Slavery is any system in which principles of property law are applied to people, allowing individuals to own, buy and sell other individuals, as a de jure form of property.
The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly from Africa to the Americas, and then their sale there. The slave trade used mainly the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage, and existed from the 16th to the 19th centuries.