Atlantic triangular slave trade
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The best-known triangular trading system is the
transatlantic slave trade which operated from
the late 16th to the early 19th centuries
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The Triangular Trade
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During this time, European countries such as
Britain, Portugal, Spain and France had
colonies in the Americas and Africa. The ships
carried slaves, crops and manufactured goods
between West Africa, the Caribbean and
American colonies and the colonial powers in
Europe. The use of African slaves was very important to growing colonial crops, which were
exported to Europe. European goods, in tum, were used to buy African slaves, which were
then brought to the Americas to work on the crops. The middle passage of the triangular trade
refers to the transportation of the slaves to the Caribbean and the Americas.
The first leg of the triangle was from a European port to Africa, in which ships carried supplies for
sale and trade, such as copper, cloth, trinkets, guns and ammunition. When a ship arrived, its
cargo would be traded for slaves. On the second leg, ships made the journey of the Middle
Passage from Africa to the New World. Many slaves died of disease in the holds of the slave
ships. Once the ship reached the New World, enslaved survivors were sold in the Caribbean or
the American colonies. The ships were then loaded with export goods for a return voyage, the
third leg, to their home port in Europe to complete the triangle. Goods that were traded in the
Atlantic economy were rum, slaves, sugar, tobacco, cotton, gold, spices, fish, lumber and
manufactured goods.
By the time the transatlantic trade was finally suppressed around 1860s, a total of ten to twelve
million Africans had been carried into New World slavery, while an estimated two million more
had died in the passage.
