I read a short article on African slavery. It began with a powerful quote from the king of Congo, "They seize numbers of our free or freed black subjects, and even nobles, sons of nobles, and even members of our own family". Over the course of four hundred years millions of people from every area of the African society were forced into slavery, and sent all over. Even though slavery had been practiced for thousands of years this enslavement of Africans was the first time that such a large number had been forcibly  taken to other continents. Exact numbers are hard to come by, but it is estimated that approximately fifteen million Africans were taken to other continents. By the end of the nineteenth century large scale slave trade began to end in Africa. Even though it ended it's never been forgotten.

Even though this was a very short article I found it was packed with very insightful information. Beginning with the quote really caught my attention, because it showed that there really was no formula to how slaves were chosen. It could be anyone! Even powerful Africans had the threat of possible slavery to deal with. Secondly, the fact that Africa was the area where the largest amount of people were forced to leave their homes to become slaves plays a big role in why we so often associate slavery with Africa. There are so many other areas of the world that people were forced, or even taken to other areas to be used as slaves. It's not something we hear about so much, because the African slave trade was so big, which we can see very clearly from the statistics!



This picture shows some of the slave trade routes from Africa during a period of time. It also gives us an approximation as to how many African slaves were taken to select areas.