essay on the triangular slave trade

The Triangular Trade

In the year 1730, in the region of present-day Senegal, a man named Ayuba Suleiman Diallo traveled down to an English port on the coast to purchase paper, likely manufactured in Europe, an important item for his Muslim cleric father. To purchase the paper, his father had given him a pair of slaves to trade, but on the way home, however, Ayuba encountered a roving band of Mandinka raiders who took him prisoner and sold him into slavery to an English captain in turn, making him one of the many millions who fell victim to the Atlantic Slave Trade. Ayuba’s account, written down years later as Some Memoirs of the Life of Job, the Son of Solomon…Who was a Slave About Two Years in Maryland…, does not describe the likely atrocious journey across the ocean to North America, where, on average, between 12% and 15% of slaves crossing the Atlantic died while in transit. The memoir is useful nonetheless for its brief glimpse into how the slave trade actually operated on the African continent. Far from existing in isolation, the Atlantic Slave Trade was interwoven into a vast, intercontinental mercantile system commonly called the Triangular Trade. 

When Europeans began sailing further out onto the open ocean in the early-to-mid 15th century, they discovered that navigating the ocean required utilizing a series of perpetual wind cycles and ocean currents, such as the North Atlantic Gyre and the Gulf Stream. Portuguese navigators in particular established a kind of triangular route while exploring the western coast of Africa with the aid of the Northeast trade winds that dominate the tropics, returning to Europe not by reversing course, but sailing northwest to the Azores and catching the Southwest Westerlies home. Christopher Columbus himself became the first person to apply this principle to a transatlantic voyage, sailing north after making landfall in the Caribbean before returning to tell the world his discoveries. It is possible that Columbus also brought enslaved Africans with him on his first voyage, making him the first “triangle trader,” and as the various European powers began establishing their colonies in North and South America, introducing cash crops like sugarcane and adopting others like tobacco. In the meantime, the process of triangular maritime routes became the standard practice of transatlantic navigation. 

As it happened, this process of navigation between Europe, Africa and the Americas fit in quite well with the prevailing economic theories on the purpose of colonies and international trade in the Early Modern Era. The overwhelming majority of colonies in the New World were not designed to exist as their own self-sustaining communities, but to act as production facilities for raw materials, particularly cash crops grown on massive plantations in hotter climates like cotton, sugarcane, chocolate, tobacco and coffee. Once harvested and processed, these crops were then sold and shipped to Europe where they were processed into finished goods. Often these goods were luxuries items made to be consumed by Europe’s elite classes, like chocolate which did not exist in a solid form yet, but as the continent inched towards the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, lower class people began consuming sugar and coffee as useful stimulants: “fuel for the labor,” as one historian put it. Finished products that went unconsumed, however, were shipped South to Africa in order to purchase slaves, which then were carried back to the New World colonies to continue the harvesting of cotton, sugarcane, chocolate, tobacco and coffee.  

But why all the way to Europe as the designated end point and as the center of production for finished goods? And why only to their own home countries? Surely wealthy individuals in Williamsburg, Vera Cruz, or Saint-Domingue enjoyed chocolate and coffee just as much as in London, Madrid or Paris. What prevented an English merchant from buying sugar in Dutch-ruled Aruba and selling it in Portuguese Brazil? The reason is that any of those practices ran up against the economic theory of Mercantilism, which in its simplest terms advocated the accumulation and circulation of precious metals (or bullion) within a single country’s market but taken to its logical extreme believed that countries should maximize exports and minimize imports under the assumption of international trade as a zero-sum game. Using policies such as high tariffs on imported finished products, and sometimes simple bans on certain exports, the European powers saw any gain their neighbors made in trade to be their loss, and they applied this principle to their colonies as well.  

Most European colonies in the New World, especially cash crop producers, were completely banned from trading with either their colonial neighbors or European ports that did not belong to their mother countries. In Britain, this was done through legislation such as the Navigation Acts of 1660, which completely banned foreign merchants from purchasing or selling goods in any English port. Customers gained access (legally) to foreign products solely through English merchants setting forth and purchasing those items themselves. France committed itself and its colonies to similar principles, called Exclusif (exclusive) by King Louis XIV’s Minister of Finance Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who also forbade the colonies from developing any kind of local manufacturing to protect industries in the metropole. Colbert’s policies of protecting domestic manufacturing later had a major influence on Alexander Hamilton. That said, one of the major weaknesses of Mercantilist thought was the sheer difficulty in enforcing the proposed policies, the large area of open ocean necessary to crack down on smuggling made it a profitable though risky enterprise, and that is assuming that customs officials were not nearly as vulnerable to bribery as they probably were. Still, the most reliable way for a country to gain access to a particular resource was to hold a colony that produced it. Because of this, the trade wars waged between the colonial powers often spun into actual wars over colonial holdings, and the acquisition and annexation of various colonies became a repeated trend in multiple 17th and 18th conflicts, even those that began in Europe. 

The Mercantilist nature of the Triangular Trade also had a major impact on the function of the slave trade, in Africa, the New World, and in between. From their small enclaves in Africa, colonial powers worked hard to maintain a favorable balance of trade with the local African elites as with their European neighbors. As mentioned before, the usual items traded for slaves were finished products, to avoid spending as much gold or silver as possible. These could include the same luxury items consumed by European elites, but also products like rum, paper and cotton cloth worked just as well, as demonstrated by Ayuba’s testimony. European weapons and munitions, too, were highly prized by the local kings and other rulers hoping to gain a military and political advantage over their rivals, as well as take new slaves as a result of the fighting.  

Enslavement was hardly a new concept to Africa when Europeans began exploring the region, mostly done to criminals and war captives. Increased European demand for slave labor, however, increased the number of people captured and sold whole sale to the slave ships. Ultimately, modern estimates place the number of people taken from Africa in chains between nine and twelve million between the 16th and 19th centuries. The finance ministers of Europe also subjected the slave trade to the same Exclusif-style regulations as their colonies. All major colonial powers in the Americas participated in the trade to some extent, but when looking at the records, slave traders overwhelmingly disembark at ports owned by the nation whose flag whose flag they flew. As the records show, however, there were many exceptions to this rule. Around 39% of slaves brought to Spanish America were brought over by non-Spanish ships, British and Portuguese in particular. The vast majority of these voyages disembarked at Caribbean, Central or South American ports. If one gets the sense that North America was something of an afterthought in the entire process, they would be correct, as only 3% of slaves from Africa were sold in North America for a number of reasons. The first is that while cotton and tobacco were profitable, crops like sugarcane can only be grown in tropical climates, which North American colonies lacked. The other reason is that slaves in North America did not die as often. As an economic practice, human misery drove slavery and saying that does more than make a moral point. Sugarcane farming in the Caribbean and South America was extraordinarily deadly for slaves, and plantation owners considered importing new slaves a cheaper option than properly maintaining their current workforce, creating a constant demand for new workers and perpetuating the cycle of the triangular trade.  

As the 18th century progressed, Mercantilism eventually fell into disuse, especially with the 1776 publication of The Wealth of Nations by Scottish philosopher Adam Smith, the first major work of modern capitalist theory. Smith argued against the high tariffs, government intervention in industries, and other barriers to free trade that defined earlier economic thought, and the rapidly industrializing Europe soon came around to his way of thinking. The slave trade also went into decline in the 19th century, as abolitionism took hold in Britain and France, though obviously, slavery continued in the United States and Brazil. Combined with the collapse of Spain’s Latin American empire, these factors all contributed to the Triangular Trade system falling into irrelevancy. It did not, however, cause the end of colonization, which began again in Asia and Africa itself in the coming decades.  

Further Reading: 

• The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation By: Daina Ramey Berry 
• Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade By: David Eltis and David Richardson
• The French Atlantic Triangle: Literature and Culture of the Slave Trade   By: Christopher L. Miller 
• www.slavevoyages.com  sponsored by Emory University 

Boone Hall Plantation & Gardens

African Americans at Antietam

John Washington

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World History Project - Origins to the Present

Course: world history project - origins to the present   >   unit 5, read: the transatlantic slave trade.

• BEFORE YOU WATCH: Impact of the Slave Trade - Through a Ghanaian Lens
• WATCH: Impact of the Slave Trade - Through a Ghanaian Lens
• READ: Domingos Álvares (Graphic Biography)
• READ: Race and Coerced Labor Part I - People as Property in the Americas
• READ: Race and Coerced Labor Part II - Motivations and Justifications

The Transatlantic Slave Trade

First read: preview and skimming for gist, second read: key ideas and understanding content.

• According to the article, what was the status of enslaved people in some parts of Africa prior to the involvement of the Europeans?
• What was the status of enslaved people in the medieval Muslim world?
• In what context did Europeans start the transatlantic slave trade?
• How did the transatlantic slave trade cause an increase in wars in Africa?
• What goods moved across the triangular trade?
• According to the article, how did the transatlantic slave trade contribute to the Industrial Revolution?

Third read: evaluating and corroborating

• What is slavery? Given the range of types of slavery in different societies discussed in this article, is it useful to use the same term for all of these different kinds of status? Why or why not?

Pre-Columbian slave trade (pre-sixteenth century CE)

Origins and overview of the transatlantic slave trade (sixteenth to nineteenth century ce), middle passage, want to join the conversation.

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How the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Created the African Diaspora

By: Nicholas Boston

Updated: July 12, 2023 | Original: February 3, 2022

The trans-Atlantic slave trade was the capture, forcible transport and sale of native Africans to Europeans for lifelong bondage in the Americas. Lasting from the 16 th to 19 th centuries, it is responsible, more than any other project or phenomenon in the history of the modern world, for the creation of the African diaspora—the dispersal of Black people outside their places of origin on the continent of Africa.

As a result of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, there are presently 51.5 million people of African descent living in North America ( United States , Mexico and Canada ), approximately 66 million in South America , 1.9 million in Central America, and more than 14.5 million throughout the islands of the Caribbean. Over centuries of transformation and upheaval, these diasporic peoples have developed rich cultural traditions, distinct societies and independent nations—all sharing elements of a common African heritage.

Triangular Trade

The trans-Atlantic slave trade was one leg of a three-part system known as the triangular trade. The forming of the triangle began when European ships, carrying firearms and manufactured goods, sailed to Africa, where the commodities were traded for enslaved men, women and children. Next, the same ships transported the human cargo across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas. 

This horrific journey was called the Middle Passage. Completing the triangle, the ships—having disembarked the enslaved Africans—were reloaded with cotton, sugar, tobacco and other cash crops produced by slave labor, and returned to Europe.

The triangular trade generated incredible wealth for the European and American nations that participated in it—at the expense of millions of human lives. An estimated 1.8 million Africans perished during the Middle Passage.

The countries that enslaved the highest number of Africans, from the most to the least, were Portugal, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Spain, the United States and Denmark—shipping a total of 12.5 million enslaved Africans to toil in what was considered the “New World.”

Other European nations, such as Germany and Sweden, took part in the trade indirectly or for a brief period of time. Canada, generally omitted from slavery history, was in fact involved in slaveholding , first as a French colony, then as part of the British Empire.

“Little is known about Canadian slavery, both inside and outside of the nation,” says Charmaine A. Nelson , director of the newly founded Institute for the Study of Canadian Slavery at NSCAD University, in Halifax. “It is a national amnesia.”

Fellow Africans' Role in the Slave Trade

Another downplayed factor is the central role played by ruling African states in the capture and sale of fellow Africans to European traders—an estimated 90 percent of all captives. The main motivation behind these transactions was the acquisition of guns for use in inter-ethnic warfare. The enslaved were abducted from as far north as present-day Senegal to as far south as Angola, and transported to destinations as far south as Argentina and as far north as New England.

Dehumanizing in all locations, the practice of slavery still could vary from place to place. This variation accounts for demographic, cultural and even genetic distinctions among modern diasporic Black populations. 

A July 2020  genetic study found that enslaved women contributed more than enslaved men to the modern-day gene pool of people of African descent in the Americas. The findings also show that Caucasian men contributed more than Caucasian women, confirming the well-documented practice of sexual violation of enslaved women.

African Communities Beyond the Americas

Predating the trans-Atlantic slave trade were eastward and northbound slave-trading  enterprises known broadly as the Arab Slave Trade. They contributed significantly to the creation of an African diasporic presence in the Old World.

“People from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and the Swahili Coast were deported as slaves to the Indian Peninsula,” says Sylviane A. Diouf , a historian of the African diaspora who co-curated the 2013 exhibition, “Africans in India: From Slaves to Generals and Rulers” at New York’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

“From the 1300s, many of these Africans and their descendants became generals, admirals, architects, high-ranking officials, prime ministers and rulers, immortalized in numerous portraits. They also founded the states of Janjira and Sachin, where they ruled over Hindu and Jewish majorities.”

The Arab and trans-Atlantic slave trades inevitably coincided, if not in their commercial dealings, in their human exploitation. It is known that continental Africans were taken to the island of Madagascar by Arab enslavers from as early as the 10 th century. In the 18 th century, European enslavers took up operations on the island, transporting roughly 6,000 people in shackles to U.S. slave markets. Though these Madagascans constituted a tiny percentage of the total enslaved population, their DNA is identifiable to this day among their living descendants, such as the actor Maya Rudolph and director Keenan Ivory Wayans . 

To satisfy different European fascinations, enslaved Africans were also taken to Europe.

“Among British royals, nobles, ship captains and merchants, a trend began of keeping Africans as entertainment, curiosities, and sometimes surrogate sons,” says Monica L. Miller , author of Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity. “ In almost all cases, these Black men were extravagantly clothed in the latest fashions or liveries—forced foppishness.”

Role of Resistance

For the nearly four centuries before its abolition by all nations involved, “the trans-Atlantic slave trade not only influenced the composition of slave communities in the Americas, it also powerfully shaped slave resistance,” according to Marjoleine Kars , author of Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast .

“Take, for instance, the Berbice slave rebellion of 1763-1764. Lasting more than a year, the rebellion took place in a small Dutch colony on the Caribbean coast of South America in February of 1763. Enslaved people, led by a man named Coffij, or Kofi, rose up, set the Dutch fleeing, and took control of the colony.”

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Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

The transatlantic slave trade.

Necklace: Pendant

Figure: Seated Portuguese Male

Pipe: Rifle

Alexander Ives Bortolot Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University

October 2003

From the seventeenth century on, slaves became the focus of trade between Europe and Africa. Europe’s conquest and colonization of North and South America and the Caribbean islands from the fifteenth century onward created an insatiable demand for African laborers, who were deemed more fit to work in the tropical conditions of the New World. The numbers of slaves imported across the Atlantic Ocean steadily increased, from approximately 5,000 slaves a year in the sixteenth century to over 100,000 slaves a year by the end of the eighteenth century.

Evolving political circumstances and trade alliances in Africa led to shifts in the geographic origins of slaves throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Slaves were generally the unfortunate victims of territorial expansion by imperialist African states or of raids led by predatory local strongmen, and various populations found themselves captured and sold as different regional powers came to prominence. Firearms, which were often exchanged for slaves, generally increased the level of fighting by lending military strength to previously marginal polities. A nineteenth-century tobacco pipe ( 1977.462.1 ) from the Democratic Republic of the Congo or Angola demonstrates the degree to which warfare, the slave trade, and elite arts were intertwined at this time. The pipe itself was the prerogative of wealthy and powerful individuals who could afford expensive imported tobacco, generally by trading slaves, while the rifle form makes clear how such slaves were acquired in the first place. Because of its deadly power, the rifle was added to the repertory of motifs drawn upon in many regional depictions of rulers and culture heroes as emblematic of power along with the leopard, elephant, and python.

The institution of slavery existed in Africa long before the arrival of Europeans and was widespread at the period of economic contact . Private land ownership was largely absent from precolonial African societies, and slaves were one of the few forms of wealth-producing property an individual could possess. Additionally, rulers often maintained corps of loyal, foreign-born slaves to guarantee their political security, and would encourage political centralization by appointing slaves from the imperial hinterlands to positions within the royal capital. Slaves were also exported across the desert to North Africa and to western Asia, Arabia, and India.

It would be impossible to argue, however, that transatlantic trade did not have a major effect upon the development and scale of slavery in Africa. As the demand for slaves increased with European colonial expansion in the New World, rising prices made the slave trade increasingly lucrative. African states eager to augment their treasuries in some instances even preyed upon their own peoples by manipulating their judicial systems, condemning individuals and their families to slavery in order to reap the rewards of their sale to European traders. Slave exports were responsible for the emergence of a number of large and powerful kingdoms that relied on a militaristic culture of constant warfare to generate the great numbers of human captives required for trade with the Europeans. The Yoruba kingdom of Oyo on the Guinea coast, founded sometime before 1500, expanded rapidly in the eighteenth century as a result of this commerce. Its formidable army, aided by advanced iron technology , captured immense numbers of slaves that were profitably sold to traders. In the nineteenth century, the aggressive pursuit of slaves through warfare and raiding led to the ascent of the kingdom of Dahomey, in what is now the Republic of Benin, and prompted the emergence of the Chokwe chiefdoms from under the shadow of their Lunda overlords in present-day Angola and Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Asante kingdom on the Gold Coast of West Africa also became a major slave exporter in the eighteenth century.

Ultimately, the international slave trade had lasting effects upon the African cultural landscape. Areas that were hit hardest by endemic warfare and slave raids suffered from general population decline, and it is believed that the shortage of men in particular may have changed the structure of many societies by thrusting women into roles previously occupied by their husbands and brothers. Additionally, some scholars have argued that images stemming from this era of constant violence and banditry have survived to the present day in the form of metaphysical fears and beliefs concerning witchcraft. In many cultures of West and Central Africa, witches are thought to kidnap solitary individuals to enslave or consume them. Finally, the increased exchange with Europeans and the fabulous wealth it brought enabled many states to cultivate sophisticated artistic traditions employing expensive and luxurious materials. From the fine silver- and goldwork of Dahomey and the Asante court to the virtuoso wood carving of the Chokwe chiefdoms, these treasures are a vivid testimony of this turbulent period in African history.

Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “The Transatlantic Slave Trade.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/slav/hd_slav.htm (October 2003)

Further Reading

Hogendorn, Jan, and Marion Johnson. The Shell Money of the Slave Trade . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Klein, Herbert S. The Atlantic Slave Trade . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Additional Essays by Alexander Ives Bortolot

• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Portraits of African Leadership: Living Rulers .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Portraits of African Leadership: Memorials .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Portraits of African Leadership: Royal Ancestors .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Trade Relations among European and African Nations .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Ways of Recording African History .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Art of the Asante Kingdom .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Asante Royal Funerary Arts .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Asante Textile Arts .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Gold in Asante Courtly Arts .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ The Bamana Ségou State .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Women Leaders in African History: Ana Nzinga, Queen of Ndongo .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Women Leaders in African History: Dona Beatriz, Kongo Prophet .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Exchange of Art and Ideas: The Benin, Owo, and Ijebu Kingdoms .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Women Leaders in African History: Idia, First Queen Mother of Benin .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Kingdoms of Madagascar: Malagasy Funerary Arts .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Kingdoms of Madagascar: Malagasy Textile Arts .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Kingdoms of Madagascar: Maroserana and Merina .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Kingdoms of the Savanna: The Kuba Kingdom .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Kingdoms of the Savanna: The Luba and Lunda Empires .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Women Leaders in African History, 17th–19th Century .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Portraits of African Leadership .” (October 2003)

Related Essays

• The Manila Galleon Trade (1565–1815)
• Portraits of African Leadership
• Religion and Culture in North America, 1600–1700
• Trade Relations among European and African Nations
• Visual Culture of the Atlantic World
• Women Leaders in African History, 17th–19th Century
• African Christianity in Kongo
• The Age of Iron in West Africa
• American Federal-Era Period Rooms
• Art of the Asante Kingdom
• George Washington: Man, Myth, Monument
• Gold in Asante Courtly Arts
• Kingdoms of the Savanna: The Luba and Lunda Empires
• Kongo Ivories
• The New York Dutch Room
• The Portuguese in Africa, 1415–1600
• Ways of Recording African History
• Women Leaders in African History: Ana Nzinga, Queen of Ndongo

List of Rulers

• Presidents of the United States of America
• Arabian Peninsula, 1600–1800 A.D.
• Central Africa, 1600–1800 A.D.
• Central America and the Caribbean, 1400–1600 A.D.
• Eastern and Southern Africa, 1400–1600 A.D.
• Guinea Coast, 1600–1800 A.D.
• Guinea Coast, 1800–1900 A.D.
• Maya Area, 1400–1600 A.D.
• Mexico and Central America, 1600–1800 A.D.
• Mexico, 1400–1600 A.D.
• South Asia, 1600–1800 A.D.
• The United States, 1600–1800 A.D.
• Western and Central Sudan, 1600–1800 A.D.
• Western and Central Sudan, 1800–1900 A.D.
• Western North Africa (The Maghrib), 1600–1800 A.D.
• Arabian Peninsula
• The Caribbean
• Central Africa
• Central America
• Guinea Coast
• North Africa
• North America
• South America

History for Kids

Triangular Slave Trade Facts for Kids

Table of Contents

• For more than 2,000 years, people have enslaved other people. They took away their freedom and made them work for them.
• In West Africa and West-Central Africa, Europeans took millions of people against their will to Europe and the Americas between 1500-1900.
• The “triangular trade” means a three-stage trade where Europeans traded their goods in Africa for slaves. The slaves were brought back to America, and sugar, tobacco, and other products were brought back to Europe.

The triangular slave trade was the most massive and concentrated mass deportation of people in history, taking place over more than four centuries. Keep reading to learn more Triangular Slave Trade facts.

We recognize today that slavery and the slave trade, including the triangular slave trade, were horrendous catastrophes in humanity’s history not just for their cruelty but also because of their scale, organization, and especially because they denied the victims’ essence.

To refer to the Africans who were enslaved simply as “slaves” disregards their individuality. They farmed, traded, served in the clergy, fought in wars, worked with gold, and performed music. They were married couples, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, among others. They might be Yoruba, Igbo, Akan, or Kongolese.

Slave Trade Begins

The slave trade began when Portuguese and Spanish explorers kidnapped Africans from African tribes they had conquered in the 15th century. Approximately 350,000 Africans were transported to the Americas as slaves in this manner.

In the 16th century, pirates from England started selling slaves to Spanish colonies. Sir John Hawkins was the first Englishman to sell slaves in these colonies. Other nations soon joined in, and they sold slaves too.

Triangular Slave Trade: The Treaty of Utrecht

In 1713, the Treaty of Utrecht was signed. Spain agreed to give British slave traders a contract called the Asiento. This contract allowed the traders to sell 144,000 slaves a year to Spanish South America. After 1700, more and more people were transported as slaves.

A third of the African slaves sailed on British vessels. It’s been estimated that around 12 million Africans were captured and sent to the Americas as slaves over several centuries. Until 1807, when slavery was ended in the United Kingdom, British trading ships exchanged goods for humans throughout western Africa.

The First Part of the Triangular Trade

A British ship set sail from Britain with trade goods. The traders were going to go to West Africa.

Between 13 and 15 million people were taken from their homes to the Americas, primarily from West Africa. The continent’s largest population transfers took place on its shores: East Africa, Mozambique, and Madagascar supplied slave labor to Europe. The term “Slave Coast” was coined for this region.

European slave traders couldn’t capture an entire African kingdom by themselves. The terrain was too challenging, and with most native tribes being quite powerful, they would have had difficulty capturing any slaves on their own accord.

Most of these slaves were sold on through trade with neighboring tribes or villages. Many bought their freedom after purchase as well. When African states began trading their slaves for goods, they became more powerful and fought wars against neighboring tribes. 

Europeans set up permanent trading camps on the West African coast. They would collect slaves to sell to passing ships. These places became known as “slave factories.”

British factories had the job of buying slaves from African chiefs. They would go to a village and buy slaves from the people who had captured people from another village. The slaves were held in prisons called factories on their way to the coast.

The British captured the Cape Coast Castle in Ghana. It had underground dungeons for up to up to 1,000 slaves that were waiting to be taken away.

A surgeon examined the African people who arrived at the factory. Those who were judged to be healthy and strong were bought by the company that owns the factory. To prevent African merchants from switching purchased slaves for unfit ones, they were branded on the chest with a hot iron to reveal their status.

The British traded slaves for goods. The British chained the slaves together and put them on a boat. A slave cost around $3 of traded goods in 1700 (cloth, guns, gunpowder, and brandy).

The goods used to buy slaves included:

Portugal mounted the most slaving operations and deported more than 5.5 million people. The Portuguese colony of Angola, in Africa, was the place where most people were brought to be slaves. The colony of Brazil was the destination for 40% of the slaves from Africa.

When Europeans stopped trading slaves, merchants in America built on their own long experience to keep the trade going.

The Second Part of the Triangular Trade

The slave ship sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to the West Indies. The voyage from Africa to the New World was called the Middle Passage. Slave ships took around six to eleven weeks to get there. The slaves were sold at auction there.

It was expected that a few Africans would perish during the passage while a large number would survive. A ship’s hold was tiny – only five feet high, and there was a shelf around the edge to carry even more slaves.

The people were loaded very closely together. One captain said they were like books on a shelf.

The conditions were inhuman. They were not able to go to the toilet. They had to lie in their filth. Sickness spread quickly. If someone died, they could lay there for hours while still chained to other living slaves.

The European crew was carrying food that slaves could not digest. Many slaves died because they were too sick. Slaves who got ill were sometimes not given food and left to die.

Slaves were forced to dance on deck for an hour a day. The crew would punish people who did not want to dance. Others threw themselves into the sea rather than enduring any more. It is estimated that 15% of slaves died on the Middle Passage.

For every captive that arrived alive in the Caribbean and America, historians estimate that five others died before they got there. This is because some people died while they were captured or on their way to the coast. And while some people survived the Middle Passage, many of them still died in the transatlantic journey.

In 1700, a slave in the West Indies was worth £20. This meant there was a nice return on investment, making the dangers worthwhile.

The Zong Massacre

The Zong was a slave ship that had a lot of slaves on it. The ship went across the Atlantic Ocean, but it missed its destination in the Caribbean and had to stay at sea for three more weeks. There was not enough water to drink, and people who were sick got even sicker.

About 131 African captives were thrown overboard and died because the crew could not get money for them if they died on the ship.

The crew members were tried in 1783. The case was not about murder but about insurance. The case was important because it symbolized the horrors of slavery and made people want to end slavery even more.

The Third Part of the Triangular Trade

Once the ship made it to the Caribbean, slaves would be sold at auction. They were examined to make sure they looked healthy.

People rubbed them with oil, so they looked healthier. And when the slaves did not obey, their backs got whipped. So they would put tar on their back wounds so you could not see them. Older slaves also had their heads shaved, so they did not have any grey hair, making them look younger.

Different factors determined the price of slaves. This included the condition of captives upon landing, where they were taken, and how many other ships there were in port at that time for sale.

The first way to sell a slave was through an auction. The slaves would be individually or in groups. They were bought at that point by whoever bid higher on them.

Another option was scrambling, where all of those who had been captured during wartime came together into one enclosure with only their captor paying upfront before anything happened between them. This often didn’t include women because most weren’t able-bodied enough to do physical labor like fieldwork.

Slaves left behind were called ‘refuse.’ They were often considered nothing more than an expense and would be sold cheaply to anyone who could afford them – leading many of those unfortunate souls on a quick death sentence from starvation or disease within months afterward.

Slaves who tried to resist or fight back faced the risk of being sent to ‘seasoning camps.’ It was estimated that up 50 percent died in these training centers for slaves, which were more like concentration camps than anything else.

The British ports that took part in the slave trade made a lot of money. Some ships were filled with sugar and rum to be sold in Britain.

Many other cities became rich because of industries that depended on materials made by slaves. These cities sent out many ships each year, and they made a lot of people in those cities wealthy by selling tobacco, cotton, and other materials. Some of those ports were Bristol, Liverpool, and Glasgow.

The Port of Liverpool

During the 18th century, Liverpool made about half a million pounds. The other British slave-trading ports together made about the same amount again.

Merchants in Liverpool traded other things, but they also traded slaves. Most of the citizens and merchants of Liverpool were involved in trading slaves. Many mayors were also involved.

The town made a lot of money because of its slave trade. It helped to make the city’s docks even more profitable. That money also helped make trading and industry in the northwest of England and the Midlands region better.

The slave trade not only provided work for thousands but also fueled Liverpool’s economic growth. The ships needed to be built and equipped; carpenters were in demand with their expertise in construction.

Ropemakers created new materials that would become important on shipboard, like hempen rigging ropes. Others found work with banking or insurance companies because Liverpool was prosperous at this time.

Consequences of the Triangular Slave Trade

Some historians think that the slave trade in Africa ruined it because of wars and the loss of many Africans. They also think that this is why European countries colonized Africa in the 19th century.

Some historians say that the slave trade made the ruling elite of African Kingdoms prosper. They wanted it to continue. When Britain stopped the slave trade in 1807, the King of Bonny wrote to Parliament and complained.

The Atlantic slave trade was one of the most important sources and expressions of racism, racial prejudice, xenophobia, and related hatred, as well as being a major cause of suffering for Africans and people of African descent, Asians, and people of Asian descent, and indigenous peoples.

• https://www.studentsofhistory.com/the-triangle-of-trade
• https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/history-of-slavery/transatlantic-slave-trade
• https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zqv7hyc/revision/3
• https://en.unesco.org/themes/fostering-rights-inclusion/slave-route
• https://theconversation.com/transatlantic-slave-trade-was-not-entirely-triangular-countries-in-the-americas-sent-ships-out-too-97115

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