Talk:Triangular trade

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)