Atlantic trade

Examples of Atlantic trade in the following topics:

• The Triangular Trade

  • The Atlantic slave trade took place across the Atlantic Ocean, predominantly from the 16th to the 19th centuries.
  • The resulting Atlantic slave trade was primarily shaped by the desire for cheap labor as the colonies attempted to produce raw goods for European consumption.
  • The term "triangular trade" is used to characterize much of the Atlantic trading system from the 16th to early 19th centuries, in which three main commodity-types were traded in three key Atlantic geographic regions: labor, crops, and manufactured goods.
  • These Africans were transported across the Atlantic as slaves and were then sold or traded in the Americas for raw materials.
  • Diagram of a slave ship from the Atlantic slave trade.

• Commerce in the New England Colonies

  • Within a century, New England colonies had become a key part of an Atlantic trade network.
  • By the end of the 17th century, New England colonists had tapped into a sprawling Atlantic trade network that connected them to the English homeland as well as the West African slave coast, the Caribbean's plantation islands, and the Iberian Peninsula.
  • The hunting of wildlife provided furs to be traded and food for the colonists' tables.
  • These local goods were shipped to towns and cities all along the Atlantic Coast.
  • This system of exchange was known as the Triangular Trade .

• The Rise of the African Slave Trade

  • Driven by the desire for raw materials, new trading outlets, and cheap labor, Europeans initiated an extensive slave trade out of West Africa.
  • The major European slave trade began with Portugal’s exploration of the west coast of Africa in search of a trade route to the East.
  • The Atlantic slave trade peaked in the late 18th century, when the largest number of slaves was captured on raiding expeditions into the interior of West Africa.
  • Other researchers claim the Atlantic slave trade was not as detrimental to various African economies as some historians purport, and that African nations at the time were well-positioned to compete with pre-industrial Europe.
  • Examine how economic desires gave birth to and perpetuated the Atlantic slave trade

• Blue Water Imperialism

  • Theoretically, British imperialists envisioned a "blue water empire," in that the British Empirestretching across the Atlantic was "Protestant, commercial, maritime, and free. " In practice, this meant that British "liberties" and cultural practices were extended to the colonies through overseas trade, weaving the colonies together while forcefully displacing American Indians from their land and building the economy on the exploitation of slave labor.
  • Therefore, blue water imperial ideology was not necessarily expansionist in terms of acquiring a territorial empire; rather, it aimed for an institutional framework of commercial, international trade in the Atlantic, which they believed would function as a mechanism for extending British imperial influence to the colonies.
  • Instead, they believed commerce could be conducted peacefully—since it would create a fair market for mutually beneficial trade that required little government interaction.
  • Since trade was to be international and mutually beneficial to all Atlantic nations and colonies, blue water empire was thus a "maritime" project.
  • By definition, blue water empire was an empire of the seas, and the expansion of Britain into the Atlantic was of paramount importance to expanding British trade influences.

• The Middle Classes

  • Economic patterns of the middle class in the Mid-Atlantic region were very similar to those in New England, with some variations for the ethnic origins of various immigrant communities.
  • Before 1720, most colonists in the mid-Atlantic region worked with small-scale farming and paid for imported manufactures by supplying the West Indies with corn and flour.
  • In New York, a fur-pelt export trade to Europe flourished, adding additional wealth to the region.
  • After 1720, mid-Atlantic farming was stimulated by the international demand for wheat.
  • Differentiate between the economic activities of the middle classes of the New England, mid-Atlantic, and Southern colonies

• Colonial Society

  • Unlike New England, the Mid-Atlantic Region gained much of its population from new immigration.
  • The Mid-Atlantic region, by 1750, was divided by both ethnic background and wealth.
  • In New York, a fur-pelt export trade to Europe flourished, adding wealth to the region.
  • After 1720, mid-Atlantic farming was stimulated with the international demand for wheat.
  • Merchants dominated seaport society and about 40 merchants controlled half of Philadelphia's trade.

• The Setbacks in the Atlantic

  • The U-boat fleet, which was to dominate so much of the Battle of the Atlantic, was small at the beginning of the war.
  • The Royal Navy quickly introduced a convoy system for the protection of trade that gradually extended out from the British Isles, eventually reaching as far as Panama, Bombay, and Singapore.
  • In the South Atlantic, British forces were stretched by the cruise of Admiral Graf Spee, which sank nine merchant ships of 50,000 GRT in the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans during the first three months of war.
  • After this initial burst of activity, the Atlantic campaign quieted down.
  • Discuss the initial Allied setbacks in the Atlantic, including Churchill's failed "offensive" strategy.

• Portugal and West Africa

  • He also aimed to probe whether it was possible to reach the Indies by sea, the source of the lucrative spice trade.
  • Soon the Atlantic islands of Madeira (1419) and Azores (1427) were reached.
  • Evolved from fishing ships designs, they were the first that could leave the coastal cabotage navigation and sail safely on the open Atlantic.
  • But the slave trade eventually became a major issue of dispute in the region.
  • The introduction of the caravel allowed Portuguese mariners to travel and navigate on the open Atlantic Ocean.

• Conclusion: European Empires in the New World

  • By the late 15th century, Europe—having recovered from the epidemic of the Black Death and in search of new products and new wealth—was seeking to improve trade and communications with the rest of the world.
  • The lure of profit pushed explorers to seek new trade routes to the East and eliminate costly middlemen.
  • By the beginning of the 17th century, Spain’s rivals—England, France, and the Dutch Republic—had each established an Atlantic presence in the race for imperial power.
  • This age of exploration and the subsequent creation of an Atlantic World marked the earliest phase of globalization, in which previously isolated groups—Africans, Native Americans, and Europeans—first came into contact with each other, sometimes with disastrous results.
  • West Africa, a diverse and culturally rich area, soon entered the stage as other nations exploited its slave trade and brought its peoples to the New World in chains.

• The Atlantic Theater

  • The Union Blockade, or the Blockade of the South, was an American Civil War effort in which the Union Navy prevented the passage of trade goods, supplies and arms to and from the Confederate States of America.
  • The blockade was established on both the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts.
  • Early battles in support of the blockade enabled the Union Navy to extend its blockade gradually southward along the Atlantic seaboard.
  • Describe the effects of the Union Blockade and the greater Anaconda Plan of the Atlantic Theater.