slave trade

noun

1. the business or process of capturing, transporting, and selling human beings into chattel slavery, especially Black Africans brought to the New World prior to the mid-19th century.

slave trade

noun

1. the business of trading in slaves, esp the transportation of Black Africans to America from the 16th to 19th centuries

slave trade

1. The transportation of slaves from Africa to North and South America between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Congress banned the importing of slaves into the United States in 1808.

Other Word Forms

• slave-trading noun
• slave-trader noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of slave trade¹

First recorded in 1725–35

Example Sentences

Whenever a Democrat was president, US foreign policy worked to undermine British attempts to suppress the Atlantic slave trade.

From Salon

Last year, the government passed a law offering nationality to people with an African ancestor who was taken from their homeland as part of the transatlantic slave trade.

From BBC

The transatlantic slave trade transformed the global economy, but the numbers show it was Juneteenth that lifted America to the top.

From Los Angeles Times

That project began in 2019 as a one-off album recorded in a small Louisiana studio, of songs inspired by the transatlantic slave trade and the suffering and often unheard voices of Black women.

From Los Angeles Times

We see that most egregiously, of course, in the transatlantic slave trade and the extermination or resettlement of Indigenous communities.

From Salon