Human toll

The neutrality of this section is disputed . Please see the discussion on the talk page . Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (November 2010) The transatlantic slave trade resulted in a vast and as yet still unknown loss of life for African captives both in and outside of America. Approximately 1.2 – 2.4 million Africans died during their transport to the New World [ 44 ] More died soon upon their arrival. The amount of life lost in the actual procurement of slaves remains a mystery but may equal or exceed the amount actually enslaved. [ 45 ] The savage nature of the trade, in which most of the enslaved people were prisoners from African wars, led to the destruction of individuals and cultures. The following figures do not include deaths of enslaved Africans as a result of their actual labor, slave revolts or diseases they caught while living among New World populations. A database compiled in the late 1990 s put the figure for the transatlantic slave trade at more than 11 million people. For a long time an accepted figure was 15 million, although this has in recent years been revised down. Most historians now agree that at least 12 million slaves left the continent between the 15 th and 19 th century, but 10 to 20 % died on board ships. Thus a figure of 11 million enslaved people transported to the Americas is the nearest demonstrable figure historians can produce. [ 44 ] Besides the slaves who died on the Middle Passage itself, even more slaves probably died in the slave raids in Africa. The death toll from slavery in the western hemisphere over the 370- year period of its existence must be reckoned at 10 million or so. Of these 10 million estimated dead blacks, possibly 6 million were killed by other blacks in tribal wars. [ 46 ] This is in addition to the unknown but comparable number of Africans removed from the continent through the Arab slave trade from the fifth through the twentieth centuries.