Colonial Triangular Trade: An Economy Based on Human Misery

Compelling firsthand accounts and primary source U.S. history documents underpin History Compass' popular Perspectives on History series. By the 1780s, about 97,000 slaves a year were being sent to the Americas on more than 800 slave ships. Most went from Africa to the West Indies, where they were trade for molasses. In New England, colonists used molasses to make rum. British merchants completed the triangle of human misery by trading rum for more slaves. This anthology of primary and second…