Triangular Trade System Fully Formed by Mid-1500s

By the mid-sixteenth century the Triangular Trade had become the defining economic system of the Atlantic world: European manufactured goods traveled to West Africa to purchase enslaved people; enslaved Africans were transported across the Middle Passage to the Americas; American commodities produced by enslaved labor (sugar, tobacco, cotton, rice, indigo) were shipped to Europe. This system generated massive capital accumulation in Portugal, Spain, England, France, and the Netherlands, financing early modern European economic development while destroying millions of African lives and futures.