The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade took place across the Atlantic Ocean from the 15th through 19th centuries. The vast majority of those who were enslaved and transported to the New World, mainly on the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage, were West Africans from the central and western parts of the continent who had been sold by other western Africans to western European slave traders, with a small minority being captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids, and brought to the Americas. The South Atlantic and Caribbean economic system centered on producing commodity crops, making goods and clothing to sell in Europe, and increasing the numbers of African slaves brought to the New World. This was crucial to those western European countries which, in