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Causes Of The Increase In Slave Trade

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The increase in the need for slaves in the eighteenth century was the result of the increase in plantation production (Benjamin 341). Over time the slave trade became larger and more competitive. There were multiple methods of trading, with one being more successful. For three centuries the slave trade dominated Atlantic commerce.

The slave trade was a large, multifaceted world wide enterprise.

The eighteenth-century increase was largely due to increased plantation production and gold mining in Brazil. Brazilian gold production peaked in the 1720s until 1745. By 1790, the British and French had large gains on their sugar islands, producing 290,000 tons of sugar per annum. While gold mining was a large source of slave labor, it was the plantations that “were the economic engines that led to the forced immigration of millions of Africans,” (Benjamin 341).

Over four million captives went to Brazil during the trade. Spanish America saw the influx of over 1.662 million slaves during the slave trade era. The French sugar islands imported almost 1.7 million slaves and the British Caribbean islands received almost 1.65 million.

The European trade business was divided into two different ways: monopolies and free trade. Charter companies were given contracts or charters that gave them a monopoly of a certain colony or region, even the entire Atlantic. These companies built forts along the African coasts to guard and hold captives before their passage.

Some merchants traded

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