slave trade

American  

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.

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slave trade British  

noun

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

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slave trade Cultural  

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.

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Other Word Forms

• slave-trader noun
• slave-trading noun

Etymology

Origin of slave trade

First recorded in 1725–35

Example Sentences

It was primarily aimed at the descendants of those who were victims of the transatlantic slave trade.

From BBC

The Browns had a hand in everything from ironmaking and rum distilling to whaling and the slave trade.

From Barron's

Around this time, the trans-Atlantic slave trade started gradually as Portuguese traders pushed farther south along the west coast of Africa in ships with larger cargo holds and more artillery than earlier vessels.

From The Wall Street Journal

It would mention his role in drafting the Fairfax Resolves at Mount Vernon in 1774, which condemned the slave trade as “wicked cruel and unnatural” and called for putting “an entire Stop” to it.

From The Wall Street Journal

When Parliament debated An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1807, the Zorg was highlighted as “a primary example of the horrors of the slave trade,” Mr. Kara writes.

From The Wall Street Journal