slave trade
noun
: trafficking of enslaved people
especially, in U.S. history : the business or practice of capturing, transporting, selling, and buying enslaved African people for profit prior to the American Civil War
Example Sentences
Recent Examples on the Web Earlier this year, when Prince William and his wife, Catherine, visited Jamaica, they were met with protests over the legacy of colonialism and calls for reparations from Britain for its involvement in the slave trade. 
Miriam Berger, Washington Post, 8 Sep. 2022 June resolution apologizing for Boston’s role in the slave trade. Kate Selig, BostonGlobe.com, 10 Aug. 2022 Gatling's recovered his wealth by investing in the slave trade. Alex Raiman, EW.com, 5 Aug. 2022 Mickelwait told me that her title at Exodus Cry, Director of Abolition, was modelled on figures such as William Wilberforce, who led the British movement to abolish the slave trade in the nineteenth century. Sheelah Kolhatkar, The New Yorker, 13 June 2022 Could an individual state reject federal supremacy by reopening the slave trade once Congress had shut it down? James Oakes, The New York Review of Books, 12 May 2022 The ship was scuttled in the muddy Mobile River after illegally dropping off 110 West Africans on the Alabama coast in 1860, decades after Congress outlawed the international slave trade. Washington Post, 2 May 2022 The ship was scuttled in the muddy Mobile River after illegally dropping off 110 West Africans on the Alabama coast in 1860, decades after Congress outlawed the international slave trade. CBS News, 1 May 2022 Trails here are also steeped in mystery, as the island once served as a refuge for Indigenous groups who escaped the slave trade during Central America's colonial period. Julia Eskins, Travel + Leisure, 6 Jan. 2022 See More
Miriam Berger, Washington Post, 8 Sep. 2022 June resolution apologizing for Boston’s role in the slave trade. Kate Selig, BostonGlobe.com, 10 Aug. 2022 Gatling's recovered his wealth by investing in the slave trade. Alex Raiman, EW.com, 5 Aug. 2022 Mickelwait told me that her title at Exodus Cry, Director of Abolition, was modelled on figures such as William Wilberforce, who led the British movement to abolish the slave trade in the nineteenth century. Sheelah Kolhatkar, The New Yorker, 13 June 2022 Could an individual state reject federal supremacy by reopening the slave trade once Congress had shut it down? James Oakes, The New York Review of Books, 12 May 2022 The ship was scuttled in the muddy Mobile River after illegally dropping off 110 West Africans on the Alabama coast in 1860, decades after Congress outlawed the international slave trade. Washington Post, 2 May 2022 The ship was scuttled in the muddy Mobile River after illegally dropping off 110 West Africans on the Alabama coast in 1860, decades after Congress outlawed the international slave trade. CBS News, 1 May 2022 Trails here are also steeped in mystery, as the island once served as a refuge for Indigenous groups who escaped the slave trade during Central America's colonial period. Julia Eskins, Travel + Leisure, 6 Jan. 2022 See More Word History
First Known Use
1701, in the meaning defined above