Triangle Trade: Sailors & Commoners

Much of the social life of Western Europe in the 18th century depended on the products of slave labour:In homes and coffee houses, people met over coffee, chocolate or tea, sweetened with Caribbean sugar. They wore clothes made from American cotton and smoked pipes filled with Virginian tobacco. They used furniture made from mahogany and other tropical woods.

Gives details about the sailors on board the slave ships and their involvement in the slave trade.

By the 1790s the ‘white gold’ that had once been a luxury product for the wealthy was a staple part of the diet of the poor. It was used to sweeten naturally bitter drinks, like coffee and tea which were also slave-produced.

By the 1700s the demand from European countries for sugar and other exotic goods was the driving force behind the trans-Atlantic slave trade.