The primary purpose of this map is to show the general direction of the principal sea routes of Arab European and American trade in African slaves up to 1873.   The selected destinations include slave debarkation and settlement areas, ports visited by African crewmen, locations of slaves taken on home leave to England and France by slaveholders and military officers, and points in England and Canada where slaves were taken following the American war for independence in 1783.

The overland routes in Africa supplied slaves to the northern, eastern, and western coasts.  Those slaves who came north out the Sahara Desert normally were shipped to Arab or Muslim areas across the Mediterranean Sea; those from the northeast to Asia via the Red Sea those from the East African coast to Asia and the Americas those from West Africa coast to Europe and the Americas via the Atlantic Ocean. Selected overland routes are indicated for the trade in Asia and the Americas.  Finally, a series of agreements culminating with the Treaty of 1873 legally abolished the East African trade; earlier agreements had abolished the trade elsewhere in Africa.

A number of Africans was among the convict labor Britain sent to Australia from England, the West Indies, Mauritius, and South Africa during the 19th century.  Africans also travelled and settled overseas as traders, missionaries, soldiers adventurers, refugees, etc. But these usually involved small, unsustained, temporary movements of people prior to 1873 are not included on this map.