网红头条

British slave traders operated on Bunce Island from about 1670 to 1807, exiling about 30,000 Africans to slavery in the West Indies and North America. While most of Bunce Island鈥檚 captives were taken to sugar plantations in the Caribbean Basin, a substantial minority went to Britain鈥檚 North American Colonies, and especially South Carolina and Georgia. Given the fact that only about 4% of the African captives transported during the period of the Atlantic slave trade went to North America, Bunce Island鈥檚 strong link to that region makes it unique among the West African slave castles.

Bunce Island鈥檚 commercial ties to North America resulted, as we shall see, in this particular castle and its personnel being linked to important economic, political, and military developments on that continent. Bunce Island figures in several significant ways in the history of the American Revolutionary War. And, later, after the war ended, the castle interacted intensively for twenty years with a community of freed slaves from North America established only 15 miles downriver. For these and other reasons, Bunce Island is arguably the most important historic site in Africa for the United States.