The number of Africans forcibly removed from their homeland during the four-hundredyear period of the Atlantic slave trade is a matter of debate. Many historians agree that approximately 10 million slaves were imported into the Americas and other parts of the Atlantic basin from 1451 to 1870, but some argue that the numbers were considerably higher. One historian made the following estimates of slave imports into British America and the United States from 1626 to just after the trade was made illegal in 1808:

 Period Barbados Jamaica Other British British Caribbean N. America 1626-1650 18,700. 2,000 1,600 1651-1675 51,100 8,000 10,100 3,900 1676-1700 64,700 77,100 32,000 23,000 1701-1720 67,800 53,500 8,800 19,800 1721-1740 55,300 90,100 8,800 50,400 1741-1760 57,300 120,200 22,000 100,400 1761-1780 49,300 149,600 67,000 85,800 1781-1810 22,700 248,900 76,300 91,600 Total 386,900 747,400 227,500 376,500 (Source: James Rawley, The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History (New York: Norton, 1981), p. 167.