Current estimates indicate that about 12.5 million Africans were forcibly shipped across the Atlantic Ocean during the era of the transatlantic slave trade. ${ }^{2}$ At least 45 per cent are believed to have departed from ports in western Central Africa (Lovejoy, unpublished). Estimates indicate that approximately 2,073,650 captives left Angola between 1801 and 1867, with about 733,000 thought to have embarked at Luanda up to 1850, turning this city into the single, most important Atlantic slaving port until the end of the slave trade in the 1860s (Domingues da Silva, 2013). In 1802, the Luanda population was estimated at some 6,925 inhabitants, including 2,832 enslaved individuals representing 41 per cent of the total population. Among the civilians, some 710 were designated brancos (whites), 1,060 pardos (of mixed African and European background) and 3,932 pretos (blacks). The remaining 1,223 were military, ecclesiastics and civil servants who were most likely brancos or pardos (Curto and Gervais, 2001, pp. 1-59).  
As in the case of other Atlantic ports, the slave trade in Luanda attracted a significant number of foreigners, mainly Portuguese and Brazilian-born men, who sojourned or eventually settled in the colonial capital. Foreign traders adventuring onto the coast of western Central Africa generally relied on local  
[^0]
[^0]:    2 For the most recent estimates on the number of Africans exported across the Atlantic Ocean, see Eltis and Richardson, 2008, pp. 3-68; 2010; and Eltis et al., 2008.