The Transatlantic Slave Trade, The Most Honourable King George IIi Of Britain

The triangular trade route brought slaves over from Africa to sell to plantation owners in the colonies. The Africans were on a ship for over a month in horrible conditions, they barely received any food or water, and could hardly sit or stand. If they became sick or died the were tossed over the deck into the sea. If they refused to eat the food they were given, they were whipped. If the slaves lived through the terrible journey they were taken to the slave market to be sold.

The transatlantic slave trade was integrated into England amid the 16th century (with the first occurrence of the trade taking place in 1563.), where it began to develop as one of the country’s most lucrative trades. Nowhere was this more evident than in the case of Liverpool, a city that ascended into prosperity from the spoils of the triangular trade.

The Atlantic slave trade was just one part of a three legged international trade network. This was known as the triangular trade, because of the shape of the route from each of the three points to stop and trade being shaped just like a triangle. It linked Europe, Africa, and the Americas. It was a very important piece of society in the 15th century. There were benefits to this trade, but mostly to the businesses and merchants. However, the impact it had on the African people lasted for centuries after slavery had ended through racism and discrimination.

The Transatlantic Slave Trade, or the Triangular Trade, connected trade between North America, Africa, and Europe. From America, plantation crops such as tobacco and cotton was sent to Europe. From Europe, manufactured goods like cloth and guns were shipped to Africa. From Africa, African slaves—men, women and children-- were transported to America.

By the time that the slave trade had been abolished in Britain and her colonies in 1807 eleven million men, women and children had been snatched from their homes. For historians understanding the factors that led to the abolition of the trade remains an important task. Whilst there is clearly a consensus on the main factors that led to this seismic and historic event there is obviously a difference in opinion on the most important due to the degree of subjectivity the question poses.

With the European discovery of the New World, African slave trade began to grow. Slaves were traded and bought and then shipped to some other place and then sold. Europeans would trade things for slaves then bring them to places like the West Indies and sell them. They would then buy goods and bring the goods back to Europe. This was the triangular trade system. Slaves played a vital role in trade all over the world, old and new. Although African slavery had already existed, there were many reasons as to why it was needed during the Atlantic World and there were many effects of this.

The history of the Atlantic slave trade is long and sordid, from the working and transportation conditions to the structure of the trade itself. Historians and scholars from all backgrounds have worked to understand the impact of slavery and why it went on for so long. Two scholars, John Thornton and Mariana Candido, have extensively studied both the impact and organization of the Atlantic slave trade, but disagree on a few main conclusions. Upon thorough review of both sides, however, John Thornton’s ideas regarding the Atlantic trade are more convincing than Candido’s, and by looking deeper into each side it is clear why.

The first stage of the Triangular Trade involved taking manufactured goods from Europe and to Africa. They sent goods like cloth, tobacco, beads, metal goods, and guns. The guns were used to help expand European empires and capture more slaves. They were helpful until the Africans got hold of it, then

The Triangular trade was a trade system among Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Europe made manufactured goods such as textiles, gun powder, firearms, iron and copper bars, alcohol, cloth and brass kitchen ware. These were traded in Africa for slaves, gold, and silver, which were transported to the Americas, where they were exchanged for tobacco, fish, lumber, flour, sugar cane, cotton, and distilled rum. This merchandise was then brought to Europe, where the cycle began again. The Triangle Trade was very

The slave trade was the largest contributor to the British economy during the 18th century. Tomas Butler stated “The profits from the slave trade were part of the bedrock of our country's industrial development. Many people and institutions in every part of the country were complicit in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.” In the early Americas, Britain supplied a vast majority of the slaves to the new world to be sold to the highest bidder. During the slave trade British ships made over ten thousand voyages and enslaved approximately 3.4 billion Africans. Some of these ships would make a profit of twenty to fifty percent. Back in England the king and the ship owners were not the only people benefiting from the slave trade. Everyone from the factory owners to the factory workers were benefited as an effect of the slave trade. The upper-class citizens were definitely making the big dollars. These people included the owners of the slave ships, the factory owners, who were able to produce and sell the products that the Africans and Americans needed and wanted, bankers who made money from the interest they earned on loans from people who borrowed money for the long voyage, and

This growth of trade during the 16th and 17th century, brought about the establishment of the Colonial Board in 1661, its objective was to decide how best to populate and work the colonies of the new world. The political aspect of this was the increasing concern that emigration of white workers to the colonies would eventually leave a shortage of cheap labour at home. The Royal Family gave its patronage to the African slave trade in 1680 by the formation of the Royal African Company (Ramdin 1987). This move could be argued to be seen as giving legitimacy to the belief that the Africans where more suited to labour than the white peoples, it could be argued that it is here that we see the first signs of racism emerging in British society.

human lives, all with a purpose of securing a profit (Foner, GML, 131). Slave plantations

The Trans-Atlantic Trade system was created to satisfy the luxury demands made by Europeans. Europe began their search for better means of receiving their lavishes through the European migrants in the Americas. Europe received luxuries such as fur, silk, timber, sugar, rice, and tobacco from the America, and in return, the Americans received manufactured goods such as guns and furniture, as well as spices, tea, oils, and tools. Because of the growing demand for luxury items in Europe, and the decrease of Indian slave labor, Africa, and the Americans created a slave trade in return for luxuries such as rum, tools, cloth, iron, and gunpowder. Slaves were by far the biggest export of Africa and the largest import into the Americas, ultimately starting the popularity and increase of the Trans-Atlantic Trade.

Having looked into the political reasons for the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade let us look into the economic reasons. In the first place it is of absolute importance to note that the economic shifts from dirty slavery business into imperialism and Industrial revolution also led to the abolition of Atlantic slave trade . That is, underlying both political and social movements, systemic developments in the growing world capitalist economy were taking place; in the vanguard was British imperialism and its industrial revolution . The New World plantation system was a highly developed form of the slave mode of production that, unlike ancient slavery, was integrated into and increasingly driven by a growing capitalist world market . The profits from New World slavery had significantly contributed to the ‘primitive accumulation’ of capital that enabled the industrial revolution, especially in Britain . However, by the

Within two decades, Britain had made decisive actions to abolish the transatlantic slave trade, and this made the emancipation of trade emerge as one of the most significant reform movements that took place in the 18th and 19th centuries. In July 1833, the British parliament abolished slave buying and selling through the passing of a Bill in the House of Commons and then in the House of Lords which abolished slave trade all through the British Empire. How this came into place has been largely debated and yet slave trade provided the British nation with money, employment, and luxurious commodities enriching the country. Interpretations of the British slave trade tends to be explained by the humanitarian or moral movements where emancipation campaigns were made by religious groups (Porter, 43). Another famous interpretation and which makes the focus of this paper is that emancipation of the slave trade was due to changes in economic interests. This paper argues that the emancipation of slave trade in British land and also on the colonial territories coincided with the periods of economic decline in the British Caribbean, and so emancipationist ideas came due to the growth of free-labor ideologies and the factory system.