The Slave Trade
More than 5.5 million slaves set sail from Africa bound for Brazil between the 16th and 19th centuries. Of the 4.9 million who arrived alive, more than 2 million docked in Rio de Janeiro, with half of those coming in the first half of the 19th century alone; in contrast, less than 400,000 slaves disembarked in mainland North America in total. “The consensus for a long time was that the British were the main slave traders and the Caribbean was the main destination,” says Daniel Domingues da Silva, a historian at the University of Missouri. “Now it’s becoming clearer that the Portuguese were the main traders, and Brazil was the principal destination for slaves on the Atlantic.”