ABSTRACT
The international trade in African slaves was a momentous historic phenomena. It formed the linchpin around which the western European powers built empires in the New World. The slave trade provided mass amounts of labor to produce valuable agricultural products that Europeans sold throughout the world, further promoting the interconnectedness of the continents and globalization. The merchants who conducted the slave trade accumulated fantastic profits that, along with the earnings from New World crops produced by these slaves, heralded the rise of capitalism and stimulated the Industrial Revolution. The slave trade also “Africanized” the Americas—as Africans comprised the great bulk of emigrants to the New World in the 16th through 18th century.
