Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (Triangular Trade)
Senior 1 · History and Citizenship
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (Triangular Trade)
Lesson 4 of 4
25 min
On the island of Montserrat, in the Caribbean, Olaudah Equiano had worked for years for a merchant named Robert King, trading small goods on his own account whenever the ship stopped in port and saving every coin. At last he had enough to buy his own freedom. On 10 July 1766, King signed the document that set him free. Equiano wrote:
"… before night, I who had been a slave in the morning, trembling at the will of another, was become my own master, and completely free. I thought this was the happiest day I had ever experienced."
Equiano, The Interesting Narrative (1789), chapter 7. Public domain.
Equiano did not stop at his own freedom. In London he joined other Africans, calling themselves the Sons of Africa, in writing letters, giving speeches and petitioning Parliament to end the trade. Resistance and campaigning by Africans, in Africa, on the ships, in the Americas and in Europe, is the other half of this history.
Definition
Resistance: action taken to oppose or fight against something, openly or secretly. Example: enslaved people escaping from plantations, or captives rising up on a ship.
Definition
Abolition: the official ending of a practice or law. The abolition of the slave trade made buying and carrying captives illegal; the abolition of slavery freed people who were already enslaved. Example: Britain abolished its slave trade in 1807 and slavery in its colonies in 1834.
Definition
Abolitionist: a person who campaigned to abolish the slave trade or slavery. Example: Olaudah Equiano and Ottobah Cugoano in London; Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce in Britain.
Definition
Maroons: enslaved people who escaped and built free communities of their own, often in mountains or forests, and defended them. Example: the Windward Maroons of Jamaica, led by Nanny; Palmares in Brazil.
| Where | How people resisted | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| In Africa | rulers who protested against or banned the trade; villages that built defences or moved to hidden places to avoid raiders | Afonso I of Kongo's letters, 1526; the Almamy of Futa Toro, 1787 |
| On the ships | revolts, refusing to cooperate, helping one another to survive | revolts may have happened on as many as one voyage in ten; the Amistad, 1839 |
| In the Americas | keeping African languages, music and faith; working slowly; running away; building maroon communities; armed revolts | Palmares in Brazil, 1605–1694; Nanny's Maroons in Jamaica; the Haitian Revolution, 1791–1804; Samuel Sharpe's uprising in Jamaica, 1831–1832 |
| In Europe | books, speeches, petitions to Parliament, refusing to buy sugar grown by the enslaved | Equiano's Narrative, 1789; the Sons of Africa; the campaign of Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce |
Worked example: an African ruler bans the caravans, 1787
The Swedish traveller Carl Bernhard Wadström visited the Senegal River in 1787–1788. He described what the ruler of Futa Toro, the Almamy Abdul Kader Kan (called by Wadström "the king of Almammy"), did:
"The king of Almammy had, in the year 1787, very much to his honour, enacted a law, that no slave whatever should be marched through his territories. At this time several French vessels lay at anchor in the Senegal, waiting for slaves … He was, however, very unpropitious to their representations, for he returned the presents which had been sent him by the Senegal company, of which I myself was a witness."
C. B. Wadström, Observations on the Slave Trade (London, 1789). Public domain.
Saint-Domingue, in the western part of the island of Hispaniola, was France's richest colony. Its sugar and coffee plantations were worked by about half a million enslaved people, about nine in every ten of the colony's inhabitants.
The revolution frightened slave owners everywhere and inspired enslaved people across the Americas.
Britain was the second-largest carrier of captives across the Atlantic, after Portugal and Brazil. Its abolition campaign drew on the evidence of freed Africans, the work of campaigners such as Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce, and petitions signed by hundreds of thousands of people. Revolts in the Caribbean added pressure.
| Law | What it did |
|---|---|
| Slave Trade Act, 1807 | Became law on 25 March 1807; from 1 May 1807 British ships could no longer carry captives. It did not free people already enslaved. Britain's navy later patrolled the West African coast to stop slave ships. |
| Slavery Abolition Act, 1833 | Came into force on 1 August 1834 and ended slavery in most British colonies. About 800,000 people were freed, but most had to go on working for their former owners as unpaid "apprentices" until 1838. The government paid £20 million in compensation to the owners; the formerly enslaved received nothing. |
Other countries followed at different times: the United States banned the import of captives in 1808 and ended slavery in 1865; the last recorded slaving voyage across the Atlantic reached Cuba in 1866; Brazil ended slavery on 13 May 1888.
Worked example: who was paid in 1834?
Important
Tip
Memory hook: 1807 and 1833 are "Trade, then Slavery". The first law stopped the trade (no new captives); the second, 26 years later, ended slavery itself. Remember: T comes before S.
OER Project: "Age of Revolutions: The Haitian Revolution". Watch how Toussaint Louverture's role changed during the revolution, and why the revolution is called the most radical of its age.
Class debate: "Enslaved and free Africans did more to end the slave trade than British campaigners did." Use the table of resistance, the Haitian Revolution and the story of Equiano to argue for or against. What evidence would you need to decide?
Practice
Further reading for this unit
Sources and credits
The rest of this lesson, its diagrams, tables, worked examples and practice items, and the unit exercises were written by Ganzaa.
This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
