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

Indeed, Britain’s encouragement of the slave trade was one of the offenses he cited in his first draft of the Declaration.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 26, 2026

The Church had already spent years engaged in a process of reflection about its own role in the slave trade.

From BBC • Jun. 18, 2026

For Father Andrew, the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade is not an abstract historical debate, but a clearly visible, structural force shaping the lives of his parishioners today.

From BBC • Jun. 18, 2026

France abolished enslaving humans more than 170 years ago, and in 2001 recognised slavery and the slave trade as "crimes against humanity".

From Barron's • May 28, 2026

All of these factors made the African slave trade a booming international business in the early 1700s.

From "In the Shadow of Liberty" by Kenneth C. Davis