Beginning from the 16th century until the early 19th century, Africans were purchased by European slave traders and shipped across the Atlantic to work as slaves in the various European colonies in the Americas. Approximately thirteen million Africans came to the Americas this way, to various locations such as Saint-Domingue, New Spain, Colonial Brazil and the Thirteen Colonies. Historians estimated approximately two million Africans were shipped to various British colonies in the Caribbean and South America. These slaves would be given new names, adopt European dress and Christianity, and be forced to work on plantations which produced cash crops to be shipped back to Europe, completing the last leg of the triangular trade. Conditions on these plantations were harsh, and many escaped into the countryside or showed other forms of resistance.