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Triangular trade

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Depiction of the classical model of the triangular trade
Depiction of the triangular trade of slaves, sugar, and rum with New England instead of Europe as the third corner

Triangular tradeortriangle tradeistradebetween three ports or regions. Triangular trade usually evolves when a region hasexportcommodities that are not required in the region from which its majorimportscome. It has been used to offsettrade imbalancesbetween different regions.

TheAtlantic slave tradeused a system of three-way transatlantic exchanges – known historically as the triangular trade – which operated between Europe, Africa, and the Americas from the 16th to 19th centuries. European workers outfittedSlave ships,and they shipped manufactured European goods owned by the trading companies to West Africa to get slaves, which they shipped to the Americas, in particular, to Brazil and the Caribbean Islands. First, in West Africa, merchants sold or bartered European manufactured goods to local slavers in exchange for slaves. Then crews transported the slaves, and remaining European manufactured goods, to the Americas where ship merchants sold the slaves and European manufactured goods to plantation owners. Merchants then purchased sugar and molasses from the plantation owners and crews shipped them to North American colonies (later the US), where the merchants sold the remaining supplies of European manufactured goods and slaves, as well as sugar and molasses from plantations to local buyers, and then purchased North American commodities to sell in Europe, including tobacco, sugar, cotton, rum, rice, lumber, and animal pelts.

This trade, in trade volume, was primarily with South America, where most slaves were sold, but a classic example taught in 20th century studies is thecolonial molasses trade,which involved the circuitous trading ofslaves,sugar (often in liquid form, asmolasses), and rum betweenWest Africa,theWest Indiesand the northern colonies ofBritish North Americain the 17th and 18th centuries.[1][2]In this triangular trade slaves grew the sugar that was used to brew rum, which in turn was traded for more slaves. In this circuit thesea lanewest from Africa to the West Indies (and later, also toBrazil) was known as theMiddle Passage;its cargo consisted of abducted or recently purchasedAfrican people.

During theAge of Sail,the particular routes were also shaped by the powerful influence ofwinds and currents.For example, from the main trading nations of Western Europe, it was much easier to sail westwards after first going south of30° N latitudeand reaching the so-called "trade winds",thus arriving in the Caribbean rather than going straight west to theNorth American mainland.Returning from North America, it was easiest to follow theGulf Streamin a northeasterly direction using thewesterlies.(Even before thevoyages of Christopher Columbus,the Portuguese had been usinga similar triangleto sail to theCanary Islandsand theAzores,and it was then expanded outwards.)

The countries that controlled the transatlantic slave market until the 18th century in terms of the number of enslaved people shipped were Great Britain, Portugal, and France.

Atlantic triangular slave trade

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See also:Atlantic slave tradeandSlave Coast of West Africa

The most historically significant triangular trade was thetransatlantic slave tradewhich operated among Europe, Africa, and the Americas from the 16th to 19th centuries.Slave shipswould leave European ports (such asBristolandNantes) and sail to African ports loaded with goods manufactured in Europe. There, the slave traders would purchase enslaved Africans by exchanging the goods, then sail to the Americas via theMiddle Passageto sell their enslaved cargo inEuropean colonies.In what was referred to as a "golden triangle", the slave ship would sail back to Europe to begin the cycle again.[3]The enslaved Africans were primarily purchased for the purpose of working onplantationsto work producing valuablecash crops(such assugar,cotton,andtobacco) which were in high demand in Europe.[4][5][6][7][8]Slave traders from European colonies would occasionally travel to Africa themselves, eliminating the European portion of the voyage.[9][10]

Slaves embarked to America from 1450 until 1800 by country[citation needed]

A classic example is thecolonial molasses trade.Merchants purchased raw sugar (often in its liquid form, molasses) from plantations in the Caribbean and shipped it toNew Englandand Europe, where it was sold to distillery companies that produced rum. Merchant capitalists used cash from the sale of sugar to purchase rum, furs, and lumber in New England which their crews shipped to Europe. With the profits from the European sales, merchants purchased Europe's manufactured goods, including tools and weapons and on the next leg, shipped those manufactured goods, along with the American sugar and rum, to West Africa where they bartered the goods for slaves seized by local potentates. Crews then transported the slaves to the Caribbean and sold them to sugar plantation owners. The cash from the sale of slaves in Brazil, the Caribbean islands, and the American South was used to buy more raw materials, restarting the cycle. The full triangle trip took a calendar year on average, according to historian Clifford Shipton.[11]

The loss of the slave shipLuxborough Galleyin 1727 ( "I.C. 1760" ), lost in the last leg of the triangular trade, between the Caribbean and Britain.
North Atlantic Gyre

The first leg of the triangle was from a European port to one in West Africa (then known as the "Slave Coast"), in which ships carried supplies for sale and trade, such ascopper,cloth,trinkets,slave beads,gunsandammunition.[12]When the ship arrived, its cargo would be sold or bartered for slaves. Ports that exported these enslaved people from Africa includeOuidah,Lagos,Aného(Little Popo),Grand-Popo,Agoué,Jakin,Porto-Novo,andBadagry.[13]These ports traded slaves who were supplied from African communities, tribes and kingdoms, including theAlladahandOuidah,which were later taken over by theDahomeykingdom.[14]

On the second leg, ships made the journey of theMiddle Passagefrom Africa to theNew World.Many slaves died of disease in the crowded 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 prepared to get them thoroughly cleaned, drained, and loaded with export goods for a return voyage, the third leg, to their home port,[15]from the West Indies the main export cargoes were sugar, rum, and molasses; fromVirginia,tobaccoandhemp.The ship then returned to Europe to complete the triangle.

The triangle route was not generally followed by individual ships. Slave ships were built to carry large numbers of people, rather than cargo, and variations in the duration of the Atlantic crossing meant that they often arrived in the Americas out-of-season. Slave ships thus often returned to their home port carrying whatever goods were readily available in the Americas but with a large part or all of their capacity with ballast.[16][17]Cash crops were transported mainly by a separate fleet which only sailed from Europe to the Americas and back.[18]In his books,Herbert S. Kleinhas argued that in many fields (cost of trade, ways of transport, mortality levels, earnings and benefits of trade for the Europeans and the "so-called triangular trade" ), the non-scientific literature portrays a situation which the contemporary historiography refuted a long time ago.[19]

Finally, even if the "triangle trade" idea is essentially incorrect, the Atlantic slave trade was one of the more complex of international trades that existed in the modern period. (…) Thus, while an actual "triangle trade" may not have existed as a significant development for ships in the trade, the economic ties between Asia, Europe, Africa, and America clearly involved a web of relationships that spanned the globe.[20]

A 2017 study provides evidence for the hypothesis that the export of gunpowder to Africa increased the transatlantic slave trade: "A one percent increase in gunpowder set in motion a 5-year gun-slave cycle that increased slave exports by an average of 50%, and the impact continued to grow over time."[21]

New England

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Graph depicting the number of slaves imported from Africa from 1501 to 1866

New England also made rum from Caribbean sugar andmolasses,which it shipped to Africa as well as within theNew World.[22]Yet, the "triangle trade" as considered in relation to New England was a piecemeal operation. No New England traders are known to have completed a sequential circuit of the full triangle, which took a calendar year on average, according to historian Clifford Shipton.[11]The concept of the New England Triangular trade was first suggested, inconclusively, in an 1866 book by George H. Moore, was picked up in 1872 by historian George C. Mason, and reached full consideration from a lecture in 1887 by American businessman and historian William B. Weeden.[11]

In the context of an incohesive operation rather than a sequential circuit, expansive eastern seaboard "Farms" had, in earnest after 1690, sustained southern New England proprietorship, land banks, andcurrencywithin a Greater Caribbean plantation complex. Historian Sean Kelley examines nineteenth-century "American slavers" because "the North American transatlantic slave trade before 1776 was, in essence, merely another branch of the carrying trade."[23][24]During the seventeenth century, colonial charters and royal commissioners precluded earlier attempts to establish a New England carrying trade by, for example, theAtherton Trading CompanyandJohn Hull.But proposals byPeleg Sanfordprovided implementation frameworks for "Farms" and carriers. Linkages within the complex would also ebb and flow with the tides of war andhurricanes.Before1780,theAtlantic hurricane seasoncontributed to New England and Greater Caribbean circumvention of mercantile trade restrictions. Newport carriers, for instance, provisioned Dutch, Danish, and especially French plantations in the Greater Caribbean, periodically more than lackluster British sites, to recompense for hurricane reductions in exports and imports.[25]Periodic trials and executions of notorious smugglers diminshed royal peacetime embargoes, particularly in response to illegal carrying as well as General Assembly endorsement ofAquidneckas a haven for pirates. These pirates began to disperse from Newport betweenQueen Anne's Warand 1723 mass executions, establishing the seaport as the dominant carrying hub, with Providence coming in a distant second. British carriers continued to provision plantations outside the boundaries of empire.[26][27]

Wartime embargoes that reduced overseas trade would, in turn, spur speculative ventures as well as land and estuary auctions ofNarragansetttribal reserves, under legislature (public) jurisdiction, by private trusts, a specific type of fiduciary relationship for subsidizing expense accounts, purveying regular annuities, or both. Bidders at vendue were frequently interior "composite"[28]yeomen and fishermen,[29]who (according to certain historians) misconceived[30]of revenue derived from the carrying trade as income "competency." Bidders included competitive carriers in secondary seaports such as Providence as well.[31]Despite the antebellum rise of "Greater Northeast" industrial agriculture,[32]the southern New England "Farms" and the carrying trade[33]inCaribbean sugar,molasses,rice, coffee, indigo, mahogany, and pre-1740 "seasoned slaves",[34]began to dissipate by theElection of 1800[35]and largely collapsed into agrarian ruins by theWar of 1812.[36]

NewportandBristol, Rhode Island,were major ports involved in the colonial triangular slave trade.[37]Many significant Newport merchants and traders participated in the trade, working closely with merchants and traders in the Caribbean andCharleston, South Carolina.[38]

Statistics

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According to research provided byEmory University[39]as well asHenry Louis Gates Jr.,an estimated 12.5 million slaves were transported from Africa to colonies in North and South America. The websiteVoyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Databaseassembles data regarding past trafficking in slaves from Africa. It shows that the top four nations were Portugal, Great Britain, France, and Spain.

Flag of vessels carrying the slaves
Destination Portuguese British French Spanish Dutch American Danish Total
Portuguese Brazil 4,821,127 3,804 9,402 1,033 27,702 1,174 130 4,864,372
British Caribbean 7,919 2,208,296 22,920 5,795 6,996 64,836 1,489 2,318,251
French Caribbean 2,562 90,984 1,003,905 725 12,736 6,242 3,062 1,120,216
Spanish Americas 195,482 103,009 92,944 808,851 24,197 54,901 13,527 1,292,911
Dutch Americas 500 32,446 5,189 0 392,022 9,574 4,998 444,729
United States 382 264,910 8,877 1,851 1,212 110,532 983 388,747
Danish West Indies 0 25,594 7,782 277 5,161 2,799 67,385 108,998
Europe 2,636 3,438 664 0 2,004 119 0 8,861
Africa 69,206 841 13,282 66,391 3,210 2,476 162 155,568
did not arrive 748,452 526,121 216,439 176,601 79,096 52,673 19,304 1,818,686
Total 5,848,266 3,259,443 1,381,404 1,061,524 554,336 305,326 111,040 12,521,339

Other triangular trades

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The term "triangular trade" also refers to a variety of other trades.

  • A triangular trade is hypothesized to have taken place among ancient East Greece (and possiblyAttica),Kommos,and Egypt.[40]
  • A trade pattern which evolved before theAmerican Revolutionary WaramongGreat Britain,theColonies of British North America,andBritish colonies in the Caribbean.This typically involved exporting raw resources, such asfish(especiallysalt cod), agricultural produce orlumber,from British North American colonies to slaves and planters in theWest Indies;sugar and molasses from the Caribbean; and various manufactured commodities from Great Britain.[41]
  • The shipment ofNewfoundlandsalt cod andcornfromBostonin British vessels to southern Europe.[42]This also included the shipment of wine and olive oil to Britain.
  • A new "sugar triangle" developed in the 1820s and 1830s whereby American ships took local produce toCuba,then brought sugar or coffee from Cuba to theBalticcoast (Russian EmpireandSweden), thenbar ironand hemp back to New England.[43]
  • Ships sailing from Britain to Australia in the last third of the 19th century found a shortage of cargoes to take back to Britain. Therefore they took New South Wales coal to China and then loaded tea and silk to carry back to Britain. The clipperThermopylaewas one of the ships that sailed this triangular route. When steamships became fuel-efficient enough to cover the distances involved, they could make two trips to Australia in a year, with one returning direct to Britain with Australian wool and the other going via China. This competed with theChina and Japan Conference,acartelof steamship owners who fiercely protected their trade and won a sequence of court cases in order to do so.[44]: 123–128 

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^Emert, Phyllis (1995).Colonial triangular trade: an economy based on human misery.Carlisle, Massachusetts: Discovery Enterprises Ltd.ISBN978-1-878668-48-6.OCLC32840704.
  2. ^Merritt, J. E. (1960). "The Triangular Trade".Business History.3(1). Informa UK Limited: 1–7.doi:10.1080/00076796000000012.ISSN0007-6791.S2CID153930643.
  3. ^Gold, Susan Dudley (2006).United States V. Amistad: Slave Ship Mutiny.Marshall Cavendish. p.35.ISBN978-0-7614-2143-6.
  4. ^Weber, Jacques."La traite négrière nantaise de 1763 à 1793"(PDF).Centre national de la recherche scientifique(in French).
  5. ^Vindt, Gérard; Consil, Jean-Michel (June 2013). "Nantes, Bordeaux et l'économie esclavagiste – Au XVIIIe siècle, les villes de Nantes et de Bordeaux profitent toutes deux de la" traite négrière "et de l'économie esclavagiste".Alternatives économiques.325:17–21.
  6. ^Morgan, Kenneth (2007).Slavery and the British Empire: From Africa to America.Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 62.ISBN9780191566271.Retrieved16 October2020.
  7. ^Kowaleski-Wallace, A.P.o.E.E., Elizabeth (2006).The British slave trade and public memory.New York: Columbia University Press.ISBN9780231137140.
  8. ^Liverpool and the Slave Trade,by Anthony Tibbles, Director of the Merseyside Maritime Museum
  9. ^About.com: The Trans-Atlantic Slave TradeArchived2008-10-14 at theWayback Machine.Accessed 6 November 2007.
  10. ^"Triangular Trade".National Maritime Museum.Archived fromthe originalon 25 November 2011.
  11. ^abcCurtis, Wayne (2006–2007).And a Bottle of Rum.New York: Three Rivers Press. pp. 117-119ISBN978-0-307-33862-4.
  12. ^Scotland and the Abolition of the Slave TradeArchived2012-01-03 at theWayback Machine.Accessed 28 March 2007.
  13. ^Mann, K (2007). "An African Family Archive: The Lawsons of Little Popo/Aneho (Togo), 1841-1938".The English Historical Review.CXXII(499): 1438–1439.doi:10.1093/ehr/cem350.ISSN0013-8266.
  14. ^Lombard, J (2018). "The Kingdom of Dahomey".West African Kingdoms in the Nineteenth Century.Routledge. pp. 70–92.doi:10.4324/9780429491641-3.ISBN978-0-429-49164-1.S2CID204268220.
  15. ^A. P. Middleton,Tobacco Coast.
  16. ^Duquette, Nicolas J. (June 2014)."Revealing the Relationship Between Ship Crowding and Slave Mortality".The Journal of Economic History.74(2): 535–552.doi:10.1017/S0022050714000357.ISSN0022-0507.S2CID59449310.
  17. ^Wolfe, Brendan (1 February 2021). "Slave Ships and the Middle Passage". In Miller, Patti (ed.).Encyclopedia Virginia.Charlottesville, VA: Virginia Humanities – Library of Virginia.Retrieved4 March2021.
  18. ^Emmer, P.C.:The Dutch in the Atlantic Economy, 1580–1880.Trade, Slavery and Emancipation. Variorum Collected Studies Series CS614, 1998.
  19. ^Klein, Herbert S. (1999).The Atlantic Slave Trade.Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.ISBN0-521-46020-4.
  20. ^Klein, Herbert S.The Atlantic Slave Trade.Cambridge University Press 1999. p. 101.
  21. ^Whatley, Warren C. (2017)."The Gun-Slave Hypothesis and the 18th Century British Slave Trade"(PDF).Explorations in Economic History.67:80–104.doi:10.1016/j.eeh.2017.07.001.
  22. ^"Slavery in Rhode Island".Slavery in the North. Accessed 11 September 2011.
  23. ^Kelley, Sean M. (30 May 2023).American Slavers: Merchants, Mariners, and the Transatlantic Commerce in Captives, 1644-1865.Yale University Press. p. 81.ISBN978-0-300-27155-3.
  24. ^Oakes, James (September 2023)."Ships Going Out".New York Review of Books.ISSN0028-7504.
  25. ^Schwartz, Stuart B. (2016).Sea of Storms: A History of Hurricanes in the Greater Caribbean from Columbus to Katrina.Princeton University Press. pp. 48–49.ISBN978-0-691-17360-3.
  26. ^Burgess, Douglas R. (2012). "A Crisis of Charter and Right: Piracy and Colonial Resistance in Seventeenth-Century Rhode Island".Journal of Social History.45(3): 605–622.ISSN0022-4529.
  27. ^Hanna, Mark G. (22 October 2015).Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570-1740.UNC Press Books. pp. 365–392.ISBN978-1-4696-1795-4.
  28. ^Bushman, Richard Lyman (1998). "Markets and Composite Farms in Early America".The William and Mary Quarterly.55(3): 351–374.ISSN0043-5597.
  29. ^Kulik, Gary (1985). "Dams, Fishes, and Farmers: Defense of Public Rights in Eighteenth-Century Rhode Island".The Countryside in the Age of Capitalist Transformation: Essays in the Social History of Rural America.University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill): 25–50.
  30. ^Kulikoff, Allan (1 February 2014).From British Peasants to Colonial American Farmers.Chapel Hill: Univ of North Carolina Press. pp. 104 and 207.ISBN978-0-8078-6078-6.
  31. ^Vickers, Daniel (1990). "Competency and Competition: Economic Culture in Early America".The William and Mary Quarterly.47(1): 3–29.doi:10.2307/2938039.ISSN0043-5597.JSTOR2938039.
  32. ^Ron, Ariel (2020).Grassroots Leviathan: Agricultural Reform and the Rural North in the Slaveholding Republic.JHU Press. p. 12.ISBN978-1-4214-3932-7.
  33. ^Clark-Pujara, Christy (2016).Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island.NYU Press. pp. 24–27.ISBN978-1-4798-7042-4.
  34. ^O'Malley, Gregory E. (2014).Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British America, 1619-1807.UNC Press Books. p. 213.ISBN978-1-4696-1535-6.
  35. ^Clark-Pujara, Christy (2016).Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island.NYU Press. p. 90.ISBN978-1-4798-7042-4.
  36. ^Taylor, Alan (2010).The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies.Alfred A. Knopf. pp. 31 and 119.ISBN978-1-4000-4265-4.
  37. ^"The Unrighteous Traffick".The Providence Journal.March 12, 2006. Archived fromthe originalon September 12, 2009.RetrievedJuly 31,2010.
  38. ^Deutsch, Sarah (1982). "The Elusive Guineamen: Newport Slavers, 1735–1774".The New England Quarterly.55(2): 229–253.doi:10.2307/365360.JSTOR365360.
  39. ^Slave Voyages,Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade - Estimates
  40. ^Jones, Donald W.; Archaeological Institute of America; University of Pennsylvania. University Museum (2000)."Crete's External Relations in the Early Iron Age".External relations of early Iron Age Crete, 1100–600 B.C.p. 97.ISBN9780924171802.
  41. ^Kurlansky, Mark.Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World.New York: Walker, 1997.ISBN0-8027-1326-2.
  42. ^Morgan, Kenneth.Bristol and the Atlantic Trade in the Eighteenth Century.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.ISBN0-521-33017-3.pp. 64–77.
  43. ^Chris Evans and Göran Rydén,Baltic Iron in the Atlantic World in the Eighteenth Century:Brill, 2007ISBN978-90-04-16153-5,273.
  44. ^King, Peter (2017).The Aberdeen Line: George Thompson Jnr's incomparable shipping enterprise.Stroud: The History Press.ISBN978-0-7509-7851-4.
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