page_title: Columbian exchange
section_title: Atlantic slave trade
hierarchical_section_title: Columbian exchange / Influence / Cultural exchanges / Atlantic slave trade
context_page_description: The Columbian exchange, also known as the Columbian interchange, named after Christopher Columbus, was the widespread transfer of plants, animals, culture, human populations, technology, diseases, and ideas between the Americas, West Africa, and the Old World in the 15th and 16th centuries. It also relates to European colonization and trade following Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage. Invasive species, including communicable diseases, were a byproduct of the exchange. The changes in agriculture significantly altered global populations. The most significant immediate impact of the Columbian exchange was the cultural exchanges and the transfer of people between continents.
  The new contacts among the global population circulated a wide variety of crops and livestock, which supported increases in population in both hemispheres, although diseases initially caused precipitous declines in the numbers of indigenous peoples of the Americas. Traders returned to Europe with maize, potatoes, and tomatoes, which became very important crops in Europe by the 18th century.
  The term was first used in 1972 by American historian Alfred W.
context_section_description: The Atlantic slave trade was the transfer of Africans from primarily West Africa to parts of the Americas between the 16th and 19th century, a large part of the Columbian Exchange. About 10 million Africans arrived in the Americas on European boats as slaves. The journey that enslaved Africans took from parts of Africa to America is commonly known as the middle passage. Today, millions of people in North America and South America, including the vast majority of the populations in the countries of the Caribbean, are descended from these Africans brought to the New World by Europeans. 
  Enslaved Africans helped shape an emerging African-American culture in the New World. They participated in both skilled and unskilled labor and gave way to a new population which represented a hybrid of the two cultures. The Birth of African American Culture: An Anthropological Perspective is a book written by Sidney Mintz and Richard Price further detailing the cultural impact of enslaved Africans in America. Mintz and Price's book helped to publicize how integral the socialization aspects of plantation life were to the structures of black culture.
  The treatment of enslaved Africans during the Atlantic slave trade became one of the most controversial topics in the history of the New World. Slavery was abolished in 1865 in the United States and was ended in Brazil in 1888, but has remained a key subject in politics, pop culture and media.
caption: Enslaved Africans were chained and bound before taken on ships to the New World
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