The Triangular Trade
75% of all Africa's exports in 18th century were enslaved humans - at its height the slave trade removed 80,000 Africans per annum
Credit: The Branded Hand, c.1845 (daguerreotype) by Southworth, Albert S. (1811-1894) & Hawes, Josiah (1808-1901) © Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, MA, USA / The Bridgeman Art Library Nationality / copyright status: American / out of copyright
Chapter 2: The Triangular Trade
Trade Prior To the Development of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
From the early 16th century ships from Britain and Western Europe travelled to the African kingdoms to exchange goods from both sides. The West African people such as the Asante and Yoruba, and those from the Benin and Dahomy kingdoms were often skilled craftsmen whose expertise in gold and metal work was far more developed than the Europeans. The West Africans also produced other luxury goods, such as carved ivory. In 1700 the African Merchant, a Scottish Company Ship, returned from West Africa with a cargo that made nearly £4000 profit. In exchange for African goods the Europeans traded in cloth and raw metal materials, but as time went on they also traded in guns, fuelling local disputes and wars. The further step from trading goods to trading people was taken as the desire for profit was met by opportunity.
The Growth of Plantations and the Need for Labour
The climate and land on the Caribbean islands made the growing of some luxury crops such as sugar and tobacco possible. The colonisers pushed the native Indians off the land through force, enslavement, or as a result of the high death rate of the Indians from contracting European illnesses and disease. To make the maximum profit on the luxury goods, cheap hard working labour was needed to work with very labour intensive crops such as sugar and tobacco. In return for a free passage to the Americas, thousands of young men and women from Britain and Ireland signed contracts agreeing to work for an employer for 4 to 7 years as indentured labour. Indentured labour differed from slavery - the period of indenture was limited and the master owned the servant's time not the actual person.
Convicted criminals and political prisoners, including religious nonconformists, were also sent to the colonies as a workforce. In the late 17th century the religious turmoil in Scotland produced a regular supply of indentured labourers, whilst in England the Monmouth rebels were another source. 1 In 1651 Covenanters and Scottish royalists were amongst the 10,000 captured by Cromwell after battle, many of whom were sold as indentured labourers to the West Indies. In 1666 the city fathers of Edinburgh shipped off "beggars, vagabonds and others not fitt to stay in the kingdome" to Virginia in the Phoenix of Leith under Captain James Gibson. The Scots Privy Council also saw indentured labour as an opportunity to get rid of undesirables and those guilty of certain crimes, and they regularly sent people to Virginia as a punishment rather than keep them in jail.
Many of the labourers died on the journey or before their 4 to 7 years were complete due to the harsh conditions and the often brutal treatment by the plantation owners. Those that survived often remained in the Caribbean and became managers and overseers. Ultimately indentured labour did not bring the profit desired and a cheaper source of labour was still sought.
Formalising the trade
Europeans quickly realised the potential profit that could be made from buying and selling Africans, and plantation owners grasped the opportunity of using a malleable renewable labour force that did not require payment or recognition.
"Africans sold other Africans by choice because they stood to gain from it. Coercion and seduction took place. For centuries they practiced a trade between themselves that was similar to serfdom. Perhaps, when the Europeans arrived, they imagined that Atlantic slavery was just an extension of that system. But they couldn't have been more mistaken. The advent of white people introduced the ideology of race to slavery. Europe justified its brutality on the basis of its natural superiority to black people."
Mungo Park, a Scottish Doctor, 'Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa', 1799
Although the Portuguese had started the practice of transporting enslaved Africans to the plantations in the New World, the other West European countries quickly followed, with the British dominating the trade for years.
In 1562 Captain John Hawkins became the first British sailor to travel to West Africa, capture 300 African people, take them to the Americas (southern states of America and the islands of the Caribbean) and sell them as goods. With the money he made from selling people he bought luxury goods grown in the region from colonial plantation owners, and returned to Britain to continue his trading. Hawkins was part of a cycle that became known as the 'Triangular Trade' and at each of the three points of the triangle there was money to be made.
The Triangular Trade
The Triangular Trade started in Britain - the first stage was the journey to West Africa to exchange goods for captured Africans.
The second stage was the transportation of captured Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas to be sold as chattels, giving rise to the term 'chattel slavery'. This stage is commonly known as the Middle Passage.
The third stage was the return journey from the Americas with plantation-grown goods, bought from the profits of selling the Africans to the plantation owners. The goods that created such high profits included sugar, rum and tobacco. Sugar was a very popular import into London and Bristol, which both had a boom in refineries and grocers. Scotland dominated the Virginian tobacco market.
The Royal African Company was formed to fully exploit and control the developing trade of enslaved people. The Royal African Company was issued with a Royal Charter in 1672. This gave it a monopoly in trading to Africa, including the slave trade. In the 1680s it was transporting approximately 5000 slaves per year. Between 1680 and 1688, it sponsored 249 voyages to Africa. However, the company was London based with mainly London businessmen benefiting. Merchant organisations from other cities such as Bristol and Liverpool lobbied to break the monopoly. Scottish merchants were also unhappy with the privileges of the company and took to organising illegal independent voyages. In 1695 the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies was formed, with little success, due to the uncertainty of the trade and the risk of attack, although 1706 did see the success of the ship Two Brothers of Leith, which journeyed via Holland.
In 1698, the Royal African Company lost its monopoly and Bristol and Liverpool also officially became slaving ports. The 1707 Act of Union with England admitted Scotland into the general trade of the British Empire, although access to the African trade was still limited. Slave ships sailed out from the Clyde; how many is not known as the Port Books before 1742 did not survive. The Scottish enthusiasm for organising all aspects of the difficult three stage journey was patchy, many instead were content to invest in the voyages from the English ports for their slaving missions.
However, from the 1750s onwards ships did leave from Port Glasgow and Greenock for the triangular trade, often transporting enslaved Africans to Virginia as well as the Caribbean. After the American War of Independence the slave trade was consolidated into the ports of London and Liverpool, and Scottish investors and merchants invested through those routes. A steady direct trade was maintained with the Americas with the importing of slave-produced goods throughout the period and beyond.
There are dominant architectural reminders of Scotland's importance in the trading of sugar produced by enslaved labour, such as giant sugar warehouses in Greenock. Leading up to 1813 - 1814 one of the largest sugar companies in the world operated from Greenock. These warehouses signify the major role of Scottish plantation owners. By the early 19th century they owned a third of the plantations in Jamaica (which was the largest producer of sugar).
Capture and the Middle Passage
All along the West African coast, stretching across hundreds of miles, Europeans established trading networks and slave forts. The captured Africans were taken by other Africans to the forts or straight to the awaiting slaving vessels. Once captured, the Africans had their clothing removed and were put into chains. This was the start of the dehumanising process of turning individuals into objects and commodities. From then on they were considered enslaved and they had no idea what lay in store for them. Traders could spend up to six weeks gathering enough people to make the journey profitable before they eventually set out for the Caribbean.
"On that very day they made me a captive. They tore off my clothes, bound me with ropes, gave me a heavy load to carry. There they sold me to the Christians, and I was bought by a certain captain of a ship at that time. He sent me to a boat, and delivered me over to one of his sailors. The boat immediately pushed off, and I was carried on board of the ship. We continued on board ship, at sea, for three months, and then came on shore in the land of Jamaica. This was the beginning of my slavery until this day. I tasted the bitterness of slavery from them, and its oppressiveness!"
Abu-Bakr al-Siddiq of Timbuktu (b. 1790)
75% of all Africa's exports in the 18th century were enslaved humans - at its height the slave trade removed 80,000 Africans per annum.
(Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains: The British Struggle to Abolish the Slavery (London, 2005), 2.)
The transportation across the Atlantic was extremely brutal and sometimes lasted three months. The mortality rate on the crossing was very high; figures taken from ships' logs and eyewitness accounts suggest that 1 in 4 people who left Africa died before they reached their destination. Conditions aboard the slave ships were appalling; huge numbers of people were crammed into very small spaces, people were packed like any other cargo and had little room to move or air to breathe. Head room was approximately 68cm with people packed on their sides. In 1788 the Dolben Act was passed by Parliament to restrict the number of enslaved transported according to the tonnage of the ship. However, the Act was regularly ignored.
Whilst on board the ship the Africans were at the mercy of the crew who regularly beat them to ensure subordination. Branding also took place and so did abuse of the women. The horrors of the Middle Passage were often used by the abolitionists to justify the ending of the trade.
How the money was made
At all sides of the triangle money could be made by merchants and business men in Britain. For example, Richard Oswald was born in Scotland, and he learnt his trade in Glasgow, Virginia and Jamaica. In 1746 he settled in London with his company, Grant, Oswald and Co. He owned ships, including slaving vessels, and his company owned Bance Island, one of the most famous and busiest slave forts, selling captured Africans. He owned shares in slave plantations in South Carolina, Jamaica and Florida. His ships carried the plantation-produced goods of sugar and tobacco back to Britain, where they were sold on. Oswald profited at every stage of the triangle. He owned a 100,000 acre estate at Auchincruive in Scotland, and on his death he left a fortune of £500,000, equivalent to £40 million pounds today.
In Britain goods were specifically produced for the African market, and the slave ships were a lucrative source of money as they had to be specially adapted for carrying, men, women and children as cargo. Metal workers producing chains and shackles also benefited, as did insurers, investors and port authorities.
Alexander Horsburgh, the surgeon with responsibility for business affairs on the Hannover, noted in his journal (one of the earliest complete records of a slaving voyage) in 1720, that on his journey from the Clyde the goods they carried were made specifically for trade with West Africa. These goods included glass beads, cheap textiles, pewter ware, gunpowder, muskets, axes, cutlasses, brandy, rum and copper bars. Guns were also another profitable export, which in the long run helped to fuel the African wars that led to the availability of slaves. 150,000 per annum were exported to West Africa each year, from Birmingham alone.
In 1749 a male slave was bought at Elmina, now in present day Ghana, for 6 ounces of gold payable in equivalent goods. These were listed in the ledgers of the Dutch West India Company as follows:
2 muskets
40 pounds of gunpowder
1 anker brandy
1 piece cotton cloth
1 piece patterned Indian cloth
2 pieces gingham
2 iron rods
1 copper rod
4 pieces fine linen
1,000 beads
1 pewter basin
20 pounds cowrie shells
Merchants in Britain benefited from the investors who bought their goods to take out, or alternatively merchants received their share of payment once the slaving vessel returned from the Caribbean.
Profits varied from trip to trip, depending on the number of captured Africans that died during transportation. Encountering pirates or bad weather also affected the potential financial profit made by each ship.
One journey for which the profit was recorded was that of the Molly. The Molly left Bristol for West Africa in January 1751, leaving with 155 Africans on board. It arrived in Jamaica in December 1751 with 125 Africans still alive for sale. The Molly arrived back in Britain in May 1752. The total investment was £3,864.17.1, of which £2,333.13.4 constituted trade goods. The sale of slaves at Jamaica was conducted by Bright, Hall & Co, including 49 men, 32 women, 20 boys and 24 girls. The average price was £28.20 sterling. Profits on the voyage came to £2,570.63
Who Owned the Plantations and Ran the Colonies?
The British Islands of the Caribbean and the colonies of the Americas were owned and run by British settlers and administrators. It was common for merchants in Britain to establish their own plantations or create relationships with agreed suppliers for plantation goods. Therefore it was British people who bought, sold, and oversaw the enslaved. Networks or communities were often established that resulted from ties back home. Alexander Horsburgh, the surgeon with responsibility for business affairs on the Hannover, noted in his journal in 1720, that there was an established Scottish network in Barbados, Antigua and St Kitts. The Hannover sailed from Port Glasgow and Horsburgh was instructed by its Scottish owners which Scottish plantation owners to contact with his cargo of enslaved Africans. These included Colonel William McDowall of Wigtonshire, a plantation owner on St Kitts.
Lady Nugent, the wife of the one time Governor of Jamaica, also noted the high presence of the Scotsmen on the islands. That Scottish presence started in the early years of the colonies and continued. Mrs Alison Blyth noted on her visit to Jamaica in 1826 that:
"...the Lord indeed knoweth. I always thought that wherever I went I would be proud of my country but here I feel almost ashamed to say I am a native of Scotland, when I see how her sons have degenerated".
The colonies were an important military base. A number of Scottish regiments were sent to the islands, especially at times of rebellion. From 1793 to 1798 and from 1800 to 1803 the esteemed officer Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane of Ayrshire served in the islands, commanding at one point the 69th regiment.
Scotland and Virginian tobacco
The Virginian colony, Chesapeake, was Britain's first permanent settlement in North America and was founded in 1607 2. The colony became popular with people leaving Britain to find success overseas. Many Scots who left Scotland as indentured labour ended up on the colony and as a result a strong network built up there. Virginia became the centre for tobacco, a high intensity crop dependent on enslaved labour. Due to the Scottish connections and the easy route from Scotland to Virginia, Glasgow became the centre for tobacco imports into Britain. By 1720 Glasgow imported over half of all the American slave-grown tobacco.
Glasgow merchants often owned the plantations in Virginia growing the crops, thus making them the owners of enslaved Africans on whose labour they became extremely wealthy. Merchants such as Andrew Buchanan, James Dunlop, John Glassford and James Wilson built grand houses in Glasgow, and the surrounding streets are still named after them. The business of importing and refinement of tobacco resulted in the Glasgow population expanding to over 70,000 by 1804, and also in the decision to expand Glasgow itself as a port rather than relying on Port Glasgow further down the Clyde.