Triangular Trade Routes

Beginning with the voyages of Columbus and other explorers, the encounter of the Americas would soon lead to the start of increased trade between Africa, Europe, and the Americas. This immense trade changed the Atlantic Ocean from a predominantly unclaimed vast ocean into part of the growing maritime empires, booming with trade. As the region progressed, economic, political, and social changes occurred rapidly due to the emergence of the Triangular Trade Route and the Trans- Atlantic Slave Trade. By the late 1600s, the increased participation in these trade routes allowed a multitude of commodities to reach the Atlantic World, permitting Europeans to construct big maritime empires and constantly serve as the dominant countries in trade and
land. As the values and institutions of European lifestyles became planted firmly in the colonization of the Americas and the slave trade thrived, a new multicultural social system emerged based on race and origin.
The Pre- Columbian Era consisted of scarce interaction between the Old World and the Americas, who were relatively isolated from the “global trade”. A series of thriving trading empires, such as Ghana, Mali, and Songhai created thriving cities in Northern and Central Africa. Africa, composed mainly of a tribe system was under the influence of animistic practices. The general essence of Africa was relatively calm, compared to what later decisions would create. In the Americas, Native Americans taking residence there had a set polytheistic religion and system that held rulers and priests at a high social status and farmers and slaves at the lowest. The incredible domains of the Inca and Aztec showed great feats of engineering and technology, including Tenochtitlan, chinampas, and a road system, much like the road system the earlier Persians used. With many regional tribes located there, the Americas were content in their own sphere of unknown exploration. Across the Atlantic were Africa and a very motivated Europe. Under a system of feudalism, Western Europeans had just come out of the Middle Ages. In Spain, the Spanish monarchy had just cleared the final Muslim residents out of Europe. Due to recent contact with Asian goods during the Crusades, Europeans began searching for a way to receive those luxuries without having to trade through the Muslim Ottoman Turks. The Portuguese spear- headed the Age of Exploration with intentions of finding a direct route to Asia. Following in pursuit, Spain sent Columbus to find the Indies, but instead encountered the Caribbean in 1492. The Spanish, and other explorers to come, would be surprised and astonished from their discovery. Europeans were under the impression beyond the ocean to the West was Asia, when in fact between the two was the hidden continent of the Americas.
Columbus’ finding of the Americas, although he didn’t know at the time, marked the beginning of what was to become a truly global trade network. The Spanish and the Portuguese served as the first to colonize the New World, however having a range of consequences. Upon meeting the Europeans on the shores of their land, the natives, unimmunized to the disease smallpox, decreased greatly in number. Along with disease and exploited enemies, superior weapons served as trouble for the Aztec and Incan empires. Through conquest, the Spanish and the Portuguese began renovating the land with cash crops. The Columbian Exchange soon interlocked the Americas and Europe; horses, cattle and manufactured products were exported from Europe, while tobacco, sugar, and other New World crops were exported out of the Americas. The New World Crops would have a profound effect on Old World countries; European and African populations increased, as well as the demand for such goods. The encomienda system, as well as a new social system developed where those from pure Spanish origin ranked at the top, while the conquered natives remained at a low status. With many of the Aztec, Incan, and additional native cultures disrupted and prohibited, the religion of many of the conquered natives transitioned from a polytheistic belief system to Christianity. The natives of South America upon coming into contact with the European conquistadors heavily declined in population as a result of disease and conquest. One priest, Bartholomew de Las Casas called for change; he felt the encomienda system exploited the natives and Europeans should use Africans instead, who were better equipped to handle the work. As the Native population dramatically fell, Europeans started looking elsewhere for labor on new plantations- what they found as a solution would greatly change trade and society. In the mid- 1600s, coastal Portuguese trade ports on the coast of Africa generated a forced migration of over 15 million slaves to Brazil or plantations in the Caribbean.
Slaves became the predominant export of Africa to the Americas, and with the surplus of labor, the sugar plantations in the Caribbean thrived, enriching many European powers. There became an emergence of the European middle class in the Old World composed of merchants, traders, and artisans. Lords who needed money to buy goods would accept it from peasants, allowing them to pay their lords with money rather than labor. Thus, the traditional feudal system declined and social mobility increased. Along with decline of feudalism, the thriving Triangular Trade Route brought forth the Commercial Revolution. New methods of business were introduced and the rising middle class began forming into organizations- partnerships, joint stock companies, banking, and insurance companies. Capitalism emerged in the Western World, and Europe was growing from a basic cluster of countries and towns to an inter-dependent complex society, while the Americas and Africa were becoming renovated. With the addition of slaves, the social system of the Americas became even more complex. Along with the natives, slaves were placed at a low status. Mostly men, and women, were taken from their African cities and in return, rising African tribes received weapons. The violence occurring in Africa counter- acted the earlier period of prosperous trade. The earlier African social system was undermined, and many cities became dependent on the slave trade. Europeans, such as the Spanish, dominated social classes in Africa and the Americas. The diversity created by the multi-cultural/ ethnic change omitted another addition to the social system. Those from mixed European/ African or European/ native descent, known as mulattoes or mestizos, held a higher social status than those of pure native or African origin. The new social
hierarchy of the Spaniards became directly responsible for the restrictions of freedom based on ethnicity and descent. What began as a search for an alternative route to Asia resulted in some of the greatest turning points in history. The incorporation of the Americas into global interaction made an obvious difference; growing empires expanded from land domains to maritime empires. Spain was able to dominate many of those affairs and influence a whole new sphere of people. While they were to dominate for the time being, the world around them was transforming in their benefit. The amount of cultural diffusion was inevitable. The Atlantic World trade routes served as a path for Europeans to advance ahead of many other civilizations, playing out later as what made many of those civilizations take devastating defeats. Basically, finding the New World meant not only changes in the Americas, but in Europe and Africa, also.