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Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, over twelve million Africans crossed the Atlantic in chains. Those who survived, and millions more of their descendants, were bought and sold as commodities and forced to labor under conditions of bondage in places as varied as Brazil, the Caribbean, and North America. Their diverse experiences of exploitation, struggle, perseverance, and liberation lie at the core of the foundation, and entrenchment, of the colonial order in the Americas. This course introduces students to scholarship on the history of the slave societies of the colonial Americas. It will trace how African and Afro-descendant people's varied experiences of slavery and freedom between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries forged an interconnected and diverse Black Atlantic world.