nearest international slave port. The idea is that the locations of inter-national slave ports were determined primarily by the geography of the coast and not by the characteristics of African societies. As such, travel time to slave ports captures exogenous variations in societal exposure to international slave trades. These ports traded slaves who were supplied from African communities, tribes and kingdoms, including the Alladah and Ouidah, which were later taken over by the Dahomey kingdom. On the second leg, ships made the journey of the Middle Passage from Africa to the New World. Many slaves died of disease in the crowded holds of the slave ships. Once There were roughly 110 African children, teenagers, and young adults on board the Clotilda when it arrived in Alabama in 1860, just one year before the Civil War. Unable to return to Africa after The Europeans traded in slaves, sugar, pepper, ivory, wax, and gold during this period. The trade in gold was a major factor in the expansion of European interest in West Africa. Gold from West Africa, Ghana in particular, represented 1/10th of the world's gold reserve in the early part of the sixteenth century (Boahen, 1986). It feels right to learn more about the transatlantic slave trade from one of its largest ports of operation, yet coming from a nation that did so much to instigate it is troubling. British maps of the period label each section of West Africa’s shoreline with its most common commodity: Grain Coast, Ivory Coast, Gold Coast, Slave Coast, as if Origins of the Transatlantic Slave Trade Portuguese Map of West Africa Portuguese mariners began patrolling the west coast of Africa in the fifteenth century, primarily in search of gold. In the process, they encountered and either purchased or captured small numbers of Africans, with the first shipload of 235 captives landing in Lagos, Portugal, in 1444. Read more about: The Transatlantic Between 1501 and 1867, nearly 13 million African people were kidnapped, forced onto European and American ships, and trafficked across the Atlantic Ocean to be enslaved, abused, and forever separated from their homes, families, ancestors, and cultures. The Transatlantic Slave Trade represents one of the most violent, traumatizing, and horrific Mozambique Island was the popular slave port to the east. Some 50 slave wrecks surround Mozambique, according to Sadiki. Yet, the African contribution to maritime history is absent, after 400 A square near Lisbon's port, where ships once unloaded slaves. Beatriz Gomes Dias and Djass, her anti-racism association, want to erect a memorial to colonial slaves at the site. called "slavery" may "be understood and the full range of variations be clearly seen" (p. 7). They carefully try to distinguish between the often stereotypical European or Western conceptions of what slavery "is" (or is thought to have been) and the realities of "slavery" within African societies before, during, and after RzIoWKX.