Question
Which countries were involved in the triangular trade?
Answers
Answered by
GPT-5 mini
The “triangular trade” usually refers to the trans‑Atlantic trade network (16th–19th centuries) linking Europe, West/Central Africa, and the Americas. It wasn’t a single formal treaty among states but a pattern of routes taken by ships from many colonial powers. Main participants:
- European powers (owners/operators of ships and colonies): Portugal, Spain, Great Britain (England/Britain), France, the Netherlands, Denmark‑Norway — with smaller roles by Sweden, Brandenburg/Prussia and others. Major ports: Lisbon, Cádiz, Liverpool, Bristol, Nantes, Amsterdam, Copenhagen.
- African regions (coastal kingdoms and trading posts that supplied captives): the West and West‑Central African coast — areas corresponding to modern Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea‑Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Angola, Congo, (and interior polities that captured and sold people).
- The Americas and Caribbean (destinations for enslaved people and sources of plantation commodities): Portuguese Brazil, Spanish colonies (Caribbean and mainland America), French colonies (notably Saint‑Domingue/Haiti), British colonies (Caribbean islands, later the United States and British North America), Dutch Caribbean colonies, and other plantation colonies producing sugar, tobacco, cotton, rum, etc.
Briefly: European ships carried manufactured goods to Africa, exchanged them for enslaved Africans (the Middle Passage to the Americas), then carried American colonial products back to Europe. The term is a simplification of a much larger, more complex and brutal Atlantic economy involving many states, companies and local African and American actors.
- European powers (owners/operators of ships and colonies): Portugal, Spain, Great Britain (England/Britain), France, the Netherlands, Denmark‑Norway — with smaller roles by Sweden, Brandenburg/Prussia and others. Major ports: Lisbon, Cádiz, Liverpool, Bristol, Nantes, Amsterdam, Copenhagen.
- African regions (coastal kingdoms and trading posts that supplied captives): the West and West‑Central African coast — areas corresponding to modern Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea‑Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Angola, Congo, (and interior polities that captured and sold people).
- The Americas and Caribbean (destinations for enslaved people and sources of plantation commodities): Portuguese Brazil, Spanish colonies (Caribbean and mainland America), French colonies (notably Saint‑Domingue/Haiti), British colonies (Caribbean islands, later the United States and British North America), Dutch Caribbean colonies, and other plantation colonies producing sugar, tobacco, cotton, rum, etc.
Briefly: European ships carried manufactured goods to Africa, exchanged them for enslaved Africans (the Middle Passage to the Americas), then carried American colonial products back to Europe. The term is a simplification of a much larger, more complex and brutal Atlantic economy involving many states, companies and local African and American actors.