The purchase and sale of African people was a major part of the early American economy. It was one of the most obvious ways Americans were iinked to the global trading economy. From 1783 to 1815, around 150,000 Africans were forced to migrate to the United States, many of them carried on American ships, and sold through networks of traders after their arrival. Thousands more were carried by American slavers to other parts of the Americas, especially Cuba, until trade there was banned in 1794. The United States accounted for an increasing proportion of the slave trade, as many as 16 percent of all people taken from Africa from 1801 to 1805. The trade centered in New England, especially Rhode Island, but leading merchants in every colony were slavers. Traders would send ships to the west coast of Africa with stores of guns, manufactured goods, and rum. These items would be...