Title: The Triangular Trade | American Battlefield Trust
Headings: The Triangular Trade
The Triangular Trade
The Economics of Slavery and the New World
Further Reading:
The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation By: Daina Ramey Berry
Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade By: David Eltis and David Richardson
The French Atlantic Triangle: Literature and Culture of the Slave Trade By: Christopher L. Miller
www.slavevoyages.com sponsored by Emory University

Content: These could include the same luxury items consumed by European elites, but also products like rum, paper and cotton cloth worked just as well, as demonstrated by Ayuba’s testimony. European weapons and munitions, too, were highly prized by the local kings and other rulers hoping to gain a military and political advantage over their rivals, as well as take new slaves as a result of the fighting. Enslavement was hardly a new concept to Africa when Europeans began exploring the region, mostly done to criminals and war captives. Increased European demand for slave labor, however, increased the number of people captured and sold whole sale to the slave ships. Ultimately, modern estimates place the number of people taken from Africa in chains between nine and twelve million between the 16th and 19th centuries. The finance ministers of Europe also subjected the slave trade to the same Exclusif-style regulations as their colonies. All major colonial powers in the Americas participated in the trade to some extent, but when looking at the records, slave traders overwhelmingly disembark at ports owned by the nation whose flag whose flag they flew. As the records show, however, there were many exceptions to this rule. Around 39% of slaves brought to Spanish America were brought over by non-Spanish ships, British and Portuguese in particular. The vast majority of these voyages disembarked at Caribbean, Central or South American ports.