Definition
The Middle Passage was the Atlantic crossing on which European and colonial slave traders carried captive Africans to the Americas, the middle leg of the triangular trade. Traders bought captives from African rulers and merchants along the coast of West and West-Central Africa, packed them into crowded ships, and sailed to the Caribbean, South America, and the mainland colonies, and many captives died before landing. New England merchants entered the slave trade in larger numbers after the Royal African Company lost its monopoly in 1698, and by the 1750s ships from Newport, Rhode Island, carried rum to Africa and captives to the West Indies. About 95 percent of the captives landed in the Caribbean and South America, and fewer than 5 percent reached mainland North America.
Why it matters on the AP exam
The Middle Passage explains the scale and direction of slavery in the British colonies. European demand for sugar, tobacco, and rice drove the trade, every British colony took part in it to some degree, and the great majority of captives went to the sugar islands, where deaths outnumbered births and planters kept buying new Africans. On the mainland, by contrast, the enslaved population also grew through children born in the colonies, a contrast that questions use to compare slavery in different regions. Questions also ask students to place the voyage within the triangular trade and the Atlantic economy and to describe how enslaved Africans resisted, from revolts on slave ships to the Stono Rebellion of 1739.
In the sources
“There were found out of the two hundred and sixty that sailed from Africa, not more than two hundred alive.”
Connections
- Enumerated goods: the sugar, tobacco, and rice that enslaved Africans grew were among the most valuable goods on the list
- Triangular trade: the route that linked New England rum, African captives, and West Indian sugar
- Royal African Company: the English company whose monopoly on the slave trade ended in 1698