Istwa Nou

The northern coast of Brazil ran a slave trade of its own, and the reason is weather. Winds and currents in the equatorial Atlantic carried ships from the Senegambian coast toward the mouth of the Amazon instead of toward Bahia or Rio, so the captaincies of Para and Maranhao, which grew cotton, cacao and rice, were supplied along a lane no other Brazilian province used. The vessels were fitted out in Lisbon rather than locally, and they bought their captives in the rivers south of the Gambia. The pattern held for over a century. Only after 1815 did significant numbers reach Amazonia from West Central Africa. Other parts of Brazil sent their own ships from their own ports and drew on Angola and the Bight of Benin. What survives the detail is this: the Atlantic worked as a set of separate lanes fixed by sailing conditions, and where in Africa a person was taken from largely settled where in the Americas that person came ashore.