A tall tapering mud-brick minaret bristling with wooden beams, seen down a sandy street.

The Grand Mosque of Agadez, Niger, 1996-97. Photo: A. A. van Achterberg, African Studies Centre Leiden, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence · Source

1500 – 1879

Atlantic Slave Trade & Early Colonial Contact

The transatlantic slave trade, the rise of the African diaspora in the Americas, and the earliest European trading posts and incursions along the African coast.

Researched Articles

On This Day

Ottoman forces under Selim I decisively defeated the Cairo-based Mamluk Sultanate at the Battle of Marj Dab… (1516)
The Ottoman Empire under Selim I defeated the Mamluk Sultanate at the Battle of Ridaniya, bringing Egypt un… (1517)
During the Ethiopian–Adal War, the Adal Sultanate seized control of southern Ethiopia. (1531)
Ahmad Baba al-Timbukti, Berber scholar and jurist of Timbuktu who authored more than 40 works, was born. (1556)
Portuguese navigator Paulo Dias de Novais founded Luanda in 1576, and it grew into the capital of Angola an… (1576)
Moroccan forces defeated a Portuguese invasion at the Battle of Alcácer Quibir, killing King Sebastian of P… (1578)
Judar Pasha's Moroccan force, about 3,000 to 4,000 strong and armed with firearms, routed a much larger Son… (1591)
Pope Clement VIII created the diocese of São Salvador, seated in the capital of the Kingdom of Kongo, by th… (1596)
Susenyos I defeated his rivals at the Battle of Gol in Gojjam, securing his position as Emperor of Ethiopia. (1607)
Jan van Riebeeck, the Dutch colonial administrator who founded the settlement that became Cape Town, was bo… (1619)
Portuguese forces defeated the Kingdom of Kongo at the Battle of Mbumbi in what is now Angola. (1622)
Barbary corsairs from North Africa raided the Irish village of Baltimore, capturing most of its inhabitants… (1631)
Kongolese and Dutch forces, allied against Portugal, defeated the Portuguese at Nambu a Ngongo in the Dembo… (1642)
Dutch sailor Jan van Riebeeck established a resupply camp at the Cape of Good Hope for the Dutch East India… (1652)
A Portuguese-led army defeated the army of King António I of Kongo at Mbwila, in the Dembos region between… (1665)
The four cornerstones of the Castle of Good Hope were laid at the Cape, beginning construction of what is t… (1666)
Dandara, a leader of the runaway-slave community of Quilombo dos Palmares in Brazil, was captured and took… (1694)
Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita, the Kongo prophetess who led the Antonian movement, was burned at Evululu, King Pe… (1706)
Iyasu I, Emperor of Ethiopia remembered as 'Iyasu the Great' for his military campaigns and administrative… (1706)
King Pedro IV of Kongo took São Salvador, the capital, from his rival Pedro Constantinho da Silva, who was… (1709)
Jupiter Hammon, who became the first African-American writer to be published in the American colonies, was… (1711)
A smallpox epidemic struck the Cape after arriving via contaminated ship linen, devastating the indigenous… (1713)
The 1716 Algiers earthquake struck Algeria, killing an estimated 20,000 people. (1716)
Benjamin Banneker, the African-American mathematician, astronomer, and almanac author who helped survey the… (1731)
Enslaved people at Plantation Magdalenenburg rose against their Dutch owners, and the revolt spread across… (1763)
Muhammad Ali, the Ottoman military commander who became the founder of modern Egypt, was born. (1769)
Ali Bey al-Kabir, the Mamluk leader who ruled Egypt as a virtually independent sultan, died. (1773)
An anonymous essay, 'African Slavery in America,' thought to be written by Thomas Paine, was published, bec… (1775)
The crew of the British slave ship Zong murdered more than 130 enslaved Africans by throwing them overboard… (1781)
British forces under Captain Thomas Shirley failed to take Elmina but captured the Dutch forts of Mouri, Co… (1782)
Phillis Wheatley, who was born in West Africa and enslaved as a child before becoming a celebrated American… (1784)
An earthquake destroyed most of the Spanish-held city of Oran, killing at least 2,000 people, with contempo… (1790)
Self-taught Black mathematician and astronomer Benjamin Banneker sent Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson a… (1791)
Enslaved people rose across the northern plain of Saint-Domingue on the night of 22 August, burning the est… (1791)
The workshops of the Cul-de-Sac rose at Croix-des-Bouquets in western Saint-Domingue as the free-coloured f… (1792)
Upper Canada passed the Act Against Slavery, banning the importation of enslaved people and beginning the g… (1793)
French Republican troops and Black insurgents captured Cap-Français during the Haitian Revolution, a turnin… (1793)
The French National Convention decreed the abolition of slavery throughout the French First Republic and it… (1794)
British troops landed at Muizenberg and drove off the Dutch garrison, beginning the British occupation of t… (1795)
Britain seized the Dutch Cape Colony in southern Africa to prevent it falling under French-allied control. (1795)
Olaudah Equiano, formerly enslaved Nigerian-born writer whose autobiography became a landmark of abolitioni… (1797)
Napoleon's forces defeated an Ottoman-Mamluk army near Cairo at the Battle of the Pyramids. (1798)
The Battle of the Nile began at Aboukir Bay, Egypt, as a British fleet under Horatio Nelson engaged and dec… (1798)
The Battle of the Nile concluded in a decisive British naval victory over Napoleon's fleet at Aboukir Bay,… (1798)
Napoleon Bonaparte's expeditionary force set sail from France to invade Egypt. (1798)
The Rosetta Stone was discovered in the Egyptian town of Rosetta by French soldiers during Napoleon's Egypt… (1799)
Napoleon Bonaparte secretly left Egypt for France, abandoning the army he had led there, en route to seizin… (1799)
Nat Turner, who later led an 1831 rebellion of enslaved people in Virginia, was born into slavery. (1800)
At the Battle of Abukir, a British force landed in Egypt aiming to end the French occupation begun under Na… (1801)
The pasha of Tripoli declared war on the United States by cutting down the flagstaff of the American consul… (1801)
Napoleon Bonaparte reinstated slavery in French colonies, reversing its abolition during the French Revolut… (1802)
Rather than surrender to Napoleon's troops sent to restore slavery, hundreds of rebels led by Louis Delgres… (1802)
On the night of 5-6 December 1803, Royal Navy ships seized five vessels carrying the French garrison that h… (1803)
Haiti declared independence from France following the Haitian Revolution, becoming the world's first black-… (1804)
In the First Barbary War, a mercenary force led by U.S. Marines under William Eaton captured the city of De… (1805)
Muhammad Ali became Wali (governor) of Egypt, founding a dynasty that would rule the country for the next c… (1805)
Jean-Jacques Dessalines, leader of the Haitian Revolution and first ruler of independent Haiti, was assassi… (1806)
British forces defeated a Batavian army at the Battle of Blaauwberg, north of Cape Town. Cape Town itself s… (1806)
Norbert Rillieux, African-American inventor and chemical engineer who revolutionized sugar refining, was born. (1806)
The Slave Trade Act received royal assent in Britain, abolishing the transatlantic slave trade across the B… (1807)