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| Triangle Trade (Atlantic slave trade) | |
|---|---|
| Name | Triangle Trade (Atlantic slave trade) |
| Other name | Transatlantic slave trade |
| Caption | Diagram of a slave ship's hold |
| Location | Atlantic Ocean |
| Era | Early modern period–19th century |
Triangle Trade (Atlantic slave trade) was the system of transatlantic commerce that connected ports in West Africa, the Caribbean, and Europe and sustained the forced movement of millions of Africans to the Americas. Operating from the 16th century through the 19th century, it involved merchant firms, navies, insurers, plantation owners, and metropolitan governments. The trade shaped institutions in Portugal, Spain, France, Great Britain, Netherlands, Denmark–Norway, Sweden, United States and numerous African polities such as the Kingdom of Kongo and Asante Empire.
The trade linked maritime circuits centered on ports like Lisbon, Seville, Cadiz, Bristol, Liverpool, Glasgow, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Copenhagen, Havre de Grâce, Bordeaux, Port-au-Prince, Kingston, Jamaica, Saint-Domingue, Charleston, South Carolina and New Orleans. European merchants exchanged manufactured goods from workshops in Birmingham, Manchester, Lyon, Genoa, Venice, Bremen and Hamburg for enslaved persons purchased through intermediaries from African rulers including the Oyo Empire, Benin Empire, Dahomey, Songhai (late) networks and coastal elites in Gulf of Guinea markets like Elmina Castle and Cape Coast Castle. The Middle Passage delivered captives to plantations owned by planters such as those in Barbados, Montserrat, Jamaica and Saint-Domingue, where cash crops like sugar, tobacco, cotton and coffee were produced for European and North American markets.
Origins trace to early Portuguese voyages by explorers such as Prince Henry the Navigator and merchants in Lisbon and Santo Domingo who repurposed existing Mediterranean and Atlantic slaving practices. The growth accelerated after the English Glorious Revolution and during mercantilist policies articulated in publications associated with thinkers in Amsterdam and Paris. Chartered companies like the Royal African Company, the Dutch West India Company, the Compagnie du Sénégal and the Danish West India Company institutionalized trafficking. Colonial conflicts including the Seven Years' War, the American Revolutionary War, the Napoleonic Wars and treaties like the Treaty of Paris (1763) reshaped markets and legal regimes, while legal cases in England and decisions in courts such as the case of Somersett v. Stewart affected metropolitan debates about legality and rights.
Routes formed triadic circuits: European manufactures to African coasts, enslaved Africans across the Atlantic (the Middle Passage) to American ports, and colonial commodities back to Europe and North America. Ships flagged by powers including Portugal, Spain, France, Great Britain, Netherlands and Denmark–Norway sailed from hubs such as Bristol Docks, Liverpool Docks, Port of Nantes, Port of Lisbon and Amsterdam's port invoking insurance from institutions like the Lloyd's of London model and financing via houses in Amsterdam Stock Exchange and banking networks in Genoa and Hamburg. Ports in Senegambia, Bight of Benin, Bight of Biafra and Kongo River served as embarkation points; disembarkation occurred at Havana, Recife, Salvador, Bahia, Cartagena de Indias, Bridgetown and Providence, Rhode Island. The logistics involved provisioning, shipboard medicine influenced by practitioners in Edinburgh and navigational practice from charts produced by Hydrographic Office predecessors.
Captured Africans from diverse societies—Yoruba, Akan, Igbo, Mande, Kongo people, Wolof, Fula, Bakongo—were held in forts such as Elmina Castle and Fort James (Gambia), inspected by factors from firms like those of John Thornton (merchant) and others. Mortality rates on the Middle Passage were influenced by overcrowding, disease, malnutrition, and violence; contemporaneous observers like Olaudah Equiano and officials in Parliament of the United Kingdom documented conditions. Resistance aboard ships included rebellions exemplified by the uprising on the Amistad (1839) and other mutinies recorded in logs of vessels owned by firms in Liverpool and Bristol. Shipboard regimes were policed by sailors, overseers and naval officers from navies such as the Royal Navy and privateers operating under letters of marque during wartime.
Wealth generated enriched merchant families, financiers and firms in Liverpool, Bristol, Glasgow, Bordeaux and Amsterdam, and funded investments in infrastructure like docks, rail schemes later tied to houses in Manchester and plantations in Barbados and Jamaica. Insurers modeled on Lloyd's of London and banks linked to houses in Amsterdam and Genoa profited; investors included figures noted in parliamentary records and municipal registers in Bristol City Council and Liverpool Corporation. Revenue from sugar and tobacco exports affected fiscal policy in France and Britain and underwrote military ventures such as expeditions by forces of Royal African Company and colonial militias in Virginia. Industrial capital in Birmingham and Manchester used raw cotton from plantations in Georgia and Alabama, tying the trade to proto-industrial growth.
Resistance took many forms: shipboard mutinies, maroon communities like those in Jamaica and Suriname, slave revolts such as the Haitian Revolution and uprisings in Saint-Domingue, legal challenges by abolitionists including activists in London Abolition Committee and petitions to legislatures in United States Congress and British Parliament. Abolitionist figures and groups—William Wilberforce, Granville Sharp, Thomas Clarkson, Olaudah Equiano, Hannah More, Elizabeth Heyrick and societies like the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade—mobilized public opinion through pamphlets, testimonies and mobilizations that influenced legislation: the Slave Trade Act 1807 and the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 in United Kingdom and gradual legal changes culminating in the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Historians such as Eric Williams, Catherine Hall, David Eltis, Stanley Engerman, Seymour Drescher and Stephen D. Kenny have debated economic interpretations, demographic impact, and moral responsibility. Scholarship draws on archival sources in Public Record Office (United Kingdom), Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo, Nationaal Archief (Netherlands), Bibliothèque nationale de France and the U.S. National Archives. The trade's legacy informs contemporary discussions in institutions like UNESCO commissions, reparations debates led by organizations such as the CARICOM Reparations Commission, museum exhibitions at the International Slavery Museum and memorialization projects in Cape Coast Castle and Gorée Island. Ongoing research engages with oral histories from descendant communities in Brazil, Haiti, Jamaica, Ghana, Benin, United States and uses interdisciplinary methods from scholars at universities including Oxford University, Harvard University, University of the West Indies, University of Ghana and University of Cape Town.