This episode explores one of history’s greatest crimes in all its complexity. We examine not only the European demand that fueled the transatlantic slave trade, but also the African kingdoms, warlords, and merchants who participated in capturing and selling millions of their fellow human beings. We trace the trade from its origins with Portuguese captain Antão Gonçalves in 1441 through its explosive growth after the colonization of the Americas. The decimation of Indigenous Caribbean populations created an insatiable demand for labor, and enslaved Africans became the brutal solution to the sugar plantations’ endless hunger for bodies. The narrative confronts an uncomfortable reality: Europeans rarely ventured into the African interior. Instead, they established coastal trading posts and relied on African partners to supply captives. Kingdoms such as Dahomey, Asante, and Oyo built power through the slave trade, while the Aro Confederacy manipulated sacred religious oracles to funnel victims to European buyers. We examine the gun–slave cycle that trapped African states in a merciless calculation, where participation meant survival and refusal meant vulnerability. From the horrors of the Middle Passage to the Zong massacre, from the barracoons of the West African coast to the seasoning plantations of the Caribbean, this episode lays bare the machinery of human suffering that transported an estimated 12.5 million Africans across the Atlantic. This is history as it happened, with all its uncomfortable truths intact. The millions who suffered deserve nothing less than the complete story.
