Commerce in human bondage during the early modern and modern eras has not only shaped the histories of peoples and nations but also played a key role in transnational history. The transportation by force of Africans and others across the seas has helped shape the modern political, economic, and cultural history of our world. The papers in this session will explore different aspects of slave trading in history, considering how a variety of human actors interacted in one of the most traumatic and horrible stories of human exploitation in the modern world.