RISE OF TRANSATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE (1 janv. 1500 – 1 janv. 1615)

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The 16th century saw the rise of the transatlantic slave trade.

Ushered in by European "discovery" of the New World and driven by a hunger to exploit its natural resources, plantation slavery, which had already proven viable on the Portuguese and Spanish island colonies off the African coast, was soon exported across the Atlantic.
This earliest iteration of the slave trade, dominated for the largest part of the 16th century by Portuguese and Spanish interests, is customarily designated as the First Atlantic System. Though it accounts for only slightly above 3% of the total slave trade, the standards for the later expansion of transatlantic trade and, most notably, the system of triangular trade originate with the First Atlantic System.

Triangular trade, generally, describes trade between three ports or regions.
The Atlantic slave trade used a system of three-way transatlantic exchanges, operating between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. The first side of the triangle was the export of goods from Europe to Africa. The majority of enslaved Africans were not captured by Europeans themselves but sold into slavery by local African rulers in exchange for a variety of goods, like guns, ammunition, alcohol, textiles, and other factory-made commodities. Likely targets of the slave trade included prisoners of war and (people deemed) criminals, but also poor members of society, sold to pay off debts, as well as women and children. The second leg of the voyage was the transport of slaves across the Atlantic to the Americas and the Caribbean islands, where they would be exchanged for raw materials. These goods, including sugar, and later on tobacco, molasses, rum, and cotton would then be shipped back to Europe for the final leg of the trade.

Operating from the early 16th to the late 19th century, the transatlantic slave trade claimed millions of lives and irreparably changed the course of many more. An estimated 12.5 million captured men, women, and children were shipped off to the Americas, sold into a life of toil under their European colonial rulers, as merchants and plantation owners made a fortune off their suffering.


(Image: Diagram of Triangular Transatlantic Trade)

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