triangle trade
Colonial shipping loop
Triangle trade refers to a historical pattern of transatlantic commerce, particularly the 18th-century system connecting Europe, Africa, and the Americas.
European ships carried manufactured goods to Africa, exchanged them for enslaved people transported to the Americas, then returned to Europe with sugar, tobacco, and other colonial products.
Each leg of the triangular route generated profit: The triangle trade shaped colonial economies for two centuries.
- slaveryOwnership of people
- AtlanticOcean bordering Europe
- Middle PassageTransatlantic slave trade crossing
- slave shipVessel transporting enslaved people
- sugarCrystalline carbohydrate sweetener
sugar cane · molasses · rum · rum barrel · Africa · Caribbean · colonies · ships · cargo · plantation · enslaved · cotton · cotton gin · tobacco · cash crop · merchants · voyage · shackles
- trade historycommerce, merchant, colonial economy, merchant ships, Silk Road
- Atlantic HistoryAtlantic crossing, transatlantic crossing, Columbus, Battle of the Atlantic, Spanish conquest
- Atlantic tradeslave ships, Atlantic crossings, transatlantic routes, shipping routes, sea lanes
- rum historyrum, molasses, sugarcane, distillation, grog
- sea routesshipping lane, Northwest Passage, sea routes, Northeast Passage, ocean routes
- slave tradeslave markets, slave auction, slave ships, slave auctions, slave market
triangle, trade, triangles, triangular, triangulate, triangulation, trades, traded, trader