Triangular Trade

The Atlantic system that carried European goods to Africa, enslaved people to the Americas and colonial produce back to Europe from the 16th to 19th centuries.

Overview

European ships loaded textiles, guns and spirits for West Africa, traded for captive people, crossed the Middle Passage to the Caribbean and mainland America, and returned with sugar, tobacco, cotton and rum. Historians estimate around 12.5 million people were forced aboard, of whom roughly 10.7 million survived the crossing. Liverpool, Bristol, Nantes, Bordeaux and Newport grew on the traffic, and the insurance and banking machinery of Atlantic capitalism matured financing it. Britain abolished the trade in 1807 and slavery in 1833, the United States in 1865. The demographic and economic damage shaped three continents and remains central to debates over inequality today.