Atlantic Triangular Trade Network

Timeline

1. c. 1519–1580Lisbon and Seville · Iberian PeninsulaPortugal established slave posts in West Africa, drawing mainly on the Congo and the Angolan coast; Spain contracted slave supply to Portuguese merchants through the asiento system. The plantation system expanded rapidly in the Caribbean and Brazil, and the early triangular trade framework took shape, though on a limited scale, relying chiefly on the monopoly licensing systems of the two Iberian empires.
2. 1580–1620West African coast and Caribbean · CaribbeanEngland's John Hawkins (in the 1560s) and French privateers began breaking into the Iberian monopoly system, buying slaves in West Africa and carrying them to the Americas. With the founding of the Virginia (1607) and Plymouth (1620) colonies, North America also began plugging into the Atlantic labor network. Massive labor demand for sugar, tobacco, and cotton drove overall growth in trade volume.
3. 1621–1630Amsterdam and Atlantic routes · AtlanticThe Dutch West India Company (WIC) was founded in 1621 and granted a monopoly on Atlantic and African trade. Using armed merchant vessels, the WIC engaged both in goods trade and in privateering against Spanish silver fleets; it briefly occupied Bahia in Brazil in 1624–1625 and began occupying the Pernambuco sugar region in 1630. The Netherlands thus intervened in the slave trade and sugar industry as a systematic power, bringing the triangular trade into a new phase of full competition among European powers.
4. c. 1640–1808London and Amsterdam · AtlanticAfter the Anglo-Dutch Wars Britain gradually dominated Atlantic trade, and in 1672 the Royal African Company held Britain's asiento rights exclusively. In the 18th century the transatlantic slave trade peaked (at roughly 6 million person-transportations), and sugar, cotton, and tobacco became major sources of European industrial capital accumulation, until Anglo-American legislation in 1807–1808 abolished it and the system entered its dissolution phase.