This map shows the various slave holding points in Western African used by European traders around 1750. These African points of embarkation included port towns, forts, and castles that changed hands among European powers and African powers frequently in the 400 years of the slave trade. The greatest numbers of enslaved persons taken from Africa came from the Congo region. Out of these ports came 10 to 15 million African captives. Before the 1830s, almost four times as many Africans came to the Americas as European migrants, and almost all of them left from the points indicated on this map. For a lesson dealing with the people involved in the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade, click here.