The Atlantic Slave Trade This eighteenth-century French engraving shows the sale of slaves at Gorée, a major slave-trading port in what is now Dakar in Senegal. A European merchant and an African authority figure negotiate the arrangement, while the shackled victims themselves wait for their fate to be decided. Slave Merchant in Gorée Island, Senegal, from Encyclopédie des Voyages, engraved by L. F. Labrousse, 1796/Bibliothèque des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, France/Archives Charmet/Bridgeman Images