Number of slaves taken from Africa by region 1501-1866| Statista

Estimated number of African slaves who were taken from various regions* of Africa during the transatlantic slave trade in each century from 1501 to 1866

Characteristic	1501-1600	1601-1700	1701-1800	1801-1866
West Central Africa and St. Helena	117,878	1,134,807	2,365,204	2,076,685
Bight of Benin	0	269,812	1,284,585	444,662
Bight of Biafra	8,459	186,322	904,616	495,164
Gold Coast	0	108,679	1,014,529	86,114
Senegambia and off-shore Atlantic	147,281	136,104	363,187	108,941
Southeast Africa and Indian Ocean islands	0	31,715	70,930	440,022
Sierra Leone	1,405	6,843	201,985	178,537
Windward Coast	2,482	1,350	289,583	43,454

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Release date

2020

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Region

Worldwide

Survey time period

1501 to 1866

Supplementary notes

*Generally speaking, the regions used in the source appear to refer to ports that are or were located in the following modern countries in mainland Africa (although there is likely a lot of overlapping data between certain regions, as their borders and names became redefined throughout history);

West Central Africa: Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Republic of the Congo
Bight of Benin: Benin, Nigeria, Togo
Bight of Biafra: Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Nigeria
Gold Coast: Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana
Senegambia: The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal
Southeast Africa: Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania
Sierra Leone: Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia
Windward Coast: Liberia, Côte d'Ivoire

No release date given in the source. Data last accessed in August 2020.

Citation formats

Throughout the history of the transatlantic slave trade, approximately 5.7 million of the 12.5 million African slaves who embarked on slave ships did so in ports along the region of West Central Africa and St. Helena. Today, these regions are in the countries of Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo. The majority of the rest were taken from West Africa, embarking in ports between the present-day countries of Senegal and Gabon, while a smaller number of slaves were captured in the southeast of Africa. Senegambia and off-shore Atlantic islands had the highest number of captives taken from that region in the 16^th century, however West Central Africa and St. Helena was the region where most slaves embarked on their journey across the Atlantic in the following centuries. As Portuguese traders were responsible for transporting the largest volume of slaves to the Americas, it is unsurprising that many of the busiest ports in the transatlantic slave trade were in Portuguese-controlled enclaves along the African coast.