The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History

While the Atlantic slave trade is well-known, the enslavement of Africans in the Indian Ocean world was equally brutal and spanned centuries. This episode focuses on the 18th-century slave trade from East Africa to the Mascarene Islands—Mauritius and Réunion—under French colonial rule. We follow the story of the ship Le Brun, which transported captives from Mozambique to the sugar plantations of Î...

In our 100th episode, we mark the milestone not with a recap but with a focused look at a single devastating year: 1781. That year saw the Zong massacre, but also a less-known tragedy — the voyage of the slave ship Vigilant, which lost over half its captives to disease and starvation before reaching Jamaica. We trace the ship's route from the Gold Coast, examine the brutal calculus of 'tight packi...

In 1839, 53 Africans held captive on the schooner La Amistad rose up, killed the captain and cook, and seized the ship. Their leader, Sengbe Pieh, known as Joseph Cinqué, was a Mende rice farmer from Sierra Leone. The revolt sparked a legal battle that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, where former president John Quincy Adams argued for the captives' freedom. This episode follows the Amistad story f...

In 1839, fifty-three captives from the Mende region of West Africa were taken aboard the schooner Amistad off the coast of Cuba. Led by a man named Sengbe Pieh (known in American records as Joseph Cinqué), they rose up, killed the captain, and forced the surviving crew to sail east toward Africa. Instead, the ship was intercepted off Long Island, sparking a legal battle that reached the U.S. Supre...

The 1820 Slave Trade Act classified the international slave trade as piracy, punishable by death. This episode follows the legislative battle led by figures like Charles F. Mercer and the American Colonization Society, the first executions under the law—including Nathaniel Gordon in 1862—and the law's limited impact on the domestic slave trade. We explore how the act became a moral compromise, sat...

In 1837, just three years after the British Empire abolished slavery in its colonies, the small island of Tortola in the British Virgin Islands was shaken by rumors of a massive slave conspiracy. Planters claimed to have uncovered a plot involving arson, poison, and a coordinated uprising across the island. Dozens of enslaved people were arrested, tried, and executed—but historians now believe the...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the explosive growth of Cuba's sugar industry in the 1830s and how it reshaped the Atlantic slave trade. They dive into the story of the ingenio (sugar plantation) system, the brutal work regime known as the 'grinding season,' and the roles of figures like Francisco de Arango y Parreño, who pushed for unlimited slave imports. The episode covers the 1817 trea...

In September 1739, about twenty enslaved Kongolese people near the Stono River in South Carolina gathered under a banner and marched south toward Spanish Florida, killing dozens of colonists along the way. This episode traces the Stono Rebellion from its origins in the Kongo kingdom's Catholic traditions to the brutal suppression and its legacy in the colony's slave codes. We examine the role of t...

In November 1841, the American slave brig Creole left Richmond, Virginia, bound for New Orleans with 135 enslaved people in its hold. Madison Washington, a man who had escaped to Canada and returned for his wife, led a revolt that seized control of the ship and sailed it to Nassau in the British Bahamas, where slavery had been abolished in 1834. The Creole mutiny sparked a major diplomatic crisis...

In Episode 92 of The Atlantic Slave Trade, Lucas and Luna explore the rise of Ouidah, the Dahomean port that became the epicenter of the Slave Coast. They trace its transformation from a quiet coastal town to a fortified slave-trading hub under King Agaja, who conquered the region in 1727. The episode details the infamous Portuguese Fort of São João Baptista de Ajudá, the role of the Dahomean Amaz...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the story of the Golden Galley, a pirate ship that was captured off the coast of West Africa in 1674 with a cargo of enslaved Africans. They discuss the Royal African Company's efforts to suppress rival European traders and pirates, the role of the English navy in protecting the slave trade, and the fate of the captives aboard the ship. The episode also touc...

In 1700, the slave ship Henrietta Marie sank off the Florida Keys, carrying a cargo of iron shackles, beads, and elephant tusks. Discovered in 1972, the wreck became the most tangible artifact of the Middle Passage ever excavated. This episode follows the ship's 1694-1700 voyages from London to the Gold Coast to Jamaica, the lives of the 190 enslaved people it carried, and the forensic evidence th...

In January 1756, Captain John Kimber of the slave ship Recovery was tried at the Old Bailey for the murder of a 15-year-old enslaved girl. Kimber had ordered her flogged for refusing to eat, and she died days later. The prosecution was brought by Granville Sharp, who used the case to challenge the legal status of the slave trade. The trial became a cause célèbre in London, revealing the brutality...

This episode of The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering explores the 1752 massacre at Old Calabar, a devastating event that exposed the brutal mechanics of the slave trade on the Bight of Biafra. Hosts Lucas and Luna delve into the complex role of the Efik people, the key figures of the era like Duke Ephraim and the slave trader John Bibby, and the infamous 'house system' that tu...

Lucas and Luna trace the forgotten Danish slave trade from the Gold Coast to the Caribbean. They explore the Christiansborg Castle in present-day Ghana, where Akan-speaking captives were held before being loaded onto Danish slave ships bound for St. Thomas. Lucas explains how the Danish government monopolized the trade through the Danish West India-Guinea Company, and how King Frederik IV granted...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the 1781 Zong massacre, one of the most infamous events in the history of the Atlantic slave trade. When the slave ship Zong ran low on drinking water, its captain, Luke Collingwood, ordered 132 enslaved Africans thrown overboard—not because it was necessary, but because the ship's owners could claim insurance on 'cargo' lost at sea, but not on those who die...

In 1831, the slave ship Prince of Orange set sail from Havana with over 200 enslaved Africans bound for the sugar plantations of Cuba. But before the ship could cross the Atlantic, a brave group of Igbo men, led by a man named Okee, rose up in a desperate bid for freedom. This episode dives into the mutiny, the brutal suppression that followed, and the legal aftermath that unfolded in Havana's col...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the 1817 Fort Blount Massacre, a brutal but little-known episode in the history of the Atlantic slave trade. They trace the flight of enslaved people from the Deep South to the maroon stronghold of Fort Blount in Spanish Florida, the alliance with Seminole and Miccosukee warriors, and the U.S. military campaign that ended in a devastating attack by Andrew Ja...

In July 1863, the largest civil insurrection in American history erupted not in the South but in New York City. The Enrollment Act of 1863, which allowed wealthy men to buy their way out of Civil War conscription for $300, ignited a firestorm of working-class fury. For four days, white mobs — many Irish immigrants — rampaged against the draft, but their rage quickly turned into a murderous pogrom...

This episode of Fexingo History takes you inside the brutal reality of the Middle Passage—the journey that carried millions of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic. We focus on the human experience within the slave ship hold: the stench, the disease, the suffocating heat, and the constant threat of rebellion. Lucas and Luna explore the design of slave ships, the infamous Brookes diagram, mortalit...

In 1693, a carefully planned uprising by enslaved Africans in Cartagena de Indias shook the Spanish colonial port and led to the creation of one of the most successful maroon communities in the Americas: San Basilio de Palenque. This episode unpacks the revolt itself—how leaders like Benkos Biohó organized hundreds of escapees across the swamps and forests of what is now Colombia—and the complex p...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the 1832 slave ship mutiny aboard the Robert, a Spanish schooner carrying over 200 enslaved Africans from the Congo to Cuba. They discuss the clandestine slave trade after abolition treaties, the role of Cuban sugar plantations, the mutineers' capture by the Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron, and the legal limbo of liberated Africans in Sierra Leone. The epi...

In January 1811, along the Mississippi River in the Territory of Orleans, dozens of enslaved men rose up in what would become the largest slave revolt in American history. Led by Charles Deslondes, a mixed-race enslaved driver from Saint-Domingue, and joined by others like Kook and Quamana, the rebels marched from the German Coast toward New Orleans, gathering recruits and burning plantations. The...

In 1723, the slave ship Elizabeth left the Gold Coast for Barbados with a cargo of over 200 captives, mostly Coromantee from the Akan region. Twenty-three men led a carefully planned revolt, armed with shackles and determination, but internal betrayal and brutal countermeasures crushed it. This episode follows the arc of the mutiny from its origins in the African interior through the Atlantic cros...

The 1839 Amistad rebellion was a watershed moment in the Atlantic slave trade. Fifty-three Mende captives, led by Sengbe Pieh (known as Joseph Cinqué), seized control of the schooner La Amistad off the coast of Cuba, sparking a dramatic legal battle that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. This episode traces the revolt from its origins in Lomboko slave pens through the harrowing Middle Passage, the m...