Istwa Nou

Direct arrivals from Africa into New England were small, roughly 10,000 people across the whole colonial era. Most came from the stretch of coast west of what is now Nigeria, aboard ships owned in Boston and Newport. A larger number reached the region indirectly, carried up from the West Indies in the trade between colonies. Those people were often what the merchants called residuals, the individuals left unsold once a cargo had been broken up in a Caribbean market, taken north on the return leg and disposed of there. The word repays sitting with. A shipload was sorted by what a sugar buyer would pay for, and whoever remained went on to a place with weaker demand. Slavery in the northern colonies was smaller in scale and identical in kind, and the people held there had usually passed through a Caribbean auction first. The islands were the sorting house of the entire system.