3.2 — Historical migrations

• Know the major historical migration waves: forced (slavery) and voluntary (labor, settler).

• Understand how historical migrations shape present-day populations and politics.

• See migration as a constant feature of human history, not an exceptional event. Forced migration — the transatlantic slave trade. Between roughly 1500 and 1866, an estimated 12.5 million Africans were kidnapped and transported across the Atlantic Ocean as slaves. Around 10.7 million survived the journey; the rest died during the Middle Passage. The trade was organized primarily by European powers — Portugal, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Spain — and supplied plantation economies in the Americas producing sugar, cotton, tobacco, and coffee. The consequences were enormous and are still present. Entire societies