Talk:Triangular trade

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 11 January 2022 and 6 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Maxton Brown (article contribs).

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This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): HybridGoku.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 11:43, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

African perspective missing

Like most of the articles about slavery the african perspective is missing. There is no explanation how the enslavement happended and who was responsible. It should be added that african kingdoms used the enslavement and trade to secure there power. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.94.30.129 (talk) 15:43, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

A very pertinent point. Complicity of African kingdoms is currently hinted at in Slave Coast of West Africa#Overview:

Ports that exported these enslaved people from Africa include Ouidah, Lagos, Aného (Little Popo), Grand-Popo, Agoué, Jakin, Porto-Novo, and Badagry. These ports traded in slaves who were supplied from African communities, tribes and kingdoms, including the Alladah and Ouidah, which were later taken over by the Dahomey kingdom.

[Content now imported here] 86.177.202.189 (talk) 12:39, 22 July 2022 (UTC); 86.177.202.189 (talk) 13:23, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

References

RfC on whether there was an Atlantic triangular trade or it is a long rejected theory and trope

There are two opposing sides to whether a triangular trade existed in colonial times, roughly between 1500 and 1850. On one side, there is the belief that ships would visit three separate areas and trade in a cyclical, clockwise path around the Atlantic Ocean. This would usually include three of these general locations: Western Europe, Western Africa, Eastern South America, the Islands of the Caribbean, Central America, and the Eastern North America. Slaves from Africa would always be included in this triangular trade. And if Europe was visited, North America was not, and vice versa. Images on this page show two common triangular trade routes.

The opposing belief is that slave ships were not able to easily convert to the shipment of raw or manufactured goods, being made almost exclusively for human cargo. Additionally, sailing times and other issues hampered the ability to conduct one circuit in a calendar year. The other argument is that triangular trade was a theory put forth in the 19th century, but was found difficult to support. This belief essentially says that trade was more commonly or almost exclusively bi-lateral, and that gold and silver would have been traded for the slaves rather than a bulk commodity like wood, sugar, or tobacco. Furthermore, triangular trade has few modern, reliable sources supporting it. The triangular trade is said to be a notion that introductory or elementary textbooks would teach, and even though the end result was similar to a triangular trade, the basic premise is oversimplified (at its least) and false (at its worst). This belief would agree to all of the shipping lines shown in triangular trade maps, but that ships were not sailing three of them in a circuit.

This RfC is intended to encompass the debate of the existence of the page, or at least the way it presents the topic as if it was a well-researched overview of the way the Atlantic slave trade was conducted. I also note that this page seems to be a restatement of the trading portion of the Atlantic slave trade article, with both articles using notions that largely connect them to one another. If the opposing view is correct, then the article needs to carefully explain that the notion of a triangular trade has limits, or be considered for deletion. However, as another commenter has stated on this page (see Caveat?), it seems to be a trope in history books to refer to triangular Atlantic trade routes, even if its historical basis is tenuous. That makes it a notable topic that would not need deletion, even if determined by consensus to be unhistorical. I like to saw logs! (talk) 00:14, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

• I'll be honest I'm a little baffled by this, but since no one else has responded, I thought I'd give it a go. It seems like what you're suggesting is a due weight issue—you're saying there are two distinct schools of thought when it comes to the existence of the triangular trade? But that's not at all clear from what you've posted—you don't mention any reliable sources, and I'm somewhat concerned that most of what you've just written is original research.

I'm not sure I'd agree with your statement here: If the opposing view is correct, then the article needs to carefully explain that the notion of a triangular trade has limits, or be considered for deletion. It's not really a Wikipedia editor's job to determine which sources are "correct". If there's a significant amount of reliable sources that question the existence of the trade, then that should be reflected in the article. It should also be considered whether "the opposi[tion]" constitutes a majority of reliable sources (or even scholars) or if it's a minority or even fringe group. I did a cursory Google search—both for the phrase "triangular trade" and a more restricted search designed to catch academic articles. I didn't search, specifically, for sources or articles denying the existence of the trade because I wanted to see how prevalent the "opposing belief", as you call it, is. I went through quite a 3 or 4 pages of search results, and found ... nothing.--Jerome Frank Disciple (talk) 03:23, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

• There clearly was a triangular trade, involving the notorious Middle Passage, carrying slaves to America or West Indies. However that does not mean that there was not also direct trade. I am not clear how far there was direct trade with Africa, returning direct to Europe, with Afrcian goods such as gold and elephant's teeth (as they were known), However there was certainly direct trade between UK and West Indies, exporting manufactured goods and returning with sugar and other West Indian products; equally with America, returning with tobacco from Virginia and rice from Carolina; no doubt other colonial products. Colonial merchants may have preferred to ship in vessels that had brought manufactures, partly because their schedule was more predictable; and partly because the planters needed to use ships belonging to the merchants who had made advances (goods supplied on credit) to them. There may be cases where slavers (operating on a less predictable schedule) failed to secure a cargo in the West Indies. There were also voyages with more than three points, but triangular trade remains a useful concept. These comments are based on books and other material on the trade of Bristol. Peterkingiron (talk) 19:41, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

  • The Middle passage seems to be exclusively for "owners and captains of slave ships" according to the article. In order for the trade to be triangular, the so-called slave ship would also go one other place, and thus, not be a slave ship during that transit. This is an interesting study, because the famous drawing of the slave ship Brooks (1781 ship) is on the Middle Passage page. You can read there that the exemplary Brooks doesn't seem to have ever traded anything to Liverpool. I delved into the source of the Brooks data, which for slaving ships, is the same source as essentially all of them: a massive project at Slavevoyages.com.

  That was a huge rabbit hole, I'll admit. In fact studying it took me (the RfC OP, as it were), a long time to digest and I got busy with other things. However, it is my impression that the researchers at SlaveVoyages do not really track the slave ships' other, non-slave-shipping travels. I'd love to talk to them about it, because I'm sure they have at least some idea what these slave ships did on their dead legs. But my impression was that Brooks, and many others like her, did not haul sugar or some other commodity back to, e.g., Liverpool. (See Brooks raw data). I will instead defer to those quotes since posted from actual researchers who are calling the triangular trade an oversimplification (cf. "overblown" and "problematically overly simple" in the replies of User:Srnec and User:Jerome Frank Disciple).

  I also agree with the sentiment that this article and several others like it are perpetuating this simplistic view. My take is that Wikipedia editors should make changes to the articles to reflect the complex view. We need to add in the more scholarly overview of the matter, even if the simplistic view dominates the bulk of the article. I do worry that a lot of them end up with a good deal of WP:grandstanding in light of the nuanced view. The all-too-simplistic maps seem to dominate the articles.

  When the horse has long left the barn, it's hard to rein him back in. I feel that the current article over-states its case simply because so few have ever been introduced to the fact that slave ships didn't complete a non-slave second leg of the trip carrying commodities. That's a revelation to the masses who learned about the concept in their youth. To hear that researchers can't find a single instance of this might cause a pretty disruptive editing war in Wikipedia.

  We might also argue now, for future editors to consider, whether talking about the matter should be characterized as 'myth', 'legend', or something like, 'oh, by the way, the triangular trade is an economic and trading concept developed in the centuries after slavery and not a description of what any particular slaving ship did.' I've always been a little surprised at how sensitive readers and editors can be over wording. That's my reason for the RfC: I know that the article is perpetuating a myth, but getting it fixed is going to take a lot of effort.

  I appreciate the views everyone has. I know that something like this blindsides those of us who think we know everything about a topic ... until we discover that there are these issues. We can all choose to reject the newer view as historical revisionism or some attack on slavery akin to Holocaust denial. It's hard to speak up, even as a seasoned editor, and say that Wikipedia is wrong here and has been for decades. Jimbo Wales isn't going to issue a press release about it.

  And so while some have stated that "there clearly was a triangular trade" and it "is so widespread and well-sourced" that Wikipedia should have these articles, the problem I see is that there is a numerous source versus a minority view problem. Triangular trade is a massively well-sourced matter that, in retrospect, turns out to suffer from common knowledge about a concept in conventional wisdom leading to argumentum ad populum. This doesn't mean that the nuanced view is even a minority view so much that it is a refinement of the conventional wisdom to correct it and make it also true. The two views are highly compatible. There is not so much as a disagreement or alternative theory here, but rather a preacher and a choir that are in unison on the over-arching theme.

  For editors striving for accuracy, there is always a problem of locating the refined, nuanced, exacting views of researchers who took the time and effort to present their valuable minority view. The forest is there, whereas the individual trees are overlooked. We have a huge forest named "Triangular trade" with 5 streams flowing through it, yet not a single tree in the forest is fed from more than one or two streams. The sources seem to all talk about the forest and three to five of the streams. My goal is to show that we can keep talking about the forest, but to be honest, we must explain the fact that the individual trees were fed by one stream. Is it a "myth" that there is a forest or we should call it a forest? Not really. Is there a misnomer? Not really.

  I think we just need to keep readers informed of the process of how the Triangular Trade happened. It wasn't each individual vessel or sea captain (tree) that traded slaves for sugar. It was the forest that we can look back and observe that conducted a triangular trade: the nation-states, the commercial shipping fleets, (the forest) etc. And by differentiating these from the individual sailors, we should actually study the whos, the whats, and the wherefors of the groups involved. Was it England, Portugal, Spain, or some Dutch corporation? Great, then say so. I like to saw logs! (talk) 21:52, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

  If there's a critique that the term triangular trade is overly simplistic, add it. I genuinely don't understand why this RFC exists.--Jerome Frank Disciple 21:58, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

• The idea that triangular trade existed is so widespread and well-sourced that Wikipedia should repeat that claim even if it is somehow later disproven. (Similar case: all those years when we thought fat was bad for human health but it later came out that the sugar injury fudged a lot of the research to sell more sugar). We would need some very, very solid sources to establish that anyone even claims otherwise, and then we should probably attribute the text, saying something like "A minority of historians believe that the triangular trade as described by others did not happen. They attribute the evidence to..." or "[this political group] says that they do not believe triangular trade happened, but this is refuted by most historical evidence" or "While historians do not dispute most of the facts of the existence of triangular trade, some historians believe the term 'triangular trade' is misleading and prefer to think of the events as just parts of the larger phenomenon of Atlantic trade..." Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:28, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
• I am a little confused about what this supposed "opposing belief" is. It seems you are suggesting it was simply not barter, that there was intermediation from money (gold/silver). But no description of triangular trade has ever suggested these were barter transactions (at least not that I'm aware of). Indeed, it would be quite unusual if it ever was. In most trade, ships arriving in a region sell one cargo for cash, and then use the cash to buy local cargo to take back. They don't expect a double coincidence of wants (nor stick around waiting for it). It's still called "triangular trade", with or without the intermediation of money. Walrasiad (talk) 16:44, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
• The only two articles on the "triangular trade" at Oxford Reference both call it a myth. Douglas Bradburn's article in The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Business, Labor, and Economic History begins “Triangular trade” is a term of art that is used to describe a three-way exchange of commodities and humans in the early modern Atlantic world. Once thought to be an accurate description of the slave trade, the triangular trade is now largely considered to be a myth, though the term still retains some use as a more generic concept. Wayne Curtis's article in The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails starts is a phrase often used to simplify the complex transatlantic trade relations of the eighteenth century and nineteenth century. It typically refers to the three-way trade between Africa, the West Indies, and either North America or Europe, which typically involved rum, molasses, and enslaved human beings. He goes on to say that More modern scholarship, however, has found that the North American triangle trade was an idea that was largely overblown. While each leg of the trade could been seen in aggregate, the idea of individual businesses making a fortune running the cycles of the trade as described above—or the region becoming enriched—is more spurious. Historian Clifford Shipton examined hundreds of New England shipping records yet failed to find “a single example of a ship engaged in such a triangular trade.” I am not qualified to evaluate any of this, but given how the consensus above contrasts with the first sources I checked, I thought it worth posting here. Srnec (talk) 23:42, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

  To be clear: If there are dissenting voices, I think that should be part of the article! I've also seen one critique published in Atlantic Studies in which the author said:

  I do not argue that a triangular trade in the Atlantic did not exist, but rather that the above triangle was one of several interwoven trades that formed a more complex geography of exchange. I also acknowledge that the slave trade triangle is a recognised abstract idea which illustrates enslavement-dependent trade between three continents, and that such triangles have become powerful "shorthand" explanations for the transatlantic slave trade and slavery. However, while the triangles reflect a "basic underlying structure," and powerfully highlight goods produced by enslaved labourers in the Caribbean, they are problematically overly simple.

  Sophie Campbell, [1]

  But I'm not sure where that leaves this RFC. If someone wants to add the skepticism or critique to this page ... they can surely do so?--Jerome Frank Disciple 02:07, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Golden Triangle (slavery)

Golden Triangle (slavery) redirects here, but the phrase "Golden Triangle" isn't used in this article. The reader can probably reasonably assume it's a synonym, but it would be useful to have some explanation of how and by whom the term is used and whether its meaning differs at all. Alternatively, the redirect could be deleted to avoid any confusion. I'd be interested to know what others think. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 09:25, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

"Golden Triangle (slavery)" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Golden Triangle (slavery) has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 August 11 § Golden Triangle (slavery) until a consensus is reached. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 16:21, 11 August 2023 (UTC)