Triangular trade

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The three way trade in the North Atlantic: Sugar > Rum > Slaves.

A "triangular trade" is a historical term referring to the 18th-century trade among the West Indies, New England, and the west coast of Africa. The commodities involved were several, but principally they were sugar, rum, and slaves. The trade brought much wealth to North America and the profits ultimately became the foundation of American capitalism. ^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Slaves, Sugar, Rum, and Guns

Sugar became an important commodity to meet the growing demands of Europeans drinking tea, coffee, and cocoa. Thus sugar was the earliest foundation upon which capitalism began to develop. ^{[citation needed]} South American and Caribbean sugar was also distilled into rum in New England, which was then traded in Africa for slaves owned by other Africans, and finally West African slaves were traded for sugar in South America. This forms a triangle on the map, hence the term "Triangular Trade." ^{[citation needed]}

New England slave ships took vats of the rum from their distilleries to Africa and bought African slaves from African owners/dealers with the rum. Other goods, including guns were also sold to the African dealers, which facilitated their obtaining more slaves. The bulk of the human cargo was sold in South America in trade for cane sugar and the cycle continued. At each stop along the way, an excellent profit was made. New England dominated the slave-trade when still colonies, but when Great Britain outlawed the trade in 1807, English ships stopped participating altogether. ^{[citation needed]}

At the same time, North American slavery expanded greatly so that slaves became a majority of the population in the South. The cotton gin was invented in 1794. In 1800, cotton cultivation was labor intensive, requiring armies of workers to produce. Although it was active in Brazil until 1893,^{[citation needed]} the slave-trade stopped in the Caribbean. So just when cotton became profitable as a cash crop in North America, slavers were looking for new markets. This Triangular Trade lasted legally from ca 1500 to 1850, when the importation of slaves was banned in the United States. After the slave-trade was outlawed in the United States, it continued illegally up until the eve of the American Civil War in 1861...

[edit] Rum for Slaves

Cotton replaced sugar as the mainstay of industrialization after slavery was banned in the Caribbean. ^{[citation needed]}

The Triangular Trade has been criticized as rum for slaves. ^{[citation needed]} This refers to the two lower legs of the triangle that represent the sale of New England rum for black slaves in Africa. The economies of many cities in New England and the economy of the state of Rhode Island were once based on the brewing industry, which financed slave-purchasing expeditions. This wealth became the basis for nascent American capitalism, and explains why the Northeast of the United States is to this day the center of financial activity, and unrivaled for dense urbanization.^{[citation needed]}

Because of the basis of modern capitalism in black slavery, modern African-American activists see it as tainted.^{[citation needed]} The slave trade itself early came under attack for creating in the United States the "peculiar institution."^{[citation needed]} For if Southern plantation owners inherited it from their forebears, New England elites had created it and continued to import slaves illegally until the Civil War.

Moreover the Triangular Trade was the source of controversy since the Federal government at the time was funded by the tariff. The tariff made it too expensive for the American South to buy from or sell to Europeans. The tariff artificially inflated prices for trade with England and Europe to make it cheaper to buy from and sell to New England, which at the time was the seat of American shipping. New England became wealthy through its shipping industry, whereas the South was wealthy in land and cotton production. Further profits from the tariff were used, for example, to improve Boston harbor in New England and Charleston harbor for New England ships.^{[citation needed]} By the eve of the Civil War more than 80 percent of the tariff was paid by the South whilst more than 80 percent of the Federal budget went to the North.^{[citation needed]}

Not surprisingly, this led to ill feeling in the South. The years before the Civil War were fraught with struggles over the tariff.^{[citation needed]} Southern leaders said that it enslaved the South to the North. Northern leaders replied that the South had no moral standing to mention slavery since Southern elites together owned millions of African slaves. The South answered that the slaves were brought in by the North, continued to be brought in illegally, and that the North controlled the cotton-based economy of the South through its control of shipping.^{[citation needed]} Some African-Americans in the Nation of Islam add more fuel to the fires of controversy by alleging that the slave-trade was controlled by Jews headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island; others disagree.^{[citation needed]} Since the tariff made trading directly with England increasingly expensive, New England began to gain control of the export of cotton from the South as well as the import of goods into the South. Thus the tariff enforced New England's dominance of the Triangular Trade by making it increasingly cheaper for trade in and out of North America to go by American ships.^{[citation needed]}

After the Civil War, importation of African laborers ceased, thus removing one leg from the triangle. Trade continued between the United States, the Caribbean and Europe (principally England). ^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Great Britain-British North America-Caribbean

The term "Triangle Trade" is also used to refer to a trade pattern which evolved after the American Revolutionary War between Great Britain, the colonies of British North America (BNA), and British colonies in the Caribbean.^{[citation needed]} This typically involved exporting raw resources such as fish, lumber, and fur from BNA colonies, sugar and molasses from the Caribbean, and various commodities from Great Britain.

The trade pattern existed through the 19th century and in some format in the 20th century until it was disrupted by World War II. Trade expanded in the post-war period to include the United States and other Western Hemisphere nations. ^{[citation needed]}

[edit] See also

1. History of Sugar
2. Rum in Colonial America
3. Atlantic slave trade
4. Industrial Revolution