The Atlantic Slave Trade

The Atlantic Slave Trade

Goree Island Slave Monument

You might wonder why a site devoted to tourism would bring up a painful subject like slavery. One of the reasons that African Americans travel to Africa is to find their heritage. Many chose South or East Africa, but to really trace their roots they must travel to West Africa (just like Alex Haley author of Roots) 

 Millions of people were dispatched in chains from West African ports running from Senegal to Angola, bound for Brazil, Caribbean and the United States.  South Africa did enslave the native population but didn't export them. In fact South Africa did import slaves from Asia.

What where the forces that drove slavery to the America's? The main one was Europeans craving for labor intensive crops like sugar, tea, coffee,tobacco and cotton. Except for cotton these crops where luxuries and some might be called drugs.  They needed a huge source of cheap labor.

So where was this labor going to come from. It's not surprising that the Europeans turned to slavery as a labor solution. Slavery including chattel slavery , the most extreme form, in which people are legally defined as property- had a long history in the Old World. At that time most slaves were not Africa but European.  The word slavery comes from the world slav referring to the Slavic people of northern Europe who were enslaved in southern Europe. Using European slaves did not work because they could not survive the tropical conditions and diseases in the Americas and Islands.The European colonist first tried to enslave the native population. This failed because 95% of the native population died from Old World diseases like small poxs and measles. Also being on their home territory many were able to escape. It is said that in the century after Columbus sailed to the New World  the population of natives lost 90 million.

Atlantic Slave Trade

Africans were acclimated to tropical climates and had some protection from Old World disease due to prior to exposure to Europeans. Since most slaves where needed in the the tropical areas of the Americas.... so Africans became the choice. It is estimated that around 50% of the slaves went to the Caribbeans, 40% to South  and Central America with only 5% to the United States.

There has been a lot of debate about how many West Africans where shipped to the New World as slaves. A 1999 study by Harvard puts the number at around 11 million. Remember this does not include those who didn't survive capture and the horror of the middle passage.

Slave Ship

Many white Europeans and Americans seem to take some satisfaction from the fact that most African slaves where sold into slavery by other Africans. Using this "logic" to shift the blame from Europeans to Africans. There is plenty of blame to go around. Remember that Africans did not sell their own people. The word African was more of a European state of mind.  Populations in Africa thought of themselves as Igbo, Asante, Kongo, Yourba..etc.  These tribes did keep and sell slaves from other tribes ..not thought of as their own people.  The biggest factor was the demand that drove the West African slave trade...it came from the Europeans wanting cheap labor for their plantations in the the New World.

When American descendant of these slaves return to West Africa here are a few points of interest:

• Goree Island , Senegal -  premiere destination for those interested in the history of the trans-Atlantic slave-trade.   The main attraction is the Maison des Esclaves (House of Slaves)

• Elmina Castle, Ghana - One of several former slave forts along Ghana's Atlantic coast, is a hugely popular destination and place of pilgrimage for African-American tourists

• Albreda Island, Gambia - French Slave port now has a slave musuem

• Jufureh, Gambia is the home village of Kunta Kinte

• The Route des Esclaves , Benin - a 2.5 mile road lined with fetishes and statues where the slaves would take their final walk down to beach and to the slave-ships. Important memorials have been set up in the last village on this road, which was the "point of no return".

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The Woman's Museum- Goree Island Senegal - Musee de la Femme - Henriette Bathily

The Woman's Museum

The Woman's Museum- Goree Island Senegal - Musee de la Femme 
The Senegal Blog
Looks at the role of Senegalese women in traditional,rituals, community, folk arts and modern West African culture. Through field research, interviews, collections in families, photographic reproductions, recordings and films, consultations archive the results will be published in the journals of the museum - which will set up a structure to attract the interest of nationals and foreigners on an important aspect of community life and organization of our society that revolve 

around the woman.

The Woman's Museum

The Museum of Senegalese women is being able to allows non Senegalese to enter "privacy" of Senegalese society or for research, study, work or university, simply need to learn about the other. They can then compare  the characteristics of other ethnic groups, other communities, other regions: the customs, traditions vary between groups.

Contact Information
Museum Henriette Bathily
Goree, Senegal
Tel: 00 221 33
Tuesday to Sunday : 10 to 16H H3 closed Monday

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Visit  page on Goree Island Senegal

The Senegal Blog

House of Slaves - Goree Island Senegal

House of Slaves - Goree Island Senegal 

House of Slaves - Goree Island

House of Slaves and its Door of No Return is a museum and memorial to the Atlantic Slave Trade on tiny Goree Island, 3 km off the coast of the city of Dakar, Senegal.It is said to memorialise the final exit point of slaves from Africa. Historians differ on how many, if any African slaves were actually held in this building, as well as the relative importance of Goree Island as a point on the Atlantic Slave Trade,but visitors from Africa, Europe and the Americas, along with world leaders, continue to make it an important place to remember the human toll of African slavery.

Door of no Return - Goree Isand

Its museum, opened in 1962 and curated until his death in 2009 by Boubacar Joseph Ndiaye, who was a tireless advocate of both the memorial and the belief in that slaves were held in the building in great numbers and from here transported directly to the Americas. Eventually he becoming curator of the Museum, Ndiaye has claimed that more than a million slaves passed through the doors of the house. This belief has made the house both a tourist attraction, and the site for dozens of state visits by world leaders to Senegal.

Statue Des Esclaves - Goree Isand

Since the 1980s, academics have downplayed the role that Goree played in the Atlantic Slave Trade. Ndiaye and other Senegalese have always maintained that the site is more than a memorial and is an actual historic site in the transport of Africans to French, Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese colonies of the Americas.

Built around 1776, the building was the home in the early 19th century to one of a class wealthy colonial Senegalese Métis woman trader Anna Colas Pépin. Researchers argue that while the houseowner may have sold small numbers of slaves and kept a few domestic slaves, the actual point of departure was 300m away at a fort on the beach. The house has been restored since the 1970s.

Slave ship

Academic accounts, such as the 1969 statistical work of historian Philip D. Curtin, argue that exports from Goree began around 1670 and continued until about 1810, at no time more than 200 to 300 a year in important years and none at all in others. Curtin's 1969 accounting of slave trade statistics records that between 1711 and 1810 180,000 enslaved Africans were transported from the French posts in Senegambia, most being transported from Saint-Louis, Senegal and James Fort in modern Gambia.

Even those who argue Goree was never important in the slave trade view the island as an important memorial to a trade that was carried on in greater scale from ports in modern Ghana and Benin.


Visit the Page for the Woman's Museum on Goree Island

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Senegals New culture and tourism minister Youssou Ndour. What can he do to promote tourism?

Goree Island - Senegal

Goree Island

Goree Island 

Île de Gorée is one of the 19 communes d'arrondissement of the city of Dakar,Senegal. It is a 0.182 square kilometres (45 acres) island located 2 kilometres (1.1 nmi; 1.2 mi) at sea from the main harbor of Dakar. 

Goree Island

Its population as  of 2005 of was estimated at 1,056 inhabitants. Gorée is both the smallest and the least populated of the 19 communes d'arrondissement of Dakar.Gorée is famous as a destination for people interested in the Atlantic slave trade and the slaves that were processed or transported from there. The more important centers for the slave trade from Senegal were north, at Saint-Louis, Senegal, or to the south in the Gambia, at the mouths of major rivers for trade.

Goree Isand

Gorée is a small island 900 metres/3,000 feet in length and 350 metres/1,165 feet in width sheltered by the Cape Vert Peninsula. Now part of the city of Dakar, it was a minor port and site of European settlement along the coast. Being almost devoid of drinking water, the island was not settled before the arrival of Europeans. ThePortuguese were the first to establish a presence on Gorée ( circa 1450 CE/AD ), where they built a small stone chapel and used land as a cemetery.Gorée is known as the location of the House of Slaves, built by an Afro-French Métis family about 

House Of Slaves

1780–1784. The House of Slaves is one of the oldest houses on the island. It is now used as a tourist destination to show the horrors of the slave trade throughout the Atlantic world. Gorée was relatively unimportant in the slave trade. The claim that the "house of slaves" was a slave-shipping point was refuted in 1959 by Raymond Mauny, who shortly afterward was appointed the first professor of African history at the Sorbonne.

Catholic Church St. Charles Barrome

The island of Gorée was one of the first places in Africa to be settled by Europeans, as the Portuguese settled on the island in 1444. It was captured by the United Netherlands in 1588, then the Portuguese again, and again the Dutch. They named it after the Dutch island of Goeree, before the British took it over under Robert Holmesin 1664.After the French gained control in 1677, the island remained continuously French until 1960. There were brief periods of British occupation during the various wars fought by France and Britain. In 1960 Senegal was granted independence. The island was notably taken and occupied by the British between 1758 and 1763 following theCapture of Gorée and wider Capture of Senegal during the Seven Years War before being returned to France at the Treaty of Paris.

Statue Des Esclaves - Goree Island

Civic franchise for the citizens of Gorée was institutionalized in 1872, when it became a French “commune” with an elected mayor and a municipal council. Blaise Diagne, the first African deputy elected to the French National Assembly (served 1914 to 1934), was born on Gorée. From a peak of about 4,500 in 1845, the population fell to 1,500 in 1904. In 1940 Gorée was annexed to the municipality of Dakar.

Ferry Goree Isand

Gorée is connected to the mainland by regular 30-minute ferry service, for pedestrians only; there are no cars on the island. Senegal’s premier tourist site, the island was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978. It now serves mostly as a memorial to the slave trade. Many of the historic commercial and residential buildings have been turned into restaurants and hotels to support the tourist traffic.


Visit the Page for the Woman's Museum on Goree Island

Official site of the mayor of Gorée