A WALK ALONG THE SLAVE ROUTE

FROM the 17th to the 19th century, the city of Ouidah served as a major slave-trading post in West Africa. Located in what is now the Republic of Benin, Ouidah witnessed the export of more than a million slaves. Often, Africans supplied fellow Africans as human cargo in exchange for such items as alcohol, cloth, bracelets, knives, swords, and especially guns, which were in high demand because of inter-tribal warfare.

Between the 16th and the 19th centuries, an estimated 12 million Africans were shipped across  the Atlantic to satisfy the demand for slave labor in the plantations and mines of the New World. About 85 percent of the slaves, says the book American Slavery-1619-1877, "went to Brazil and the various Caribbean colonies of the British, French, Spanish, and Dutch." And estimated 6 percent wen to the colonies that would later become part of the United States.

At the start of their journey,many of the slaves-chained, beaten, and branded-walked the two-and-a-half-mile (4 km) route that now goes from the Ouidah Museum of History, a reconstructed fortress, to what is called the Door of No Return, which stands on the beach. The door marks the end of the Slave Route. It is more symbolic  than literal, for the slaves did not always depart from the same spot. Why did slavery become so popular?

Next time: A WALK ALONG THE SLAVE ROUTE - A Long, Ugly History

From The Awake! magazine