The phrase "middle passage" refers to the process of transporting slaves from the ports of west andrncentral Africa to the Americas. The encyclopaedia is organized entirely around this theme. Inevitably, the time-frame is chiefly the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries although some entries touch on earlier events: e.g. the Description of Africa by Leo Africanus, 1550, the Huguenot slave trader Jean Barbot, born 1655 and an article on Galley Slaves. Some entries jump forward in time: the famous Amistad case of 1839 gets a mention but, also, as a separate entry, the film Amistad of 1997; also included is the French film, The Middle Passage, 2000. However, the bulk of the book deals with the last century and a half of the Atlantic slave trade, ending in the mid-1800s.
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