Born Then1501–1799
Life during the Atlantic slave trade (West Africa)
Be born in a place it hit, a few years before it began, and see what it did to five ordinary lives.
What it meant for ordinary people
From the 1500s to the 1800s European traders bought millions of captives on the West African coast, from Senegambia to the Bight of Biafra, and shipped them to the Americas. Wars and raids to supply the trade spread inland. About one in seven captives died at sea, and many more died before reaching the ships.
Deaths: about 12.5 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic; about 1.8 million died on the Middle Passage.
How hard it hits each person in the game (risk of death, of being conscripted, of leaving) comes from scholarly estimates.
Around the same time
- Indian Ocean slave trade 700–1799
- Sengoku period 1467–1590
- Expulsion of the Jews from Spain 1492
- Collapse of the Taíno population 1493–1530
- Atlantic slave trade (West Africa) 1501–1799
- Atlantic slave trade (Kongo and Angola) 1514–1799
- Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire 1519–1521
- Smallpox epidemic in Mexico 1520–1521
- Smallpox in the Inca Empire 1525–1527
- Ethiopian–Adal war 1529–1543
- Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire 1532–1572
- Cocoliztli epidemic of 1545 1545–1548
- Plantation slavery in Brazil 1550–1799
- Cocoliztli epidemic of 1576 1576–1578
- Russian conquest of Siberia 1580–1700
- Moroccan invasion of the Songhai Empire 1591–1599
- Imjin War 1592–1598
- Tokugawa peace 1603–1780
- Epidemic in coastal New England 1616–1619
- Thirty Years' War 1618–1648
- Dutch conquest of the Banda Islands 1621
- Late Ming famines and rebellions 1627–1644
- Italian plague of 1629–1631 1629–1631
- Deccan famine of 1630–1632 1630–1632
- Sugar slavery in the Caribbean 1640–1799
- Ming–Qing transition 1644–1683
- Slavery in the British North American colonies 1660–1799
- Great Plague of London 1665–1666
- Little Ice Age famines of the 1690s 1693–1698
- 1707 Hōei earthquake and Fuji eruption 1707–1708