Question

Explain the triangular slave trade carried out during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Answer 1

Instructions:
The answer to this question can be broken into 4 parts:

• Why slave trade happened.
• Process of Triangular slave trade
• Conditions of slaves
• How slavery was normalised

Solution:

• French people owned plantations in the Caribbean, but they were reluctant to go to these unknown territories and work. They resorted to the Triangular Slave trade to solve this shortage of labour. The triangular slave trade between Europe, Africa, and the Americas began in the seventeenth century.
• French merchants sailed from the ports of Bordeaux or Nantes to the African coast, where they bought slaves from local chieftains. Branded and shackled, the slaves were packed tightly into ships for the three-month-long voyage across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. There, they were sold to the plantation owners.
• The enslaved people were made to work in dejected conditions to satiate the growing demand for indigo, coffee, and sugar in Europe! Port cities like Bordeaux and Nantes owed their economic prosperity to the flourishing slave trade.
• And astonishingly, slavery was seen as something very normal in the eighteenth century.