Most of the people who came to Jamaica before 1807 travelled through sea ports on the coast of West Africa and Central West Africa. They had been sold into slavery by people who captured or exploited them.
This map shows the origins of all the currently known voyages to the Americas, not just the ships going to Jamaica. Although African Jamaicans arrived from all of these locations, the majority came from West Africa (the Gold Coast, Bight of Benin, and Bight of Biafra) or from West Central Africa.
| Africans who disembarked in Jamaica boarded from these regions in 50 year periods | Senegambia and off-shore Atlantic | Sierra Leone | Windward Coast | Gold Coast | Bight of Benin | Bight of Biafra | West Central Africa (Angola) and St. Helena | South-east Africa and Indian ocean islands | Totals |
| 1651-1700 | 7850 | 965 | 0 | 10505 | 34033 | 31508 | 25305 | 8905 | 119071 |
| 1701-1750 | 14703 | 6734 | 4611 | 143621 | 71256 | 68422 | 79315 | 2269 | 390931 |
| 1751-1800 | 10207 | 30325 | 41661 | 181652 | 53327 | 220060 | 84619 | 0 | 621851 |
| 1801-1850 | 716 | 1636 | 2617 | 16054 | 3651 | 36799 | 16008 | 0 | 77481 |
| Totals | 33476 | 39660 | 48889 | 351832 | 162267 | 356789 | 205247 | 11174 | 1209334 |
| regions with the highest total # | |||||||||
| regions with the second highest # | |||||||||
| totals in | |||||||||
| 50 – year intervals | |||||||||
| source: “Voyages” Slave Trade Database | |||||||||
| consulted 2022.09.19 | |||||||||
| http://www.slavevoyages.org/estimates/NvcQArAF |
Place of origin of Africans disembarked in Jamaica
In Jamaica, no single African linguistic or cultural group predominated. The composition of the African population in Jamaica was largely mixed, albeit from a few primary regions, including Lower Guinea in West Africa and Central West Africa. Continuous inflows of new arrivals meant that African traditions persisted. The diverse backgrounds of the émigrés shaped aspect of Afro-Jamaican culture even as some groups remained numerically dominant.