Slavery and Triangle Trade

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Slavery and Triangle Trade
Lesson Objective To understand the history of
the Triangle Trade and how it impacted the
American colonies.

• 1660-1865

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Triangular Trade

• The triangular trade system was so named because
  the ships left from European ports with
  manufactured goods, stopped in Africa to trade
  goods and gather the captives, after which they
  set out for the New World to deliver their human
  cargo, trade for natural goods and then returned
  to the ports of Europe. The Middle Passage was
  that part of the slave triangle that brought the
  human cargo from West Africa to North America,
  South America, and the Caribbean.

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Europe to Africa

• One leg of the triangular trade brought
  manufactured goods from Europe to Africa.
• Some goods included knives, guns, pots, beads,
  cloth, hardware, rum, or salt.

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Africa to the Americas(The Middle Passage)

• Originally European traders wanted Ivory, gold,
  and other goods from Africa. European colonies in
  the Americas needed workers for their large sugar
  plantations, mines, and tobacco fields.
• African rulers would capture and sell their
  enemies and neighbors to European slave traders
  who would sell them in the Americas.

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European goods were bartered (traded) for
slaves.Many of the slave ship captains were
Portugese and had already established their trade
routes around Africa
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Middle Passage Conditions

• The trip from Africa to the Americas was referred
  to as the Middle Passage.
• Slaves were crammed tightly below deck and
  chained together. They had little space and
  disease was rampant.

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• The captured Africans were allowed on deck for
  very little time and were given little food. Many
  died from disease, hunger, or committed suicide.
• Tight packers lost more cargo because they
  packed in as many captives as possible.
• An estimated 2-3 million slaves died on the slave
  ships.

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Americas back to Europe

• Goods from the colonies in the Americas traveled
  back to Europe in the holds of the ships who had
  unloaded their slave cargoes.
• Molasses, sugar, tobacco, indigo, rice, and other
  crops along with lumber, fish, and furs were
  shipped to Europe for money.

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Triangle Trade and the Colonies

• The Northern colonies economy was based on the
  shipbuilding and fishing industries. Lumber and
  skilled craftspeople were also important to the
  Northern colonies. These goods were traded with
  other countries.

• The Southern colonies economy depended on
  agriculture. Tobacco, sugar cane, cotton, and
  rice were some of the cash crops of the South.
  The slaves worked hard to produce these crops.
  The surplus of the crops were sold to Europe.

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Triangle Trade Activity Time

• Please clear off your desk completely.
• The only item you should have on your desk is a
  pen or pencil.