[Battling Enslavement] [Countries who abolished slavery] [Europe today] [Geography and economy]

In about 1441, Portugal began to buy slaves from Africa so that they could have help on their farms and do chores around the house. From there on, slaves began to spread through Europe. This trade was called the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, and it lasted over fourteen centuries. About 11,232,000 Africans were sold in that time period. From then on slaves were a big part in the everyday lives of the average European.

In the 1600’s, Africans were used as slaves to an extensive amount on the British sugar plantations. In 1617, the people in Bermuda began to purchase slaves for the first time. By 1676, a Quaker by the name of George Fox published a book explaining to other Quakers that slaves are people too and need to be treated with respect and not like animals. In 1688, Aphra Benn published the book Oroonoko: The Royal Slave, which became the first novel to discuss the rights and wrongs of the Slave Trade. On February 18 of that same year, the German Mennonite Resolution against slavery took place in the British American Colonies to protest the trading of the slaves between the Europeans and Africans. Throughout Europe in the 1600s, slaves were used as unpaid help around large farms, when people had done something to offend the European government, or broken a law.