Slaves proved to be profitable on these plantations so Europeans kept going back to Africa for more. By the 1500's, five thousands slaves per year had been exported doubling to over 36,000 by the 1700's (Burnside 27). Eventually, this trade of slaves led into the Middle Passage.
The Middle Passage was triangular trade systems that started at the European ports, stopped in Africa to pick up human cargo, drop the human cargo off in the Americas, and return to Europe to repeat the cycle. .
The Africans would bring the captive slaves to the coasts where they conducted slave trade negotiations. Once on the coast, the European would scrutinize the health of the slaves "sometimes checking their sweat because it was believed that you could tell the state of one's health through his sweat. As soon as the examinations were done, the negotiations would begin. The captive slaves were thought of as commodity and were treated as such; it was best explained by a Frenchman as, "Slaves are priced the same way as all other goods, and hence one says so much gold's worth of slaves [. . .]- (Burnside 115). After all negotiations were complete, the slaves were taken on board the ship where they would endure suffering and pain to last a lifetime. .
On ships, such as the infamous Brooks, the slaves were packed like cargo. They were branded with hot iron, shackled together in pairs, and thrown at the bottom of the ship packed on top of each other leaving no room to twist, turn, or defecate. As a result, the environment for traveling thousand of miles was horrid. The air was always stale and damp, it was hot all the time, and dehydration was common because of the lack of water. Many slaves tried to commit suicide by starving him or herself or jumping overboard. The crew usually recovered those who jumped and starvation was not permitted. If a slave was caught not eating, the Europeans would lashed him until he decided to eat, or burn their lips with hot coal, or pure molten lead on their skin, or forced their jaws open and shoved food down their throat (Burnside 122).