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Who Was To Blame For The Triangular Trade Essay

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Imagine going about your everyday life when all of a sudden, you are taken away from your family, friends, and the life you know and you are placed aboard a ship going to a foreign place. On top of all that, you will have to work hard for free and be treated with almost no respect. It’s crazy right? Well not for the millions of Africans during the 15th to 19th century. The Atlantic Slave Trade was a part of the triangular trade which involved trading between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. The triangular trade was a trade system between the three continents which involved exchange of goods and slaves. The Europeans traded manufactured goods while the Africans traded slaves and the Americans traded for agricultural products. In all of this, the question arises that who is to blame? The blame can’t be placed on only one group of people because each group has played a big role in the slave trade. By looking at what was the role of each continent in the slave trade, we can see how much they are to blame. …show more content…

With the colonists gaining more land, they needed more labor workers for their farms and plantations. The Europeans would come and invade African villages and take away the poor men and children. To the Europeans who would come to trade and the Americans who bought the slaves, the slaves were just considered business. In Thomas Phillip’s journal, he talks about one of his voyages in which he says, “we mark’d the slaves we had bought in the breast, or shoulder, with a hot iron…”(Strayer 704) That comment just shows how the slaves weren’t considered humans by the traders. He also later states how he transferred 700 men and women and from the tone of it, it didn’t even phase him. (Strayer 705)The Europeans should be blamed because bought the slaves. Their high demand of labor workers is what really pushed the slave trade to become as big as it

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