From the 16th to the 19th century, on the other side of the Atlantic arrived the largest forced migration in world history. This is called the Atlantic slave trade or the transatlantic slave trade. The transatlantic slave trade began in earnest when Portuguese interests in Africa moved away from their valuable gold deposits and toward something they found much more readily available than minerals, slaves. Europeans viewed Africans as a source of cheap labor for their American colonies. European planters established large farms and plantations in the United States to grow tobacco, sugar, and many other cash crops. As plantations grew, so did the number of people needed to maintain them. Hence their demand for more slaves. In the 17th century, commerce was no longer a game but a real exercise, reaching its peak towards the end of the 18th century. It was a very precise trade due to the fact that each stage of the trade was extremely profitable for the merchants. This is what we call the famous triangular trade. The first stage of trade was the shipping of manufactured goods from Europe to Africa. Some of these products included beads, cowrie shells, fabrics, alcohol, tobacco, metal items and firearms. They used guns to help expand empires and also found it useful in obtaining more slaves by force. These goods were exchanged for African slaves. British slave ships left ports such as London, Liverpool and Bristol for West Africa to transport these goods. Merchants from across Europe brought refined goods to Africa to trade for slaves. Merchants traded with chiefs and rulers of high authority. The second stage of Tr...... middle of paper ......its main export was tobacco and hemp. The ship then returned to Europe to complete the triangle. After this whole process, the cycle repeated itself over and over again, and this system was used for a while before ending in the early 1800s. The fight to end the transatlantic slave trade and Slavery was achieved through African resistance and economic factors such as as well as through humanitarian campaigns. The Slave Trade Act of 1807 and many other acts and treaties were signed to end slavery. Despite Britain's abolition of the slave trade and efforts to end it beginning in 1807, the illegal trade continued for another 60 years. Slavery still exists today in areas such as bonded labor, child slavery, forced marriages, forced labor and especially human trafficking. Slavery is something we humans do to each other, which means it won't change until society does...