Up to twenty million enslaved Africans died in transit and bondage.

Evidence

Ten million enslaved Africans perished in Middle Passage, on reasonable estimates. Death en passant to a life more often than not worse than death. Starved, worked, beaten, suffocated, diseased to death. Numbers as large again prematurely killed in new world slavery. Systemically, brutally worked, beaten, saddened or maddened into death. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 22

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reading list on slavery and Atlantic world history, and to the ‘On Sacrifice’ article’s treatment of death on industrial scale.