Katherine Collins, Maci New, Adam Funck, Grace Kinner

https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1uYgg-9VfpRdBUnvHfI-YPncqwVI&ll=28.568012018388195%2C-48.81151279680353&z=3

Explanatory Paragraph:

The Transatlantic Slave Trade, through which millions of people from the African continent were sold into slavery and transported across the Atlantic Ocean, is inextricably linked to the Colombian Exchange, which saw the trading of various crops types from the “Old World” to the “New World” and vice versa. The major cash crops from the trade include sugar (both sugar cane and refined sugar), tobacco, chocolate, and cotton. The ease with which these crops were grown resulted in a rapid expansion of the local populations as well as in the volume of the commodities demanded. Consequently, this expansion called for more agricultural production and ultimately more slaves. “The slave trade increased in the seventeenth century, as more large-scale agricultural production increased the need for labor” (Rose). With the increased need for labor, slave traders had to go ever deeper into the continent, due to the fact that the populations of viable slaves in Western Africa had been sucked dry. Therefore, we can conclude that the crops that moved back and forth between the New and Old Worlds were the ones that were easily cultivated and profited from, and that the Slave Trade was ultimately the tool used to provide the workforce needed for their cultivation.

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