Paths of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Interactions, Identities, and ...

Spanish, and Dutch),⁹ others have approached Atlantic interactions from a more global perspective while still giving visibility to the role played by Latin America and the Caribbean.¹⁰

The Atlantic exchanges and their effects were critical to the economies of regions surrounding the Atlantic slave ports, and such exchanges also decisively influenced the centers located in the interior of the European, African, and American continents. In both the North and South Atlantic, as well as in the Caribbean basin, the various forms of the internal slave trade were an additional factor to be considered.¹¹ The process of enslavement did not end with arrival on the American shores; in this context, the different paths taken by the individuals and groups who were victims of the Atlantic slave trade were influenced by a myriad of factors—including the disembarking region, the kind of work performed, gender, age, religion, and language. These elements very often oriented the paths toward freedom available to these men and women. In some regions, such as Bahia in Brazil, some slaves obtained their freedom through manumission or self-purchase and were able to continue traveling back and forth between Brazil and West Africa. All over the Americas, enslaved people organized revolts and created runaway-slave communities.

The recent online version of The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database: Voyages not only provides details about the different modalities taken by the slave trade in the North Atlantic and the Caribbean basin but also confirms the importance of the South Atlantic, where the voyages did not follow the traditional triangular itinerary.¹² Over the centuries, Portuguese and Brazilian slave merchants traveled directly between Brazil and the West African and West Central African ports without necessarily stopping in Portugal. These voyages generated new forms of contacts and gave rise to specific trade networks and communities.¹³ In the largest African slave ports—Luanda, Ouidah, and Benguela—Brazilian-born merchants frequently dominated the trade.

Perhaps one of the most important and intriguing expressions of Atlantic exchange is the creation of so-called Creole communities. Recent scholarship shows increasingly that in some Atlantic regions,