Triangular trade
Triangular trade or triangle trade is trade between three ports or regions. Triangular trade usually evolves when a region has export commodities that are not required in the region from which its major imports come. Such trade has been used to offset trade imbalances between different regions.
The most commonly cited example of a triangular trade is the Atlantic slave trade, but other examples existed. These include the seventeenth-century carriage of manufactured goods from England to New England and Newfoundland, then the transport of dried cod from Newfoundland and New England to the Mediterranean and the Iberian peninsula, followed by cargoes of gold, silver, olive oil, tobacco, dried fruit, and "sacks" of wine back to England. Maritime carriers referred to this Atlantic trade as the "sack trade". A 19th-century example involved general cargo shipped from Britain to Australia, Australian coal to China, then tea and silk back to Britain.
The Atlantic slave trade used a system of three-way transatlantic exchanges – known historically as the triangular trade – which operated between Europe, Africa, and the Americas from the 16th to 19th centuries. European merchants outfitted slave ships, then shipped manufactured European goods owned by the trading companies to West Africa to get slaves, which they shipped to the Americas. First, in West Africa, merchants sold or bartered European manufactured goods to local slavers in exchange for slaves. Then crews transported the slaves and the remaining European manufactured goods to the Americas, where ship merchants sold the slaves and European manufactured goods to plantation-owners. Merchants then purchased sugar and molasses from the plantation-owners, and crews shipped them to North American colonies, where the merchants sold the remaining supplies of European manufactured goods and slaves, as well as sugar and molasses from plantations to local buyers, and then purchased North American commodities - including tobacco, sugar, cotton, rum, rice, lumber, and animal pelts - to sell in Europe.
This trade, in trade volume, was primarily with South America, where most slaves were sold, but a classic example taught in 20th-century studies is the colonial molasses trade, which involved the circuitous trading of slaves, sugar, and rum between West Africa, the West Indies and the northern colonies of British North America in the 17th and 18th centuries. In this triangular trade, slaves grew the sugar that was used to brew rum, which in turn was traded for more slaves. In this circuit the sea-lane west from Africa to the West Indies was known as the Middle Passage; its cargo consisted of abducted or recently purchased African people.
During the Age of Sail, the particular routes were also shaped by the powerful influence of winds and currents. For example, from the main trading nations of Western Europe, it was much easier to sail westwards after first going south of 30° N latitude and reaching the belt of so-called "trade winds", thus arriving in the Caribbean rather than going straight west to the North American mainland. Returning from North America, it was easiest to follow the Gulf Stream in a northeasterly direction using the westerlies.
The countries that controlled the transatlantic slave-market until the 18th century in terms of the number of enslaved people shipped were Great Britain, Portugal, and France.
The Atlantic sack trade
From 1620 to 1709, ships and additional maritime vessels embarked from Newfoundland and New England docks in a "sack trade." Sailors from both regions carried salted cod into southern Europe, particularly from Boston and Ferryland into Mediterranean and Iberian peninsular seaports. Spanish and Portuguese Catholics welcomed these traders for manifold reasons, including church exemption of cod from the fasting and abstinence mandated for Lent, Advent, and myriad saint remembrance days. Newfoundland and New England ships then carried Iberian wine "sacks", olive oil, dried fruit, tobacco, and substantial volumes of Iberian specie, mined by indigenous captives in Cerro Rico and Cerro de Pasco, into England. After 1661, Parliament lifted a ban on bartering New England cod for Iberian material goods, as well as for bills of exchange. Oil, fruit, tobacco, New World gold and silver, "sacks" of wine, Iberian material culture, and then this paper currency were exchanged for manufactured products in England. During the final leg, colonial carriers transshipped English metropolitan goods, and any "sacks" of surplus wine, across the Atlantic and back into their homeports.The "sack trade" dissolved after 1709 because of changes in cod curing processes and provincial demand for sugar as well as molasses. Atlantic demand for dried cod pushed New England and Newfoundland competency thresholds for angling into transatlantic barter and exchange economies. These shifting conceptions, and scope of, provincial competency resulted in New England and Newfoundland schooners searching for more and more fishing sites along northeastern banks. Fishermen remained offshore for extended periods of time as their vessels trawled North American waters. Peter Pope argues that women often worked shorecrews and as substitutes for men.
In order to sustain catches within schooner holds during these protracted trips, fishermen began to "lightly salt" cod and stored the wet fish for air-drying, the latter after returning to points of departure. According to historian Christopher Magra, "invariably, the combination of a wet-salt cure and an air-dry cure produced a greater percentage of refuse-grade, dried cod." Increasing amounts of this "refuse" cod became unmarketable in southern Europe as expansion of the "sack trade" counterintuitively expedited contraction from within. But New England and Newfoundland fishermen tapped their own demand for sugar, molasses, and cheap, domestically-distilled rum, as a commercial avenue to alternate markets for "refuse" cod: sugarcane planters and their agents in Caribbean littorals. Sugarcane planters relied on cheap, low-grade fish to feed chattel slaves.
The Atlantic triangular slave trade
The most historically significant triangular trade was the transatlantic slave trade which operated among Europe, Africa, and the Americas from the 16th to 19th centuries. Slave ships would leave European ports and sail to African ports loaded with goods manufactured in Europe. There, the slave traders would purchase enslaved Africans by exchanging the goods, then sail to the Americas via the Middle Passage to sell their enslaved cargo in European colonies. In what was referred to as a "golden triangle", the slave ship would sail back to Europe to begin the cycle again. The enslaved Africans were primarily purchased for the purpose of working on plantations to work producing valuable cash crops which were in high demand in Europe. Slave traders from European colonies would occasionally travel to Africa themselves, eliminating the European portion of the voyage.A classic example is the colonial molasses trade. Merchants purchased raw sugar from plantations in the Caribbean and shipped it to New England and Europe, where it was sold to distillery companies that produced rum. Merchant capitalists used cash from the sale of sugar to purchase rum, furs, and lumber in New England which their crews shipped to Europe.
With the profits from the European sales, merchants purchased Europe's manufactured goods, including tools and weapons and on the next leg, shipped those manufactured goods, along with the American sugar and rum, to West Africa where they bartered the goods for slaves seized by local potentates. Crews then transported the slaves to the Caribbean and sold them to sugar plantation owners. The cash from the sale of slaves in Brazil, the Caribbean islands, and the American South was used to buy more raw materials, restarting the cycle. The full triangle trip took a calendar year on average, according to historian Clifford Shipton.
The first leg of the triangle was from a European port to one in West Africa, in which ships carried supplies for sale and trade, such as copper, cloth, trinkets, slave beads, guns and ammunition. When the ship arrived, its cargo would be sold or bartered for slaves. Ports that exported these enslaved people from Africa include Ouidah, Lagos, Aného, Grand-Popo, Agoué, Jakin, Porto-Novo, and Badagry. These ports traded slaves who were supplied from African communities, tribes and kingdoms, including the Alladah and Ouidah, which were later taken over by the Dahomey kingdom.
On the second leg, ships made the journey of the Middle Passage from Africa to the New World. Many slaves died of disease in the crowded holds of the slave ships, and a estimated 15 to 25% would die of disease's before completing there trip, which ships often carry 700 enslaved people. Once the ship reached the New World, enslaved survivors were sold in the Caribbean or the American colonies. 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, from the West Indies the main export cargoes were sugar, rum, and molasses; from Virginia, tobacco and hemp. The ship then returned to Europe to complete the triangle.
The triangle route was not generally followed by individual ships. Slave ships were built to carry large numbers of people, rather than cargo, and variations in the duration of the Atlantic crossing meant that they often arrived in the Americas out-of-season. Slave ships thus often returned to their home port carrying whatever goods were readily available in the Americas but with a large part or all of their capacity with ballast. Cash crops were transported mainly by a separate fleet which only sailed from Europe to the Americas and back. In his books, Herbert S. Klein has argued that in many fields, the non-scientific literature portrays a situation which the contemporary historiography refuted a long time ago.
Finally, even if the "triangle trade" idea is essentially incorrect, the Atlantic slave trade was one of the more complex of international trades that existed in the modern period. Thus, while an actual "triangle trade" may not have existed as a significant development for ships in the trade, the economic ties between Asia, Europe, Africa, and America clearly involved a web of relationships that spanned the globe.
A 2017 study provides evidence for the hypothesis that the export of gunpowder to Africa increased the transatlantic slave trade: "A one percent increase in gunpowder set in motion a 5-year gun-slave cycle that increased slave exports by an average of 50%, and the impact continued to grow over time."