The Triangular Trade
After Columbus accidentally bumped into the New World in 1492, a whole new global economy began to take shape. Europe, Africa, and the America’s became linked together in a vast network known as the Triangular trade. Slaves were the main commodity coming from Africa, meant to work on American plantations.
Fast forward to the 1600's to see a picture where the major European powers of the time (the British, French, Dutch, Spanish, and the Portuguese) were all competing to carve up the New World and its plentiful natural resources amongst themselves. Colonists wasted no time in clearing the forests and mining the hills. Soon the New World colonies were sending back home lumber, indigo (blue dye), tobacco, coffee, furs, cocoa, iron, fish, hemp, cotton, and the most important crop of all sugar cane. This last cash crop was more than just a sweetener for breakfast cereal (which hadn’t been invented yet). Sugar Cane was used in making rum, which was much more inexpensive to make than other types of alcohol.
These and other natural resources would be sent back to Europe's workshops to be made into manufactured goods. Some of the goods included clothing, furniture, tools, rum, guns, and food. These manufactured goods would be sent back to the colonies to be sold at a fat profit. But we’re skipping the most important link in the triangular chain–African slaves.
The rich soil and warm weather of the Americas proved to be a great place to set up sugar and rice plantations. But a question arose. Who would do the dirty work of actually farming the plantation? The answer was simple, use the Native Americans as slave labor. There was one problem with that. The Native Americans did not make good slaves; they ran away or died of European diseases, such as smallpox. They died by the millions. Soon, there were hardly any Native Americans left and so the Europeans turned to Africa to solve its labor problems.
Africans were a perfect solution. They had a resistance to many of the same tropical diseases that had killed the Native Americans. The demand for cheap labor increased. So, by the early 1500's, Europeans had built dozens of slave forts to house the captured slaves along the coast of West Africa. Now the work of shipping human beings across 2,000 miles of ocean could begin.
Slave trading was risky business. Storms, pirate attacks, disease, or slave mutinies were always a risk for merchants who decided to deal in the sale of forced human labor. The risks were considered worth it because the profits were ridiculously attractive. In the 1750's, a slave could be bought in West Africa for £5 could be sold in the West Indies (aka the Caribbean) for £30! Slave ships with names such as Caroline, Ann, Jesus, or the Hope (ironic, right?) would ply the Atlantic exchanging rum, guns, sugar, and cloth for African slaves.
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