The Congo region is one of the…

The Congo region is one of the principal sources of slaves for markets in Arabia, the Middle East, and the New World.

The trade has devastating effects on both Kongo and non-Kongo communities for almost four hundred years.

By the late seventeenth century, up to fifteen thousand  slaves a year were sent out of the lower Congo River area.

The European slave traders were usually the final link in a chain of African and Arab merchants who brought slaves down to coastal trading posts.

The slave trade in the eastern part of present-day Zaire is dominated by Arabs and continues until the late nineteenth century.

All European nations had abolished the trade by the mid-nineteenth century, and the end of the American Civil War in 1865 finally extinguished another main market.

Besides the obvious depopulation, the slave trade in the Congo area has caused many local rebellions and increased ethnic warfare.