Triangular trade.

When settlers realized that harvesting crops and doing other chores went by much faster with slaves, there was a dramatic increase in slave labor in British North America. In the 1700s, the triangle trade was established, greatly increasing the number of African slaves shipped to British North America. In the Triangle Trade, British North Americans shipped out goods to the West Indies and Britain in return for slaves and other resources. While trans-Atlantic

Trade during colonial America was done between Europe, Africa, and the New World. They traded food, natural resources, animals, and slaves. History proves to show that trade highly increases economies and through the Triangular Trade route the economy of the colonies shot up. It was really easy for colonists to buy slaves from Africa and have them shipped across the Middle Passage just as easy as it was to be over an indentured servant. As stated above, colonists preferred slaves over indentured servants, so they chose African slaves. This allowed for a rapid growth in the number of slaves within the British North American colonies that increased trade and economic power for the colonies.

Europe has had a long history of slave trade already by the time the 16th century came around. Many slaves worked on various types of plantations where they would grow sugar, tobacco, and coffee beans, creating large amounts of profit. All of

Capitalism was the sole purpose for being the cause of an exponential use of slaves in all aspects of production. Notably, it involved an economic system whose basis originates from private ownership of all the means of production as well as the production of goods and services majorly meant for profit. With characteristics such as accumulation of capital, labor, private property ownership, and competitive market. Therefore, there was a great need for means of production hence slavery. However, there is a close relationship between free and slave labor as used in production. The paper uses “Capitalism and Slavery” (William, 1961) as a primary source material to compare the profitability of free labor and slave labor through an in-depth discussion of the role the African slavery played in the development of capitalism in the New World. Free labor and slave labor both have profits in the production process and would be applied differently at various places. For instance, slave labor was profitable in activities in which little skills and versatility in production process were required. It is worth noting that, the use of slave labor to cultivate a fresh soil is more profitable than the use of free men in the cultivation of an exhausted land. However, the use of slave labor was the option at the earlier stages of development of colonies, although slaved labor was unskillful, given reluctantly, and lacks versatility (Eltis, 2000). Moreover, use of slave labor were not moral but

Africans were brought to the Americas through the Transatlantic Slave Trade to make up for the labor shortage created after the Native Americans died (doc 1). Most slaves became workers on plantations which allowed the New World to produce raw materials which would later be traded with Europe (doc 1). However, the increase of raw materials, such as sugarcane, resulted in the New World becoming a part of an international trade (doc 2). This allowed them to gain access to raw materials, such as Indigo rice tobacco coffee cocoa and cotton (doc 2). So even though slaves were forcibly brought to the Americas, the increase in slave labor resulted in an overall increase of trade between Europe and the

Colonists participated in international and imperial trade by using the triangular trade. Although, out of necessity, the colonies sent raw materials, such as fish and fur, to England in exchange for manufactured goods. In order to protect England’s agriculture and fisheries put taxes on goods. This resulted in the New York and New England to buy more from England than they sold. To avoid this, the colonies started using their own ships and merchants, this formed the triangular trade. The triangular trade allowed New Englanders to ship rum to the west coast of Africa, where they exchanged for slaves; took the enslaved Africans to the West Indies; and returned home with various commodities, including molasses from which they manufactured rum. The triangular trade allowed the colonies trade to prosper and for more profit to be

Slavery was a driving force of the sugar trade because the profits from selling slaves had driven sellers to sell more. Also, the The increase of sold slaves produced more sugar, thus expanding the sugar trade. Documents 9 and 11 deal with the market of slaves, while Document 10 compares slave population to sugar production. According to David Richardson, after purchasing slaves off the West African coast, selling them to British Caribbean would give sellers very high profit. In fact, in 1748, a seller’s profit would be about £18 per slave sold. In 1768, however, both purchase price and selling price of a slave had increased; yet remarkably a seller’s profit reached £25 per slave sold (Doc. 9). Sellers such as grocers and tailors and other commoners were able to take part in this trade by buying a share of a venture (Doc. 9). Craftsmen involved in the trade did not use money to trade slaves. African slaves were traded with material goods such as bullets, tobacco-pipes, brass pans, and copper bars (Doc. 11). The economic growth from the slave trade had produced both money and slaves, which increased sugar production. The massive amounts of slaves working had produced tons of sugar from a plantation. Although working in deplorable conditions, the “free” labor from the slaves had produced extremely high yields (Doc. 8). For

Slave trading was a business and “over the four centuries of Atlantic slavery, millions of Africans and their descendants were turned into profits.” (Johnson) The Atlantic trade was highly depended on by slave owners as the life expectancy of a slave working in the sugar cane plantations was about seven years in the Caribbean. Due to the use of slave labor by the 18th century surplus capital was being invested in European industry.

We first look at the advent of slavery and the main propulsion of it. As the trade routes opened, new types of items were found and shared in new countries. Two of the most wanted and profitable crops were sugar and tobacco. In order to grow the large amounts of these crops many people were needed and in order to secure a profit, instead of paying people to work,

[x] France for example has created New France in Canada and also down into Florida and Spain had a large portion of Mexico and Southern America. [xi] These new colonizes helped create trade between the New and Old World. Government ventures lended money for explorers to set forth and trade in the West and elsewhere.[xii] This also led to the role of mercantilism in the Atlantic as well. They helped promote overseas trade between a country and its own colonizes.[xiii] As they controlled more trade, different trading companies began to emerge in response to mercantilism. The Dutch West Indian Company and the royal African Company chartered by their motherlands all participated in a system which included other non- European countries as well. This system was known as the Atlantic Circuit which was a clockwise network of trading links that moved goods, wealth and people around the Atlantic system.[xiv] This helped make the slave trade more efficient because now a vast amount of slaves could be transported to their specific destinations as requested by a country. As document 8 shows, the slaves which came from Africa each followed a specific route in the Atlantic Circuit. [xv] tying in with document 4 the work that had to be done on the plantation was a lot and that is why with the help of city ports in Africa they were able to get a large number of slaves to help in the Americas. An example of the type of work they did can be

This paper will question the relationship between Slavery and Capitalism, and the extent to how dependent Capitalism was on slavery. Chattel slavery first arrived to America in 1619 and from there the business just kept on growing. It leads to the invention of the cotton gin and helped push forward the young country into the developed powerful nation it is now. This can be gained from the readings from Bailyn, Beverly, the Declaration of Independence, and other works that show not only how profitable slavery was, but also how important it was to the development of America as a country.

In the Renaissance, slaves were starting to be used in plantations, mostly in America, but also in plantations in Italy and off the coast of Africa (Gascoigne). So, in both the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution, at least some slaves were used for hard labor. The Portuguese were the first to put slaves to work in plantations, and slaves soon came to be used on plantations in the Americas by nations such as Spain, Holland, France, England, and the Netherlands. The first slaves they enslaved in these colonies were the native peoples, but soon, the native population began to dwindle. Since Portugal had been exploring the coast of Africa and since Africa had a booming population of people, Africans became the people they predominantly enslaved (Guild). Thus, racial slavery was started. Blacks came to be viewed as lower than human, and this view spread to all the nations which came to have plantations in America. Millions of blacks were imported to plantations for sugar, spices, tobacco, coffee, etc. during the span of the Renaissance (Hornsby).

Many historians justify that the evolving of the industrial revolution was based on slavery and mainly the triangular trade. The triangular trade was the route taken by Europeans to transport goods to Africa in exchange for slaves to be taken to the Americans. The triangular trade was seen as the first system of global commerce which linked Britain, Africa and the Americans. The most important colonies for the sugar growth were West Indies islands. During the 17th and the 18th century Dutch settlers in Brazil had perfected their sugar cultivation at the same time the triangular trade was taking place between America, Britain and Africa. As the

Labor exploitation was the key for the effectiveness of european expansion in the new world and define slavery as a principal component for global capitalism until it was not longer profitable. The atlantic slave trade influence europe economic growth and market development to rapidly spread through the atlantic trade. It was a intense dependence on the triangular trade that made merchants made big profits at the expense of the exploited labour abroad. Merchants were involved in all three sides of the triangle trade that allowed the transportation of slaves from Europe to Africa where goods were traded for slaves and then those slaves were brought to the Americas for the cultivation food crops and other raw materials; these later were brought back to Europe, Africa and the Americas to be sold. Resistance and revolts against the trade of slave was stronger in African areas where european demographic power was lower but “It was not until 1780s that increasing european along the west of africa coast finally drove up the price of slaves” and the overproduction of sugar in the caribbean and other raw materials lead the fall in the selling price of these products (shillington p181) european nations began to question whether the trade was still profitable or not. Britain was the first to completely abolished slavery in 1834 when manufactures found european labor in factories more efficient and less expensive than plantations. It was follow for the french colonies 1848, Cuba in

We will now explore the background of the triangle trade in America, Britain, and Africa, along with the economic effects that were brought to not only America and Britain but also the economic effects brought to Africa as a result of slavery and the slave trade.