Slave Coast

The Slave Coast was a historical region of the West African Atlantic coast, covering parts of present day Togo, Benin, and Nigeria along the Bight of Benin between the Volta River and Lagos Lagoon. It acquired its name in the seventeenth century to distinguish it from the neighboring Gold Coast, and from the early sixteenth to the late nineteenth century it became one of the principal regions from which enslaved Africans were transported to the Americas, with an estimated two million people, about sixteen percent of everyone forced across the Atlantic, departing from its shores. Ouidah and Lagos were its main ports, with more than half of departures leaving from an unimproved beach south of Ouidah. European powers including Portugal, Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark, and France built forts and trading posts along the coast to conduct the trade, shaping the region societies and its place in the wider Atlantic world. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/