Triangular Trade

Hi everybody, in my next post I would like to give a short summary about the Triangular Trade in relation with slavery during the late 16th to early 19th centuries. 

Triangular Trade was the term used to describe three very profitable journeys. These journeys traded carrying slaves, cash crops, and other manufactured goods between West Africa, American colonies and the European countries, with the northern colonies of British North America, often to New England.

Here I give you an interactive map, it is much better than this one here

http://www.nmm.ac.uk/upload/swf/flashmap10.swf

1. The outward passage from Europe to Africa carrying manufactured goods.
2. The middle passage from Africa to the Americas or the Caribbean carrying African captives and other 'commodities’.
3. The homeward passage carrying sugar, tobacco, rum, rice, cotton and other goods back to Europe.

African slaves were absolutly necessary for the continuous growing colonial cash crops, these, were exported to Europe. European goods in general, in turn, were used to purchase African slaves, which were then brought on the sea lane west from Africa to the Americas, it was called middle passage. Theses slaves were taken to work in the colonies. In exchange sugar, tobacco, rum, rice, cotton and other goods from America went back to Europe, and so on.

About the 1790s there were 480,000 enslaved people in British Caribbean colonies. About 11-12 million Africans were transported across the Atlantic into slavery. Many more had died during capture and transportation because of the bad conditions they had to face.

List of Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangular_trade

http://lylesj.tripod.com/trade/tritrade.html

http://www.eduplace.com/kids/socsci/books/applications/imaps/maps/g5s_u3/index.html