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The transatlantic slave trade

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For more than 300 years millions of African people were captured, sold and forced to work as enslaved people in the Americas. Britain played a major part.

The triangular trade

European traders sailed to West Africa with goods such as cloth, guns and metal goods, and exchanged them for captured African people.
The ships then crossed the Atlantic, the Middle Passage, to the Caribbean and Americas, where people were sold into slavery.
Ships returned to Europe with sugar, tobacco, cotton and rum produced by enslaved labour.
The ports of London, Bristol and Liverpool grew rich from this trade.

The Middle Passage and plantations

Historians estimate that about 12.5 million Africans were forced onto ships across the Atlantic. Around 1.8 million of them died on the voyage. British ships carried more than 3 million people.
People were chained below deck in crowded, dirty conditions for weeks.
On plantations enslaved people were treated as property. They worked long hours under violent punishment, and families could be split up and sold.

Resistance

Enslaved Africans resisted in many ways: rebellions on ships and plantations, running away, working slowly, and keeping their cultures, music and languages alive.
The Haitian Revolution, which began in 1791 and was led by Toussaint Louverture among others, created the independent country of Haiti in 1804.
Worked example

Explain why the slave trade made some British cities rich.

  1. Merchants in ports like Liverpool and Bristol owned and supplied slave ships.
  2. Goods from plantations, such as sugar and tobacco, were sold for big profits in Britain.
  3. This money paid for buildings, banks and businesses in those cities.

Answer: Profits from ships, trade and plantation goods flowed into ports like Liverpool, Bristol and London.

Key idea

The triangular trade linked Britain, West Africa and the Americas. About 12.5 million Africans were forced across the Atlantic on the Middle Passage. Enslaved people resisted, and the Haitian Revolution (from 1791) won independence in 1804.

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