Yet it was the Atlantic slave trade, which between the 16th and the 19th centuries involved the forced migration of some 12 million Africans to the Americas, that forged an explicit link in European minds between racial inferiority, enslavement, and Africa. We will return to slavery and the slave trade in Chapter 4. The point to be noted here is that the modern idea of Africa emerged, in many ways, from the dehumanizing crucible of Atlantic slavery.
