United States History Student Edition

Triangular Trade The triangular trade supported the economies of three regions—the colonies, Great Britain, and Africa—though at a terrible human cost.

GEOGRAPHY CONNECTION 1. Patterns and Movement From where did the American colonies receive molasses? Interconnections What was the main role of Great Britain in the triangular trade? 2. Global

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big profits to many Southern plantation owners. The wealthiest of them gained control of the economic and political life of the region. Large- scale farming, based on the labor of enslaved Africans, became a way of life for generations of Southern families. Very little commerce or industry developed in the region. British and New England merchants managed trade. Many large plantations were located in the Tidewater, a region of low-lying plains along the Atlantic coast. Southern colonists built their plantations near rivers so they could ship their crops to market by boat. Plantations were like small villages. Their vast fields surrounded cabins, barns, workshops, and outdoor kitchens. A large plantation might even have its own chapel and school. Between the Tidewater and the Appalachian Mountains lay a region of hills and forests known as the backcountry. Its settlers included hardy newcomers to the colonies. They grew corn and tobacco on small family farms. Backcountry farmers greatly outnumbered large plantation owners, but plantation owners were wealthier and more powerful. For years, tobacco was the main cash crop in Maryland and Virginia. Then, over time, profits from tobacco declined.

Southern planters began growing other cash crops such as rice, corn, and wheat. The geography of South Carolina and Georgia was particularly good for growing rice. In low-lying areas along the coast, planters built dams to flood the fields to create watery “rice paddies” where the crop could thrive. Rice was such a profitable crop that by the 1750s, South Carolina and Georgia had the fastest-growing economies in the colonies. Southern planters expanded their farming operations by exploiting the work of enslaved Africans. While most plantations had fewer than 50 enslaved people, some had 200 or more. Slavery and the slave trade became major parts of the colonial economy. Slavery in North America For enslaved Africans, the voyage to America usually began with a forced march to a European fort on the West African coast. There, they were sold to Europeans, who loaded them onto ships. The trip across the Atlantic Ocean was called the “Middle Passage.” This name arose because it was often the second, or middle, leg of the three-part route known as the triangular trade. The Middle Passage was a terrible ordeal.

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The English Colonies Are Settled and Grow