The nations of Europe began planting colonies in the Western Hemisphere in the late fifteenth century. Slavery soon followed the first European explorers and settlers to the New World. Slaves provided a solution to a critical labor shortage in these colonies, which produced valuable cash crops and raw materials. The earliest New World slavery was geared toward large-scale commercial planting on estates in the Caribbean region and later on the North American mainland. The owners of these estates needed as many hands as possible for the production of sugar, tobacco, rice, indigo, and, later, cotton. For a dependable source of labor, they had only one place to turn: the African slave trade.

This market was served by slave merchants operating out of ports in Europe, especially England, and in North America. The slavers left their home ports with holds full of manufactured goods to...