12.5 Million People. Documented. By Name Where Possible.
The SlaveVoyages.org Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database — the most comprehensive historical database of the trade — documents 36,000 voyages transporting an estimated 12.5 million captives from Africa between 1500 and 1900. Approximately 1.8 million died in transit — roughly 15% mortality on Middle Passage crossings, though some voyages saw 50%+.
The slave ship as factory
The Brooks slave ship diagram (1788) — showing 454 captives chained in shelves with 6 inches of headroom — became the most reproduced image in abolitionist history. But the diagram was a legal representation: the Regulated Slave Trade Act of 1788 had just reduced the legal carrying capacity from 609. The ship was already more 'efficient' than before regulation.
Revenue logic: A healthy enslaved adult from the Bight of Benin sold for approximately £50 in the Caribbean in the 1780s. Transport cost was approximately £10 per captive if they survived. The enslaved person would generate £300–£500 in lifetime labor value on a sugar plantation. This was not cruelty for its own sake — it was a financial instrument.
The legal infrastructure of dehumanization
European colonial powers created an elaborate legal architecture to define captives as property:
- Code Noir (1685, France): Enslaved people as 'movable property'
- Virginia Slave Codes (1705): Made slavery hereditary through the mother — 'partus sequitur ventrem'
- South Carolina Negro Act (1740): Banned literacy, drums, and assembly after the Stono Rebellion
These laws were not describing reality — they were attempting to create it. The resistance they tried to outlaw never stopped.
