Stages in the triangular slave trade

This post explores the three key stages of the trade, connecting Europe, Africa, and the Americas, and delves into the profound impact it had on millions of lives. Through understanding the outward passage, the middle passage, and the return passage, we confront the unimaginable suffering and resilience of those affected.

The triangular slave trade, a pivotal element of the global trade systems of the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, involved three key stages across the Atlantic Ocean, connecting Europe, Africa, and the Americas.

Stage 1: Europe to Africa

European traders sailed to Africa with ships full of goods, such as guns and gun powder, cloths, beads and glass ware

Stage 2: Africa to Americas

European traders exchanged their goods for African slaves at places such as the Gold coast (Ghana): Slave Coast (Senegal) and Grain Coast (Nigeria).
Slaved were shipped to the Americas (new world) to work in plantations

Stage 3: Americas to Europe

The profit made from selling the slaves were taken back to Europe where it could pay for more goods to trade in Africa again.

Abolition of Triangular Slave Trade

Abolition of slavery and triangular slave trade is the official end of slavery

Factors that helped in the abolition of slavery

1. The rise of humanitarians such as Christians and scholars who condemned slave trade on moral grounds
2. Influential abolitionists such e.g. William Wilberforce and Abraham Lincoln
3. High death rate of sailors in the English Navy
4. Success of slave revolts
5. The industrial revolution
6. Slaves had become less profitable

People who were instrumental in the abolition of slavery and Triangular Slave Trade

William Wilberforce

1. Was a British politician who campaigned against slavery and the slave trade in the British Empire.
2. He was a humanitarian who was strongly opposed to slavery and the slave trade.
3. William Wilberforce and other humanitarians believed that all people regardless of colour were equal and that they were all created in the image of God. They condemned the slave trade as evil and unchristian and began to campaign against it.

These campaigns led to the abolition of slavery and the slave trade

Abraham Lincoln

• Abolishing slavery even proved to be harder to achieve in the USA than in Britain and other countries such as France. It took a civil war before abolishing could be achieved in the USA. The person who played a leading role in the abolition of slavery in the USA was President Abraham Lincoln.
• Slave states and Free states: In the early 1800s views in the USA were divided between those of the slave states in the south and Free states in the North where slavery had already been abolished.
• Abolition campaign in the USA: By the 1830s white people and freed slaves in the North started abolition campaign. They believed that slavery was against their Christian faith and the founding principles of the United States.
• Civil war between North and south: Abraham Lincoln was elected as president of the United States in 1860. His strong anti-slavery views were not acceptable to the southern states. Eleven southern states broke away from the United States following his election. The breakaway by the southern states led to the civil war between the south and north.

Emancipation proclamation (1863) and Thirteenth Amendment (1865): In January 1863 during the civil war president Abraham Lincoln issued the emancipation proclamation. This was an official statement that declared all enslaved people in the south free. The proclamation made slavery in the United States of America illegal.

This ensured that when the Northern states won the civil war it would end slavery in the south. In December 1865 (eight months after the end of the civil war), the Thirteenth Amendment was formerly adopted by the parliament of the USA. This amendment changed the Constitution of the USA to state that slavery would no longer exist within the United States.

Other factors that helped in the abolition of Triangular Slave Trade

Slavery was finally abolished because of:

• High deaths rate of sailors in the English Navy who were enforcing the ban on the slave trade made the British government to finally abolish slavery because they needed men to fight in the war against France.
• Success of slave revolts: places such as Barbados and saint Dominguez, this posed a threat to European and American governments
• Industrial revolution: slaves were replaced by machines which did work faster. This made slave become a social nuisance as they turned to petty crimes.

Britain established Freetown in Sierra Leone to resettle freed slaves II. The Americans resettled free slaves in Liberia