Africans organized their societies around the family unit, and gold supply often dictated which society held the most power—until the start of the Atlantic slave trade.
The beginning of the Atlantic slave trade in the late 1400s disrupted African societal structure as Europeans infiltrated the West African coastline, drawing people from the center of the continent to be sold into slavery.
New sugar and tobacco plantations in the Americas and Caribbean heightened the demand for enslaved people, ultimately forcing a total of 12.5 million Africans across the Atlantic and into slavery.
