Shows / The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Atlantic slave trade was not a single enterprise but a centuries-long, globe-spanning system that transformed economies, cultures, and human lives across Africa, the Americas, and Europe. This show examines the trade from its 15th-century origins under Portuguese and Spanish colonization through its peak in the 18th century and its eventual abolition in the 19th century. Lucas and Luna guide listeners through the brutal Middle Passage, the rise of plantation economies in Brazil, the…
Episodes
The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo HistoryThe Slave Trade's Fante Broker Network
In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the Fante people of the Gold Coast, focusing on the coastal brokers who managed the Atlantic slave trade from the 17th…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Slave Trade's Global Web: The Indian Ocean Connection
In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the Indian Ocean slave trade, a parallel system to the Atlantic that operated for centuries. They discuss the Swahili…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Middle Passage's Unseen Harvest: Dysentery, Triage, and Shipboard Medicine
In Episode 215, Lucas and Luna step aboard a slave ship to examine the gruesome realities of the Middle Passage through the lens of disease and medical triage…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Middle Passage's Living Cargo: Death and Revolt on the Slave Ships
In this episode, Lucas and Luna dive into the brutal reality of the Middle Passage, the horrific sea journey that carried over twelve million enslaved Africans…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Slave Ship São José: A Wreck That Tells the Truth
In December 1794, the Portuguese slave ship São José Paquete de Africa sank off the coast of Cape Town, taking more than two hundred enslaved Mozambicans with…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Atlantic Slave Trade's Hidden Toll: Death in the Barracoons
Before the Middle Passage, enslaved Africans endured the barracoons — the holding pens along the West African coast where disease, starvation, and violence…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Slave Trade's Canary Islands: A Brutal Testing Ground
Before the transatlantic slave trade reached its horrifying scale, there was a smaller, crueler rehearsal: the Canary Islands. In the fifteenth century…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Clotilda and Africatown: America's Last Slave Ship
In 1860, decades after the international slave trade was outlawed, a wealthy Alabama shipowner financed a secret voyage to the Kingdom of Dahomey. The schooner…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Slave Trade's Last Stand: Brazil's Illegal Slave Smuggling
In this episode of Fexingo History, Lucas and Luna explore the final chapter of the transatlantic slave trade — the clandestine smuggling of enslaved Africans…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The 1710 Haitian Coffee Boom: A Brief Atlantic History
In 1710, a single French ship captain brought a coffee plant from Java to the French colony of Saint-Domingue. That one cutting, planted in the mountains above…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Zong Massacre and the Birth of Abolition
In 1781, the slave ship Zong threw 132 enslaved Africans overboard so the owners could claim insurance. The ensuing court case, Gregson v Gilbert, became a…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Fight to Stop the Slave Trade: The West Africa Squadron
In this episode of Fexingo History, Lucas and Luna explore the West Africa Squadron, the Royal Navy force that sought to suppress the Atlantic slave trade…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
Njinga of Ndongo: The Queen Who Defied the Portuguese
Before the transatlantic trade reached its brutal peak, one African queen stood against the Portuguese empire in Angola — and she did it on her own terms. In…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Slave Trade's Atlantic Geography: Winds, Currents, and Routes
In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the physical geography that shaped the transatlantic slave trade — the trade winds, ocean currents, and seasonal…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Slave Trade's African Wars: Dahomey and the Fall of Whydah
In this episode, Lucas and Luna dig into a brutal chapter of the transatlantic slave trade that's often glossed over: the African wars that supplied the…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Slave Trade's African Courts: Kings, Captives, and the Price of Power
In Episode 202 of The Atlantic Slave Trade, Lucas and Luna explore a side of the transatlantic trade that rarely makes the headlines: the internal African…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Slave Trade's Indian Ocean Shadow
While the Atlantic slave trade dominates memory, a parallel system moved millions of Africans across the Indian Ocean, from the Swahili Coast to Arabia…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Slave Trade's Secret Ledger: Insurance and Finance
In this special 200th episode, Lucas and Luna explore the hidden financial machinery behind the Atlantic slave trade, focusing on the role of insurance…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The 1811 German Coast Uprising: America's Largest Slave Revolt
In January 1811, over 500 enslaved people armed with cane knives and muskets marched from the plantations of Louisiana's German Coast toward New Orleans…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Slave Ship Brookes and the Diagram That Ended an Empire
In 1788, an engraved diagram of the slave ship Brookes shocked Britain and changed the course of the abolition movement. This episode unpacks the story behind…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
How the Captain of a Slave Ship Became a Witness
In 1787, a young man named John Newton wrote a pamphlet that would help ignite the British abolition movement. But Newton was no outsider to the slave trade —…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Slave Trade's Forgotten Currency: Cowrie Shells and Manillas
In this episode, Lucas and Luna trace the humble cowrie shell from the Maldives to the coasts of West Africa, where it became the currency that oiled the…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The 1817 Fort Blount Massacre: A Forgotten Slave Rebellion
In 1817, as the Second Seminole War smoldered in Spanish Florida, a fugitive slave named Nero led a desperate uprising at Fort Blount on the Apalachicola…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The 1839 Amistad Captives in Cuba: A Legal Battle for Freedom
Before the famous Supreme Court case, the Amistad captives spent months in a Connecticut jail while lawyers fought over their fate. This episode follows the…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The 1835 Malê Revolt: Brazil's Muslim Slave Uprising
In January 1835, a group of enslaved Muslims in Salvador da Bahia rose up against their captors in one of the most significant urban slave rebellions in the…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
Slave Ships and the Middle Passage: A Cargo of Souls
In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the brutal mechanics of the Middle Passage—the transatlantic journey that carried millions of enslaved Africans to the…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Transatlantic Slave Trade's Hidden Economy
In this episode, Lucas and Luna delve into the banks, insurers, and merchants whose fortunes were built on the slave trade, tracing the financial networks that…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The 1835 Malê Revolt: Brazil's Muslim Slave Uprising
In January 1835, a group of enslaved Africans in Salvador, Bahia, rose up in the largest urban slave revolt in Brazil's history. Many were Malê—Muslims…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Stono Rebellion: Slave Uprising in Colonial South Carolina
In 1739, along the Stono River in South Carolina, a group of enslaved Africans launched the largest slave revolt in British North America. Led by a man known…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Asiento de Negros: Spain's Slave Trade Monopoly
How a 30-year monopoly contract to supply enslaved Africans to Spanish America turned into one of the most corrupt business deals of the 18th century. In this…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Aro Confederacy: Africa's Slave Trading Empire
This episode explores the Aro Confederacy, a powerful merchant network that dominated the slave trade in the Bight of Biafra for over two centuries. Based at…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Christian King Who Fought the Slave Trade: Kongo's Afonso I
In the early 16th century, the Kingdom of Kongo in Central Africa became one of the first African states to embrace Christianity. But its king, Afonso I, soon…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Zong Massacre: The Slave Ship Case That Shocked Britain
In 1781, the British slave ship Zong set sail from Africa to Jamaica. When a navigation error led to a water shortage, Captain Luke Collingwood ordered 133…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The £20 Million Payout: Britain's Compensation to Slave Owners
In 1833, Britain passed the Slavery Abolition Act, ending slavery in most of its empire — but it also set aside a staggering £20 million (40% of the national…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
1807 British Abolition and the Campaign That Ended the Slave Trade
In 1807, Britain banned its own participation in the transatlantic slave trade after a decades-long grassroots campaign. This episode traces the movement from…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Amistad Rebellion: Slaves Who Won Their Freedom in Court
In 1839, a group of fifty-three enslaved Africans aboard the Spanish schooner La Amistad seized control of the ship, sparking a dramatic legal battle that…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
Dahomey's Role in the Atlantic Slave Trade
This episode shifts focus to West Africa's Slave Coast, examining how the Kingdom of Dahomey became a central player in the Atlantic slave trade. We trace…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Second Middle Passage: America's Domestic Slave Trade
Between the ban on importation in 1808 and the Civil War, over a million enslaved people were forcibly moved from the Upper South to the Deep South in what…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The 1841 Creole Rebellion: Slaves Who Sailed to Freedom
In November 1841, 135 enslaved people aboard the brig Creole revolted on the high seas, killing one slave trader and forcing the crew to sail to Nassau…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
Haitian Revolution: The 1791 Bois Caïman Uprising
In August 1791, on a sugar plantation in Saint-Domingue, enslaved people gathered for a secret vodou ceremony that would ignite the Haitian Revolution. This…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The 1816 Negro Fort: America's Most Dangerous Slave Refuge
Before the Underground Railroad, there was the Negro Fort — a British-built fortress in Spanish Florida that became the largest free Black settlement in North…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The 1812 Slave Revolt in the Danish Virgin Islands
In 1812, enslaved Africans on the Danish colony of St. Jan (now St. John, US Virgin Islands) rose up against their Danish and Dutch planters in one of the…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The 1820s Coffee Boom and Brazil's Slave Trade Finale
When the world's coffee addiction took off in the 1820s, Brazil's Paraíba Valley became the epicenter of a brutal economic boom — one that demanded…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The 1839 La Escalera Conspiracy in Cuba
In 1844, Cuba's colonial authorities uncovered an alleged plot among free people of color and enslaved Africans to overthrow the plantation system. The…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The 1831 Christmas Rebellion: Jamaica's Largest Slave Revolt
In December 1831, tens of thousands of enslaved Jamaicans rose up in what became the largest slave rebellion in British Caribbean history. Led by Samuel…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The 1820s Coffee Boom and the Slave Trade's Last Gasp in Brazil
In this episode, we explore how Brazil's 19th-century coffee boom fueled a brutal resurgence of the transatlantic slave trade even as Britain pressed for…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The 1820 Treaty That Made the Slave Trade Piracy
In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the 1820 Treaty of London, in which the United States and Britain agreed to treat the international slave trade as…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Secret Lives of Slave Ship Captains
Behind every cargo of enslaved Africans stood a captain — part merchant, part navigator, part brutal enforcer. In this episode, Lucas and Luna peel back the…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Middle Passage Food: Cuisine of Survival
In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the often-overlooked culinary history of the Middle Passage — what enslaved Africans ate during their forced journey…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The African Muslim Rebellion That Shook Brazil
In 1835, enslaved Muslims in Salvador, Brazil, rose up in one of the most audacious urban revolts in the Americas. Known as the Malê Revolt, it was led by…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Dahomey Amazons: West Africa's All-Female Army
Before the kingdom of Dahomey fell to French colonialism, its army included a corps of several thousand women soldiers — the Agooji, or Dahomey Amazons. This…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Indian Ocean Slave Trade: East Africa's Forgotten Diaspora
We often think of the Atlantic when we hear 'slave trade,' but for centuries before and after, a vast network moved enslaved people from East Africa…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The Saltwater Railroad: Resistance Networks from Slavery to Freedom
The story of the Saltwater Railroad—a term used to describe the covert maritime routes enslaved people took to escape bondage in the American South to freedom…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The 1835 Malê Revolt: Enslaved Muslims in Brazil
In January 1835, a sweeping slave revolt shook Salvador, Bahia, led by West African Muslims known as Malê. The rebels, literate in Arabic, coordinated using…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The 1820s Coffee Boom and the Slave Trade's Last Gasp in Brazil
By the 1820s, the British Navy had been patrolling the Atlantic for over a decade, hunting illegal slave ships. But in Brazil, a coffee boom was fueling a new…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The 1835 Malê Revolt: Enslaved Muslims in Brazil
In January 1835, a group of enslaved and freed African Muslims in Salvador, Bahia, staged a carefully planned uprising known as the Malê Revolt. Drawing on…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The 1707 Slave Ship Mutiny of Thomas Gaines: Justice Denied
In 1707, Thomas Gaines, a white sailor on the slave ship Elizabeth, led a mutiny after witnessing the brutal murder of an enslaved woman. He and his…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The 1831 Christmas Rebellion: Jamaica's Largest Slave Revolt
In December 1831, the largest slave rebellion in Jamaica's history erupted across the western parishes, led by a Baptist deacon named Samuel Sharpe. This…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
The 1788 Dolben Act: Britain's First Slave Ship Regulation
In 1788, a backbench MP named Sir William Dolben steered an unprecedented bill through Parliament: the first law to regulate conditions on British slave ships…
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History
Gustavus Vassa: The African Who Chronicled the Middle Passage
In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the extraordinary life of Olaudah Equiano, also known as Gustavus Vassa, who was kidnapped from what is now Nigeria as…