<P> The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people , mainly from Africa to the Americas , and then their sale there . The slave trade used mainly the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage , and existed from the 16th to the 19th centuries . The vast majority of those who were enslaved and transported in the transatlantic slave trade were Africans from central and western Africa , who had been sold by other West Africans to Western European slave traders ( with a small number being captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids ) , who brought them to the Americas . The South Atlantic and Caribbean economies especially were dependent on the supply of secure labour for the production of commodity crops , making goods and clothing to sell in Europe . This was crucial to those western European countries which , in the late 17th and 18th centuries , were vying with each other to create overseas empires . </P>
<P> The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people , mainly from Africa to the Americas , and then their sale there . The slave trade used mainly the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage , and existed from the 16th to the 19th centuries . The vast majority of those who were enslaved and transported in the transatlantic slave trade were Africans from central and western Africa , who had been sold by other West Africans to Western European slave traders ( with a small number being captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids ) , who brought them to the Americas . The South Atlantic and Caribbean economies especially were dependent on the supply of secure labour for the production of commodity crops , making goods and clothing to sell in Europe . This was crucial to those western European countries which , in the late 17th and 18th centuries , were vying with each other to create overseas empires . </P>
when did the atlantic slave trade start and end
when did the atlantic slave trade start and end
the 16th to the 19th centuries
the 16th to the 19th centuries