The area now known as Gabon was involved in the transatlantic slave trade, but it was not among the largest or primary departure regions compared with places such as Angola and the Congo region (West Central Africa), the Bight of Benin, the Bight of Biafra, or the Gold Coast and Senegambia regions in West Africa.

Some captives were taken from coastal and inland areas connected to present-day Gabon, especially through trading networks along the Atlantic coast. European traders, including the Portuguese and later the French, had contact with the region.

However, Gabon’s dense rainforests, limited coastal trading infrastructure, and lower integration into the major Atlantic slave-export systems meant that the scale was much smaller than in neighboring Congo-Angola regions.

In the 1800s, France increasingly used Gabon as a colonial foothold in Central Africa, and Libreville itself was founded partly as a settlement for freed slaves after the suppression of the slave trade.