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slave trade

slave trade

17 3.6
Buying, selling, and moving people to force them to work, often from Africa to the Americas
  • noun
  • /sleɪv treɪd/
  • NSFW
translation icon : trata de esclavos
  • Estimates for the Trans-Saharan slave trade, spanning a period of nearly 2000 years, go as high as 9 million.
  • the Atlantic slave trade
  • the trans-Atlantic slave trade
  • the African slave trade

One was the slave trade in the Atlantic and in the China trade.

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Examples

  • Britain was among the first states in the history of the world to abolish the slave trade and then to abolish slavery.

  • The transatlantic slave trade forcibly transported millions of Africans to the Americas.

  • I have to ask you, do you feel this is a slave trade of a different kind?

  • One was the slave trade in the Atlantic and in the China trade.

  • The end of the transatlantic slave trade for example.

  • I read your article in The Times this morning about the slave trade in the Americas.

  • But as the foreign slave trade was cut off, the domestic American slave trade absolutely boomed.

  • In the centuries following the Renaissance, the African slave trade was mainly led by Portugal and Spain.

    Academic text (2008)
  • Spain and England signed a treaty in 1817, expanded in 1835, making the slave trade illegal.

    Academic text (2017)
  • To engage in the slave trade is to look upon the utmost of grotesque horrors.

    Academic text (2008)

Synonyms

slave traffic
vsslave trade
  • NSFW
8.4

The buying, selling, and moving of people to be forced to work, especially Africans taken to the Americas

means the same but uses a different term for the historical activity

Surface Forms

slave trade singular
slave trades plural

Morphology

slave + trade

The meaning is directly compositional: 'slave' denotes people who are owned and 'trade' denotes buying and selling, so a B1 learner who knows both words can infer 'the buying and selling (and related transport) of slaves'. This noun+noun compound follows a common cross-linguistic pattern for types of trade, making it transparent to learners.

Etymology

Slave trade comes from the real business described by its parts, slave and trade: buying, selling and moving people as slaves. People taken from Africa were put on ships and sold in markets in the Americas, so the phrase means 'the buying and selling of people'.