Talk:Triangular trade

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Interesting...I have found references to this trade (not always by name, but always refering to traders that commenced each venture in Europe, and finished it where they had started) in 7 separate books here - and no doubt will find more if I keep looking - from respected historians as disparate as G. M. Trevelyan, A. J. Parry, A. L. Rouse, and two encyclopedias, a specialist book on the slave trade, a history of pre-colonial Africa, a biography of Drake...um, that's 8. Old Sir John Hawkins, for instance, started in Plymouth; so it was England, Africa, the Caribbean, and back to England. He didn't capture the slaves himself, so he would have had to barter something he brought with him. If I can see one decent reference to that not happening I will start rethinking it.

You, yourself believed it until very recently. What changed your mind? AlanE 23:27, 26 August 2008 (EDT)

Sources

Where are they? Jirby 15:50, 27 August 2008 (EDT)

Pages 187-192 "West Africa before the Colonial Era" - Basil Davidson. It discusses the pre-existing trade between Europe and West Africa (which goes against Andy's premise that there was no Euro/African leg.

Try http://www.nmm.ac.uk/freedom/viewTheme.cfm/theme/triangular which is the British National Maritime Museum. Perhaps someone a little closer than I am can actually have a look...I'm 12,000 miles away or thereabouts.

Check out the journal of John Newton - yes, he who wrote "Amazing Grace" - published by Spurrell, London 1962.

Andy's premise is that that the Europe-Africa leg "doesn't make sense because at the time Africa was not a significant market for finished goods." Why then were there numerous European forts and "factories" built along the West African coast - starting fom as far back as the mid-15th century when the Portuguese started bringing slaves into Europe - if not for trade? As soon as the enormous market in the Caribbean, Brazil etc. was created then the trade was expanded to across the Atlantic. And who were the traders? Not Brazilians or the Spanish colonists. Europeans. Based in Europe, where they raised the capital or royal patronage, or both. The first leg of the three had been there a century before the "middle passage" became , well, the middle passage.

I am in no way denying that Americans - north south or middle - did not trade backwards and forwards across the Atlantic; and as the years passed and manufacturing industries grew in the New World this trade took over. But if we deny that the Europeans traded with West Africa because there was no market for finished goods, then (a) what did they buy the slaves bound for Europe/North Africa with before the triangular trade began? (Or is Andy denying that that existed too?)(b) what did the colonists use as tender for their slave purchases if it was a straight two-way trade? (If there was no market in Africa for European goods, why was there one for American items?) and (c)why were there so many European forts, factories (in its original sense of the word) and other trading sites from Senegal to Angola... the ruins of some of which are still there? Remember, these African territories were not invaded - these places were usually rented from the local ruler - some dating from before Columbus.

Gotta have breakfast. I'll see if I can get to my "local" little library today. But I do want to know on what basis Andy changed his mind. If it is mainly because the Europe/Africa leg doesn't make sense, then I am afraid that, um, doesn't make sense. AlanE 17:29, 27 August 2008 (EDT)

"It doesn't make sense because at the time Africa was not a significant market for finished goods."

Then what, pray tell, was being exchanged for slaves at forts such as Elmina and others of its ilk? AliceBG 19:40, 1 September 2008 (EDT)

Thank you Alice! I was beginning to think no one cared about this...

Andy...please see the CP articles on: Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Nigeria, Angola, and every other West African nation you can think of. They are all copied and pasted from (I assume) the CIA factbook site, and their History sections all mention the setting up of trading posts by European nations. Also, please check out:

http://www.unesco.no/fredensborg/monuments_and_sites_in_ghana/

http://www.colonialvoyage.com/googlearth/ghanaaccra.html

http://www.pbs.org/wonders/Episodes/Epi3/elmina.htm

Please reconsider your position...it is a complete reversion of what has been unquestioned non-ideological historical orthodoxy; and there is more evidence for very heavy Europe-Africa trade than you can poke a stick at. Ghana's Parliament actually sits in a castle built as a trading post. AlanE 21:17, 1 September 2008 (EDT)

Denial of the triangular trade

Alan, I think we have to consider what implications are generally drawn from the idea that there was a triangular trade based on Americans buying African slaves. I can think of two extremes, but I don't know enough to tell which is closer to the truth:

1. White Americans are the worst people, because they bought slaves from Africa and exploited them terribly.
2. Most Africans were enslaved by their own people or by Muslims, so the real villains are the uncivilized African tribes and the Islamic civilization.

Can you help me find the middle ground between these extreme views? --Ed Poor ^Talk 09:04, 1 December 2008 (EST)

Ed...I will do what I can, but give me a day to collect my thoughts...and bear in mind that I belong to a breed that is generally non-judgemental historically, so that if I say here, or on any other page or on any facet of pre-20th century history, that the Americans did that, or the Brits did this, or the Portuguese were this (or that) I am not laying blame, nor following any ideological path. I am not a scholar as such, just an extremely well-read person with a curious mind (though the memory for detail is starting to go.)

(I now have to get a bit of other history onto site. By the way, it's quarter to five in the morning here, and I am not yet fully functional.) AlanE 12:48, 1 December 2008 (EST)

Random thought...middle passage can mean the second leg of the three voyages making up the "triangular trade"...... Or .... Though I have never seen the term used in an Atlantic context, I have seen references to a "middle passage" in the Indian Ocean...where they stood out from the South African coast, passed well to the east of Madagascar and sailed more or less diagonally north east to India or Ceylon instead of the Portuguese route up the coast of Africa and across the Arabian Sea using the monsoon, or the Dutch way across to just shy of West Aust, using the "Roaring Forties" then up. So a middle passage in the slave trade context could be the middle passage from Africa to the Caribbean; not the north passage to North America, or the southern route to Brazil. I know I could be arguing against my own case but that's me. (I now have to leave for the morning or longer...Christmas shopping with wife...may not be back 'til after 4PM when I am locked out.) AlanE 16:50, 1 December 2008 (EST)