beginning of the 19th century, was a legitimate, universally recognized and profitable branch of trade, with a clear organization of European and American trading houses. The Africans, for their part, also created on the coast a fairly organized system of buying and selling their compatriots. The chaos of the slave trade should be discussed only in relation to those areas where slaves were captured.
