World History, Unit 3

Module 2, Lesson 2: “Triangle Trade” Secondary Sources

Document A: The Triangle Tempest

The slave trade grew big because of European activities in distant lands beyond the Atlantic.

In 1492, having sailed westward across the Atlantic, Christopher Columbus and his men arrived at some islands of the Caribbean Sea, which lies between North and South America. Knowing nothing of the existence of the American continent (although Northern Europeans had in fact reached it many centuries earlier), Columbus believed that he had landed near India. So he called these Caribbean islands the West Indies, a name they still bear. Others followed Columbus. They entered the vast land masses of North, Central and South America.

These others, who were Spanish soldiers and adventurers, ruined the American peoples they found. Their intention was not to trade, but to loot; not peace, but war; not partnership, but enslavement. They fell upon these lands with greed and the fury of destruction…

There was terrible destruction of the “Indians,” the name that was mistakenly given by these raiders to the native-born American peoples. A Spanish report of 1518, only 26 years after the first voyage of Columbus across the Atlantic, says that when the island of Cuba was discovered, it was believed to contain more than a million “Indians,” but “today their number does not exceed 11,000. And judging from what has happened, there will be none of them left in three or four years’ time, unless some remedy is applied.”

Trying desperately to find new sources of free labor, the Spanish began sending out their own people under conditions that were no different from slavery. But the Spaniards could not find enough people to enslave. Where else to look for slaves? The answer was West Africa. The Portuguese and Spanish had already imported a few West African captives into their countries. Now they began to export West Africans to the West Indies and the mainland of the Americas.

In this they faced enormous difficulties. They had to first seize or buy their African captives and bring them back to Spain and Portugal. Then they had to get these men across the Atlantic Ocean without entirely ruining their health, no small problem in the foul old sailing ships of those days. Lastly, they had to turn these captives, those who were still alive after the crossing of the seas, into slaves. This, too, proved very difficult. The Africans resisted enslavement by every means they could. They broke out in revolt after revolt, led by heroes whose names we shall never know. They fought to the death.

…As the wealth and size of the American plantation-colonies became ever larger, so also did the demand for slave labor. There developed what was to become known as the Triangle Trade, a commercial system which greatly helped to build the continued industrial and technical progress of Western Europe on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

This new and potent trading system, starting in the late sixteenth century, was seen as triangular because it had three distinct stages or “sides.” Each of these “sides” brought a profit to the merchants and manufacturers of Western Europe.

In the first stage or “side” of this trade, merchants in the big ports of Western Europe bought and shipped goods such as cottons, alcoholic spirits, metalware and firearms to West African chiefs and kings in exchange for slaves. These slaves were prisoners of war or condemned criminals. If they had stayed in West Africa, they would have been domestic or household slaves…[as Equiano was before he was shipped to the West Indies (Equiano’s story will be covered in the next lesson)]

African chiefs and kings often exchanged such “slaves” among themselves. They saw no reason for not selling them to Europeans. As a result, it was fairly easy for the Europeans to buy captives.

The second “side” of the triangle lay in taking these captives across the Atlantic, usually in chains, and selling them to the plantation owners in exchange for sugar, tobacco, rum and other products. The owners turned them into real slaves.

The third “side” consisted of taking the American products back to Europe and selling them at very high prices.

This slave trade enormously enriched the nations of Western Europe. On the other hand, it made West African nations much poorer. Although the devastating effects of this trade would not be known for years, the beginnings of the evil trade were part of the sixteenth century. The cloud was then no bigger than a man’s hand, but soon it grew into a tempest. The tempest blew and raged for centuries.

Source: Clark, L.E., Ed. (1991). Through African eyes, volume I: The past, the road to independence. New York: Cite Books, pp. 104-108.

According to this source, what was the origin of the Atlantic Slave Trade?

According to this source, what justifications were used for engaging in the buying and selling of

humans?

According to this source, what was traded? Where were the goods obtained and/ or produced?

Who was involved in the Triangle Trade? Who benefited from this trade?

1

Pittsburgh Public Schools