Historian brenda e stevenson says, by the beginning of the 16 hundreds, the increase in the trade in slaves to accommodate sugar and tobacco production. The expansion of sugar cultivation beyond brazil in the mid seventeenth century was especially important for africans imported to cultivate it. By the eighteenth century, coffee and indigo were also important slave produce exports. But you could say the same thing about north america before theAmericas revolution - they had slaves too.
The Atlantic Slave Trade mixes centuries of human bondage with violence, economics, commerce, geo-political competition, liberty, morality, injustice, revolution, tragedy and bloody reckonings. That sounds like a lot, yet this show merely scratches the surface of this enormous subject.