2. This Accursed Trade Why was there a Slave Trade?

3. White Gold  People in Europe had developed a sweet tooth – the trade in sugar and spices were lucrative  Trade links to the East became blocked over land so a sea route to the east had to be discovered  Instead of finding India, European explorers found the Caribbean and America – sugar and spices could both be grown there…

4. Need for Labour  In order to grow the amounts of sugar etc that was being consumed in Europe a large workforce was needed  Europeans tried to do the work themselves, but it was backbreaking and there were not enough new settlers to do all the chores  Europeans tried to force the indigenous people to do the work, but many of them died from European diseases or refused.

5. Why Africa?  Africans had been enslaving one another for hundreds of years  Arabs had also used African slaves for a long time  Africans tended to be immune to European diseases and were used to working in high temperatures  Many Africans were open to bribes

6. Triangular Trade  The British were able to make more profit using a triangular method than by going directly to the Americas  Cheaply produced pots, pans, guns etc were loaded on to ships and taken to West Africa  The metal goods were swapped for human cargo (so the slaves had cost very little in real terms)  The Slaves were then taken to the Americas and sold to the planters in return for sugar etc  Sugar was taken back to the UK and sold for a huge profit.

7. Map of Triangular Trade

8. Profit margins  British entrepreneurs only needed one ship which would contain the metal goods, slaves and sugar/rum/tobacco/cotton etc  The price of making the metal goods was tiny in comparison with the money that could be made from selling sugar etc  In some cases, the African slaves were ‘bought’ for as little as a few shells – which cost the British traders nothing

9. Who benefited?  Cities with ports: e.g. Liverpool; Glasgow; Bristol; Douglas (Isle of Man)  Banks who gave loans to the ship owners to help them start businesses  Factory owners who made clothes from the cotton brought from the Americas  Middle Class families who used sugar or drank rum – perhaps they were even oblivious to the suffering caused by the demand they had for white gold?