Tens of thousands of people from Africa were forcibly brought to the Americas in the early 1600s through the early 1800s.
During the colonial era, an African slave trade system developed towards Spanish America and Brazil, initially monopolized by Portuguese merchants and later by Dutch smugglers. It is estimated that some 620,000 Africans arrived in America between 1501 and 1641. The massive traffic did not arrive until the 18th century, mainly at the hands of the English and French, who transported more than 5,500,000 mainly to their sugar possessions in the Caribbean, such as Barbados and Santo Domingo.
Slavery would not be abolished by all American countries until the nineteenth century, which in the case of the United States generated a strong political tension that led to the American Civil War.
