This gallery of Images of African Slavery and the Slave Trade includes pictures of indigenous and European slave trade, capture, transportation to the coast, slave pens, inspection by European merchants and ships captains, slaving ships, and scenes from the Middle Passage.
Indigenous slavery in West Africa, known as pawnship, differed somewhat from the chattel slavery of the trans-Atlantic trade, since pawns would live amongst a similar culture. Pawns would, however, still be restrained against escape.
Indigenous African slavers from coastal regions would travel far into the interior to obtain slaves. They were generally better armed, having obtained guns from European merchants in trade for slaves.
Prisoners could be held in slave sheds, or barracoons, for several months whilst awaiting the arrival of European merchants.
Slaves are shown hobbled to roughly hewn logs (on left) or in stocks (on right). Slaves would be fastened to the roof supports by rope, attached around their necks or interweaved into their hair.
This engraving, entitled An African man being inspected for sale into slavery while a white man talks with African slave traders, appeared in the detailed account of a former slave ship captain, Theodore Canot - Captain Canot: Twenty Years of an African Slaver, edited by Brantz Mayer and published in New York in 1854.
From an engraving entitled An Englishman Tastes the Sweat of an African, numbered from right to left the image shows Africans displayed for sale in a public market, an African being examined before purchase, an Englishman licking sweat from the Africans chin to test whether he is sick with a tropical disease (a sick slave would quickly infect the rest of the human cargo on a tightly packed slave ship), and an African slave wearing an iron slave marker.
A detailed drawing of the slave ship Brookes, showing how 482 people were to be packed onto the decks. The detailed plans and cross sectional drawing of the slave ship Brookes was distributed by the Abolitionist Society in England as
