History - The Slave Trade

• The Triangular Trade is a historical term indicating trade among three ports or regions.
• The best-known triangular trading system is the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
• This trade carried slaves, cash, crops and manufactured goods between West Africa, the Caribbean or American colonies and the European powers.
• The use of slaves was fundamental to growing the colonial cash crops which were then exported to Europe.
• European goods were, in turn, used to purchase African slaves which were then bought from West Africa to the Americas on the so called Middle Passage.

• The conditions on a ship were dire.
• People were squashed up into the tightest spaces possible.
• There would be excrement all over the floor and conditions would generally be filthy.
• Occasionally, somebody would come round with food, but they would only feed the stronger people.

• In 1807, William Wilberforce got the slave trade banned.
• Slavery didn't finish until 1833, another 30 years of fighting.
• Other notable things that caused slavery to be abolished included:

The general public signed an anti-slavery petition that gained hundreds of thousands of signatures.

A sugar boycott by women reduced profit earned by plantation owners.

The media used plays, paintings and cartoons to get their message across. Newspapers, poems and books were also another way to get the message out.

The Human Rights argument said that slavery was unethical.

The Christians believed it was bad because the slaves were being converted into Christians and so we were harming Christians.

Hannah More encouraged women to go against slavery

Touissant L'Overture led the first slave revolution.