1760-1814: The port of Bissau became a major embarkation point for captives destined for the Americas, with the vast majority of vessels owned and operated b…

1760-1814: The port of Bissau became a major embarkation point for captives destined for the Americas, with the vast majority of vessels owned and operated by merchants in Lisbon. This traffic was initially part of a broader Portuguese effort to develop the Amazonia region of South America through forced labor. Despite an 1815 treaty with Great Britain intended to end the Portuguese slave trade north of the equator, the traffic from Bissau persisted at reduced levels well into the 1840s. The region’s long-standing history of local slave trading provided a ready infrastructure for the large-scale trans-Atlantic deportations managed by the Portuguese crown.