Slave Triangle- the three stages of the voyage that were made by slave trading ships: from Europe to Africa, from Africa to America and from America back to Europe between the 17th and 19th centuries. (It formed a triangular trade pattern, hence the name 'The Slave Triangle).
Stage 1: In Africa, European slave traders bought enslaved Africans in exchange for goods shipped from Europe.
Stage 2: Also called the 'Middle Passage'. This was the part of the triangle where enslaved Africans were forcibly shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to America. On reaching America, those Africans who had survived the journey were sold as slaves to work on plantations.
Stage 3: The third and final part of the triangular slave trade was the return voyage from America to Europe. Slave ships returned to Europe loaded with goods produced on plantations using slave labour. It could take slave ships up to one year to complete the entire triangular voyage.
Why did the trade begin?
Expanding European empires in the New World lacked one major resource a work force. In most cases the indigenous peoples had proved unreliable (most of them were dying from diseases brought over from Europe), and Europeans were unsuited to the climate and suffered under tropical diseases. Africans, on the other hand, were excellent workers: they often had experience of agriculture and keeping cattle, they were used to a tropical climate, resistant to tropical diseases, and they could be "worked very hard" on plantations or in mines, so africans would be excellent workers to handle the work of others so in order to assist them in their work Africans were kidnapped and forced to be made their slaves.
In each of the stages items were given which was- The first stage of the Triangular Trade involved taking manufactured goods from Europe to Africa: cloth, spirit, tobacco, beads, cowrie shells, metal goods, and guns. The guns were used to help expand empires and obtain