The Atlantic System

The idea of utilizing slave labor in plantation agriculture came forth in the continent of Europe. European merchants began the early slave trade by transporting slaves to work on different plantations located in the Portuguese island colonies. Significant amounts of profits were made especially from the sugar plantation lands on the island of Sao Tome, with the demanding and rigorous work schedules of slaves. When the Triangular Trade emerged, with the demand for work sources in the western hemisphere, European merchants were able to increase their profit even more by selling slaves for double the amount with posted advertisements (Bentley, 1769). Europe most certainly gained an economic advantage with the event of the Atlantic Slave Trade, as well as a lead in their progress in industrialization.

The trading of slaves was a highly profitable and economically viable because it provided traders with the opportunity to earn profit, expanded international trade, provided farmers with cheap labor, and created cheaper prices for commodities. The slave trade gave plantation owners cheap labor that allowed them to grow large amounts of crops, which merchants could then sell to other nations for substantial revenue. The slave trade was an integral and imperative part of the New and Old World’s economies. Without slavery, it would not have established such a boisterous international trade and competition between countries. Traders that understood “basic economic principles such as supply, demand, and competition” (pg.39) knew that great profit could be earned from slavery.

European planters established large farms and plantations in the America's to grow tobacco, sugar and many other cash crops. As the plantations grew, the amount of people needed to tend them grew as well. Thus their demand for more slaves. By the seventeenth century the trade was no longer a game but actually in full effect, reaching a peak towards the end of the eighteenth century. It was a trade which was very precise due to the fact that each stage of the trade were extremely profitable for merchants.

The rapid growth of sugar as a food has a long and intertwining history that originated in New Guinea. Following the production, consumption, and power that corresponds with sugar, one is able to see numerous causes and effects of the changes underway in the world between 1450 and 1750. The production of sugar in the Americas eventually led to not only the creation of the Atlantic Slave Trade, but also enhanced commerce. Consumption of sugar through rapid trade thoroughly helped to develop modern capitalism. The power that sugar generated dramatically changed the economic, social, and political fate of the nation as a whole.

The triangular system perpetuated the demand for slaves by Europeans in order to increase their country’s wealth. Throughout all of the shipping of goods, including human cargo, individual people were involved in the evolution of the transatlantic trade. The main focus of this paper is to see the overall dynamics of the system, and involvement of individuals and countries, like Jamaica. The evolution and immersion of the transatlantic slave trade not only strengthened capitalism for individuals and their countries, but in turn it weakened Africa and Jamaica by making it dependent economically on outside nations. The slave trade in Africa began long before the introduction of Europeans.

The first and most important factor that can be attributed to Britain’s economic growth is the transport of slaves from Western and Central Africa to the Americas; not only did slavery help fund the industrialization of Britain on a national scale, but also on an individual level. Britain saw an enormous influx of capital through their various trading companies and agricultural settlements in the Caribbean and Americas, but as Eric Williams suggests, slavery had precipitated these ... ... middle of paper ... ...y of whom also served as mayors of Liverpool and Members of Parliament, essentially reinforcing the fact that most of the wealthiest political figures rose to power through the slave trade. As Eric Williams suggests in “Slavery and Capitalism”, slavery helped in financing the British Industrial revolution via capital mobility and large scale investments and it was abandoned when it stopped being profitable. Once again, reinforcing the idea that all of Britain’s political and social reforms were economically motivated. Albeit, the slave trade furnished an economic base for a large-scale international trading network.

This region made the production easy because it was a very fertile growing ground for the sugar, the earth’s most profitable product at this time. At first the Indians were used to work in the sugar fields but the Portuguese soon found out that the Indians were not going to meet their needs. So the Portuguese turned to slavery in the 1500’s to meet the high demand for human labor. As the demand for sugar exploded, the number of slaves in Brazil exploded also, making Brazil have one of the largest slave populations in the world. For three more centuries after this Europeans transported Africans they captured to Brazil to work in the sugar production industry.

In the nineteenth century, manufacturing was the most important factor because it brought about industrialization. The expansion of both economic and technological advances also brought about the changes in American society. The growth and eventual dominance of market capitalism in the United States changed the lives of all Americans fundamentally. The Market Revolution and the rise of market capitalism influenced the working class because of new inventions, like the cotton gin, and it encouraged farmers to raise more cotton in the South, and brought people in the North greater opportunities in the work field. With distant but profitable markets now attainable, farmers and manufactures now produced for the market rather than for their own personal consumption.

Individually, these factors led to an enormous economic growth for the early American colonies, but collectively, it left a social gap that we are still trying to bridge today. Capitalism has always been a double edge sword for the United States. It began as the driving force in pushing along economic growth, but it came at the price of the African society. It was implied, and enforced, that Africans were of a lesser class through the means in which they were "used" by the slave owners to promote their wealth and stature. The larger their plantation, the wealthier and more successful people were seen.

Slavery transitioned to becoming global system by bringing African slaves throughout the world, generating free labor and creating a successful economy in multiple societies. The Atlantic Slave trade was essential to the globalization of slavery. When ...