Triangular trade
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Triangular trade or triangle trade is a historical term indicating trade principally of three products or between three regions.
The three-way trans-Atlantic trade known historically as the Triangular Trade was the trade during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of slaves, sugar (often in its liquid form, molasses), and rum between West Africa, the West Indies and the northern colonies of British North America. The slaves grew the sugar from which was brewed rum, which in turn was traded for more slaves. In this circuit, the sea lane west from Africa to the West Indies (and later, also to Brazil) was the notorious Middle Passage; its cargo, abducted or recently purchased African slaves.[1] Triangle Trade also involved shipping sheep from country to country making sheep coats along the way.
By the nineteenth century, the original Triangular Trade had expanded into the four-way Atlantic Trade between Europe, West Africa, the West Indies and South America, and North America, with numerous industrial and agricultural products exchanged along the way.[2] The Atlantic slave trade evolved where a region had an export commodity that was required in the region from which its major imports came. The expanded Atlantic trade thus provided a mechanism for rectifying trade imbalances.
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[edit] The Atlantic Trade
In the early nineteenth century, fueled by the success of the Triangular Trade, the explosive beginnings of the industrial revolution in Europe expanded the circle of trade into a full-blown Atlantic Trade, encompassing much of the ocean. Now bearing multiple products, the broadening transactions represented a profitable enterprise for merchants and investors. The business was risky, competitive, and severe, but enslaved Africans fetched a high price at auctions, making the trade in human cargo a lucrative business.
In the burgeoning Atlantic trade of slaves, industrial products, and agricultural products (especially cotton), the first leg of the triangle was from a European port to Africa, in which ships carried supplies for sale and trade, such as copper, cloth, trinkets,slave beads, guns and ammunition. [3] When the slave ship arrived, its cargo would be sold or bartered for slaves, who were tightly packed like any other cargo to maximize profits.
On the second leg, ships made the journey of the Middle Passage from Africa to the New World. Once the slave ship reached the New World, enslaved survivors were sold for a good profit in the Caribbean and the Americas.
The ships were then prepared to get them thoroughly cleaned, drained, and loaded with export goods for a return voyage, the third leg, to their home port.[4] From the West Indies the main export cargoes were sugar, rum, and molasses; from Virginia, commodities were tobacco and hemp. The ship then returned to Europe to close the circuit.
New England also benefited from the trade, as many merchants were from New England, especially Rhode Island, which originally sailed under the flag of Great Britain, eventually replaced the role of Europe in the expanded Atlantic trade. New England brewedrum from the Caribbean sugar and molasses, which it shipped to Africa as well as within the Americas.[5] Yet, the Triangular Trade as considered in relation to New England was a piecemeal operation. No New England traders are known to have completed a full sequential circuit of the triangle, which took a calendar year on average, according to historian Clifford Shipton, after years of sifting through New England shipping records, could not find a single instance of a ship completing the full triangle as described [6] The concept of the New England Triangular Trade was first suggested, inconclusively, in an 1866 book by George H. Moore, was picked up in 1872 by historian George C. Mason, and reached full consideration from a lecture in 1887 by American businessman and historian William B. Weeden. [7] After the European powers abolished slavery, the Atlantic slave trade was conducted almost exclusively by these shippers of the New World.
[edit] Other three-way trades
The term "triangular trade" may also refer to a variety of other three-way trades:
- A trade pattern which evolved before the American Revolutionary War between Great Britain, the colonies of British North America, and British colonies in the Caribbean. This typically involved exporting raw resources such as fish (especially salt cod) or agricultural produce from British North American colonies to feed slaves and planters in the West Indies (also lumber); sugar and molasses from the Caribbean; and various manufactured commodities from Great Britain.[8]
- The shipment of Newfoundland salt cod and corn from Boston, Massachusetts in British vessels to southern Europe.[9]
- The "sugar triangle" whereby American ships took local produce to Cuba, then brought sugar or coffee from Cuba to St Petersburg, then bar iron and hemp back to New England.[10]
[edit] Double Triangle
The "Indian Ocean Triangle" or "Double Triangle" involved dhows with Arab and sometimes Somali crews, who traveled to Basra, Bombay/Mumbai and Mombassa on the outward passage and returned to Dar-es-Salaam, Karachi and Aden. The above were known as the "Six Ports" to those involved in the trade. The origins of this trade route go back to medieval times. It was still thriving in the 1960s.
[edit] External links
- The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, a portal to data concerning the history of the triangular trade of transatlantic slave trade voyages.
[edit] References
- ^ National Maritime Museum - Triangular Trade. Accessed 26 March 2007.
- ^ About.com: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Accessed 6 November 2007.
- ^ Scotland and the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Accessed 28 March 2007.
- ^ A. P. Middleton, Tobacco Coast.
- ^ Rhode Island Slavery History. Accessed 15 December 2007.
- ^ Curtis, Wayne. and a Bottle of Rum. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2006-2007. ISBN 978-0-307-33862-4. page 117.
- ^ Curtis, Wayne. and a Bottle of Rum. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2006-2007. ISBN 978-0-307-33862-4. page 119.
- ^ Kurlansky, Mark. Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World. New York: Walker, 1997. ISBN 0-8027-1326-2.
- ^ Morgan, Kenneth. Bristol and the Atlantic Trade in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN 0521330173. Pages 64–77.
- ^ Chris Evans and Göran Rydén, Baltic Iron in the Atlantic World in the Eighteenth Century : Brill, 2007 ISBN 9789004161535, 279
| Part of a series on Trade routes |
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| Amber Road | Hærvejen | Incense Route | Kamboja-Dvaravati Route | King's Highway | Roman-India routes | Royal Road | Salt Road | Siberian Route | Silk Road | Spice Route | Tea route | Varangians to the Greeks | Via Maris | Triangular trade | Volga trade route | Trans-Saharan trade | Old Salt Route | Hanseatic League | Grand Trunk Road |
