Tens of thousands of people from Africa were forcibly brought to the Americas in the early 1600s through the early 1800s. This was known as the slave trade.
The slave trade was the transportation from Africa to the Americas of enslaved African people from the 16th to the 19th century. The economies of the Southern United States and the Caribbean were particularly dependent on this business. Although the Portuguese were the first to engage in it, many European countries participated in the trade. Most slaves worked on plantations, mostly growing coffee, tobacco, cocoa, sugar and cotton.
