The human traffic through which African societies supplied the labor needs of the Americas invokes many fundamental questions. Some of the most persistent questions are why Africa supplied so many captives; how the trade was organized; what its political, social, and cultural implications were; what the gender and ethnic composition was; and how the trade affected the societies involved. The answers to these questions are the primary focus of this book. They are addressed from the vantage point of the Bight of Biafra, a major exporting region, extending from the Niger Delta (exclusive of the River Nun) in modern Nigeria to Cape Lopez in modern Gabon. The region supplied an estimated 13 percent of all captives exported between 1551 and 1850, which made it the third most important supply region after West-Central Africa and the Bight of Benin. What marked out the Bight of Biafra slave trade was its unusual trajectory. Departures of captives from the region increased fivefold between the last quarter of the seventeenth century and the last quarter of the eighteenth century (Table 0.1). Concomitantly, the majority Igbo of the hinterland were probably the largest single African group arriving in North America and several Caribbean destinations for much of the eighteenth century. The traffic closed down quickly in the 1840s, but for most of the preceding century, the Bight of Biafra had been the second most important region for captives taken to the Americas (though lagging well behind West-Central Africa).