North Eastern Atlantic

The sea west of Upper Guinea approaches a coast where many rivers reach the Atlantic through mangrove-lined estuaries. The Rio Pongo became a centre of the trade in captive people at the end of the eighteenth century, drawing merchants into an older network linking coastal Baga communities with the interior. Farther south, the Sherbro coast had long supplied camwood to English traders. African rulers and merchant families shaped the exchanges that brought ships to these waterways.