Question

describe the change that took place in the african slave trade in the 1500s . describe the middle passage and its toll on people.

Answer 1

@Data_LG2

Answer 2

well, before Columbus found America and opened it up to European trade, the African slave trade consisted of three parts

Arab sailors along the Mediterranean capturing European ships, with an occasional raid as far north as England....continued right up to 1820

The huge slave trade on the east coast of Africa, where Arab slavers captured and sailed several million Africans to Arabia and the Persian Gulf area from the 1200's -1600's, and then probably another 10 million from 1600-1900's until the British put a stop, more or less to it, although it still goes on.......

the slave trade in west/central Africa, where Arab slavers from 1300 on would cross into today's Mali and Niger and Mauritania and Ghana and buy African slaves from African rulers, and then take them north in huge camel caravans across the Sahara and Shamel deserts....maybe 3-5 million over the centuries, as many did not survive the trip, and most did not survive captivity in Tripoli, Algeria, and Libya / Egypt

on the West Coast of Africa, after 1500, African rulers would capture and sell 'wholesale" other Africans to the few European shippers who established trading stations on the coast; these shippers would sell to the shippers who took their cargo to the following places, and percentages to each, a table you can get by google searching the term "destination of African slaves":

Distribution of slaves (1450-1900) [49]
Destination Percentage
Brazil 35.4%
Spanish Empire 22.1%
British West Indies 17.7%
French West Indies 14.1%
British North America and future United States 4.4%
Dutch West Indies 4.4%
Danish West Indies 0.2%

so the slave trade in Africa was going on for centuries before slaves were taken across the Atlantic

continued on to North Africa and Arabia for a good hundred years after the US and Britain stopped the Atlantic trade in 1807

and less than 5 % of the Atlantic trade took slaves to what became the USA.....-YAHOO