West Africa was affected by European expansion and exploration decades before the European discovery of the Americas. In some ways, then, West Africa was already connected to the New World the moment Europeans discovered it. The relationship between the territory that is now the US and West Africa developed rapidly in the 1600s as West Africa and North America both became hubs of British trade. In its early phases, the connection between West Africa and what was to become the US centered around slavery and the growing number of enslaved Africans brought to North America in slave ships. The arrival of more than 400,000 African people between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries through the transatlantic and intra-American slave trades infused the early American republic with important African cultural elements. At the same time, the transatlantic slave trade shaped West Africa’s political, economic, and cultural history. The struggles of African and African-descended people to regain their freedom and pursue political and social gains shaped American legal, political, and social life.