What Are Three or More Economic Factors That Contributed to Slavery?
- From 1500 to 1860 around 12 million enslaved Africans were traded to the Americas. Those in charge of the ships made large profits. According to Dr. Alan Rice with RevealingHistories.org, the Royal Africa Company made an average profit of 38 percent for each of its ship voyages in the 1680s. They could buy the slaves for low prices in Africa and then sell them to plantations in the Americas for relatively high prices.
- The greatest demand for labor-intensive farming came from Brazil and the sugar plantations on the islands of the Caribbean. Slaves also were needed in Virginia to work on the tobacco plantations. Tobacco was such an important part of the economy of Virginia that tobacco leaves and later "Tobacco notes" were used as legal tender throughout the 18th century. Many other crops demanded slave labor in the Americas; these included rice, cotton and coffee crops.
- Strong demand in Europe for the crops produced on slave plantations in the New World was a major economic factor that contributed to slavery. These products were not necessities for European survival, but mostly luxury goods for upper-class Europeans, such as coffee and sugar. The love of sugar in Britain and other European countries, for instance, greatly increased the demand for sugar production so that more slaves were needed to keep growing the production of sugar plantations, according to Dr. Rice.
- These three economic factors that contributed to slavery represent a triangle of trade. The transatlantic slave trade consisted of three distinct passages to make up this triangle: The outward passage brought manufactured goods from Europe to Africa; the middle passage carried African slaves from Africa to the Americas; the homeward passage carried the crops made by the slaves back to Europe for consumption.