'Mulatto' Slave Traders: Who Were They?

The trans-Atlantic slave trade, as the historian David Eltis writes, "was the largest long-distance coerced movement of people in history and, prior to the mid-19th century, formed the major demographic well-spring for the re-peopling of the Americas following the collapse of the Amerindian population." In fact, we now know, thanks to Eltis' Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, that some 12.5 million Africans were captured, traded and shipped to the New World between 1501 and 1867. But what most of us don't know is how all of these Africans were captured, moved to the coast of West and Central Africa, traded and then boarded on ships destined for the New World.

A Diabolical System

No family wants to find skeletons in its closet, and no people wants to discover lives being bought and sold, especially by their own, in the past. This is especially true for people of African descent regarding the trans-Atlantic slave trade, a system of capture and trade in black human beings that was, we might say, diabolically ingenious, involving African elites, European merchants and even a class of prosperous mulatto slave traders. There's more than enough blame and guilt to be shared by all parties.

Mulatto' Slave Traders: Who Were They?