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 ImagesThe 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.