Timeline: Evolution Of The Slave Trade

1619: 20 black indentured servants arrive at Jamestown, Va.

1620: Pilgrims land at Plymouth, Mass.

1640-1680: Beginning of large-scale African slave labor in the British Caribbean for sugar production.

1650: Connecticut becomes second American colony (after Massachusetts) to pass a statute recognizing slavery.

1662: The Tryall, built in Wethersfield, becomes the first American ship engaged in the West Indies trade.

1689-1795: Jamaica's Maroon Wars (slave rebellions).

1730: Britain becomes the largest-scale slave-trading country. From 1690 to 1807, British ships transport about 2.9 million enslaved Africans.

1752: Slave revolt in Martinique.

1756-63: In the Seven Years' War (called the French and Indian War in America), Britain and Prussia defeat France, Spain, Austria and Russia.

1761: Slave revolt in Nevis, next to St. Kitt's (also called St. Christopher's)

1764: Massachusetts sea captains and merchants oppose an increase in the price of sugar and molasses, declaring them essential to the slave trade, New England's "vital commerce."

1772: The Lord Chief Justice of Great Britain, in the landmark Somersett case, declares that "as soon as any slave sets foot in England he becomes free."

1775-83: American Revolution.

1776: Declaration of Independence is adopted; section condemning the slave trade is dropped.

1783: Blacks loyal to Britain leave the U.S., some eventually to be settled in Sierra Leone.

1787: British philanthropists establish "Province of Freedom" for freed slaves in Sierra Leone.

1789: French Revolution begins.

1790: First U.S. Census lists 3.9 million people, 698,000 of them slaves.

1791: Haitian Revolution begins as a slave uprising, leading to the establishment of Haiti in 1801.

1793: Eli Whitney patents his cotton gin, which leads to the explosion of the cotton industry, and slavery, in the southern U.S.

1794: The French National Convention frees slaves in the French colonies.

- The U.S. Congress prohibits the manufacture, fitting, equipping, loading or dispatching of any vessel to be employed in the slave trade.

1807: The British Parliament bans the Atlantic slave trade.

- Great Britain converts Sierra Leone into a crown colony.

- The United States passes legislation banning the slave trade, to take effect in 1808.

Copyright © 2016, Hartford Courant