A complete timeline of slavery: from the ancient world to abolition

Earliest recorded slave trading

Egyptian records document slave raids into Nubia. Slavery is already an established institution across the ancient world.

Trans-Saharan trade routes established

Caravan routes across the Sahara are in active use, carrying enslaved people northward alongside gold and ivory.

Slavery embedded across Africa

Internal slavery is practised across Sub-Saharan African kingdoms. It predates any European contact by over two millennia.

Arab slave trade formally begins

A peace treaty requires Nubian rulers to supply enslaved people to Arab invaders annually, the first formalised Arab slave trading arrangement.

Arab traders expand across East Africa

Following Islam’s expansion across North Africa, Arab merchants establish slave trading networks along the East African coast and across the Sahara.

The Zanj Rebellion

Tens of thousands of enslaved East Africans rise in a fifteen-year revolt against their Arab captors in Iraq, one of the largest slave rebellions in history.

Zanzibar becomes a major slave hub

Arab traders based in Zanzibar and along the Swahili coast are moving tens of thousands of enslaved Africans per year to markets in Arabia and Persia.

Portugal begins West African exploration

Portuguese ships begin exploring the West African coast. The Arab-dominated slave trade has already been running for over 750 years.

Portugal starts the Atlantic slave trade

The first Portuguese slave trading voyage from West Africa. Portugal will dominate the Atlantic trade for the next 150 years. Britain is not yet involved.

Spain enters the trade

Spain becomes a major consumer of enslaved labour in its American colonies. Portugal and Spain dominate entirely. Britain is still absent.

The Dutch enter the trade

The Dutch become significant participants in the early seventeenth century, primarily supplying enslaved labour to their Caribbean colonies.

Britain enters the Atlantic slave trade

Britain becomes a significant participant, approximately 200 years after Portugal started the trade, and nearly 1,000 years after the Arab trade began.

Royal African Company founded

Charles II charters the Royal African Company with a monopoly on the English slave trade. Britain’s commercial involvement is now formalised.

Britain at peak involvement

Britain becomes the largest single Atlantic carrier in the eighteenth century, transporting approximately 3.1 million enslaved Africans, fewer than Portugal’s 5.8 million.

Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade founded

British abolitionists including Wilberforce and Clarkson begin one of the first mass political campaigns in history. No other nation mounts anything comparable.

Britain abolishes the slave trade

The Slave Trade Act passes. Britain becomes the first major slave-trading nation to abolish the trade. Portugal, France, Spain, and the United States continue.

Royal Navy West Africa Squadron deployed

Britain sends warships to suppress the Atlantic slave trade. Over sixty years the Squadron intercepts 1,600 slave ships and frees over 150,000 people.

Abolition of Slavery Act

Slavery is abolished across the British Empire. Britain pays £20 million, roughly £2 billion in today’s money, to end the institution.

Royal Navy East Africa Squadron deployed

Britain sends a second naval force to suppress the Arab slave trade in the Indian Ocean, capturing around 1,000 dhows and freeing 12,000 people.

Zanzibar slave market closed

British pressure forces the Sultan of Zanzibar to outlaw the slave trade and close the main East African slave market. The Arab trade that began in 652 AD is finally broken.

Saudi Arabia and Yemen abolish slavery

The Arab slave trade, which began over 1,300 years earlier, finally ends in the last holdout states. Mauritania does not criminalise it until 2007.