Peak of Atlantic Slave Trade
The early eighteenth century saw the Atlantic slave trade reach its largest volume, with estimates of 50,000 or more enslaved Africans transported across the Atlantic annually. The abolition of the RAC monopoly (1698) opened the trade to all English merchants, while the French asiento concession (Tratado de Asiento, 1713) gave Britain rights to supply enslaved Africans to Spanish America. The trade was deeply embedded in the economies of Bristol, Liverpool, Nantes, and Bordeaux, and its profits financed early industrial investment. Historians estimate that between 1700 and 1800 some 6 million Africans were forcibly transported to the Americas.
- Year: 1700 CE
- Category: Economic
