British cities had to produce goods in order to trade with African tribal chiefs, goods to exchange for people captured in war or kidnapped to sell as slaves.
Level B
Sugar Plantation
Extreme labor demands meant that sugar planters tried to maintain a permanent excess of adult-male workers.
Plantations grew ‘cash’ crops of sugar, tobacco, coffee, spices and cotton for sale back in Europe. Cash crops were so called because they were grown in large quantities just for sale, rather than for local use. Bhe need for workers soon increased to keep up with the demand for sugar.
Slave trading was not a poor man’s occupation. A coffle of forty slaves might cost the trader well over $30,000 in cash, a huge sum in the nineteenth century that is equivalent to about $600,000 today. Major traders nearly always came from wealthy planter families. The traffic in human beings made them even richer.
