Episode 11: The Triangular Trade Route (I)
March 10, 2025
一
Then Bartolomé, a European, suggested to the European colonizers that they stop using the Indians, and instead use black Africans from tropical regions, who, he claimed, were as strong as wild bulls and would be better suited for this type of work.
Bartolomé’s father had traveled to the Americas with Columbus. It is fair to say he grew up to be quite a knowledgeable and well-informed man. He may not have had ill intention when he made the suggestion. What he didn’t know, however, was that it was his suggestion that brought endless disaster to the Africans. Born from his suggestion was the most notorious route that lasted nearly 400 years: the triangular trade route.
To explain what the triangular trade route was, let’s do a simulation. Assume I were a British merchant in the 16th century, and I wanted to go to the newly discovered Americas to do business. What would I do?
I would first load my ship with rum, guns, and textiles. Then, instead of sailing west to the Americas, I would sail south all the way to Africa, land on a coast near the Gulf of Guinea, and trade with the locals using the goods I had on my ship.
What I traded for was living human cargo—strong black slaves, tied up one by one in ropes.
I would exchange for as many slaves as I could. Maybe my boat was big enough for 400 of them, but I might cram 1,000 of them into it. If some of them died due to lack of oxygen or sickness on the way, I would just throw the dead bodies into the ocean. I wouldn’t care, for I’d be making good money with just 100 of them surviving the journey.
With this shipload of Black slaves, I would travel west until I reached a coast in the Americas, such as Haiti. I would then trade the slaves for precious metals such as gold and silver, as well as raw materials including tobacco, corn, and sugar molasses, which can only be found in the Americas. I would then ship these back to England, where they are in endless demand due to the rapid growth of industry.
The route my ship traveled—starting from Europe, first going southward, then westward, and finally sailing back to Europe—formed a triangle. This is why this commercial route came to be known as the triangular trade route.
二
In 1972, historian Alfred Crosby published a book titled ‘The Columbian Exchange’.
In this book, he described how a constant exchange of commodities among all continents following the discovery of America by Columbus led to significant changes in ecological systems. For example, the four most widely produced crops in the world today—potatoes, corn, tomatoes and cassava, were first cultivated by the Indians and spread from the Americas to other countries, including China, via the Columbian Exchange.
Even though he didn’t mention African slaves in this book, I believe, from a profit perspective, Black Africans—a commodity that should never have been treated as such—were more profitable than all other commodities in the Columbian Exchange. They were the most valuable and key commodity in the exchange.
I have my reasons for saying so. The first person who came up with this genius business idea made so much money that even the Queen of England was envious.
This is what happened.
John Hawkins, commonly believed to be the first person to establish the triangular trade route, was an admiral. In fact, he held a series of titles: admiral of the British Royal Navy, European navigator, privateer, and slave trader.’
He was deserving of every one of his titles and performed extraordinarily in each of these areas.
As a commanding officer of the British Royal Navy, he played a key role in England’s defeat of the Spanish Armada.
As a navigator, he pioneered the triangular trade route, which existed for 400 years.
As a privateer, he was a seasoned and much-feared pirate in the Caribbean and led multiple raids on the Spanish treasure fleet.
As a slave trader—well, he started the slave trading business.
In October 1562, he led his fleet out of England and embarked on his first slave-trading voyage. His fleet consisted of three ships, the largest of which, Saloman, weighed 120 tons.
To help sail through the unchartered waters, he hired a Spaniard as navigator at the Canary Islands, then sailed to Guinea, where he easily captured 300 Africans.
Carrying his living cargo, he sailed across the Atlantic to the West Indies in the Americas. He sold the slaves to the Spanish colonists in Hispaniola in exchange for a large amount of hides, ginger, sugar, and jewels.
A year later, in September 1562, he returned fully loaded. According to some records, he quickly became the richest person in the neighborhood. He threw the most lavish parties, strutted around, and bragged about his fortune. Before long, the Queen of England heard about it.
Queen Elizabeth I summoned him to the palace and criticized him harshly. Human trafficking! How could a Royal Navy admiral with noble birth commit such immoral and detestable acts!
Such a disgrace to his noble title, to Britain, worst of all, to God and humanity.
Hawkins didn’t panic. Instead, he just listened quietly. When the Queen was finished, he calmly told her a number.
What number? The profit he had made from the voyage.
Then the Queen fell silent.
Hawkins left.
A year later, the Queen gave him one of her own ships as her personal investment in the business.
Personally, I have no prejudice against Queen Elizabeth I; I am merely describing a true historical event. I may also add that morality, on many occasions, is just a commodity with a price tag.
三
Africa lost 100 million strong laborers, but fewer than 20 million were brought to the Americas alive. The rest were either killed in manhunts or perished during sea transportation.
Today, about 13% of the American population is Black. The majority of these 40 million people are descendants of those enslaved. They have fought for equality for almost 400 years. While they may have achieved legal equality, inter-racial harmony is still light-years away. A few hundred years have not been enough to mend the trauma and rupture caused by the triangular trade route.
Today, when we sing the praises of the greatness of the European industrial revolution, marvel at the magnificent buildings in Europe, and envy Europeans for their elegant afternoon tea, but should not forget the misery suffered by the Indians and the African slaves who died in the plantation fields or were dumped at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Every single screw that built the great British industrial evolution was stained with their blood and tears.
You should also know that when Thomas Jefferson passionately wrote “All men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence, “all men” in his mind didn’t include the Black slaves in his house or the Indians working on his manor.
Besides human lives, there was also wealth. It is now impossible to estimate how much wealth was looted by the Europeans from the Americas.
The most conservative estimate is that Spain alone stole 2.5 million kilograms of gold and 100 million kilograms of silver during its 300 years of colonization in Latin America. What’s more, the profit it gained from tobacco and sugar plantation was an astonishing ten times the value of the gold and silver it looted.
You may wonder:
Where did all the gold and silver go? Of course, it went to fund the extravagant lifestyles of European royals and nobility—a way of life that some people today would die for. It also directly contributed to the Price Revolution in Europe, leading to a significant rise in commodity prices. Interestingly, a large amount of silver also flowed into China.
Studies show, Europe had shipped hundreds of thousands of tons of silver from South America to China, mainly for purchasing tea, silk and porcelain.
While silver was not originally the main currency in China, with the massive influx of silver from South America, the Ming dynasty of China ended up adopting it as the primary medium of exchange. Silver ingot weighing 50 grams became the standard unit for tax collection by the central government. Silver from the Americas indirectly spurred commodity and economic reforms in both the Ming and Qing dynasties.
In a way, globalization had already begun taking shape back then.
To be continued in our next episode.