slave trade

noun

: trafficking of enslaved people
especially, in U.S. history : the business or practice of capturing, transporting, selling, and buying enslaved African people for profit prior to the American Civil War

Examples of slave trade in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Bunce Island, where captive West Africans were held in a stone fortress before being forced onto slave ships for the deadly journey across the Middle Passage, served as the center of the region’s slave trade. Joshua Kagavi, Smithsonian Magazine, 29 Feb. 2024 Also in the display is a shackle and chain, representative of the slave trade, donated to the museum by a Wisconsin woman in January 2023. Amy Schwabe, Journal Sentinel, 7 Feb. 2024 Not to King Louis XIII, who formerly authorized the slave trade in 1642, or his son, the Sun King, who introduced slavery’s legal code, both of whose remains are buried inside the gothic building. Catherine Porter, New York Times, 25 Jan. 2024 The plot description seems to evoke the Atlantic slave trade, and Adeyemi also channeled her feelings about female autonomy in the wake of the fall of Roe v. Wade. Ew Staff Published, EW.com, 20 Dec. 2023 The island has a turbulent past—its indigenous population was colonized by the Spanish and then the Dutch—and its archives contain artefacts ranging from sunny vintage postcards to books about the nation’s role in the slave trade and Venuzuela’s oil boom. Kate Knibbs, WIRED, 8 Apr. 2024 Often, Williams collects the earth from historically important sites of loss in the African diaspora: plantations of the American South, street corners where Black trans women were murdered or the banks of a river that became a thoroughfare for the domestic slave trade. Zachary Small, New York Times, 22 Mar. 2024 The Clotilda docked in Mobile, Alabama, in July 1860, five decades after the abolition of the American slave trade. Barbara Spindel, The Christian Science Monitor, 7 Mar. 2024 The slave trade also provided a lot of information that appeared all the way up until the 18th century. Lisa Deaderick, San Diego Union-Tribune, 18 Feb. 2024

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'slave trade.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

1701, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of slave trade was in 1701

Dictionary Entries Near slave trade

Cite this Entry

“Slave trade.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slave%20trade. Accessed 26 Apr. 2024.

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