1642 to 1807 · Africanspan
The trade out of West Central Africa multiplied sevenfold
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Across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the number of captives shipped from West Central Africa rose sevenfold as demand for labour in the Americas intensified. Luanda, the Portuguese base on the Angolan coast, stayed central throughout, and it stopped being the only outlet. From the 1670s Loango and Malembo, north of the Congo River, became major embarkation points. South of Luanda, Benguela grew quickly after 1700. The political detail is the one that matters most. Ports south of the Congo were held and administered by the Portuguese. The trading venues to the north remained under African jurisdiction, governed by African authorities who set the terms and collected the duties, and they were open to merchants of every nationality, so a French, Dutch or English captain could load there on the same footing as a Portuguese one. A large share of the people who ended up in Saint-Domingue came off this coast, which is why Kongo names, Kongo speech and Kongo religious forms sit so deep inside Haitian Vodou.
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