middle passage journey time

The Middle Passage — the Brutal Voyage Across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas

1520s–1850s

The Middle Passage was a route in the Triangular Trade System that started in Northwest Africa, crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and ended in the Americas. The Middle Passage is most well-known for its use in the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the terrible suffering it imposed on imprisoned Africans who were sold into slavery.

This illustration depicts captive Africans in the hold of the ship Gloria during a journey across the Middle Passage. Image Source: New York Public Library Digital Collections .

What was the Middle Passage?

The Middle Passage was part of the Triangular Trade System , which facilitated the movement of commodities — knives, guns, ammunition, cotton cloth, tools, and other manufactured goods — from Europe to Africa, transporting Africans to serve as laborers in the Americas and West Indies, and conveying various goods, primarily raw materials, generated on the plantations — sugar, rice, tobacco, indigo, rum, and cotton — back to Europe. 

Within the Triangular Trade System, the Middle Passage was the route that transported Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas and the West Indies, where they were sold into slavery, often to work on large tobacco and sugar plantations. It was also the middle route of the Transatlantic Slave Trade .

As part of the Mercantile System , the Middle Passage was an approved route English ships were allowed to use to transport goods and products. Africans were collected in Africa, carried across the ocean, and landed in various port cities in the Americas.

From about 1518 to the mid-19th century, hundreds of thousands of Africans — men, women, and children — were loaded onto ships and traveled across the Middle Passage on voyages lasting 3 weeks to 6 months, depending on the weather.

The conditions on the ships were horrible, as Africans were usually confined below deck in cramped quarters. Many were marked with brands and men were chained together. Many Africans died during the journey and many more suffered from illness or harsh treatment from the crewmembers.

The first Africans arrived in Jamestown on a ship in 1619 , where they became Indentured Servants. At that time, Indentured Servants accounted for a significant portion of the workforce in the English Colonies. Over time, plantation owners transitioned to enslavement, due to incentives provided by the Headright System and the fact they had complete control over slaves — including their children.

From 1619 to 1860, it is believed roughly 475,000 Africans were abducted and sent to North America, where they landed in a port and were auctioned off as slaves. It is believed that 18-20 percent of the slaves that crossed the Middle Passage died during the journey.

Facts About the Middle Passage

1. Some historians view the Transatlantic Slave Trade as the largest movement of people from one location to another in history, as somewhere between 10 and 15 million Africans were forcibly transported across the Middle Passage from the early 1500s to the latter half of the 19th Century.

2. It is estimated that as many as 2 million Africans died crossing the Middle Passage, and thousands more died after they arrived in the Americas, as they were transported to plantations.

3. The high death rate was due to cramped conditions, which allowed diseases like measles and smallpox to quickly spread. Unsanitary conditions led to contaminated drinking water, leading to dysentery, diarrhea, and dehydration. Many arrived at their destination covered in sores and suffering from fever.

4. Once Africans embarked on the Middle Passage, they were cut off Africans from their culture and history. This led to the establishment of unique cultures that paid tribute to their African heritage, while adapting to the harsh realities of plantation life, including the Gullah Culture in South Carolina and Georgia.

5. The Middle Passage usually took more than seven weeks, with the length of the voyage depending on the weather over the Atlantic Ocean. Over time, advances in technology reduced the travel time but did not improve the conditions Africans were subjected to.

6. Africans were placed below deck, with males and females separated. Males were placed toward the bow (front) and females toward the stern (back). Males were usually bound in chains and forced to lie on the floor, shoulder-to-shoulder. Females were typically unchained.

7. During the voyage across the Middle Passage, Africans were usually fed only once or twice a day. Some refused to eat, as a form of protest against their abduction. If they refused, they were often force-fed by their captors.

8. There were Middle Passage destination ports in all regions of the American Colonies. Sullivan’s Island in South Carolina holds the unfortunate distinction of being the port where the highest number of Africans entered the American Colonies.

9. Boston and Newport were the primary destinations for ships that sailed the Middle Passage to New England.

10. After arriving in the New World, some Africans escaped from their captors. They formed “Maroon Colonies” in remote regions of the American Colonies, including South Carolina and Florida.

11. The Middle Passage was the middle portion of the complex Transatlantic Trade System that started in Africa and ended in the Americas.

What was it like on the Middle Passage?

Olaudah Equiano, a writer and Abolitionist who was also known as Gustavus Vassa, was taken from his village in Nigeria when he was a boy. He crossed the Middle Passage to the Caribbean, where he was sold to an officer in the British Royal Navy. 

In his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano , he recalled the experience:

“When I looked ‘round the ship too and saw a large furnace of copper boiling, and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted of my fate and quite overpowered with sorrow and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and fainted…I asked if we were not to be eaten by those white men with horrible looks, red faces, and long hair?”

“The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocating us. This produced copious perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died, thus falling victims to the improvident avarice, as I may call it, of their purchasers. This wretched situation was again aggravated by the galling of the chains, now become insupportable; and the filth of the necessary tubs, into which the children often fell, and were almost suffocated. The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable.”

The “necessary tubs” Equiano refers to are buckets used as toilets.

Middle Passage Ports of Destination in the New England Colonies

New hampshire — portsmouth.

It is believed the presence of Africans in New Hampshire can be traced to 1645 when a “Mr. Williams” of Piscataqua bought a man from Guinea who was kidnapped from Africa. As the Transatlantic Slave Trade grew, Portsmouth became a major port of arrival for ships carrying captive Africans.

A historical marker in Portsmouth marks the African Burying Ground and says:

“Throughout the Colonial Era, New Hampshire’s affluent port town had the largest number of slaves in the colony, up to 4 percent of the population recorded in the census of 1767. By 1810, few if any people of African ancestry were still enslaved in Portsmouth.”

It is important to note that from its founding to 1741, New Hampshire was usually under the legal jurisdiction of Massachusetts .

Massachusetts — Boston and Salem

Boston and Salem were both destinations for ships crossing the Middle Passage, however, one of the earliest instances of involvement in the slave trade took place in 1637.

That year, the ship Desire sailed out of Salem, carrying Pequot People who were captured during the Pequot War . The ship sailed to the Caribbean, where the Pequots were sold into slavery to work on Sugar Plantations.

On the return trip, the Desire carried Africans, who were sold in Boston when the ship docked in February 1638.

Soon after, Massachusetts Bay Colony passed the Body of Liberties (1641), which legalized slavery for “captives taken in just wars” and “strangers as willingly sell themselves or are sold to us.”

Rhode Island — Newport, Bristol, and Providence

Following the Pequot War and King Philip’s War , many Native American Indians living in the area were taken as prisoners and many were transported to the Caribbean where they were sold as slaves.

Some of their land was claimed by Plymouth Colony as spoils of war and Plymouth sold it to a group that founded the town of Bristol. From 1700 to 1808, Newport, Bristol, and Providence became major destination ports for ships sailing the Middle Passage. 

The first known slave ship arrived in Newport in 1696. The Seaflower carried 47 captive Africans. In 1700, three ships left Newport and sailed to Africa where they purchased Africans and then sold them in Barbados.

One of the most well-known slave owners was James DeWolf of Bristol, Rhode Island. A merchant and politician, DeWolf and members of his family brought an estimated 12,000 enslaved Africans across the Middle Passage to Rhode Island.

Connecticut — New London and Middletown

In 1761, a schooner named Speedwell arrived in New London, Connecticut , carrying 74 captive Africans. Unfortunately, another 21 died on the journey. When the Speedwell left New London, it traveled to Middletown.

A historical marker in New London says:

“Although this is the only documented voyage of a ship arriving in New London directly from Africa with enslaved Africans, slave traders often sailed from New London to Africa and the West Indies to purchase enslaved Africans and sell them throughout the Americas…the sale of enslaved Africans is only one part of a larger story of how slavery drove New London’s eighteenth-century economy. The food, livestock and lumber that flowed through New London to the West Indies supported the sugar plantations where enslaved Africans toiled.”

Middle Passage Ports of Destination in the Middle Colonies

New york — new amsterdam and new york city.

The Province of New York was originally the Dutch colony of New Netherland. A group of settlers arrived in 1626 and founded New Amsterdam on the southern tip of Manhattan Island, which is the location of present-day New York City. That same year, 11 Africans arrived on a ship. They were from Congo, Angola, and the island of Sao Tome, and they worked in farming, construction, and the Fur Trade.

The city became a major destination for ships on the Middle Passage and it is estimated that by the 1630s roughly one-third of the city’s population were enslaved Africans. After the colony transferred to English control, the African population continued to rise.

A slave market was opened in 1711 along the bank of the East River, on Wall Street. It operated for more than 50 years, closing in 1762. However, the slave trade in New York City continued.

Oppression of the African population contributed to the New York Slave Revolt (1712) and the New York Slave Conspiracy (1741) .

New Jersey — Camden and Perth Amboy

The institution of slavery spread from New Amsterdam, across the Hudson River, into present-day New Jersey. In 1630, 50 Africans were enslaved on a farm, making them the first blacks in what became the Province of New Jersey. 

In 1664, the Lords Proprietors implemented the Headright System, offering land to anyone who paid to have slaves brought into the colony. The purpose was to increase the population and the workforce.

By 1760, there were at least three ports in Camden serving as destinations for ships sailing the Middle Passage. Perth Amboy was also a well-known port.

Pennsylvania — Philadelphia

Captive Africans arrived in the area as early as 1639, in present-day Philadelphia, which was part of New Sweden and later New Netherland. 

After New Netherland transitioned to English control, King Charles II granted the territory of present-day Pennsylvania to William Penn. 

The colony was initially a haven for Quakers, who opposed slavery. However, Penn and others still owned slaves and Philadelphia was a major port destination for the Middle Passage. The first ship carrying captive Africans arrived in 1684. That ship, the Isabella , carried around 150 captive Africans. It is believed to be the first shipment of slaves that arrived after Penn’s colony was established.

By 1688, the first anti-slavery protests were held when Dutch Quakers and German Mennonites living in Germantown issued a petition asking their slave-holding neighbors, who were also Quakers, to free their slaves and abolish the practice.

Delaware — Lewes and Wilmington

Delaware started as part of New Sweden. The first African in the territory was a man named Anthony , who arrived in New Sweden on the Fogel Grip in 1639. Known as “Black Anthony,” he was either kidnapped by the crew or stowed away on the ship, but he was delivered to Fort Christina. Nine years later, he was a free man, working as as special assistant to Governor Johan Printz.

After the colony was transferred to the English, it was known as the Lower Counties on the Delaware. By 1721, an estimated 500 enslaved Africans were living in the colony.

Lewes and Wilmington served as destinations for Middle Passage ships.

Middle Passage Ports of Destination in the Chesapeake Colonies

Maryland — annapolis.

The first colonists from Europe who arrived in Maryland brought enslaved Africans with them. Maryland charged lower taxes on imported slaves, making ports in the colony attractive destinations for ships on the Middle Passage.

It is believed the first slave ship arrived in Annapolis on September 29, 1757, carrying 90 captive Africans. 10 years later, another slave ship arrived. Its story is told on a historic marker at the port of Annapolis that says:

“Most notable is the arrival of the Lord Ligonier , a British ship constructed in New England and captained by Thomas Davis, that embarked from Senegambia and the Guinea Coast with 140 captive Africans. A total of 96 captive Africans survived and were delivered to Annapolis in 1767. On this ship was the ancestor of the late Alex Haley, known to the world as “Kunta Kinte.” 

His journey and his life as a person held in bondage are chronicled in Haley’s award-winning novel and mini-series, Roots.

Captive Africans like Kunta Kinte were sold into chattel slavery for a lifetime but continued to seek physical and spiritual liberty for themselves and their families.”

Additional ports in Maryland served as destinations for Middle Passage ships, including Leonardtown, London Towne, Oxford, Port Tobacco, Selby’s Landing, and Sotterly.

Virginia — Jamestown

In 1619, the first documented Africans in the American Colonies arrived near Jamestown, Virginia on a ship called the White Lion . It was an English ship, sailing as a privateer for the Dutch, and took the Africans from a Portuguese ship. The ship docked at Point Comfort and traded the Africans for food. This incident is largely seen as the beginning of America’s involvement in the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

That same year, the Virginia Company devised and implemented the Headright System , which encouraged landowners to bring colonists into Virginia. Following Bacon’s Rebellion , the wealthy planters shifted from indentured servitude to enslavement. In doing so, they reaped the benefits of the Headright System and retained control of the workforce.

Virginia’s economy was largely based on tobacco farming and required a large workforce. By the start of the 18th Century, slaves accounted for a large portion of the population.

Along with Jamestown, Middle Passage destinations included Point Comfort, Yorktown, Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Leedstown.

Only South Carolina imported more captive Africans than Virginia. Following the abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Virginia was a leader in the Domestic Slave Trade.

Middle Passage Ports of Destination in the Southern Colonies

North Carolina and South Carolina were originally one colony — Carolina — which was founded by the Lords Proprietors of Carolina. Four of the Lords Proprietors were members of the Royal African Company, a slave trading company, and then encouraged the importation of African slaves.

In 1712, Carolina was divided into two regions. South Carolina became a Royal Colony in 1719, followed by North Carolina in 1729.

North Carolina — Wilmington

The primary Middle Passage port in North Carolina was Wilmington, however, other Middle Passage destinations in North Carolina were Roanoke, New Bern, Brunswick, and Beaufort.

South Carolina — Sullivan’s Island

Sullivan’s Island sits at the mouth of Charleston Harbor, not far from Charleston, South Carolina. It holds the unfortunate distinction of being the most popular entry point for captive Africans in America. It is estimated that 260,000 Africans were transported across the Middle Passage to Sullivan’s Island.

Upon their arrival, any Africans who were sick were placed in “Pest Houses,” which were small houses, usually 30 feet long and 10 feet wide. They would stay there until they were deemed healthy enough to be sent to the slave auction in Charleston.

A historical marker on Sullivan’s Island says:

“…this historical marker acknowledges Sullivan’s Island as the arrival point for tens of thousands of Africans torn from their homes in West Africa and sold into slavery between 1700 and 1775. About 40 percent of African-Americans alive today can trace their ancestral roots to West Africa through the Sullivan’s Island/Charleston gateway.”

Georgia — Savannah

Georgia was founded in 1733 to be a buffer region between South Carolina and Spanish Florida. At the start, slavery was illegal, however, land owners still had slaves and the practice was legalized in 1751. At that point, Savannah became a major destination port for the Middle Passage. Captive Africans were often held on Tybee Island before they were transported to Savannah to be sold at slave auctions.

Legacy of the Middle Passage

There are several ongoing projects working to document the Middle Passage.

The Middle Passage Project

The Middle Passage Project is working to install markers that accurately commemorate the arrival and lives of Africans who were forced to cross the Middle Passage. The project intends to remember the contributions of those Africans and their ancestors. It is part of a national effort to research and identify the 48 ports that were destinations for ships sailing the Middle Passage as part of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

The Slave Voyages Consortium

The Slave Voyages Consortium offers a collaborative website that compiles and makes publicly accessible records of the largest slave trades in history . Users can search records to learn about the broad origins and forced relocations of more than 12 million African people who were sent across the Atlantic in slave ships, and hundreds of thousands more who were trafficked within the Americas.

Middle Passage APUSH Notes and Study Guide

Use the following links and videos to study the Colonial Era, the New England Colonies , the Middle Colonies , and the Southern Colonies for the AP US History Exam. Also, be sure to look at our Guide to the AP US History Exam .

Middle Passage APUSH Definition

The Middle Passage was a frightening and dehumanizing voyage that was part of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Triangular Trade System. It referred to the perilous journey that African captives endured, crossing over the Atlantic Ocean from West Africa to the Americas. Packed tightly in the cargo holds of slave ships, Africans suffered extreme hardships, including overcrowding, disease, and cruelty. The Middle Passage played a crucial role in supplying enslaved labor to American Colonial economies, leaving a tragic legacy of exploitation and suffering.

Middle Passage Video for APUSH Notes

This video from Heimler’s History discusses the Transatlantic Slave Trade, including the Middle Passage.

• Written by Randal Rust

What Is the Middle Passage?

The History of the Trade of Enslaved People Across the Atlantic

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The “Middle Passage” refers to the horrific journey of enslaved Africans from their home continent to the Americas during the period of this transatlantic trade . Historians believe 15% of all Africans loaded onto these ships did not survive the Middle Passage—most died of illness due to the inhumane, unsanitary conditions in which they were transported. 

Key Takeaways: The Middle Passage

• The Middle Passage was the second leg of the triangular trade of enslaved people that went from Europe to Africa, Africa to the Americas, and then back to Europe. Millions of Africans were packed tightly onto ships bound for the Americas.
• Roughly 15% of enslaved people didn't survive the Middle Passage. Their bodies were thrown overboard.
• The most concentrated period of the triangular trade was between 1700 and 1808, when around two-thirds of the total number of enslaved people embarked on the Middle Passage.

Broad Overview of the Middle Passage

Between the 16th and 19th centuries, 12.4 million Africans were enslaved by Europeans and transported to various countries in the Americas. The Middle Passage was the middle stop of the "triangular trade": European ships would first sail to the western coast of Africa to trade a variety of goods for people who had been captured in war, kidnapped, or sentenced to enslavement as punishment for a crime; they would then transport enslaved people to the Americas and sell them in order to purchase sugar, rum, and other products; the third leg of the journey was back to Europe.

Some historians believe that an additional 15% of the 12.4 million died before even boarding these ships, as they were marched in chains from the point of capture to the western coasts of Africa. Approximately 1.8 million enslaved Africans, never made it to their destination in the Americas, mostly because of the unsanitary conditions in which they were housed during the months-long journey.

Around 40% of the total enslaved population went to Brazil, with 35% going to non-Spanish colonies, and 20% going directly to Spanish colonies. Less than 5%, around 400,000 enslaved people, went directly to North America; most U.S. captives passed first through the Caribbean. All the European powers—Portugal, Spain, England, France, the Netherlands, and even Germany, Sweden and Denmark—participated in the trade. Portugal was the largest transporter of all, but Britain was dominant in the 18th century.

The most concentrated period of the triangular trade was between 1700 and 1808, when around two-thirds of the total number of enslaved people were transported to the Americas. Over 40% were transported in British and American ships from six regions : Senegambia, Sierra Leone/the Windward Coast, the Gold Coast, the Bight of Benin, the Bight of Biafra, and West Central Africa (Kongo, Angola). These enslaved Africans were taken primarily to British Caribbean colonies where over 70% of them were purchased (over half in Jamaica), but some also went to the Spanish and French Caribbean.

The Transatlantic Journey

Each ship carried several hundred people, about 15% of whom died during the journey. Their bodies were thrown overboard and often eaten by sharks. Captives were fed twice a day and expected to exercise, often forced to dance while in shackles (and usually shackled to another person), in order to arrive in good condition for sale. They were kept in the hold of the ship for 16 hours a day and brought above deck for 8 hours, weather permitting. Doctors checked their health regularly to make sure they could command high prices once they were sold on the auction blocks in the Americas.

Conditions onboard were also bad for the poorly paid crew members, most of whom were working to pay off debts. Although they inflicted violence upon enslaved people, they in turn were treated cruelly by the captains and subject to whipping. The crew was tasked with cooking, cleaning, and guarding them, including preventing them from jumping overboard. They, like the captives, were subject to dysentery, the leading cause of death on these ships, but they were also exposed to new diseases in Africa, like malaria and yellow fever. The mortality rate among sailors during some periods of this trade was even higher than that of captives, over 21%.

Resistance by Enslaved People

There is evidence that up to 10% of these ships experienced violent resistance or insurrections by enslaved people. Many committed suicide by jumping overboard and others went on hunger strikes. Those who rebelled were punished cruelly, subjected to forced eating or whipped publicly (to set an example for others) with a "cat-o'-nine-tails (a whip of nine knotted cords attached to a handle)". The captain had to be careful about using excessive violence, however, as it had the potential to provoke larger insurrections or more suicides, and because merchants in the Americas wanted them to arrive in good condition.

Impact and End of the Middle Passage

Enslaved people came from many different ethnic groups and spoke diverse languages. However, once they were shackled together on the ships and arrived in the American ports, they were given English (or Spanish or French) names. Their distinct ethnic identities (Igbo, Kongo, Wolof, Dahomey) were erased, as they were transformed into simply "Black" or "enslaved" people.

In the late 18th century, British abolitionists began inspecting the ships and publicizing details of the Middle Passage in order to alert the public to the horrific conditions aboard and gain support for their cause. In 1807 both Britain and the U.S. outlawed the trade of enslaved people (but not enslavement itself), but Africans continued to be imported to Brazil until that country outlawed the trade in 1831 and the Spanish continued importing African captives to Cuba until 1867.

The Middle Passage has been referenced and reimagined in dozens of works of African American literature and film , most recently in 2018 in the third highest-grossing movie of all time, Black Panther .

• Rediker, Marcus.  The Slave Ship: A Human History . New York: Penguin Books, 2007.
• Miller, Joseph C. "The Transatlantic Slave Trade."  Encyclopedia Virginia . Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, 2018, https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Transatlantic_Slave_Trade_The
• Wolfe, Brendan. "Slave Ships and the Middle Passage."  Encyclopedia Virginia . Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, 2018, https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/slave_ships_and_the_middle_passage
• The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
• Images of Enslavement and the Slave Trade
• What Was the Triangle Trade?
• How Many Enslaved People Were Taken from Africa?
• A Short History of the African Slave Trade
• African Traders of Enslaved People
• The Transatlantic Slave Trade: 5 Facts About Enslavement in the Americas
• Origins of the Trans-Atlantic Trade of Enslaved People
• Five Common Stereotypes About Africa
• The Role of Islam in Slavery in Africa
• Events and Legacy of the Amistad Case of 1840
• Timeline of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
• International Trade of Enslaved People Outlawed
• Profile of Prince Henry the Navigator
• The Untold History of Native American Enslavement
• A Brief History of the Age of Exploration

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The middle passage.

Boston's "Cradle of Liberty," Faneuil Hall , stands only steps away from sites where merchants sold enslaved Africans whom they had trafficked across the Middle Passage from West Africa to North America. While frequently recognized as a place of debate and protest during the American Revolution and subsequent social revolutions, this building also serves as a reminder of the wealth amassed by the port city of Boston from the Transatlantic trade, which included the selling of enslaved Africans.

From the 1500s to the 1800s, merchants transported approximately 12 million Africans across the Atlantic as human property. The most common routes formed what is now known as the "Triangle Trade," connecting Europe, Africa, and the Americas. From 1560 to 1850, about 4.8 million enslaved people were transported to Brazil; 4.7 million were sent to the Caribbean; and at least 388,000, or 4% of those who survived the Middle Passage, arrived in North America. Between 1700 and 1808, the most active years of the international slave trade, merchants transported around 40% of enslaved Africans in British and American ships.

The Middle Passage itself lasted roughly 80 days on ships ranging from small schooners to massive, purpose-built "slave ships." Ship crews packed humans together on or below decks without space to sit up or move around. Without ventilation or sufficient water, about 15% grew sick and died. Ottobah Cugoano, a survivor of the voyage, called it "the brutish, base, but fashionable way of traffic" (Gates and Anderson 1998: 369). In addition to the physical violations enslaved people suffered, they were ripped away from their families, homelands, social positions, and languages.

Voices of the Middle Passage

Many individuals who experienced the Middle Passage or participated in the Transatlantic Slave Trade have documented its horrors. Read the words of some of these individuals through the dropdowns below.

Belinda Sutton

Belinda Sutton submitted a petition to the Massachusetts General Court in 1783 to argue her right to a pension from the estate of her enslaver Isaac Royall Jr. This petition provides an account of her experience being forcibly removed from her homeland and brought to the colonies.

But her affrighted imagination, in its most alarming extension, never represented distresses equal to what she hath since really experienced – for before she had Twelve years enjoyed the fragrance of her native groves, and e’er she realized, that Europeans placed their happiness in the yellow dust which she carelessly marked with her infant footsteps – even when she, in a sacred grove, with each hand in that of a tender Parent, was paying her devotions to the great Orisa who made all things – an armed band of white men, driving many of her Countrymen in Chains, ran into the hallowed shade! – could the Tears, the sighs and supplications, bursting from Tortured Parental affection, have blunted the keen edge of Avarice, she might have been rescued from Agony, which many of her Country's Children have felt, but which none hath ever described, — in vain she lifted her supplicating voice to an insulted father, and her guiltless hands to a dishonoured Deity!  She was ravished from the bosom of her Country, from the arms of her friends – while the advanced age of her Parents, rendering them unfit for servitude, cruelly separated her from them forever! Scenes which her imagination had never conceived of – a floating World – the sportingMonsters of the deep – and the familiar meetings of Billows and clouds, strove, but in vain to divert her melancholly attention, from three hundred Affricans in chains, suffering the most excruciating torments; and some of them rejoicing, that the pangs of death came like a balm to their wounds. Once more her eyes were blest with a Continent – but alas! how unlike the Land where she received her being!  here all things appeared unpropitious – she learned to catch the Ideas, marked by the sounds of language only to know that her doom was Slavery, from which death alone was to emancipate her... i  

To learn more about Belinda Sutton, please visit the Royall House & Slave Quarters webpage on Belinda Sutton and Her Pensions .

i. "Petition of Belinda." Massachusetts Anti-Slavery and Anti-Segregation Petitions; Massachusetts Archives Collection. v.239-Revolution Resolves, 1783. SC1/series 45X. Massachusetts Archives. Boston, Mass. https://nrs.lib.harvard.edu/urn-3:fhcl:13906083 .

Olaudah Equiano

In his personal narrative, Olaudah Equiano recounts his kidnapping, enslavement, and life in freedom. Equiano dedicated his life to advocating against slavery and published this narrative to help illustrate the horrors of this system.

The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast was the sea, and a slave ship, which was then riding at anchor, and waiting for its cargo. These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted into terror, which I am yet at a loss to describe, nor the feelings of my mind. When I was carried on board I was immediately handled, and tossed up, to see if I were sound, by some of the crew, and I was now persuaded that I had got into a world of bad spirits, and that they were going to kill me…When I looked round the ship too, and saw a … a multitude of black people of every description chained together, everyone of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted of my fate, and, quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and fainted. i ... The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. This produced copious perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died, thus falling victims to the improvident avarice, as I may call it, of their purchasers. This wretched situation was again aggravated by the galling of the chains, now become insupportable; and the filth of the necessary tubs, into which the children often fell, and were almost suffocated. The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable. ii

i. Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa,  The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself Vol 1 (London: Author, 1789), 70.

ii. Olaudah Equiano,  The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano , 79.

Alexander Falconbridge

Dr. Alexander Falconbridge served as surgeon aboard a number of slave ships in the late 1700s. He later became active in anti-slavery work. The following is excerpted from his book,  An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa :

...The hardships and inconveniences suffered by the Negroes during the passage are scarcely to be enumerated or conceived….But the exclusion of fresh air is among the most intolerable… the Negroes' rooms soon grow intolerable hot. The confined air, rendered noxious by the effluvia exhaled from their bodies and being repeatedly breathed, soon produces fevers and fluxes which generally carries off great numbers of them… During the voyages I made, I was frequently witness to the fatal effects of this exclusion of fresh air… The deck, that is the floor of their rooms, was so covered with the blood and mucus which had proceeded from them in consequence of the flux, that it resembled a slaughter-house. It is not in the power of the human imagination to picture a situation more dreadful or disgusting… i

i. Alexander Falconbridge, An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa (London: J. Phillips, George Yard, Lombard-Street, 1788), 24. GoogleBooks .

Austin Bearse

In his book,  Reminiscences of Fugitive-Slave Law Days in Boston,  sailor and abolitionist Austin Bearse recounts his time shipping enslaved Africans in the southern states. Though not referring specifically to the Middle Passage across the Atlantic Ocean, Bearse's account gives further insight into New England's complicity with slavery and the slave trade and the horrors experienced by its victims.

Between the years of 1818 and 1830, I was from time to time mate on board of different vessels engaged in the coasting trade on the coast of South Carolina. It is well known that many New England vessels are in the habit of spending their winters on the Southern coast, in pursuit of this business –for vessels used to run up the rivers for the rice and cotton of the plantations, which we took to Charleston. We often carried gangs of slaves to the plantations as they had been ordered. These slaves were generally collected by slave-traders in Charleston, brought there by various causes, such as the death of owners and the division of estates, which threw them into the market. Some were sent as punishment for insubordination, or because the domestic establishment was too large; or because persons moving to the North and West preferred selling their slaves to the trouble of carrying them. We had on board our vessels, from time to time, numbers of these slaves –sometimes two or three, and sometimes as high as seventy or eighty. They were separated from their families and connections with as little concern as calves and pigs are selected out of a lot of domestic animals…We used to allow the relatives and friends of the slaves to come on board and stay all night with their friends, before the vessel sailed. In the morning it used to be my business to pull off the hatches and warn them that it was time to separate, and the shrieks and cries at these times were enough to make anybody's heart ache. i

After this experience, Austin Bearse decided that, "Because I no longer think it right to see these things in silence, I trade no more south of Mason and Dixon's line." ii He later became an active and leading member of Boston's abolitionist community.

i. Austin Bearse,  Reminisces of the Fugitive Slave Law Days  (Warren Richardson, 1880), 9,  Archive.org .

ii. Austin Bearse,  Reminisces of the Fugitive Slave Law Days , 9.

George Henry Moore

The following is excerpted from George Henry Moore's 1866  Notes on the History of Slavery in Massachusetts . Though not a first-hand account, Moore's research and writings shed light into one of the Boston's darkest episodes early in the slave trade in the mid 1600s.

…at the very birth of the foreign commerce of New England the African slave trade became a regular business. The ships which took cargoes of staves and fish to Madeira and the Canaries were accustomed to touch on the coast of Guinea to trade for negroes, who were carried generally to Barbadoes or the other English Islands in the West Indies, the demand for them at home being small. In the case referred to, instead of buying negroes in the regular course of traffic, which, under the fundamental law of Massachusetts already quoted, would have been perfectly legal, the crew of a Boston ship joined with some London vessels on the coast, and, on pretence of some quarrel with the natives, landed a "murderer" –the expressive name of a small piece of cannon –attacked a negro village on Sunday, killed many of the inhabitants, and made a few prisoners, two of who fell to the share of the Boston Ship. i

i. George Henry Moore, Notes on the History of Slavery in Massachusetts (Massachusetts: D. Appleton & Company, 1866), 29.

Boston's Role in the Middle Passage

As a major port city, Boston played a role in this global economic story. The first slave trade voyage from the American colonies sailed out of Massachusetts. The ship Desire left Salem in 1637, carrying Native American captives from the Pequot War to be sold as slaves in the Caribbean. When it returned up the coast with the first known Africans imported into the northern English colonies, it most likely anchored in Boston. After this documented case of enslavement, Massachusetts legalized the enslavement of Africans, Native Americans, and mixed-race people in the colony's Body of Liberties . Thus began the legal justification for slavery in the Massachusetts colony.

It is estimated that 166 transatlantic voyages embarked out of Boston. Local newspapers carried over 1,000 ads for the sale of enslaved people during the 1700s, which took place everywhere from ships to markets, warehouses, coffee houses, and homes.

Boston Gazette, June 22, 1761

Boston was further complicit in the Triangle Trade as a major exporter of rum, likely made from sugar produced in the Caribbean and sometimes sold in exchange for enslaved Africans. Ironically, commodities such as sugar and molasses drove colonial Bostonians to revolution: leaders likened taxation on these goods to slavery even as the trade continued to prop up slavery itself.

As one of the wealthiest and most well-connected Boston merchants, Peter Faneuil played an integral role in this empire of goods, wealth, and enslavement. Ledgers, letters, custom records, and other primary sources reveal his involvement in trading goods consumed and produced by enslaved labor including sugar, molasses, indigo, and grain. Peter Faneuil financed in part at least two slaving voyages, and several suspected slaving voyages, as well as enslaved men and women in his home. Though Faneuil cannot be characterized as a major slave trader, he built his financial empire on this complex trading system that relied on the institution of slavery.

The Legacy of the Middle Passage

Despite vast cultural and linguistic diversity, enslaved Africans in the colonies transformed shared elements of their cultures into the creolized societies of the African diaspora. Widespread southern and Caribbean food traditions, music, and religious rituals in the colonies have been traced back to African roots. In Boston, the enslaved community composed of descendants of the first Africans from the West Indies, supplemented by trafficked Africans.

In the years leading up to the American Revolution, enslaved people called for their own freedom as Boston's leaders spoke about liberty from the Crown. In the 1770s, enslaved individuals petitioned the General Court of Massachusetts for their freedom and for an end to slavery; however, their efforts failed. After the Revolution, northern states confronted the hypocrisy of fighting a war for freedom while holding thousands of men, women, and children in bondage. In 1783, the Massachusetts Supreme Court decided that slavery was incompatible with the new state constitution. In 1808, Britain and the United States agreed to ban the transatlantic slave trade.

Slavery itself flourished in the United States until the American Civil War, becoming the defining issue of national political life. Slavery in the South and second-class citizenship in the North became legacies of a history that began with the Middle Passage. As trailblazing Bostonian Maria Stewart wrote in 1833:

"The unfriendly whites...stole our fathers from their peaceful and quiet dwellings, and brought them hither...now that we have enriched their soil, and filled their coffers, they say that we are not capable of becoming like white men, and that we never can rise to respectability in this country. They would drive us to a strange land. But before I go, the bayonet shall pierce me through."

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Boston African American National Historic Site

Last updated: February 22, 2023

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History Resources

The Middle Passage, 1749

A spotlight on a primary source by robert livingston.

The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocating us. This produced copious perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died, thus falling victims to the improvident avarice, as I may call it, of their purchasers. This wretched situation was again aggravated by the galling of the chains, now become insupportable; and the filth of the necessary tubs [large buckets for human waste], into which the children often fell, and were almost suffocated. The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable.

On July 29, Robert Livingston reported to Petrus Dewitt on several business dealings—including the loss incurred on the Rhode Island . Livingston’s callous description demonstrates the slave-trade investor’s emphasis on the financial loss rather than the human cost:

We have thank God had the good fortune of haveing one of our Guinea Sloops come in, tho after along passage of 79 days in which time they buryed 37 Slaves & Since 3 more & 2 more likely to die which is an accident not to be helped, and which if had not happend we Should have made a Golden Voyage but as it is there will not be much left I fear, unless the other Sloop meets with better Luck

A full transcript is available.

Questions for discussion.

• Study the image of the deck of a slave ship. How and why would abolitionists use this illustration to rally opponents of the slave trade?
• Study the image of the deck of a slave ship. How might those involved in the slave trade use this image to attract investors?
• Describe the conditions reported in The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano that were responsible for the loss of life on board slave ships.
• Why did Captain James keep detailed records about the loss of lives on the sloop Rhode Island ?

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Encyclopedia Virginia, Virginia Humanities

The Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Middle Passage

The transatlantic slave trade involved the purchase by Europeans of enslaved men, women, and children from Africa and their transportation to the Americas, where they were sold for profit. Between 1517 and 1867, about 12.5 million Africans began the Middle Passage across the Atlantic, enduring cruel treatment, disease, and paralyzing fear aboard slave ships . Of those, about 10.7 million survived, with about 40 percent of them going to work on sugarcane plantations in Brazil. Most others labored in the Caribbean, while about 3.5 percent ended up in British North America and the United States. In total, an estimated 388,000 Africans landed alive in North America and about 140,000 of these came to the Chesapeake Bay region. Most enslaved people reaching the Chesapeake Bay region before the 1670s were purchased from the English West Indies. The Royal African Company then brought about 7,000 Africans directly to Virginia between 1670 and 1698. The number of enslaved Africans imported to the colony rose steeply after 1698, when the Royal African Company lost its monopoly. The number of enslaved Africans imported into the Chesapeake Bay region peaked in the decade between 1721–1730, when 13,000 men, women, and children arrived, although it continued at robust levels until around 1780. The abolitionist movement, which began in Great Britain, helped end the British trade to the United States. The United States outlawed the importation of enslaved people through the transatlantic trade beginning in 1808. Virginia planters supported these bans, which due to a surplus of enslaved laborers positioned them as suppliers in a new, domestic slave trade .

The transatlantic slave trade was the purchase, transportation, and sale of enslaved people from Africa. These Africans were purchased by Europeans and sold in the Americas for a profit. Between 1517 and 1867, about 12.5 million Africans were forced onto the Middle Passage. On the slave ships , they suffered cruel treatment, disease, and fear. About 10.7 million survived the voyage. They were sold to work in North and South America. Most enslaved Africans ended up in the Caribbean and South America. But the number in the Virginia colony increased over time. The abolitionist movement helped end the British trade to the United States. The United States outlawed the transatlantic slave trade in 1808. By then, Virginia planters had many enslaved laborers. They could continue a profitable trade within the United States .

In This Entry

• Further Reading

Contributor:  Joseph C. Miller

Origins of the Transatlantic Slave Trade

Some tribes and nations in Africa experienced conflict. This led to many Africans being vulnerable to capture. Another nation in Europe, Spain, united with Portugal. The two nations began working together to buy and trade many different resources.  They also worked together to buy and sell enslaved people. They transported captives to different islands and other slave plantations. In 1619, two English ships—the  White Lion  and the  Treasurer —attacked a Portuguese ship. They robbed its cargo of about fifty enslaved Africans. A few months later, the  White Lion  arrived in Virginia. It was carrying the  “20. and odd”  survivors—the  first Africans  in the new colony.

By the 1620s Portugal had many large sugar plantations in Brazil. These plantations required many enslaved laborers. The work growing sugar cane was intense.

The Dutch took control of these sugar Plantations from 1630 until 1654. The Dutch were eventually driven out. They turned to bringing captured Africans to the English sugar plantations in Barbados and Jamaica.

The Middle Passage

The trade developed between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. It was sometimes called the “triangular trade.” On the first leg, goods from Europe were transported for trade in Africa. These goods included wine, metals such as iron and copper, and cheap muskets. The highest demand, however, was for cloth.

Inhumanity and Horrors of the Middle Passage

More than half of the enslaved Africans who landed in North America came through Charleston, South Carolina. Many came through Charleston after 1800 as cotton production became profitable. About 130,000 men, women, and children landed in the Chesapeake Bay region. Virginia planters purchased them to work in  tobacco fields .

Virginia and the Transatlantic Slave Trade

In 1673, adult enslaved people were sold to Virginia planters for low prices. Most enslaved Africans were sold to the  richest Virginians . The planters paid in tobacco. They also claimed headrights, or land grants, of fifty acres on each enslaved person. (The headright system, gave land to anyone who paid the cost of transporting an  indentured servant  to the colony. It was extended to cover enslaved laborers. Headrights for enslaved people were ended in 1699.)

The number of enslaved Africans in Virginia rose to 13,000 by 1730. The population of enslaved people no longer depended on the transatlantic slave trade. If an enslaved woman gave birth to a child, that child would be considered enslaved as well. This would make the transatlantic slave trade much less important to Virginia and the other English colonies.

End of the Transatlantic Slave Trade

In the United States, plantation owners made huge profits from owning enslaved people. These enslavers rarely found slavery to conflict with their Revolutionary ideas of liberty and equality.  Thomas Jefferson criticized Britain’s practice of selling enslaved people to colonists at high prices.

Congress passed an “Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves,” on January 1, 1808. Rich Virginia planters supported the ban on importing slaves. But this was not because they opposed slavery. Many of them had transitioned from growing tobacco to producing things that were easier to grow. Their numbers of enslaved Africans had been increasing naturally. The invention of the cotton gin and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution created a cotton boom in the southern states. Virginia enslavers were able to be the suppliers of the enslaved labor needed to grow cotton. Planters from Georgia to Texas would be forced to purchase enslaved people from Virginia. Between 1790 and 1860, more than 1 million enslaved men, women, and children were transported from the Upper South to the Deep South.

The transatlantic slave trade involved the purchase, transportation, and sale of enslaved men, women, and children from Africa. These Africans were purchased by Europeans and transported to the Americas where they were sold for profit. Between 1517 and 1867, about 12.5 million Africans began the Middle Passage across the Atlantic. They endured cruel treatment, disease, and paralyzing fear aboard  slave ships . Of those, about 10.7 million survived, with about 40 percent of them going to work on sugarcane plantations in Brazil. Most others labored in the Caribbean, while about 3.5 percent ended up in British North America and the United States. In total, an estimated 388,000 Africans landed alive in North America. About 140,000 of these came to the Chesapeake Bay region. Most enslaved people reaching the Chesapeake Bay region before the 1670s were purchased from the English West Indies. The Royal African Company then brought about 7,000 Africans directly to Virginia between 1670 and 1698. The number of enslaved Africans imported to the colony rose steeply after 1698, when the Royal African Company lost its monopoly. The trade continued at robust levels until around 1780. The abolitionist movement, which began in Great Britain, helped end the British trade to the United States. The United States outlawed the importation of enslaved people through the transatlantic trade beginning in 1808. Virginia planters supported these bans, which, due to a surplus of enslaved laborers, positioned them as suppliers in a new,  domestic slave trade .

Portuguese mariners began patrolling the west coast of Africa in the fifteenth century, primarily in search of gold. In the process, they encountered and either purchased or captured small numbers of Africans. The first shipload of 235 captives landed in Lagos, Portugal, in 1444. After the 1470s, gold from the Akan area (modern-day Ghana) financed a second, larger stage of Atlantic slaving. The Portuguese purchased captives from the Benin area just east of the Niger River delta and sold them to labor in the gold mines of the Akan area. The Portuguese left other enslaved Africans on the small islands of the eastern Atlantic. The Portuguese and Spaniards held these islands for strategic reasons. They paid the costs of military occupation by putting Africans to work turning small farms into large sugar plantations. In this way, gold supported slaving and enslaved people produced sugar. In turn, this supported increased commercial investments in the Atlantic world.

Shortly after 1500, the Portuguese transferred the plantation model to the island of São Tomé off the coast of what is now Gabon. São Tomé had good rains and rich volcanic soil ideal for growing sugar. By the mid-sixteenth century the island’s residents had invested heavily in enslaved labor. São Tomé would be the world’s leading producer of raw sugar.

From Local to Transatlantic Trade

The first large wave of captured Africans swept across the Atlantic in the 1590s. Prior to then, the trade in captives had been relatively small. African authorities strongly preferred to sell commodities such as gold, ivory, and other natural resources. At the time, conflicts between African peoples did not result in much violence or produce many captives. An exception to this involved Saharan traders. Beginning in the tenth century, they introduced horses to sell for gold from the region next to the desert. The Africans who bought these horses deployed them to wage wars of a much greater intensity. As conflicts grew, the demand for horses exceeded the supply of gold to pay for them. The horses were used to capture Africans to sell as enslaved laborers to buy more horses. These captives were destined for markets in North Africa, but along the way the desert traders diverted some of their human cargo to Portuguese buyers.

At the same time, the death of King Henry of Portugal in 1580 led to a union with Spain. The Portuguese in West Africa became Spanish subjects with the authority to trade in American markets. By this time, the chaos in Kongo had produced thousands of refugees who were easily captured for transport to the Spanish Indies. The cost of buying these vulnerable Africans was low. European investors were able make a profit selling these captives in America for Spanish silver.

Dutch and English privateers, neither of them friends of Spain or Portugal, preyed on the ships transporting these captive Africans. In 1619, two of them—the  White Lion  and the  Treasurer —attacked the Portuguese ship  São João Bautista . They robbed it of its cargo of about fifty enslaved Africans. A few months later, the  White Lion  arrived in Virginia carrying the  “20. and odd”  survivors—the  first Africans  in the new colony. 

The trade remained relatively small until a series of unrelated events converged in the area south of the Kingdom of Kongo (present-day northern Angola). This transformed the early stream of captives for sale in the Old World into a flood of enslaved people destined for the Americas. In 1575, the Portuguese sent a military expedition to a bay near the mouth of the Kwanza River. Their intention had been to seize what they incorrectly believed to be mountains of silver in the interior. They arrived during a prolonged drought, which had caused many African communities to scatter in search of food. Some younger men survived by forming armed gangs to prey on the few communities still with crops. Some of these bandits joined the Portuguese in attacking the area around the lower Kwanza River.

By the 1620s Portugal had established large sugar plantations in Brazil. Portugal had claimed Brazil in 1500, replacing São Tomé as the world’s largest producer of sugar. These plantations required enslaved labor on a large scale to do the back-breaking work of cultivating sugar cane. However, enslaved Africans for sale in the Spanish port cities were far too expensive. Instead, the Brazilian Portuguese bought enslaved Africans from ship captains stopping along their course to the Caribbean. They also organized their own slaving ventures in West Africa.

Portuguese sugar production was interrupted when the Dutch seized northeast Brazil’s plantations from 1630 until 1654. When they were eventually expelled, the Dutch turned to supplying captive Africans to the early English sugar plantations in Barbados and Jamaica.

The so-called triangular trade that subsequently developed between Europe, Africa, and the Americas was in fact a complex series of separate trades. These were sometimes spread over several ships sailing on each of its three legs. On the first leg, manufactured goods from Europe were transported for sale or trade in Africa. These goods included wine and spirits, various metals such as iron and copper, and ammunition and cheap muskets. (The Portuguese avoided and eventually banned the sale of firearms in Angola.) The most highly sought-after material in Africa, however, was cloth, mostly Indian cottons and Chinese silks.

On the second, middle leg of the trade, goods were replaced with human cargo for the journey to the Americas. The captives were sold in the European colonies to produce the sugar, tobacco, cotton, and other raw materials that would be shipped to Europe. Captured Africans  suffered terribly  on this Middle Passage. They were often loaded onto slave ships after enduring weeks or months of forced marches, deprivation, and brutality on their way to the sea. This left them vulnerable to traumatic stress and diseases. When chained below decks, they could barely move, even to attend to bodily functions. They were routinely subjected to rough, sometimes brutal treatment by members of the crew. As the writer known only as “Dicky Sam” recounted in  Liverpool and Slavery  (1884): “The captain bullies the men, the men torture the slaves, the slaves’ hearts are breaking with despair; many more are dead, their bodies thrown into the sea, more food for the sharks.” Malnutrition, dehydration, and disease produced mortality among the captives. The death rate averaged above 20 percent in the first decades of the transatlantic trade. This rate dropped to 10 percent by 1800 or so, and to about 5 percent in the last decade of the trade.

Between 1517 and 1867, 12.5 million enslaved Africans were forced onto ships to begin the Middle Passage to America. About 10.7 million men, women, and children survived the journey. About 40 percent, mostly from Angola, landed in Brazil, where the trade continued until 1850. About 35 percent of enslaved Africans went to the non-Spanish colonies in the Caribbean. A bit more than 20 percent were sold in Spanish colonies. About 3.5 percent were sent to British North America and the United States. This was well north of the major sailing routes, where the sugar, the heart of the Atlantic economy, could not be cultivated.

The tens of thousands of voyages that comprised the transatlantic slave trade were structured as business ventures. Elite European merchants and merchant bankers provided funding and capital transfer services to British, French, and Dutch operators of ships. The Portuguese left their trade in the southern Atlantic to traders in Brazil. High losses due to mortality on the Middle Passage were a primary reason that many Triangular Trade voyages failed to turn a profit. John Newton, a British captain who publicly turned against the trade, described the whole enterprise as “a sort of lottery in which every adventurer hoped to gain a prize.”

Every national community of European merchants participated in the transatlantic slave trade. Portugal was the largest overall transporter of enslaved Africans. Great Britain became the dominant slaving power in the eighteenth century. It accounted for about 25 percent of the total, including up to half of those enslaved people delivered to North America. Spain accounted for about 15 percent of the total. The French transported about 12 percent of enslaved Africans—mostly to its West Indies islands during the eighteenth century and before the Haitian Revolution of 1791. The Dutch transported less than 5 percent.

North Americans were relatively minor players in the transatlantic slave trade. They accounted for less than 3 percent of the total trade. Most of the North American trade was conducted by Rhode Island merchants. They exported lumber and pine resin, meat and dairy products, cider, and horses to the West Indies and returned with molasses. The rum processed from this molasses was exported to Africa, to sell for enslaved captives. They then transported these captives to the West Indies to sell to sugar planters for more molasses.

The highest volumes of the transatlantic slave trade came in the 1700s. During this century more than half of the total, amounting to an average of about 50,000 enslaved Africans per year, was transported. This took place mostly from the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763 until the end of the British trade in 1807.

More than half of the 388,000 enslaved Africans who landed alive in North America came through the port of Charleston, South Carolina. A burst of arrivals came through Charleston after 1800 as cotton production in the state took off. Anxious planters anticipated the end of slave imports in 1808. The Chesapeake Bay region was second, with an estimated 130,000 men, women, and children landing there. Some of these enslaved people, particularly before 1700, came to North America not directly from Africa but from the Caribbean. Virginia planters purchased them to work in  tobacco fields .

In the Americas, planters paid for enslaved people on credit secured by future deliveries of sugar or other products. Some captains of slave ships were reluctant to accept sugar or tobacco. They were concerned over the price they might receive when they then tried to sell it in European markets. Bills of exchange in financial centers such as London covered this risk. Generally, American buyers of captives paid captains about a quarter of what they owed immediately in cash or commodities such as sugar or tobacco. They sent the rest over the next year and a half. As a result of these delayed payments, some slave ships returned to Europe largely empty of cargo. Once home, slave-ship captains sold what commodities they carried. The investors in the voyages waited to collect the rest in payments on the credit extended.

English Trade Monopoly in West Africa

Though the number of enslaved Africans arriving in Virginia increased under the Royal African Company, it remained relatively small. In the years prior to 1670, only two to three ships, carrying perhaps 200 to 300 captives each, arrived. In the following decade, that tripled to between seven and nine arrivals, totaling as many as 2,000 enslaved captives. Between 1681 and 1690, about eleven ships carrying approximately 3,200 enslaved Africans landed in Virginia. That number decreased the following decade to five ships carrying about 1,100 enslaved Africans, probably related to King William’s War (1689–1697) with France.

In 1698, the Crown withdrew the Royal African Company’s monopoly. It had sold enslaved Africans on credit to startup planters in Barbados, who paid their debts too slowly for the company to continue to operate. With the monopoly gone, private traders swooped in, increasing the slave trade. About the same time, a series of wars on the Gold Coast and the rise of slave-trading in the southeastern region of Nigeria was occurring. This resulted in more enslaved Africans available for export to the Americas. The number of enslaved Africans being brought to Virginia rose from about 1,100 in the 1690s to 13,000 between 1721–1730. Imports of enslaved Africans remained robust for the next several decades. Though, after about 1730 the enslaved population in the Chesapeake Bay region became self-sustaining due to births to enslaved women. This would gradually decrease the importance of the transatlantic slave trade to Virginia.

The abolition movement that had begun with British Quakers, spread to the United States. It aroused popular opinion against the transatlantic trade by  reporting on the horrors  of the Middle Passage. Among other strategies, they spread an iconic image of the British slave ship  Brookes  to demonstrate the extreme crowding of the captives on the slave deck. In 1788, the British Parliament restricted the number of enslaved Africans who could be transported in given spaces on the ships. In 1806 Westminster banned trade to foreign territories, including the new United States. On March 25, 1807, Parliament ended British participation in the trade altogether.

In Britain, the stakeholders in the trade were primarily merchants invested in goods and ships. In the United States, they were plantation owners, whose profits from owning enslaved people were substantial. These enslavers rarely found slavery to be in conflict with their Revolutionary ideals of liberty and equality.  Thomas Jefferson , in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence, criticized Britain’s practice of selling enslaved people to colonists at inflated prices. Debate over the civil standing of enslaved people in the United States resulted in a constitutional compromise. This compromise allowed limited additional enslaved people to be sold into the country. Without referring specifically to enslaved Africans, Article I, Section 9, of the U.S. Constitution gave temporary control over imports to the states. It prohibited Congress from interfering with the “Migration or Importation such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit,” for twenty years.

Congress passed an “Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves,” which became effective on January 1, 1808. Elite Virginia planters supported the prohibition of further imports of enslaved people, but not because they opposed slavery. Rather, many of them had transitioned from growing tobacco to production of less labor-intensive wheat. For three generations or more, their holdings of enslaved Africans had been increasing naturally, creating a surplus of hands. Around the same time, the invention of the cotton gin and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution created a cotton boom in the southern states. Virginia enslavers thus found themselves positioned to become the suppliers of the enslaved labor needed to cultivate cotton. Planters from Georgia to Texas would be forced to purchase enslaved people from Virginia and other long-time slave-holding states. Between 1790 and 1860, more than 1 million enslaved men, women, and children were transported in a large and profitable domestic trade from the Upper South to the Deep South. Whether through the transatlantic trade or through the domestic trade of enslaved people, the human toll of the slave trade in terror, death, and widespread social disruption is difficult to fathom.

Portuguese mariners began patrolling the west coast of Africa in the fifteenth century, primarily in search of gold. In the process, they encountered and either purchased or captured small numbers of Africans, with the first shipload of 235 captives landing in Lagos, Portugal, in 1444. After the 1470s, gold from the Akan area inland from the so-called Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana) financed a second, larger stage of Atlantic slaving. The Portuguese purchased captives from the Benin area just east of the Niger River delta and sold them to labor in the gold mines of the Akan area. On their way back to Europe, the Portuguese left other enslaved Africans on the small islands of the eastern Atlantic, especially Madeira and the Canaries. The Portuguese and Spaniards held these islands for strategic reasons and paid the costs of military occupation by putting Africans to work turning small farms into large sugar plantations. In this way, gold begat slaving and slaves begat sugar, which, in turn, supported increased commercial investments in the Atlantic world.

Shortly after 1500, the Portuguese transferred the plantation model to the equatorial island of São Tomé off the coast of what is now Gabon, which boasted good rains and rich volcanic soil ideal for growing sugar. By the mid-sixteenth century the island’s residents had invested heavily in enslaved labor and made São Tomé the world’s leading producer of raw sugar.

The first large wave of captive Africans swept across the Atlantic in the 1590s. Prior to then, the trade in captives had been relatively small because African authorities strongly preferred to sell extracted commodities, such as gold, ivory, and other natural resources. At the time, conflicts between African peoples did not result in much violence or produce many captives. An exception to this involved Saharan traders who, beginning in the tenth century, introduced horses to sell for gold from the region adjoining the desert. The Africans who bought these horses deployed them to wage wars of a much greater intensity. As conflicts escalated, the demand for horses exceeded the supply of gold to pay for them, and the mounts were used to capture Africans to sell as slaves to buy more horses. These captives were destined for markets in North Africa, but along the way the desert traders diverted some of their human cargo to Portuguese buyers, who then sold them in established Iberian markets, which was how the first cargo of enslaved people came to be sold at Lagos, Portugal.

The trade remained relatively small until a series of unrelated events converged in the area south of the Kingdom of Kongo (present-day northern Angola) to transform the early stream of captives for sale in the Old World into a flood of enslaved people destined for the Americas. In 1575, the Portuguese sent a military expedition to a bay near the mouth of the Kwanza River. Their intention had been to seize what they incorrectly believed to be mountains of silver in the interior. They arrived in the midst of a prolonged drought, which had caused many African communities to disperse in search of food. Some younger men survived by forming armed gangs to prey on the few communities still with crops, and some of these bandits joined the Portuguese in attacking the area around the lower Kwanza River, then under the influence of a military leader called the Ngola.

At the same time, the death of King Henry of Portugal in 1580 led to a dynastic union with Spain. The Portuguese in West Africa became Spanish subjects with the authority to trade in Spain’s American markets. By this time, the chaos in Kongo had produced thousands of refugees who were easily captured for dispatch to the Spanish Indies. The cost of buying these desperately vulnerable Africans was low, so European investors were able make a profit selling these captives in America for Spanish silver.

Dutch and English privateers, neither of them friends of Spain or Portugal, preyed on the ships transporting these captive Africans. In 1619, two of them—the  White Lion  and the  Treasurer —attacked the Portuguese ship  São João Bautista , robbing it of its cargo of about fifty enslaved Africans. A few months later, the  White Lion  arrived in Virginia carrying the  “20. and odd” survivors—the  first Africans  in the new colony.

The Production of Sugar

By the 1620s Portugal had established sizable sugar plantations in Brazil, which it had claimed in 1500, replacing São Tomé as the world’s largest producer of sugar. These plantations required enslaved labor on a large scale to do the back-breaking work of cultivating sugar cane. However, enslaved Africans for sale in the Spanish port cities were far too expensive. Instead, the Brazilian Portuguese bought enslaved Africans from ship captains stopping along their course to the Caribbean, while also organizing their own slaving ventures in West Africa.

Portuguese sugar production was interrupted when the Dutch seized northeast Brazil’s plantations from 1630 until 1654. When they were eventually expelled, the Dutch turned to supplying captive Africans to the early English sugar plantations in Barbados and Jamaica in the West Indies.

The so-called triangular trade that subsequently developed between Europe, Africa, and the Americas was in fact a complex series of separate trades, sometimes spread over several vessels sailing on each of its three legs. On the first leg, manufactured goods from Europe were transported for sale or trade in Africa. These goods included wine and spirits, various metals such as iron and copper, and ammunition and cheap muskets. (The Portuguese avoided and eventually banned the sale of firearms in Angola.) The category of goods most in demand in Africa, however, was cloth, mostly Indian cottons and Chinese silks.

On the second, middle leg of the trade, goods were replaced with human cargo for the journey to the Americas, where the captives were sold in the European colonies to produce the sugar, tobacco, cotton, and other raw materials that would be shipped to Europe on the final leg of the triangle. Captive Africans suffered terribly on this Middle Passage, often loaded onto slave ships after enduring weeks or months of forced marches, deprivation, and brutality on their way to the sea, leaving them vulnerable once onboard the ships to traumatic stress and communicable diseases. When chained below decks, they could barely move, even to attend to bodily functions. “The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. … the air soon became unfit for respiration from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died,” wrote Olaudah Equiano of his time on a slave ship following his capture ( The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano , 1789).

Captives were routinely subjected to rough, sometimes brutal treatment by members of the crew, whom they outnumbered by ten or more to one. As the writer known only as “Dicky Sam” recounted in Liverpool and Slavery (1884): “The captain bullies the men, the men torture the slaves, the slaves’ hearts are breaking with despair; many more are dead, their bodies thrown into the sea, more food for the sharks.” Malnutrition and dehydration, both aggravated by dysentery, smallpox, and other afflictions, produced mortality among the captives that averaged above 20 percent in the first decades of the transatlantic trade, which dropped to 10 percent by 1800 or so, and to about 5 percent in the last decade of the trade.

Between 1517 and 1867, 12.5 million enslaved Africans were forced onto ships to begin the Middle Passage to America. About 10.7 million men, women, and children survived the journey. Of these, about 40 percent, mostly from Angola, landed in Brazil, where the trade continued until 1850. About 35 percent of enslaved Africans went to the non-Spanish colonies in the Caribbean and a bit more than 20 percent were sold in Spanish colonies. About 3.5 percent were sent to British North America and the United States, which lay well north of the major sailing routes and where the sugar at the heart of the Atlantic mercantile economy could not be cultivated.

The tens of thousands of voyages that comprised the transatlantic slave trade were structured as business ventures. Elite European merchants and merchant bankers provided funding and capital transfer services to British, French, and Dutch operators of ships, while the Portuguese left their trade in the southern Atlantic to traders in Brazil. High losses due to slave mortality on the Middle Passage were a primary reason that many Triangular Trade voyages failed to turn a profit. John Newton, a British captain who publicly turned against the trade, described the whole enterprise as “a sort of lottery in which every adventurer hoped to gain a prize.”

Every national community of European merchants participated in the transatlantic slave trade. Portugal was the largest overall transporter of enslaved Africans. Great Britain became the dominant slaving power in the eighteenth century, accounting for about 25 percent of the total, including up to half of those enslaved people delivered to North America. Spain, which entered the trade directly only in the nineteenth century to support the belated development of sugar and coffee in Cuba, eventually accounted for about 15 percent of the total. The French transported about 12 percent of enslaved Africans—mostly to its West Indies islands during the eighteenth century and before the Haitian Revolution of 1791—and the Dutch less than 5 percent.

North Americans were relatively minor players in the transatlantic slave trade, accounting for less than 3 percent of the total trade. Most of the North American trade was conducted by Rhode Island merchants, who exported lumber and pine resin, meat and dairy products, cider, and horses to the West Indies and returned with molasses, which they distilled into very high-proof rum. This they exported to Africa, primarily Upper Guinea and the Windward Coast, to sell for enslaved captives, which they then transported to the West Indies to sell to sugar planters for more molasses.

The highest volumes of the transatlantic slave trade came in the 1700s. During this century more than half of the total, amounting to an average of about 50,000 enslaved Africans per year, was transported, mostly from the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763 until the end of the British trade in 1807. (The source for these precise numbers is the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, a collection of the known details of almost 36,000 slaving voyages, about 80 percent of the total, which allow reasonable estimates for the undocumented remainder.)

Slightly more than half of the 388,000 enslaved Africans who landed alive in North America came through the port of Charleston, South Carolina. A burst of arrivals came through Charleston after 1800 as cotton production in the state took off and anxious planters anticipated the end of slave imports in 1808. The Chesapeake Bay region was second, with about a third, or an estimated 130,000 men, women, and children disembarking there. Some of these enslaved people, particularly before 1700, came to North America not directly from Africa but from the Caribbean, where Virginia planters purchased them to work in tobacco fields .

In the Americas, planters or their brokers paid for slaves on credit secured by future deliveries of sugar or other commodities. Some slave captains were reluctant to accept sugar or tobacco out of concern over the price they might receive when they then tried to sell it in European markets, and bills of exchange drawn on merchant-bankers in financial centers such as London covered this risk. Generally, American buyers of captives paid captains about a quarter of what they owed immediately in cash or commodities such as sugar or tobacco and sent the rest over the next year and a half. As a result of these delayed payments, some slave ships returned to Europe largely empty of cargo. Once home, slave-ship captains sold what commodities they carried, and the investors in the voyages waited to collect the rest in payments on the credit extended.

In 1660, King Charles II of England chartered the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa, granting its investors a monopoly on English trade in West Africa, then mostly for gold. After falling into debt, it reorganized and obtained a new charter in 1672 as the Royal African Company. Again structured around the quest for gold, the company carried enslaved captives to the Americas as a concession to the interests of the Crown in securing strategic island anchors in Barbados and Jamaica. The company purchased African captives from Senegambia and on the Gold Coast and established direct routes to English colonies in the Caribbean and North America.

Prior to 1672, direct shipments of enslaved captives to the Chesapeake Bay region were rare. Beginning in 1673, however, the company offered to sell adult slaves to Virginia planters for £18 sterling. These  sales  were not made at public auction or directly to planters but to intermediaries, usually local merchants who served as sales agents. As a result, nearly all enslaved Africans ended up in the hands of the  richest Virginians . These planters paid in tobacco and claimed headrights, or land grants, of fifty acres each on each of them. (The headright system awarded land to anyone who paid the cost of transporting an  indentured servant  to the colony and was extended to cover enslaved laborers. Headrights for enslaved laborers were terminated in 1699.)

Though the number of enslaved Africans arriving in Virginia increased under the Royal African Company, it remained relatively small. In the years prior to 1670, only two to three ships, carrying perhaps 200 to 300 captives each, arrived. In the following decade, that tripled to between seven and nine arrivals, totaling as many as 2,000 enslaved captives. Between 1681 and 1690, about eleven ships carrying approximately 3,200 enslaved Africans landed in Virginia. That number decreased the following decade to five ships carrying about 1,100 enslaved Africans, probably related to King William’s War (1689–1697) with France.

In 1698, the Crown withdrew the Royal African Company’s monopoly after it had sold enslaved Africans on credit to startup planters in Barbados, who paid their debts too slowly for the company to continue to operate. With the monopoly gone, private traders swooped in, increasing the slave trade. About the same time, a series of wars on the Gold Coast and the rise of the slave-trading Aro Confederacy in southeastern Nigeria resulted in more enslaved Africans available for export to the Americas. As a result, the number of enslaved Africans being brought to Virginia rose from about 1,100 in the 1690s to 8,600 between 1701–1710 and to 13,000 between 1721–1730. Imports of enslaved Africans remained robust for the next several decades, although after about 1730 the enslaved population in the Chesapeake Bay region became naturally self-sustaining due to births to enslaved women, which would gradually lessen the importance of the transatlantic slave trade to Virginia.

The abolition movement that had begun with British Quakers spread to the United States. It aroused popular opinion against the transatlantic trade by reporting on the horrors  of the Middle Passage by, among other strategies, spreading an iconic image of the British slave ship  Brookes to demonstrate the extreme crowding of the captives on the slave deck. In 1788, the British Parliament restricted the number of enslaved Africans who could be transported in given spaces on the ships, and in 1806 Westminster banned trade to foreign territories, including the new United States. On March 25, 1807, Parliament ended British participation in the trade altogether.

     In Britain, the stakeholders in the trade were primarily merchants invested in goods and ships. In the United States, they were plantation owners, whose profits from owning slaves were substantial and who seldom found slavery to be in conflict with their Revolutionary ideals of liberty and equality. Thomas Jefferson , in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence, criticized Britain’s practice of selling slaves to colonists at inflated prices, and debate over the civil standing of individuals enslaved in the new United States resulted in a constitutional compromise allowing limited additional numbers to be sold into the country. Without referring specifically to enslaved Africans, Article I, Section 9, of the U.S. Constitution ceded temporary control over imports to the states by prohibiting Congress from interfering with the “Migration or Importation such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit,” for twenty years.

At the first opportunity, on March 2, 1807, Congress passed an “Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves,” which became effective on January 1, 1808. Elite Virginia planters supported the prohibition of further imports of slaves, but not because they opposed slavery. Rather, many of them had transitioned from growing tobacco to production of less labor-intensive wheat, and for three generations or more their holdings of enslaved Africans had been increasing naturally, creating a surplus of hands. Around the same time, the invention of the cotton gin and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution created a cotton boom in the southern states. Virginia enslavers thus found themselves positioned to become the suppliers of the enslaved labor needed to cultivate cotton, as absent new supplies of enslaved laborers from Africa, planters from Georgia west to Texas would be forced to purchase enslaved people from Virginia and other long-time slave-holding states. Between 1790 and 1860, more than 1 million enslaved men, women, and children were transported in a large and very profitable domestic trade from the Upper South to the Deep South. Whether the transatlantic trade or the domestic trade in enslaved people, the human toll of the slave trade in terror, death, and widespread social disruption is difficult to fathom.

“Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database”

• African American History
• Antebellum Period (1820–1860)
• Colonial History (ca. 1560–1763)
• Revolution and Early Republic (1763–1823)
• Coombs, John C. “The Phases of Conversion: A New chronology for the Rise of Slavery in Early Virginia.” William and Mary Quarterly 68, no. 3 (July 2011): 332–360.
• Eltis, David and David Richardson. Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade . New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2010.
• Harms, Robert. The Diligent: A Voyage through the Worlds of the Slave Trade. New York: Basic Books, 2002.
• Miller, Joseph C. Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730­–1830. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988.
• O’Malley, Gregory E. Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British America, 1619–1807 . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014).
• Rediker, Marcus. The Slave Ship: A Human History . New York: Penguin Books, 2007.
• Thomas, Hugh. The Slave Trade: The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440–1870 . New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.
• Thornton, John K., and Linda Heywood. Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585–1660 . New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
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The Middle Passage: A Jungian Field Guide to Finding Meaning and Transformation in Midlife

By maria popova.

“In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself within a dark woods where the straight way was lost,” Dante wrote in the Inferno . “The perilous time for the most highly gifted is not youth,” the visionary Elizabeth Peabody cautioned half a millennium later as she considered the art of self-renewal , “the perilous season is middle age.”

In The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife ( public library ), Jungian analyst James Hollis offers a torch for turning the perilous darkness of the middle into a pyre of profound transformation — an opportunity, both beautiful and terrifying, to reimagine the patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior acquired in the course of adapting to life’s traumas and demands, and finally inhabit the authentic self beneath the costume of this provisional personality.

One has entered the Middle Passage when the demands of the true self press restive and uprising against the acquired persona, eventually colliding to produce untenable psychic ache — a “fearsome clash,” Hollis writes, leaving one “radically stunned into consciousness.” A generation after James Baldwin contemplated how myriad chance events infuse our lives with the illusion of choice , Hollis considers our unexamined conditioning as a root cause of this clash:

Perhaps the first step in making the Middle Passage meaningful is to acknowledge the partiality of the lens we were given by family and culture, and through which we have made our choices and suffered their consequences. If we had been born of another time and place, to different parents who held different values, we would have had an entirely different lens. The lens we received generated a conditional life, which represents not who we are but how we were conditioned to see life and make choices… We succumb to the belief that the way we have grown to see the world is the only way to see it, the right way to see it, and we seldom suspect the conditioned nature of our perception.

Haunting this conditional life are our psychic reflexes — the coping mechanisms developed for the traumas of childhood, which Hollis divides into two basic categories: “the experience of neglect or abandonment” or “the experience of being overwhelmed by life,” each with its particular prognosis. The overwhelmed child may become a passive and accommodating adult prone to codependence, while the abandoned child may spend a lifetime in addictive patterns of attachment searching for a steadfast Other. These unconscious responses adopted by the inner child coalesce into a provisional adult personality still preoccupied with solving the emotional urgencies of early life. Hollis observes:

We all live out, unconsciously, reflexes assembled from the past.

Carl Jung termed such reflexes personal complexes — largely unconscious and emotionally charged reactions operating autonomously. Most of life’s suffering stems from the unexamined workings of these complexes and the conditioned choices they lead us to, which further sever us from our true nature. Hollis writes:

Most of the sense of crisis in midlife is occasioned by the pain of that split. The disparity between the inner sense of self and the acquired personality becomes so great that the suffering can no longer be suppressed or compensated… The person continues to operate out of the old attitudes and strategies, but they are no longer effective. Symptoms of midlife distress are in fact to be welcomed, for they represent not only an instinctually grounded self underneath the acquired personality but a powerful imperative for renewal… In effect, the person one has been is to be replaced by the person to be. The first must die… Such death and rebirth is not an end in itself; it is a passage. It is necessary to go through the Middle Passage to more clearly achieve one’s potential and to earn the vitality and wisdom of mature aging. Thus, the Middle Passage represents a summons from within to move from the provisional life to true adulthood, from the false self to authenticity.

The summons often begins with a call to humility — having failed to bend the universe to our will the way the young imagine they can, we come to recognize our limitations, to confront our disenchantment, to reckon with the collapse of projections and the crushing of hopes. But this reckoning, when conducted with candor and self-compassion, can reward with “the restoration of the person to a humble but dignified relationship to the universe.”

This, Hollis argues, requires shedding the acquired personality of what he terms “first adulthood” — the period from ages twelve to roughly forty, on the other side of which lies the second adulthood of authenticity. Bridging the abyss between the two is the Middle Passage. He writes:

The second adulthood… is only attainable when the provisional identities have been discarded and the false self has died. The pain of such loss may be compensated by the rewards of the new life which follows, but the person in the midst of the Middle Passage may only feel the dying… The good news which follows the death of the first adulthood is that one may reclaim one’s life. There is a second shot at what was left behind in the pristine moments of childhood.

Hollis envisions these shifting identities as a change of axes, moving from the parent-child axis of early life to the ego-world axis of young adulthood to the ego-Self axis of the Middle Passage — a time when “the humbled ego begins the dialogue with the Self.” On the other side of it lies the final axis: “Self-God” or “Self-Cosmos,” embodying philosopher Martin Buber’s recognition that “we live our lives inscrutably included within the streaming mutual life of the universe” — the kind of orientation that led Whitman, who lived with uncommon authenticity and made of it an art, to call himself a “kosmos,” using the spelling Alexander von Humboldt used to denote the interconnectedness of the universe reflected in his pioneering insistence that “in this great chain of causes and effects, no single fact can be considered in isolation.” The fourth axis is precisely this recognition of the Self as a microcosm of the universe — an antidote to the sense of insignificance, alienation, and temporality that void life of meaning. Hollis writes:

This axis is framed by the cosmic mystery which transcends the mystery of individual incarnation. Without some relationship to the cosmic drama, we are constrained to lives of transience, superficiality and aridity. Since the culture most of us have inherited offers little mythic mediation for the placement of self in a larger context, it is all the more imperative that the individual enlarge his or her vision.

These shifting axes are marked by several “sea-changes of the soul,” the most important of which is the withdrawal of projections — those mental figments that “embody what is unclaimed or unknown within ourselves,” born of the tendency to superimpose the unconscious on external objects, nowhere more pronounced than in love: What is so often mistaken for love of another is a projection of the unloved parts of oneself.

Drawing on the work of Jungian psychologist Marie-Louise von Franz, Hollis describes the five stages of projection — a framework strikingly similar to the seven stages of falling in and out of love that Stendhal outlined two centuries ago. Hollis writes:

First, the person is convinced that the inner (that is, unconscious) experience is truly outer. Second, there is a gradual recognition of the discrepancy between the reality and the projected image… Third, one is required to acknowledge this discrepancy. Fourth, one is driven to conclude one was somehow in error originally. And, fifth, one must search for the origin of the projection energy within oneself. This last stage, the search for the meaning of the projection, always involves a search for a greater knowledge of oneself.

In consonance with Joan Didion’s piercing insistence that “the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life is the source from which self-respect springs,” Hollis considers the ultimate payoff of this painful turn from illusion to disillusionment:

The loss of hope that the outer will save us occasions the possibility that we shall have to save ourselves… Life has a way of dissolving projections and one must, amid the disappointment and desolation, begin to take on the responsibility for one’s own life… Only when one has acknowledged the deflation of the hopes and expectations of childhood and accepted direct responsibility for finding meaning for oneself, can the second adulthood begin.

The vast majority of our adult neuroses — a somewhat dated term, coined by a Scottish physician in the late eighteenth century and defined by Carl Jung as “suffering which has not discovered its meaning,” then redefined by Hollis as a “protest of the psyche” against “the split between our nature and our acculturation,” between “what we are and what we are meant to be” — arise from the refusal to acknowledge and let go of projections, for they sustain the persona that protects the person and keep us from turning inward to befriend the untended parts of ourselves, which in turn warp our capacity for intimacy with others. Hollis writes:

We learn through the deflation of the persona world that we have lived provisionally; the integration of inner truths, joyful or unpleasant, is necessary to bring new life and the restoration of purpose. […] The truth about intimate relationships is that they can never be any better than our relationship with ourselves. How we are related to ourselves determines not only the choice of the Other but the quality of the relationship… All relationships… are symptomatic of the state of our inner life, and no relationship can be any better than our relationship to our own unconscious.

It is only when projection falls away that we can truly see the other as they are and not as our need incarnate, as a sovereign soul and not as a designated savior; only then can we live into Iris Murdoch’s splendid definition of love as “the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real,” and be enriched rather than enraged by this otherness.

Defying the dangerous Romantic ideal of love as the fusion of two souls and echoing Mary Oliver’s tender wisdom on how differences make couples stronger , Hollis writes:

When one has let go of the projections and the great hidden agenda, then one can be enlarged by the otherness of the partner. One plus one does not equal One, as in the fusion model; it equals three — the two as separate beings whose relationship forms a third which obliges them to stretch beyond their individual limitations. Moreover, by relinquishing projections and placing the emphasis on inner growth, one begins to encounter the immensity of one’s own soul. The Other helps us expand the possibilities of the psyche. […] Loving the otherness of the partner is a transcendent event, for one enters the true mystery of relationship in which one is taken to the third place — not you plus me, but we who are more than ourselves with each other.

Ultimately, healthy love requires that we cease expecting of the other what we ought to expect of ourselves. In so returning to ourselves from the realm of projection, we are tasked with finally mapping and traversing the inner landscape of the psyche, with all its treacherous terrain and hidden abysses. Hollis writes:

It takes courage to face one’s emotional states directly and to dialogue with them. But therein lies the key to personal integrity. In the swamplands of the soul there is meaning and the call to enlarge consciousness. To take this on is the greatest responsibility in life… And when we do, the terror is compensated by meaning, by dignity, by purpose. […] Our task at midlife is to be strong enough to relinquish the ego-urgencies of the first half and open ourselves to a greater wonder.

In the remainder of The Middle Passage , Hollis goes on to illustrate these concepts with case studies from literature — from Goethe’s Faust to Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground to Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” — illuminating how personal complexes and projections play out in everything from parenting to creative practice to love, and how their painful renunciation swings open a portal to the deepest and most redemptive transformation. Complement it with Alain de Botton on the importance of breakdowns and Judith Viorst on the art of letting go , then revisit Ursula K. Le Guin’s magnificent meditation on menopause as rebirth .

— Published March 3, 2024 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2024/03/03/the-middle-passage-john-hollis/ —

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The Middle Passage

Introduction.

Welcome aboard the journey through V.S. Naipaul’s “The Middle Passage” 🚢! First published in 1962, this book offers a profound narrative that is part travelogue, part profound inquiry into the cultures and identities of the Caribbean. V.S. Naipaul, a Nobel Laureate hailing from Trinidad, takes us on a journey back to his homeland and beyond, exploring the islands of the Caribbean and the shadows of colonialism and slavery.

“The Middle Passage” refers to the infamous sea voyage that transported slaves from Africa to the Americas, but Naipaul uses this as a metaphor to explore the post-colonial identity of the Caribbean. The book spans genres, merging travel writing with historical and sociopolitical commentary, making it a unique piece in Naipaul’s body of work.

Naipaul’s sharp observations and incisive prose dissect the complexities of decolonization, the search for identity, and the lingering effects of slavery on the Caribbean psyche. As we set sail with Naipaul, we’re invited to look beyond the palm trees and turquoise waters, and dive deep into the heart of the Caribbean’s tumultuous history and its people’s quest for a sense of belonging 🌴🌊.

Join me as we navigate through the intricate narrative of “The Middle Passage,” discovering its rich tapestry of characters, themes, and Naipaul’s unparalleled insight into the human condition. Let’s embark on this enlightening voyage together!

Plot Summary

“The Middle Passage” is not a novel with a traditional plot structure but rather a travelogue that chronicles V.S. Naipaul’s journey through the Caribbean after ten years of living in England. As such, it doesn’t follow the conventional exposition , rising action , climax , falling action , and resolution format typical of fictional narratives. Instead, Naipaul offers a series of observations and experiences across various Caribbean islands, including Trinidad, Guyana, Suriname, Martinique, and Jamaica.

Given the nature of the book, a “plot summary” would instead outline the key phases of Naipaul’s journey and the main insights or observations he shares about each location:

Trinidad — Naipaul begins his journey by returning to Trinidad, his homeland. Here, he confronts the complexities of his feelings about coming home and his observations on the societal changes and the lingering effects of colonialism. His narrative is introspective, reflecting on his personal history and the broader history of the island and its people.

Guyana — In Guyana, Naipaul encounters a society that, to him, appears caught between its colonial past and the uncertain promise of a post-colonial future. He notes the racial tensions and the economic challenges facing the country, providing a critical view of its attempt to forge a national identity.

Suriname — His experiences in Suriname highlight the cultural diversity of the region, with its mix of Indian, African, and Indonesian influences. Naipaul is particularly interested in how these cultures coexist and how colonial legacies have shaped their development.

Martinique — In Martinique, Naipaul explores the concept of “négritude” and its role in shaping the island’s identity. He offers a critique of the romanticization of African heritage and its impact on the island’s political and social landscape.

Jamaica — Naipaul’s visit to Jamaica allows him to reflect on the contrasts between the island’s tourist-friendly image and the realities of its historical and social complexities. He discusses issues of race, class, and the impact of tourism on the island’s culture.

Throughout “The Middle Passage,” Naipaul’s journey is marked by his sharp, often critical observations of the post-colonial world of the Caribbean. He examines the themes of identity, colonial legacy, and the search for a post-independence direction. The book concludes with Naipaul’s reflections on the Caribbean’s place in the world and its future, offering a powerful insight into the region’s struggle to reconcile its past with its present.

Character Analysis

Given the nature of “The Middle Passage” by V.S. Naipaul as a travelogue rather than a fictional narrative , the book does not feature characters in the traditional sense. Instead, Naipaul himself is the central figure, with the people he encounters and the societies he observes acting more as subjects of his critique and analysis than as characters with personal story arcs.

However, we can analyze Naipaul’s own persona as presented in the book, alongside his general observations of the people and societies of the Caribbean, to understand the dynamics at play:

• V.S. Naipaul — As the narrator and principal observer, Naipaul’s personality is central to the book. He is characterized by his sharp and often critical eye, intellectual curiosity, and sometimes controversial perspectives on the post-colonial world. His journey is not only geographical but also deeply personal, reflecting on his own identity as a Trinidadian and as part of the broader diaspora.

Naipaul’s interactions with the people he meets and his observations on various societies offer a window into the post-colonial Caribbean. While specific individuals are not the focus, the collective character of each society he visits is vividly portrayed through his descriptions and critiques.

Here’s a summary in table format focusing on Naipaul’s perspective :

Naipaul’s character analysis, therefore, is intertwined with his analysis of the Caribbean itself, making “The Middle Passage” a complex exploration of both the author’s and the region’s search for identity and meaning in the aftermath of colonialism.

Themes and Symbols

“The Middle Passage” by V.S. Naipaul, being a rich and complex travelogue, delves into a multitude of themes and employs various symbols to convey the multifaceted experiences and observations of the author. Here are some of the major themes and symbols present in the book:

• Post-Colonial Identity — Naipaul explores the struggle of Caribbean societies to forge a new identity in the aftermath of colonialism. This theme is pervasive throughout his journey, as he encounters various cultures trying to reconcile their colonial past with the quest for a unique post-independence identity.
• Search for Belonging — Closely tied to the theme of post-colonial identity, the search for belonging reflects Naipaul’s personal journey as well as the broader existential quest of the Caribbean people. This theme underscores the complexities of homecoming and the sense of alienation from one’s roots.
• Colonial Legacy and Its Impact — The enduring effects of colonial rule on the social, economic, and political fabrics of the Caribbean nations are critically examined. Naipaul discusses how colonialism has shaped racial dynamics, cultural identity, and societal structures.
• Racial Tensions and Class Struggles — The book highlights the racial divisions and class disparities that are prevalent in the Caribbean. Naipaul’s observations on the interactions between different racial groups and the socioeconomic hierarchies offer insight into the ongoing challenges these societies face.
• The Middle Passage Itself — The title symbolizes the traumatic voyage of enslaved Africans to the Americas, serving as a metaphor for the tumultuous journey of the Caribbean nations from colonization to independence. It also reflects Naipaul’s personal journey of exploration and understanding.
• The Sea — Often mentioned in the book, the sea represents both the physical barrier that isolates the Caribbean islands from the rest of the world and the historical conduit for colonial exploitation and cultural exchange.
• The Ship — Naipaul’s mode of travel between the islands, the ship, symbolizes the transition between past and present, the old world and the new, highlighting the fluid nature of identity and the interconnectedness of history and contemporary society.

These themes and symbols enrich Naipaul’s narrative , providing a deeper understanding of the Caribbean’s complex history and its ongoing struggle to define itself in a post-colonial world. Through his journey, Naipaul not only interrogates the societal issues facing these nations but also reflects on the personal quest for identity and belonging in a rapidly changing world.

Given the unique nature of “The Middle Passage” as a non-fiction travelogue by V.S. Naipaul, focusing on the author’s reflections and observations rather than a fictional storyline, the book’s style and tone are directly influenced by Naipaul’s personal perspective and narrative voice . Here’s a closer look at how these elements contribute to the mood and atmosphere of the work:

Style and Tone

• Observational and Analytical — Naipaul’s style is marked by keen observation and a deeply analytical approach. He meticulously describes the environments, societies, and people he encounters, often providing historical context to deepen the reader’s understanding.
• Descriptive and Vivid — Naipaul uses descriptive language to paint vivid pictures of the Caribbean landscapes, towns, and cities he visits. This vividness helps the reader to visualize the settings and understand the socio-cultural backdrop against which Naipaul’s observations are made.
• Incisive and Critical — Known for his incisive commentary, Naipaul does not shy away from critiquing the post-colonial societies he explores. His critiques are often direct and unsparing, aimed at dissecting the complexities and contradictions of Caribbean societies.
• Reflective and Personal — There’s a reflective quality to Naipaul’s writing that stems from his personal journey back to his homeland and through the Caribbean. This introspection lends a personal tone to the narrative , as Naipaul grapples with his own identity and perceptions.
• Somber and Critical — The tone of “The Middle Passage” can often be somber, reflecting Naipaul’s critical view of the legacies of colonialism and the challenges facing the Caribbean. His observations on racial tensions, economic disparities, and the search for national identity contribute to this somber mood.
• Wry and Ironic — At times, Naipaul employs a wry, ironic tone , especially when describing absurdities or contradictions within the societies he visits. This use of irony highlights the complexities and sometimes the absurdities of post-colonial identity and society.
• Bullet Points :
• Observational and Analytical: Naipaul’s detailed account of a calypso performance in Trinidad not only describes the event itself but also analyzes its cultural significance and historical roots.
• Descriptive and Vivid: His depiction of Georgetown, Guyana, brings to life the city’s colonial architecture and the bustling Stabroek Market.
• Incisive and Critical: Naipaul’s critique of the lingering effects of colonialism on Caribbean education systems reveals his critical stance on post-colonial governance and societal structures.

Naipaul’s writing style and tone in “The Middle Passage” serve not only to engage the reader but also to challenge them to think critically about the themes of identity, colonialism, and societal change. Through his distinctive voice , Naipaul offers a compelling and often provocative exploration of the Caribbean, its past, and its possible futures.

Literary Devices Used in The Middle Passage

1. metaphor.

• Use : Naipaul uses metaphors to draw parallels between the physical journey across the Caribbean and the historical journey of the region from colonialism to independence. The title itself, “The Middle Passage,” is a metaphor for the transitionary state of post-colonial societies.
• Use : Through detailed descriptions of landscapes, cities, and people, Naipaul creates vivid imagery that brings the Caribbean to life for the reader, highlighting both its beauty and its socio-economic challenges.
• Use : Irony is employed to critique the remnants of colonial attitudes and the failed promises of independence. Naipaul often juxtaposes the idealized view of the Caribbean with the reality of life on the islands, highlighting contradictions in a subtly ironic manner.

4. Symbolism

• Use : Symbols such as the sea, ships, and the very landscapes of the Caribbean islands serve to represent the complex history and identity of the region. They symbolize both the separation and connection between the islands and their colonial pasts.

5. Allusion

• Use : Naipaul alludes to historical events, literary works, and cultural practices to contextualize his observations and arguments, providing depth and a broader frame of reference for the reader.

6. Personification

• Use : The author occasionally personifies elements of the Caribbean landscape and its cities, imbuing them with emotions and characteristics that reflect the cultural and historical essence of the region.

7. Juxtaposition

• Use : Juxtaposing the old with the new, the colonized with the colonizers, and the rich with the poor, Naipaul highlights the contrasts and conflicts within Caribbean societies, emphasizing the complexity of their post-colonial identities.

8. Anecdote

• Use : Naipaul integrates personal anecdotes and stories from the people he meets, which serve to illustrate broader themes and bring a human element to his analysis of societal issues.

9. Hyperbole

• Use : While less frequent, hyperbole is used to emphasize the absurdity or extremity of certain situations or behaviors, often to highlight the disparities and injustices within Caribbean societies.
• Use : Through evocative narrative and empathetic storytelling, Naipaul employs pathos to engage the reader’s emotions, particularly when describing the plight of those affected by poverty, racial discrimination, and the legacies of colonialism.

These literary devices are instrumental in shaping “The Middle Passage” into a compelling and multifaceted exploration of the Caribbean. They enhance Naipaul’s critique of post-colonial societies, deepen the narrative’s emotional impact, and enrich the reader’s understanding of the complex interplay between history, culture, and identity in the region.

Literary Devices Examples

Personification, juxtaposition.

These examples, though synthesized, demonstrate how literary devices can be applied to enhance the narrative and thematic depth of non-fiction works like “The Middle Passage,” enriching the reader’s engagement with the text.

The Middle Passage – FAQs

Q: What is “The Middle Passage” about? A: “The Middle Passage” is a travelogue by V.S. Naipaul that documents his journey through the Caribbean, exploring the islands’ cultures, histories, and the impacts of colonialism and slavery. It provides a critical examination of post-colonial identity and societal changes in the region.

Q: Why is the book titled “The Middle Passage”? A: The title refers to the transatlantic slave trade route used to transport enslaved Africans to the Americas. It symbolizes the historical trauma of slavery and its lasting effects on Caribbean societies, as well as Naipaul’s own journey through these islands.

Q: When was “The Middle Passage” published? A: “The Middle Passage” was published in 1962.

Q: What are some of the main themes in “The Middle Passage”? A: Major themes include the search for post-colonial identity, the legacy of colonialism and slavery, racial tensions, and the contrasts between the Caribbean’s picturesque image and its complex realities.

Q: Which countries does V.S. Naipaul visit in “The Middle Passage”? A: Naipaul visits several countries, including Trinidad (his birthplace), Guyana, Suriname, Martinique, and Jamaica.

Q: How does V.S. Naipaul describe the Caribbean societies he encounters? A: Naipaul offers a critical and often unsparing view of the Caribbean societies, focusing on their struggles with post-colonial identity, economic challenges, and the remnants of colonial and racial divisions.

Q: What literary style is “The Middle Passage” written in? A: The book is written in a descriptive and analytical style, blending travel writing with socio-political commentary and personal reflection.

Q: Has “The Middle Passage” been controversial? A: Yes, some of Naipaul’s opinions and generalizations about Caribbean societies and people have sparked controversy and debate, particularly regarding his perspectives on race, culture, and post-colonial development.

Q: What impact did “The Middle Passage” have? A: “The Middle Passage” is considered an important work for its in-depth exploration of Caribbean identity and the legacies of colonialism. It has contributed to discussions on post-colonial studies and remains a significant reference for understanding the region’s history and society.

Q: Is “The Middle Passage” considered a novel ? A: No, “The Middle Passage” is not a novel . It is a non-fiction travelogue that combines historical, cultural, and personal insights into the Caribbean post-colonial experience.

This quiz is designed to test your comprehension and engagement with “The Middle Passage” by V.S. Naipaul, encouraging a deeper understanding of its themes, content, and literary merit.

Spot the literary devices used in the following paragraph:

“In the shimmering heat of the Caribbean sun, the islands appeared as emeralds floating on a sapphire sea. Each island, with its own pulse and rhythm, whispered tales of a turbulent past, where echoes of freedom songs mingled with the chains of history. The sea, an eternal witness to the passage of time, cradled these stories, carrying them from shore to shore. Here, the remnants of empires lay entangled with the roots of new beginnings, where every breeze seemed to carry the promise of change and the weight of legacy.”

• Metaphor — The islands are compared to “emeralds floating on a sapphire sea,” evoking their lush beauty and the clear blue waters of the Caribbean.
• Personification — The islands are given the human attribute of having “its own pulse and rhythm,” suggesting a vibrant, living culture unique to each.
• Alliteration — “Whispered tales of a turbulent past” uses alliteration with the repetition of the ‘t’ sound, enhancing the musical quality of the prose .
• Symbolism — The sea is a symbol of time and history, connecting the islands’ pasts and futures, and serving as a constant through changes.
• Imagery — Vivid descriptions of the landscape create a vivid picture of the Caribbean, engaging the reader’s senses and immersing them in the setting .
• Hyperbole — “Echoes of freedom songs mingled with the chains of history” exaggerates to emphasize the deep and conflicting history of the Caribbean, from slavery to the fight for independence.
• Juxtaposition — “The remnants of empires lay entangled with the roots of new beginnings” juxtaposes the past and the present, highlighting the transition from colonial rule to the search for a new identity.

This exercise aims to enhance your ability to identify and understand the use of literary devices in non-fiction narrative , enriching your reading experience and analytical skills.

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Home » Europe » Moscow

EPIC MOSCOW Itinerary! (2024)

Moscow is the heart of Mother Russia. Just the mention of this city conjures images of colorful bulbous pointed domes, crisp temperatures, and a uniquely original spirit!

Moscow has an incredibly turbulent history, a seemingly resilient culture, and a unique enchantment that pulls countless tourists to the city each year! Although the warmer months make exploring Moscow’s attractions more favorable, there’s just something about a fresh snowfall that only enhances the appearance of the city’s iconic sites!

If you’re a first-time visitor to Moscow, or simply wanting to see as much of the city as possible, this Moscow itinerary will help you do just that!

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Best Time To Visit Moscow

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Here is a quick look at the seasons so you can decide when to visit Moscow!

The summer months (June-August) are a great time to travel to Moscow to take advantage of the enjoyable mild temperatures. This is considered peak travel season. Bear in mind that hotel prices rise along with the temperatures!

If you’re planning a trip to Moscow during fall (September-November) try to plan for early fall. This way the temperatures will still be pleasant and winter won’t be threatening.

Russian winters (December-February) are not for the faint of heart as Napoleon learned to his peril. Some days the sun will be out for less than an hour, and snow is guaranteed. Although winters are exceptionally cold, this is when you’ll get a true glimpse of the Moscow experience!

The best time to visit Moscow is during spring  (March-May). The temperatures will begin to creep up and the sun begins to shine for significant portions of the day. Hotel rates will also have yet to skyrocket into peak ranges!

With a Moscow City Pass , you can experience the best of Moscow at the CHEAPEST prices. Discounts, attractions, tickets, and even public transport are all standards in any good city pass – be sure invest now and save them $$$ when you arrive!

Moscow is a large city with many accommodation options to choose from. Staying in a location that fits with your travel plans will only enhance your Moscow itinerary. Here is a brief introduction to a few great areas of the city we recommend checking out!

The best place to stay in Moscow to be close to all the action is Kitay-Gorod. This charming neighborhood will put you within walking distance to Moscow’s famous Red Square, thus cutting down on travel time. This will allow you to see more of the city in a shorter amount of time!

It’s surrounded by restaurants, cafes, bars, and shops. If you’re a first-time visitor to Moscow, or just planning a quick weekend in Moscow, then this area is perfect for you!

Another great area to consider is the Zamoskvorechye district. This area of the city offers a blend of new and old Moscow. It has an artsy vibe and there are plenty of fun sites you can explore outside of the main touristy areas of Moscow.

Of course, as in all areas of Moscow, it’s close to public transportation that will quickly connect you with the rest of the city and make your Moscow itinerary super accessible!

Best Airbnb in Moscow – Exclusive Apartment in Old Moscow

Modern and cozy, this apartment is in the heart of Old Moscow. Bordering the Basmanny and Kitay-Gorod districts, this two-bedroom flat is walking distance to the Kremlin and Red Square. Safe, quiet, and comfortable, this is the best Airbnb in Moscow, no question!

Best Budget Hotel in Moscow – Izmailovo Alfa Hotel

The Izmailovo Alfa Hotel is a very highly rated accommodation that provides all the components necessary for a comfortable trip to Moscow. There is an on-site restaurant, bar, fitness center, and an airport shuttle service. The rooms are modern and spacious and are equipped with a TV, heating/air conditioning, minibar, and more!

Best Luxury Hotel in Moscow – Crowne Plaza Moscow World Trade Centre

If you’re touring Moscow in luxury, the Crowne Plaza Moscow World Trade Centre is the hotel for you! Elegantly furnished rooms are equipped with a minibar, flat-screen TV,  in-room safes, as well as tea and coffee making facilities! Bathrooms come with bathrobes, slippers, and free toiletries. There is also an onsite restaurant, bar, and fitness center.

Best Hostel in Moscow – Godzillas Hostel

Godzillas Hostel is located in the center of Moscow, just a short walk from all the major tourist attractions and the metro station. Guests will enjoy all the usual hostel perks such as self-catering facilities, 24-hour reception, Free Wi-Fi, and security lockers. This is one of the best hostels in Moscow and its wonderful social atmosphere and will make your vacation in Moscow extra special!

An important aspect of planning any trip is figuring out the transportation situation. You’re probably wondering how you’re going to get to all of your Moscow points of interest right? Luckily, this sprawling city has an excellent network of public transportation that will make traveling a breeze!

The underground metro system is the quickest and most efficient way to travel around Moscow. Most visitors rely exclusively on this super-efficient transportation system, which allows you to get to pretty much anywhere in the city! It’s also a great option if you’re planning a Moscow itinerary during the colder months, as you’ll be sheltered from the snow and freezing temperatures!

If you prefer above-ground transportation, buses, trams, and trolleybuses, run throughout the city and provide a rather comfortable alternative to the metro.

Moscow’s metro, buses, trams, and trolleybuses are all accessible with a ‘Troika’ card. This card can be topped up with any sum of money at a metro cash desk. The ticket is simple, convenient, and even refundable upon return to a cashier!

No matter which method you choose, you’ll never find yourself without an easy means of getting from point A to point B!

Red Square | Moscow Kremlin | Lenin’s Mausoleum | St. Basil’s Cathedral  | GUM Department Store

Spend the first day of your itinerary taking your own self guided Moscow walking tour around the historic Red Square! This is Moscow’s compact city center and every stop on this list is within easy walking distance to the next! Get ready to see all of the top Moscow landmarks!

Day 1 / Stop 1 – The Red Square

• Why it’s awesome: The Red Square is the most recognizable area in Moscow, it has mesmerizing architecture and centuries worth of history attached to its name.
• Cost: Free to walk around, individual attractions in the square have separate fees. 
• Food nearby: Check out Bar BQ Cafe for friendly service and good food in a great location! The atmosphere is upbeat and they’re open 24/7!

The Red Square is Moscow’s historic fortress and the center of the Russian government. The origins of the square date back to the late 15th century, when Ivan the Great decided to expand the Kremlin to reflect Moscow’s growing power and prestige!

During the 20th century, the square became famous as the site for demonstrations designed to showcase Soviet strength. Visiting the Red Square today, you’ll find it teeming with tourists, who come to witness its magical architecture up close!

The square is the picture postcard of Russian tourism, so make sure to bring your camera when you visit! No matter the season, or the time of day, it’s delightfully photogenic! 

It’s also home to some of Russia’s most distinguishing and important landmarks, which we’ve made sure to include further down in this itinerary. It’s an important center of Russia’s cultural life and one of the top places to visit in Moscow!

In 1990, UNESCO designated Russia’s Red Square as a World Heritage site. Visiting this historic site is a true bucket-list event and essential addition to your itinerary for Moscow!

Day 1 / Stop 2 – The Moscow Kremlin

• Why it’s awesome: The Moscow Kremlin complex includes several palaces and cathedrals and is surrounded by the Kremlin wall. It also houses the principal museum of Russia (the Kremlin Armory).
• Cost: USD $15.00
• Food nearby: Bosco Cafe is a charming place to grat a casual bite to eat. They have excellent coffee and wonderful views of the Red Square and the Moscow Kremlin!

The iconic Moscow Kremlin , also known as the Kremlin museum complex, sits on Borovitsky Hill, rising above the Moscow River. It is a fortified complex in the center of the city, overlooking several iconic buildings in the Red Square!

It’s the best known of the Russian Kremlins – citadels or fortress’ protecting and dominating a city. During the early decades of the Soviet era, the Kremlin was a private enclave where the state’s governing elite lived and worked.

The Kremlin is outlined by an irregularly shaped triangular wall that encloses an area of 68 acres! The existing walls and towers were built from 1485 to 1495. Inside the Kremlin museum complex, there are five palaces, four cathedrals, and the enclosing Kremlin Wall with Kremlin towers.

The Armoury Chamber is a part of the Grand Kremlin Palace’s complex and is one of the oldest museums of Moscow, established in 1851. It showcases Russian history and displays many cherished relics. Definitely make sure to check out this museum while you’re here!

The churches inside the Moscow Kremlin are the Cathedral of the Dormition, Church of the Archangel, Church of the Annunciation, and the bell tower of Ivan Veliki (a church tower).

The five-domed Cathedral of the Dormition is considered the most famous. It was built from 1475–1479 by an Italian architect and has served as a wedding and coronation place for great princes, tsars, and emperors of Russia. Church services are given in the Kremlin’s numerous cathedrals on a regular basis.

The Grand Kremlin Palace was the former Tsar’s Moscow residence and today it serves as the official workplace of the President of the Russian Federation (Vladimir Putin seems to have bagged that title for life) .

Insider Tip: The Kremlin is closed every Thursday! Make sure to plan this stop on your Moscow itinerary for any other day of the week!

Day 1 / Stop 3 – Lenin’s Mausoleum

• Why it’s awesome: The mausoleum displays the preserved body of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin .
• Cost: Free!
• Food nearby: Khinkal’naya is a charming Georgian restaurant with vaulted ceilings and exposed brick. It’s a popular place with locals and right next to the Red Square!

Lenin’s Mausoleum, also known as Lenin’s Tomb, is the modernist mausoleum for the revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin. It’s located within the Red Square and serves as the resting place for the Soviet leader! His preserved body has been on public display since shortly after his death in 1924.

It’s located just a few steps away from the Kremlin Wall and is one of the most controversial yet popular Moscow attractions!

Admission is free for everyone, you’ll only need to pay if you need to check a bag. Before visitors are allowed to enter the mausoleum, they have to go through a metal detector first. No metal objects, liquids, or large bags are allowed in the mausoleum!

Expect a line to enter the building, and while you’re inside the building, you’ll be constantly moving in line with other visitors. This means you won’t be able to spend as long as you’d like viewing the mausoleum, but you’ll still be able to get a good look. Pictures and filming while inside the building are strictly prohibited, and security guards will stop you if they see you breaking this rule.

The mausoleum is only open on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday – unless it’s a public holiday or a day scheduled for maintenance. The hours it’s open for each day are limited, make sure to check online before you visit to make sure you can fit this into your Moscow itinerary for that day!

Insider Tip: The Lenin’s Museum is there for people to pay their respect; remember to keep silent and move along quickly, it’s not intended for people to congregate around. Also, men are not allowed to wear hats and everyone must take their hands out of their pockets when inside the building.

Day 1 / Stop 4 – St. Basil’s Cathedral

• Why it’s awesome: A dazzling designed cathedral that showcases Russia’s unique architecture. This cathedral is one of the most recognizable symbols of the country!
• Cost: USD $8.00
• Food nearby: Moskovskiy Chaynyy Klub is a cozy cafe serving food items and pipping hot tea; it’s the perfect place to go if you’re visiting Moscow during the winter months!

Located in the Red Square, the ornate 16th-century St. Basil’s Cathedral is probably the building you picture when you think of Moscow’s unique architecture. Its colorful onion-shaped domes tower over the Moscow skyline!

The cathedral was built from 1555-1561 by order of Tsar Ivan the Terrible. It was designed with an iconic onion dome facade and enchanting colors that captivate all who see it. Fun fact: If you’re wondering why Russian churches have onion domes, they are popularly believed to symbolize burning candles!

This iconic cathedral has become a symbol of Russia due to its distinguishing architecture and prominent position inside the Red Square. It’s one of the most beautiful, wonderful, and mesmerizing historical cathedrals in the world!

The interior of the church surprises most people when they visit. In contrast to the large exterior, the inside is not so much one large area, but rather a collection of smaller areas, with many corridors and small rooms. There are 9 small chapels and one mausoleum grouped around a central tower.

Visiting the inside is like walking through a maze, there are even small signs all around the cathedral tracing where to walk, and pointing you in the right direction! The walls are meticulously decorated and painted with intricate floral designs and religious themes.

The church rarely holds service and is instead a museum open for the public to visit.

Insider Tip: During the summer months the line to go inside the cathedral can get quite long! Make sure to arrive early or reserve your tickets online to guarantee quick access into the cathedral!

Day 1 / Stop 5 – GUM Department Store

• Why it’s awesome: This is Russia’s most famous shopping mall! It’s designed with elegant and opulent architecture and provides a real sense of nostalgia!
• Cost: Free to enter
• Food nearby: Stolovaya 57 is a cafeteria-style restaurant with a variety of inexpensive Russian cuisine menu items including soups, salads, meat dishes, and desserts. It’s also located inside the GUM department store, making it very easily accessible when you’re shopping!

The enormous GUM Department Store is located within the historic Red Square. It has a whimsical enchantment to it that sets it apart from your typical department store.

A massive domed glass ceiling lines the top of the building and fills the interior with natural sunlight. There are live plants and flowers placed throughout the mall that give the shopping complex a lively and cheerful feel! A playful fountain sits in the center, further adding to the malls inviting a sense of wonder and amusement!

The GUM department store opened on December 2, 1893. Today, it includes local and luxury stores, including Fendi, Louis Vuitton, Prada, and many more! There are numerous cafes, restaurants, and even a movie theater inside!

For a special treat, head into Gastronom 1. This 1950s-style shop sells gourmet food items, like wine, freshly-baked pastries, cheese, Russian chocolate, and of course, vodka! Also, be on the lookout for a bicycle pedaling ice cream truck with an employing selling ice cream!

The ambiance is simply amazing, a trip to this idyllic shopping mall is an absolute must on any Moscow itinerary!

Insider Tip: Make sure to carry some small change on you in case you need to use the restroom, you’ll need to pay 50 rubles – or about USD $0.80 to use the bathroom in GUM.

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These are packing cubes for the globetrotters and compression sacks for the  real adventurers – these babies are a traveller’s best kept secret. They organise yo’ packing and minimise volume too so you can pack MORE.

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Novodevichy Convent | Gorky Park | State Tretyakov Gallery | All-Russian Exhibition Center | Bolshoi Theater

On your 2 day itinerary in Moscow, you’ll have a chance to use the city’s excellent public transportation service! You’ll explore a few more of Moscow’s historic highlight as well as some modern attractions. These sites are a little more spread out, but still very easily accessible thanks to the metro!

Day 2 / Stop 1 – Novodevichy Convent

• Why it’s awesome: The Novodevichy Convent is rich in imperial Russian history and contains some of Russia’s best examples of classical architecture!
• Cost: USD $5.00
• Food nearby: Culinary Shop Karavaevs Brothers is a cozy and simple place to have a quick bite, they also have vegetarian options!

The Novodevichy Convent is the best-known and most popular cloister of Moscow. The convent complex is contained within high walls, and there are many attractions this site is known for! 

The six-pillared five-domed Smolensk Cathedral is the main attraction. It was built to resemble the Kremlin’s Assumption Cathedral and its facade boasts beautiful snowy white walls and a pristine golden onion dome as its centerpiece. It’s the oldest structure in the convent, built from 1524 -1525, and is situated in the center of the complex between the two entrance gates.

There are other churches inside the convent as well, all dating back from many centuries past. The convent is filled with an abundance of 16th and 17th-century religious artworks, including numerous large and extravagant frescos!

Just outside the convent’s grounds lies the Novodevichy Cemetery. Here, you can visit the graves of famous Russians, including esteemed authors, composers, and politicians. Probably the most intriguing gravestone belongs to Russian politician Nikita Khruschev!

The Novodevichy Convent is located near the Moscow River and offers a peaceful retreat from the busy city. In 2004, it was proclaimed a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The convent remains remarkably well-preserved and is an outstanding example of Moscow Baroque architecture! 

Insider Tip: To enter the cathedrals inside the complex, women are advised to cover their heads and shoulders, while men should wear long pants.

Day 2 / Stop 2 – Gorky Central Park of Culture and Leisure

• Why it’s awesome: A large amusement area in the heart of the city offering many attractions!
• Cost: Free! 
• Food nearby: Check out Mepkato, located inside Gorky Central Park for a casual meal in a cozy setting. There are indoor and outdoor seating options and the restaurant is child-friendly!

Gorky Central Park of Culture and Leisure is a large green space in the heart of Moscow. The park opened in 1928, and it stretches along the scenic embankment of the Moskva River. It covers an area of 300-acres and offers a lovely contrast from the compact city center.

You’ll find all sorts of wonderful attractions, from boat rides to bike rentals to tennis courts and ping-pong tables, and much more! there are an open-air cinema and festive events and concerts scheduled in the summer months.  A wide selection of free fitness classes is also offered on a regular basis, including jogging, roller skating, and dancing!

Although many of the options you’ll find here are more suited for outdoor leisure during the summer, you’ll also a selection of winter attractions, including one of Europe’s largest ice rinks for ice-skating!

If you’re trying to decide what to do in Moscow with kids, the park also offers several venues designed specifically for kids. Check out the year-round Green School which offers hands-on classes in gardening and art! You can also feed the squirrels and birds at the Golitsinsky Ponds!

The park is very well maintained and kept clean and the entrance is free of charge, although most individual attractions cost money. There is also Wi-Fi available throughout the park.

With so many attractions, you could easily spend all day here! If you’re only planning a 2 day itinerary in Moscow, make sure to plan your time accordingly and map out all the areas you want to see beforehand!

Day 2 / Stop 3 – The State Tretyakov Gallery

• Why it’s awesome: The gallery’s collection consists entirely of Russian art made by Russian artists!
• Food nearby : Brothers Tretyakovs is located right across the street from the gallery. It’s a wonderfully atmospheric restaurant serving top quality food and drinks!

The State Tretyakov Gallery was founded in 1856 by influential merchant and collector Pavel Tretyakov.  The gallery is a national treasury of Russian fine art and one of the most important museums in Russia!

It houses the world’s best collection of Russian art and contains more than 130, 000 paintings, sculptures, and graphics! These works have been created throughout the centuries by generations of Russia’s most talented artists!

The exhibits range from mysterious 12th-century images to politically charged canvases. The collection is rich and revealing and offers great insight into the history and attitudes of this long-suffering yet inspired people!

All pictures are also labeled in English. If you plan to take your time and see everything inside the museum it will take a good 3-4 hours, so make sure to plan your Moscow trip itinerary accordingly! This gallery is a must-see stop for art lovers, or anyone wanting to explore the local culture and history of Russia in a creative and insightful manner! 

Insider Tip: When planning your 2 days in Moscow itinerary, keep in mind that most museums in Moscow are closed on Mondays, this includes The State Tretyakov Gallery!

Day 2 / Stop 4 – All-Russian Exhibition Center

• Why it’s awesome: This large exhibition center showcases the achievements of the Soviet Union in several different spheres. 
• Food nearby: Varenichnaya No. 1 serves authentic and homestyle Russian cuisine in an intimate and casual setting.

The All-Russian Exhibition Center is a massive park that presents the glory of the Soviet era! It pays homage to the achievements of Soviet Russia with its many different sites found on the property.

The center was officially opened in 1939 to exhibit the achievements of the Soviet Union. It’s a huge complex of buildings and the largest exhibition center in Moscow. There are several exhibition halls dedicated to different achievements and every year there are more than one hundred and fifty specialized exhibitions!

The Peoples Friendship Fountain was constructed in 1954 and is a highlight of the park. The stunning gold fountain features 16 gilded statues of girls, each representing the former Soviet Union republics. 

The Stone Flower Fountain was also built in 1954 and is worth checking out. The centerpiece of this large fountain is a flower carved from stones from the Ural Mountains! Along the side of the fountain are various bronze sculptures.

You will find many people zipping around on rollerblades and bicycles across the large area that the venue covers. It’s also home to amusement rides and carousels, making it the perfect place to stop with kids on your Moscow itinerary! Make sure to wear comfortable shoes and allow a few hours to explore all the areas that interest you!

Day 2 / Stop 5 – Bolshoi Theater

• Why it’s awesome: The Bolshoi Theater is a historic venue that hosts world-class ballet and opera performances!
• Cost: Prices vary largely between USD $2.00 –  USD $228.00 based on seat location.
• Food nearby: Head to the Russian restaurant, Bolshoi for high-quality food and drinks and excellent service!

The Bolshoi Theater is among the oldest and most renowned ballet and opera companies in the world! It also boasts the world’s biggest ballet company, with more than 200 dancers!

The theater has been rebuilt and renovated several times during its long history. In 2011 it finished its most recent renovation after an extensive six-year restoration that started in 2005. The renovation included an improvement in acoustics and the restoration of the original Imperial decor.

The Bolshoi Theater has put on many of the world’s most famous ballet acts! Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake premiered at the theater in 1877 and other notable performances of the Bolshoi repertoire include Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker!

Today, when you visit the theater, you can expect a magical performance from skilled singers, dancers, and musicians with the highest level of technique!

If you don’t have time to see a show, the theater also provides guided tours on select days of the week. Tours are given in both Russian and English and will provide visitors with a more intimate look at the different areas of the theater!

The stage of this iconic Russian theater has seen many outstanding performances. If you’re a fan of the performing arts, the Bolshoi Theater is one of the greatest and oldest ballet and opera companies in the world, making it a must-see attraction on your Moscow itinerary!

Godzillas Hostel

Godzillas Hostel is located in the center of Moscow, just a short walk from all the major tourist attractions and the metro station.

• Towels Included

Cosmonautics Museum | Alexander Garden | Ostankino Tower | Izmaylovo District | Soviet Arcade Museum

Now that we’ve covered what to do in Moscow in 2 days, if you’re able to spend more time in the city you’re going to need more attractions to fill your time. Here are a few more really cool things to do in Moscow we recommend!

Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics

• Hear the timeline of the ‘space race’ from the Russian perspective
• This museum is fun for both adults and children!
• Admission is USD $4.00

The Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics is a museum dedicated to space exploration! The museum explores the history of flight, astronomy, space exploration, space technology, and space in the arts. It houses a large assortment of Soviet and Russian space-related exhibits, and the museum’s collection holds approximately 85,000 different items!

The museum does an excellent job of telling the full story of the exciting space race between the USSR and the US! It highlights the brightest moments in Russian history and humanity and is very interesting and fun for all ages!

If you’re a fan of space or just curious about gaining insight into Russia’s fascinating history of space exploration, make sure to add this to your 3 day itinerary in Moscow!

The Alexander Garden

• A tranquil place to relax near the Red Square
• Green lawns dotted with sculptures and lovely water features
• The park is open every day and has no entrance fee

The Alexander Garden was one of the first urban public parks in Moscow! The garden premiered in 1821 and was built to celebrate Russia’s victory over Napoleon’s forces in 1812!

The park is beautiful and well maintained with paths to walk on and benches to rest on. The park contains three separate gardens: the upper garden, middle garden, and lower garden.

Located in the upper garden, towards the main entrance to the park is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier with its eternal flame. This monument was created in 1967 and contains the body of a soldier who fell during the Great Patriotic War!

The park stretches along all the length of the western Kremlin wall for about half a mile. Due to its central location in the city, it’ll be easily accessible when you’re out exploring The Red Square.

It provides a bit of relief from the city’s high-energy city streets. Bring a picnic lunch, go for a walk, or just sit and people watch, this is one of the best Moscow sites to wind-down and relax!

Ostankino Television Tower

• Television and radio tower in Moscow
• Currently the tallest free-standing structure in Europe
• Make sure you bring your passport when you visit, you can’t go up without it!

For spectacular views of the city, make sure to add the Ostankino Television Tower to your itinerary for Moscow! This impressive free-standing structure provides stunning views of the city in every direction. The glass floor at the top also provides great alternative views of the city!

It takes just 58 seconds for visitors to reach the Tower’s observation deck by super fast elevator. The tower is open every day for long hours and is a great site in Moscow to check out! There is even a restaurant at the top where you can enjoy rotating views of the city while you dine on traditional Russian cuisine or European cuisine!

The tower is somewhat of an architectural surprise in a city that is not known for skyscrapers! To see the city from a new perspective, make sure to add this stop to your Moscow itinerary!

Izmaylovo District

• The most popular attractions in this district are the kremlin and the flea market
• Outside of the city center and easy to reach via metro
• Most popular during the summer and on weekends

Travel outside the city center and discover a unique area of the city! The Izmaylovo District is a popular destination for locals and tourists alike, and one of the coolest places to see in Moscow! The two main attractions we recommend checking out are the Kremlin and the flea market.

The Izmailovo Kremlin was established as a cultural center and molded after traditional Russian architecture. This colorful complex is home to several single-subject museums, including a Russian folk art museum and a vodka museum!

Next to the Kremlin is the Izmailovo open-air market, which dates back to the 17th century! The market is connected to the Izmailovo Kremlin by a wooden bridge. Pick up all your Russian souvenirs here, including traditional handicrafts, paintings, books, retro toys, and Soviet memorabilia!

You will find many hand-made and hand-painted options available at higher prices, as well as mass-produced souvenir options at lower prices!

Museum of Soviet Arcade Games

• Closed on Mondays
• Filled with old arcade games that visitors get to try out!
• The museum also includes a small cafe and burger shop

For something a little different, check out the Museum of Soviet Arcade Games! The museum features roughly 60 machines from the Soviet era, including video games, pinball machines, and collaborative hockey foosball! The machines inside the museum were produced in the USSR in the mid-1970s.

The best part is, most of the games are still playable! Purchase tickets and try the games out for yourself! The museum also has a neat little screening room that plays old Soviet cartoons and an area with Soviet magazines! This unique attraction is a fun addition to a 3 day itinerary in Moscow, and an attraction that all ages will enjoy! 

Whether you’re spending one day in Moscow, or more, safety is an important thing to keep in mind when traveling to a big city! Overall, Moscow is a very safe place to visit. However, it is always recommended that tourists take certain precautions when traveling to a new destination!

The police in Moscow is extremely effective at making the city a safe place to visit and do their best to patrol all of the top Moscow, Russia tourist attractions. However, tourists can still be a target for pickpockets and scammers.

Moscow has a huge flow of tourists, therefore there is a risk for pickpocketing. Simple precautions will help eliminate your chances of being robbed. Stay vigilant, keep your items close to you at all times, and don’t flash your valuables!

If you’re planning a solo Moscow itinerary, you should have no need to worry, as the city is also considered safe for solo travelers, even women. Stay in the populated areas, try and not travel alone late at night, and never accept rides from strangers or taxis without a meter and correct signage.

The threat of natural disasters in Moscow is low, with the exception of severe winters when the temperature can dip below freezing! Bring a good, warm jacket if you visit in Winter.

However, please note that Russian views on homsexuality are far less accepting than those in Western Europe. Likewise, Non-Caucasian travellers may sadly encounter racism in Russia .

Don’t Forget Your Travel Insurance for Moscow

ALWAYS sort out your backpacker insurance before your trip. There’s plenty to choose from in that department, but a good place to start is Safety Wing .

They offer month-to-month payments, no lock-in contracts, and require absolutely no itineraries: that’s the exact kind of insurance long-term travellers and digital nomads need.

SafetyWing is cheap, easy, and admin-free: just sign up lickety-split so you can get back to it!

Click the button below to learn more about SafetyWing’s setup or read our insider review for the full tasty scoop.

Now that we’ve covered all the top things to see in Moscow, we thought we’d include some exciting day trips to other areas of the country!

Sergiev Posad (Golden Ring)

On this 7-hour guided tour, you’ll visit several scenic and historic areas of Russia. Start your day with hotel pick-up as you’re transferred by a comfortable car or minivan to Sergiev Posad. Admire the charming Russian countryside on your drive and enjoy a quick stop to visit the Russian village, Rudonezh!

You’ll see the majestic Saint Spring and the Church of Sergiev Radonezh. You’ll also visit the UNESCO World Heritage Site, Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, one of the most famous Orthodox sites in Russia!

Lastly, you’ll swing by the local Matreshka market and enjoy a break in a nice Russian restaurant before returning to Moscow!

Day Trip to Vladimir and Suzdal

On this 13-hour trip, you’ll discover old Russia, with its picturesque landscapes and white-stoned beautiful churches! You’ll visit the main towns of the famous Golden Ring of Russia – the name for several cities and smaller towns north-east of Moscow.

Your first stop will be in the town of Vladimir, the ancient capital of all Russian principalities. The city dates back to the 11th century and is one of the oldest and the most important towns along the Ring! Next, you’ll visit Suzdal, a calm ancient Russian town north of Vladimir with only 13,000 inhabitants!

The old-style architecture and buildings of Suzdal are kept wonderfully intact. If you’re spending three days in Moscow, or more, this is a great option for exploring the charming areas outside the city!

Zvenigorod Day Trip and Russian Countryside

On this 9-hour private tour, you’ll explore the ancient town of Zvenigorod, one of the oldest towns in the Moscow region! As you leave Moscow you’ll enjoy the stunning scenery along the Moscow River, and make a few stops at old churches along the way to Zvenigorod.

Upon arrival, you’ll explore the medieval center, including the 14th-century Savvino-Storozhevsky Monastery. Next, you’ll take a break for lunch (own expense) where you’ll have the chance to try out the Russian cuisine! Next, you’ll visit the Museum of Russian Dessert and sip on tea at a Russian tea ceremony.

The final stop of the day is at the Ershovo Estate, a gorgeous place to walk around and enjoy nature!

Day Trip to St Petersburg by Train visiting Hermitage & Faberge

On this full-day tour, you’ll enjoy a a full round trip to St Petersburg where you’ll spend an exciting day exploring another popular Russian city! You’ll be picked up from your hotel in Moscow and be transferred to the train station where you’ll ride the high-speed train ‘Sapsan’ to St Petersburg.

Upon arrival, you’ll start the day by touring the Hermitage Museum and the Winter Palace. Next, you’ll visit the Faberge Museum, where you’ll explore the impressive collection of rare Faberge Eggs! In the afternoon, enjoy a sightseeing boat ride and a traditional 3-course Russian lunch.

If you’re spending 3 days in Moscow, or more, this is an excellent trip to take!

Trip to Kolomna – Authentic Cultural Experience from Moscow

On this 10-hour tour, you’ll escape the city and travel to the historic town of Kolomna! First, you’ll visit the 14th-century Kolomna Kremlin, home to the Assumption Cathedral and an abundance of museums!

Next, enjoy lunch at a local cafe (own expense) before embarking on a tour of the Marshmallow Museum – of course, a marshmallow tasting is provided!  Your final stop is the Museum of Forging Settlements, where displays include armor and accessories for fishing and hunting.

Discover this beautiful Russian fairytale city on a private trip, where all of the planning is taken care of for you!

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Find out what people want to know when planning their Moscow itinerary.

How many days you need in Moscow?

We recommend that you spend at least two or three days in Moscow to take it all in.

What’s the best month to visit Moscow?

The best time to visit Moscow is over the spring, from March to May as temperatures are mild, crowds are thin and prices are reasonable.

What are some unusual things to do in Moscow?

I mean, queuing up to see an almost 100 year old corpse is pretty unsual! Check out Lenin’s Mausoleum if you fancy it!

What are some fun things to do in Moscow?

The Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics is a fun place to explore the famous space race from the perspective of the ‘other side’!

We hope you enjoyed our Moscow itinerary! We’ve made sure to cover all the Moscow must-sees as well as some unique attractions in the city! Our addition of insider tips, favorite food stops, and day trips from Moscow is an added bonus and will guarantee you make the most out of your exciting Russian vacation!

Immerse yourself in the modern and traditional Russian lifestyle! Get lost in museums, witness awe-inspiring architecture, and indulge in Russian cuisine! Spend the day strolling through all of the charming sites of Moscow, admiring the beautiful scenery and discovering the city’s fairytale-like enchantment!

And for transparency’s sake, please know that some of the links in our content are affiliate links . That means that if you book your accommodation, buy your gear, or sort your insurance through our link, we earn a small commission (at no extra cost to you). That said, we only link to the gear we trust and never recommend services we don’t believe are up to scratch. Again, thank you!

Alya and Campbell

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• Destinations

Moscow Travel Guide

Boasting a history that spans eight centuries, Russia's capital has evolved into an expansive megapolis which resembles a city-state. Its Cold War history and massive size might give it an intimidating image, but at its core Moscow is every bit the European city offering wealth of history and culture coupled with modernity and edginess. Travel here for strikingly impressive landmarks, high art, world class ballet, lavish celebrations, along with dynamic pockets of nightlife and trendy restaurants. — Nano Betts

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What the New Overtime Rule Means for Workers

One of the basic principles of the American workplace is that a hard day’s work deserves a fair day’s pay. Simply put, every worker’s time has value. A cornerstone of that promise is the  Fair Labor Standards Act ’s (FLSA) requirement that when most workers work more than 40 hours in a week, they get paid more. The  Department of Labor ’s new overtime regulation is restoring and extending this promise for millions more lower-paid salaried workers in the U.S.

Overtime protections have been a critical part of the FLSA since 1938 and were established to protect workers from exploitation and to benefit workers, their families and our communities. Strong overtime protections help build America’s middle class and ensure that workers are not overworked and underpaid.

Some workers are specifically exempt from the FLSA’s minimum wage and overtime protections, including bona fide executive, administrative or professional employees. This exemption, typically referred to as the “EAP” exemption, applies when: 

1. An employee is paid a salary,  

2. The salary is not less than a minimum salary threshold amount, and 

3. The employee primarily performs executive, administrative or professional duties.

While the department increased the minimum salary required for the EAP exemption from overtime pay every 5 to 9 years between 1938 and 1975, long periods between increases to the salary requirement after 1975 have caused an erosion of the real value of the salary threshold, lessening its effectiveness in helping to identify exempt EAP employees.

The department’s new overtime rule was developed based on almost 30 listening sessions across the country and the final rule was issued after reviewing over 33,000 written comments. We heard from a wide variety of members of the public who shared valuable insights to help us develop this Administration’s overtime rule, including from workers who told us: “I would love the opportunity to...be compensated for time worked beyond 40 hours, or alternately be given a raise,” and “I make around $40,000 a year and most week[s] work well over 40 hours (likely in the 45-50 range). This rule change would benefit me greatly and ensure that my time is paid for!” and “Please, I would love to be paid for the extra hours I work!”

The department’s final rule, which will go into effect on July 1, 2024, will increase the standard salary level that helps define and delimit which salaried workers are entitled to overtime pay protections under the FLSA. 

Starting July 1, most salaried workers who earn less than $844 per week will become eligible for overtime pay under the final rule. And on Jan. 1, 2025, most salaried workers who make less than $1,128 per week will become eligible for overtime pay. As these changes occur, job duties will continue to determine overtime exemption status for most salaried employees.

The rule will also increase the total annual compensation requirement for highly compensated employees (who are not entitled to overtime pay under the FLSA if certain requirements are met) from $107,432 per year to $132,964 per year on July 1, 2024, and then set it equal to $151,164 per year on Jan. 1, 2025.

Starting July 1, 2027, these earnings thresholds will be updated every three years so they keep pace with changes in worker salaries, ensuring that employers can adapt more easily because they’ll know when salary updates will happen and how they’ll be calculated.

The final rule will restore and extend the right to overtime pay to many salaried workers, including workers who historically were entitled to overtime pay under the FLSA because of their lower pay or the type of work they performed. 

We urge workers and employers to visit  our website to learn more about the final rule.

Jessica Looman is the administrator for the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division. Follow the Wage and Hour Division on Twitter at  @WHD_DOL  and  LinkedIn .  Editor's note: This blog was edited to correct a typo (changing "administrator" to "administrative.")

• Wage and Hour Division (WHD)
• Fair Labor Standards Act
• overtime rule

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Central Bank Digital Currencies in the Middle East and Central Asia

Author/Editor:

Serpil Bouza ; Bashar Hlayhel ; Thomas Kroen ; Marcello Miccoli ; Borislava Mircheva ; Greta Polo ; Sahra Sakha ; Yang Yang

Publication Date:

April 26, 2024

Electronic Access:

Free Download . Use the free Adobe Acrobat Reader to view this PDF file

Disclaimer: The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board, or IMF management.

Against the backdrop of a rapidly digitalizing world, there is a growing interest in central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) among central banks, including in the Middle East and Central Asia (ME&CA) region. This paper aims to support ME&CA policymakers in examining key questions when considering the adoption of a CBDC while underscoring the importance of country-specific analyses. This paper does not provide recommendations on CBDC issuance. Instead, it frames the discussion around the following key questions: What is a CBDC? What objectives do policymakers aim to achieve with the issuance of a CBDC? Which inefficiencies in payment systems can CBDCs address? What are the implications of CBDC issuance for financial stability and central bank operational risk? How can CBDC design help achieve policy objectives and mitigate these risks? The paper provides preliminary answers to these questions at the regional level. A survey of IMF teams and public statements from ME&CA policymakers confirm that promoting financial inclusion and making payment systems more efficient (domestic and cross-border) are the top priorities in the region. Payment services through CBDCs, if offered at a lower cost than existing alternatives, could spur competition in the payment market and help increase access to bank accounts, improve financial inclusion, and update legacy technology platforms. CBDCs may also help improve the efficiency of cross-border payment services, especially if designed to address frictions arising from a lack of payment system interoperability, complex processing of compliance checks, long transaction chains, and weak competition. At the same time, CBDCs could negatively impact bank profitability while introducing a substantial operational burden for central banks. However, the exact economic and financial impacts of CBDCs need further study and would depend on estimates of CBDC demand, which are uncertain and country- dependent. CBDC issuance and adoption is a long journey that policymakers should approach with care. Policymakers need to analyze carefully whether a CBDC serves their country’s objectives and whether the expected benefits outweigh the potential costs, in addition to risks for the financial system and operational risks for the central bank.

Departmental Paper No 2024/004

Central Bank digital currencies Commercial banks Digital financial services Financial inclusion Financial institutions Financial markets International organization Payment systems Political economy Technology

9798400263798/2616-5333

Please address any questions about this title to [email protected]

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House Approves $95 Billion Aid Bill for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan

After months of delay at the hands of a bloc of ultraconservative Republicans, the package drew overwhelming bipartisan support, reflecting broad consensus.

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By Catie Edmondson

Reporting from the Capitol

The House voted resoundingly on Saturday to approve $95 billion in foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, as Speaker Mike Johnson put his job on the line to advance the long-stalled aid package by marshaling support from mainstream Republicans and Democrats.

In four back-to-back votes, overwhelming bipartisan coalitions of lawmakers approved fresh rounds of funding for the three U.S. allies, as well as another bill meant to sweeten the deal for conservatives that could result in a nationwide ban of TikTok.

The scene on the House floor reflected both the broad support in Congress for continuing to help the Ukrainian military beat back Russia, and the extraordinary political risk taken by Mr. Johnson to defy the anti-interventionist wing of his party who had sought to thwart the measure. Minutes before the vote on assistance for Kyiv, Democrats began to wave small Ukrainian flags on the House floor, as hard-right Republicans jeered.

How the House Voted on Foreign Aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan

Here’s how each member of the House voted on the foreign aid bills.

The legislation includes $60 billion for Kyiv; $26 billion for Israel and humanitarian aid for civilians in conflict zones, including Gaza; and $8 billion for the Indo-Pacific region. It would direct the president to seek repayment from the Ukrainian government of $10 billion in economic assistance, a concept supported by former President Donald J. Trump, who had pushed for any aid to Kyiv to be in the form of a loan. But it also would allow the president to forgive those loans starting in 2026.

It also contained a measure to help pave the way to selling off frozen Russian sovereign assets to help fund the Ukrainian war effort, and a new round of sanctions on Iran. The Senate is expected to pass the legislation as early as Tuesday and send it to President Biden’s desk, capping its tortured journey through Congress.

“Our adversaries are working together to undermine our Western values and demean our democracy,” Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas and the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said Saturday as the House debated the measure. “We cannot be afraid at this moment. We have to do what’s right. Evil is on the march. History is calling and now is the time to act.”

“History will judge us by our actions here today,” he continued. “As we deliberate on this vote, you have to ask yourself this question: ‘Am I Chamberlain or Churchill?’”

The vote was 311 to 112 in favor of the aid to Ukraine, with a majority of Republicans — 112 — voting against it and one, Representative Dan Meuser of Pennsylvania, voting “present.” The House approved assistance to Israel 366 to 58; and to Taiwan 385 to 34, with Representative Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan, voting “present.” The bill to impose sanctions on Iran and require the sale of TikTok by its Chinese owner or ban the app in the United States passed 360 to 58.

“Today, members of both parties in the House voted to advance our national security interests and send a clear message about the power of American leadership on the world stage,” Mr. Biden said. “At this critical inflection point, they came together to answer history’s call, passing urgently needed national security legislation that I have fought for months to secure.”

Minutes after the vote, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine thanked lawmakers, singling out Mr. Johnson by name “for the decision that keeps history on the right track.”

“Democracy and freedom will always have global significance and will never fail as long as America helps to protect it,” he wrote on social media. “The vital U.S. aid bill passed today by the House will keep the war from expanding, save thousands and thousands of lives, and help both of our nations to become stronger.”

Outside the Capitol, a jubilant crowd waved Ukrainian flags and chanted, “Thank you U.S.A.” as exiting lawmakers gave them a thumbs-up and waved smaller flags of their own.

For months, it had been uncertain whether Congress would approve new funding for Ukraine, even as momentum shifted in Moscow’s favor. That prompted a wave of anxiety in Kyiv and in Europe that the United States, the single biggest provider of military aid to Ukraine, would turn its back on the young democracy.

And it raised questions about whether the political turmoil that has roiled the United States had effectively destroyed what has long been a strong bipartisan consensus in favor of projecting American values around the world. The last time the Congress approved a major tranche of funding to Ukraine was in 2022, before Republicans took control of the House.

With an “America First” sentiment gripping the party’s voter base, led by Mr. Trump, Republicans dug in last year against another aid package for Kyiv, saying the matter should not even be considered unless Mr. Biden agreed to stringent anti-immigration measures. When Senate Democrats agreed earlier this year to legislation that paired the aid with stiffer border enforcement provisions, Mr. Trump denounced it and Republicans rejected it out of hand.

But after the Senate passed its own $95 billion emergency aid legislation for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan without any immigration measures, Mr. Johnson began — first privately, then loudly — telling allies that he would ensure the U.S. would send aid to Kyiv.

In the end, even in the face of an ouster threat from ultraconservative members, he circumvented the hard-line contingent of lawmakers that once was his political home and relied on Democrats to push the measure through. It was a remarkable turnabout for a right-wing lawmaker who voted repeatedly against aid to Ukraine as a rank-and-file member, and as recently as a couple of months ago declared he would never allow the matter to come to a vote until his party’s border demands were met.

In the days leading up to the vote, Mr. Johnson began forcefully making the case that it was Congress’s role to help Ukraine fend off the advances of an authoritarian. Warning that Russian forces could march through the Baltics and Poland if Ukraine falls, Mr. Johnson said he had made the decision to advance aid to Kyiv because he “would rather send bullets to Ukraine than American boys.”

“I think this is an important moment and important opportunity to make that decision,” Mr. Johnson told reporters at the Capitol after the votes. “I think we did our work here and I think history will judge it well.”

Mr. Johnson structured the measures, which were sent to the Senate as one bill, to capture different coalitions of support without allowing opposition to any one element to defeat the whole thing.

“I’m going to allow an opportunity for every single member of the House to vote their conscience and their will,” he had said.

In a nod to right-wing demands, Mr. Johnson allowed a vote just before the foreign aid bills on a stringent border enforcement measure, but it was defeated after failing to reach the two-thirds majority needed for passage. And the speaker refused to link the immigration bill to the foreign aid package, knowing that would effectively kill the spending plan.

His decision to advance the package infuriated the ultraconservatives in his conference who accused Mr. Johnson of reneging on his promise not to allow a vote on foreign aid without first securing sweeping policy concessions on the southern border. It prompted two Republicans, Representatives Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Paul Gosar of Arizona to join a bid by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia to oust Mr. Johnson from the top job.

Ms. Greene claimed the Ukraine aid bill supported “a business model built on blood and murder and war in foreign countries.”

“We should be funding to build up our weapons and ammunition, not to send it over to foreign countries,” she said before her proposal to zero out the money for Kyiv failed on a vote of 351 to 71.

Much of the funding for Ukraine is earmarked to replenish U.S. stockpiles after shipping supplies to Kyiv.

Since Russia’s invasion in 2022, Congress has appropriated $113 billion in funding to support Ukraine’s war effort. $75 billion was directly allocated to the country for humanitarian, financial and military support, and another $38 billion in security assistance-related funding was spent largely in the United States, according to the Institute for Study of War , a Washington-based research group.

Hard-right Republican opposition to the legislation — both on the House floor and in the critical Rules panel — forced Mr. Johnson to rely on Democrats to push the legislation across the finish line.

“If Ukraine does not receive this support that it requires to defeat Russia’s outrageous assault on its sovereign territory, the legacy of this Congress will be the appeasement of a dictator, the destruction of an allied nation and a fractured Europe,” said Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. “Gone will be our credibility, in the eyes of our allies and of our adversaries. And gone will be the America that promised to stand up for freedom, democracy, and human rights, wherever they are threatened or wherever they are under attack.”

Thirty-seven liberal Democrats opposed the $26 billion aid package for Israel because the legislation placed no conditions on how Israel could use American funding, as the death toll in Gaza has reached more than 33,000 and the threat of famine looms. That showed a notable dent in the longstanding ironclad bipartisan backing for Israel in Congress, but was a relatively small bloc of opposition given that left-wing lawmakers had pressed for a large “no” vote on the bill to send a message to Mr. Biden about the depth of opposition within his political coalition to his backing for Israel’s tactics in the war.

“Sending more weapons to the Netanyahu government will make the U.S. even more responsible for atrocities and the horrific humanitarian crisis in Gaza which is now in a season of famine,” said Representative Jonathan L. Jackson, Democrat of Illinois.

Carl Hulse , Annie Karni , and Kayla Guo contributed reporting from Washington and Marc Santora from Kyiv.

Catie Edmondson covers Congress for The Times. More about Catie Edmondson