page_title: Triangular trade
section_title: New England
hierarchical_section_title: Triangular trade / Atlantic triangular slave trade / New England
caption_attribution_description: English: A graph depicting the number of slaves imported from Africa
context_page_description: Triangular trade or triangle trade is a historical term indicating trade among three ports or regions. Triangular trade usually evolves when a region has export commodities that are not required in the region from which its major imports come. Triangular trade thus provides a method for rectifying trade imbalances between the above regions.
  Historically the particular routes were also shaped by the powerful influence of winds and currents during the age of sail. For example, from the main trading nations of Western Europe, it was much easier to sail westwards after first going south of 30 N latitude and reaching the so-called "trade winds"; thus arriving in the Caribbean rather than going straight west to the North American mainland. Returning from North America, it is easiest to follow the Gulf Stream in a northeasterly direction using the westerlies. A triangle similar to this, called the volta do mar was already being used by the Portuguese, before Christopher Columbus' voyage, to sail to the Canary Islands and the Azores. Columbus simply expanded this triangle outwards, and his route became the main way for Europeans to reach, and return from, the Americas.
context_section_description: New England also made rum from Caribbean sugar and molasses, which it shipped to Africa as well as within the New World.  Yet, the "triangle trade" as considered in relation to New England was a piecemeal operation. No New England traders are known to have completed a sequential circuit of the full triangle, which took a calendar year on average, according to historian Clifford Shipton. The concept of the New England Triangular trade was first suggested, inconclusively, in an 1866 book by George H. Moore, was picked up in 1872 by historian George C. Mason, and reached full consideration from a lecture in 1887 by American businessman and historian William B. Weeden.
  The song "Molasses to Rum" from the musical 1776 vividly describes this form of the triangular trade.
  Newport, Rhode Island was a major port involved in the colonial triangular slave trade. Many significant Newport merchants and traders participated in the trade working closely with merchants and traders in the Caribbean and Charleston, South Carolina.
caption: Graph depicting the number of slaves imported from Africa from 1501 to 1866
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