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

This is Cape Fear Pier, one of the North Carolinian ports used in the transatlantic slave trade.

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“Our work,” he says, “is bigger than just a search for shipwrecks. It is about…the way we talk about the slave trade and its connection to our world and ourselves.”

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Wakanda is mythical, but it lacks the problematic history rewrite required to make the forthcoming Viola Davis-starring “The Woman King” and its lionizing of a kingdom built on the slave trade palatable.

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Last year, Commonwealth leaders agreed it was time for a "meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation" about reparatory justice for the "abhorrent" transatlantic slave trade.

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

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