Brazil Becomes the Largest Destination of the Atlantic Slave Trade
Nearly five million enslaved Africans, more than any other place in the Americas
Quick facts
- Enslaved Africans to Brazil
- Almost 5 million (1501-1866), the largest destination
- NPS figure
- About 4.8 million, 1560-1850
- Portugal/Brazil carrier total (embarked)
- 5,848,266 of 12,521,337 (SlaveVoyages)
- Illegal trade after the ban
- Almost 1 million more (Yale University Press)
What happened
Brazil received more enslaved Africans than anywhere else in the Americas. Yale University Press states that Portuguese America, Brazil after 1822, received almost five million enslaved Africans between 1501 and 1866. The U.S. National Park Service records that from 1560 to 1850, about 4.8 million enslaved people were transported to Brazil, more than the roughly 4.7 million sent to the Caribbean and vastly more than the fewer than 400,000 carried to North America. The SlaveVoyages database credits the Portugal and Brazil carrier flag with 5,848,266 of the 12,521,337 Africans embarked across the entire trade. Mortality on the crossing, on the plantations, and in the mines was enormous, and even after Brazil's own laws banned the traffic, Yale University Press notes almost one million more individuals were carried into the country illegally in one of the greatest crimes of the nineteenth century.
Why it matters
The scale is the point. Sugar, then gold, then coffee were all built on the forced labor of enslaved Africans, and Brazil's share of the trade, close to 40 to 46 percent of all arrivals in the Americas by most estimates, shaped the country's population, culture, and inequality more than any other single fact of its history.
How we know
The near-five-million figure is stated verbatim by Yale University Press and corroborated by the U.S. National Park Service's Middle Passage article; the carrier-flag totals are read directly from the SlaveVoyages estimates database, whose aggregate tables are treated as estimates rather than exact counts.
Sources
- Yale University Press. The Slave Trade in the U.S. and Brazil: Comparisons and Connections · Reputable sourceyalebooks.yale.edu · The domain "yalebooks.yale.edu" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- U.S. National Park Service. The Middle Passage · Primary source (author-declared)nps.gov · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- SlaveVoyages. Estimates (Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database) · General sourcelegacy.slavevoyages.org · Cited as a "reference" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Related timelines
- The Atlantic Slave Trade → · See the Atlantic Slave Trade timeline for the full arc of the trade, the Middle Passage, and Brazil's 1888 abolition as the last in the Americas.