Driven by the Atlantic slave trade and the new found cash-crop sugar, a triangular trade system grew between Britain, its colonies, and Africa. The agricultural and commercial trade flow, the South Atlantic System, created tight bonds between northern colonies, formed a plantation-society worked by slaves in the southern colonies, and gave Britain profitable control over all the colonies. The South Atlantic System brought wealth to English merchants, commerce to the American colonies, and a brutal life to the African workers that were transported and forced into slavery.
Centered in Brazil and the West Indies, sugar was the main product of the South Atlantic system. Planters founded huge sugar plantations in order to feed the European demand
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With the help of the Navigation Acts, the sugar trade was kept with British merchants. The British profited from the slave trade, selling guns, iron, rum, and cloth for one-third of the value of a slave. British economy soared, allowing shipyards to build and strengthen the British Navy, factories to manufacture textiles and iron, and sugar and tobacco refineries. The South Atlantic System developed Britain into the world’s economic leader.
The creation of the first American urban industries began with West Indian trade.
Lumber, fishing, ship-building, and crop industries formed and major ports developed in the colonies. Colonies soon relied on one another for production of exports, and the shipping of them. American colonists received bills of exchange from West Indian planters or London merchants. This was a form of credit, and the British used it to easily control colonial trade. It separated British and colonial currency, and was part of the beginning of the separation between the two economies and their societies. With steady trade, large industrial cities, and trade traffic connecting the colonies, development in the northern colonies was
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Each society benefitted differently, and development from the flow of people and the growth of wealth changed each society. The consequence of the South Atlantic System was the movement of 6.1 million Africans across the Atlantic. The trade devastated Africa and transformed its societies. The Atlantic slave trade pushed commerce out of the savannas and the Islamic world, and helped foster militaristic warfare between African states. Many of the problems that were born during the time of the slave trade are still occurring today. The South Atlantic System not only shaped Britain and its colonies, it also shaped the
Sugar was first grown in New Guinea around 9000 years ago, which New guinea traders trade cane stalks to different parts of the world. In the New world christopher columbus introduced cane sugar to caribbean islands. At first sugar was unknown in Europe but was changed when sugar trade first began. Sugar trade was driven by the factors of production land which provided all natural resources labor what provided human resources for work and capital which includes all the factories and the money that’s used to buy land. Consumer demand was why sugar trade continued to increase.
Slave labor is the final factor that drove the sugar trade and made it so successful. Slaves were the manual laborers on the plantations, doing the actual harvesting and boiling because the owner wasn’t there to do so (Document 8). Without the slaves working the farm, everything was pretty much useless. There is also a direct correlation between the number of slaves and the tons of sugar produced. This is shown in Document 9, where the island of Jamaica starts out with 45,000 slaves, and produces 4,782 tons of sugar. When the number of slaves increases by less than half to 74,500, the amount of sugar produced is more than tripled at 15, 972 tons. This clearly exhibits how slaves were essential to sugar
Self-interest can be seen in many of the writings throughout American history. The mercantile system, as exhibited by the British on the colonies, was an extremely hedonistic approach to gaining wealth for themselves. Mercantilism, as set forth by the Navigation Acts, imposed strict and extremely descriptive laws that would limit and exploit trade in the colonies, allowing Britain to control the wealth and profit of materials and goods in America. These acts were used to keep America from trading with any other countries. As stated in the Navigation Act of 1660, "no goods or commodities whatsoever shall be imported into or exported out of any lands" to his Majesty belonging"in any other ship or ships...as do truly and without fraud belong only to the people of England or Ireland" (Restoration 98). Britain knew that by controlling the colonies in this manner they could take the raw materials out and sell the finished products back, and by doing so they would profit greatly. This mercantile system exemplifies the arrogant minds of the British while America was developing. This system would soon become a failure due to the people's demands to have representation along with taxation, and their desire to separate from England as a free and independent state. Likewise, it was due to self-interest of the greedy planters and the self righteous farmers in the south that slavery was highly used. At that time they needed all the labor they could get, and the cheapest way to obtain it was through the purchase of slaves. Some of the slavery was downplayed by calling it indentured servitude, where servants were essentially slaves for a limited number of years.
The transatlantic slave trade was one of the most important factors in how the world came to be the way it is today. This trade led to the economic prosperity and political development in European countries and the population decline on the African continent. It was the catalyst for the development of both rich and poor societies today. The Two Princes of Calabar is a prime example of how this trade affected the economic growth of the countries and civilizations involved.
The Transatlantic Slave Trade started out as merchant trading of different materials for slaves. With obtaining a controllable form of labor being their main focus, the Europeans began to move to Africa and take over their land. The natives had to work on the newly stolen land to have a source of income to provide for their families.Soon others Europeans began to look for free labor by scouring the continent of Africa. Because Europeans were not familiar with the environment, Africans were employed to kidnap other Africans for the Transatlantic Slave Trade. After trade routes were established, different economies began to link together, and various items were exchanged across the world. As the Atlantic Slave Trade grew larger, problems began
Cotton, spices, silk, and tea from Asia mingled in European markets with ivory, gold, and palm oil from Africa; furs, fish, and timber from North America; and cotton, sugar, and tobacco from both North and South America. The lucra¬tive trade in enslaved human beings provided cheap labor where it was lacking. The profits accrued in Europe, increasingly in France and Britain as the Portuguese, Spanish, and then Dutch declined in relative power. It was a global network, made possible by the advancing tech¬nology of the colonialists.
Sugar in its many forms is as old as the Earth itself. It is a sweet tasting thing for which humans have a natural desire. However there is more to sugar than its sweet taste, rather cane sugar has been shown historically to have generated a complex process of cultural change altering the lives of all those it has touched, both the people who grew the commodity and those for whom it was grown. Suprisingly, for something so desireable knowledge of sugar cane spread vey slow. First found in Guinea and first farmed in India (sources vary on this), knowledge of it would only arrive in Europe thousands of years later. However, there is more to the history of sugar cane than a simple story of how something was adopted piecemeal into various cultures. Rather the history of sugar, with regards to this question, really only takes off with its introduction to Europe. First exposed to the delights of sugar cane during the crusades, Europeans quickly acquired a taste for this sweet substance. This essay is really a legacy of that introduction, as it is this event which foreshadowed the sugar related explosion of trade in slaves. Indeed Henry Hobhouse in `Seeds of Change' goes so far as to say that "Sugar was the first dependance upon which led Europeans to establish tropical mono cultures to satisfy their own addiction." I wish, then, to show the repurcussions of sugar's introduction into Europe and consequently into the New World, and outline especially that parallel between the suga...
African slaves were brought to the America’s by the millions in the 17th and 18th century. The Spanish and British established lucrative slave trades within Africa and populated their new territories with captured and then enslaved Africans. The British brought the slaves to their new colonies in North America to work on the large plantations and the Spanish and Portuguese brought the slaves to South America. Slavery within North and South America had many commonalities yet at the same time differences between the two institutions.
Slaves and slave trade has been an important part of history for a very long time. In the years of the British thirteen colonies in North America, slaves and slave trade was a very important part of its development. It even carried on to almost 200 years of the United States history. The slave trade of the thirteen colonies was an important part of the colonies as well as Europe and Africa. In order to supply the thirteen colonies efficiently through trade, Europe developed the method of triangular trade. It is referred to as triangular trade because it consists of trade with Africa, the thirteen colonies, and England. These three areas are commonly called the trades “three legs.”
Secondly land was a major thing that drove the sugar trade. In document 1, its shows a map of the West Indies. The West Indies is where a lot of the sugar was grown, Why? Because in order to grow sugar you need hot, humid climate, the West Indies have that hot, humid climate to produce sugar.
This paper will give an analysis of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade explaining the challenges and painful afflictions African peoples had to endure. Revealing the constant struggles of the African during the trade and how it correlates with people in present day society. Additionally, the system also established the World economy by utilizing Africans for stock and exchange.
One facet of this unique system involved the numerous economic differences between England and the colonies. The English government subscribed to the economic theory of mercantilism, which demanded that the individual subordinate his economic activity to the interests of the state (Text, 49). In order to promote mercantilism in all her colonies, Great Britain passed the Navigation Acts in 1651, which controlled the output of British holdings by subsidizing. Under the Navigation Acts, each holding was assigned a product, and the Crown dictated the quantity to be produced. The West Indies, for example, were assigned sugar production and any other colony exporting sugar would face stiff penalties (Text, 50). This was done in order to ensure the economic prosperity of King Charles II, but it also served to restrict economic freedom. The geographical layout of the American colonies made mercantilism impractical there. The cit...
Around fifteen million Africans were captured and sold to slave transporters to be taken to the Americas (internet). These people were being taken from their homes and villages, where they were needed the most. Along with the mass number of people taken, most of the slaves were the strongest and fittest of people around. With the deflated population it was difficult to keep up their production of crops, and it caused a ripple effect on the families and religions. So many people were taken, so the family structure changed drastically and religions changed. Traditions were lost and replaced by the missionaries, islamic people, other outside people coming in to take the land. Villages and kingdoms fell more and more often when most of the best soldiers were taken and guns started to play a more key role in their battles. If it were not for slavery, Africa might not be known as the “third world continent” it is present
The leading cause of the African American slave trade in the 15th- 19th centuries was that white skinned Europeans and African profited from the exploitation of slavery throughout the Americas, and Africa in which were used as workers that did the job white skinned people could not in the Americas in order to produce cheap materials for wealth and trade. The major effect of the African slave trade was that up to 12 million Africans were forced onto European slave ships and treated like cargo.
The transatlantic slave trade occurred throughout the entire continent of Africa and was divided into two eras, the first and the second Atlantic systems. The first Atlantic system was the slave trade of Africans to Portuguese and Spanish territories. The second Atlantic system which made up most of the transatlantic slave trade is the one I will focus on. This second Atlantic system, was characterized by the shipment of Africans from countries such as Senegal, Gambia, Ghana, Angola, and the Democratic Republic of Congo to the ...