1803–1830s: (The Abolition Chronology — Denmark 1803, Britain 1807, the United States 1808, Holland 1814, France 1817, the Congress of Vienna 1815, and Most …

1803–1830s: (The Abolition Chronology — Denmark 1803, Britain 1807, the United States 1808, Holland 1814, France 1817, the Congress of Vienna 1815, and Most European States by the Mid-1830s — but the Atlantic Slave Trade Died Hard and Continued to the 1860s–1880s): Denmark and Britain, two of the biggest slave carriers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, were among the first to prohibit their citizens from participating in the trade, in 1803 and 1807 respectively. They were followed by the United States in 1808, Holland in 1814, and France in 1817, although France had toyed with abolition during the revolutionary years of the 1790s. At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, there was a general agreement among most European states that the slave trade should be abolished, although Portugal argued for a ban only on the trade north of the equator. By the mid-1830s most European states had outlawed the trade, but it was extremely difficult to enforce. The Atlantic slave trade died hard and continued through much of the nineteenth century, with several West African coastal states — for example Dahomey — refusing to abandon what was seen as an essential economic and political activity. Widespread warfare among the Yoruba produced large numbers of people for export, while swathes of central Africa, notably the region of modern Angola, continued exporting slaves as they had throughout the earlier period of the trade. The main destination for slaves in the nineteenth century was Latin America — particularly Brazil, the single largest illegal importer of the century. The Atlantic trade gradually declined and had largely disappeared by the 1870s and 1880s, due partly to British anti-slavery squadrons patrolling the Atlantic coastline but more fundamentally to dwindling demand in the Americas and the expansion of legitimate commerce.