Britain along with other European countries, was the lynchpin of the triangular trade. African people were torn from their homelands and committed to forced labour in British sugar-producing colonies in the Caribbean. Ships began their journey in London, Bristol or Liverpool loaded with guns, beads, textiles and artillery. In West Africa these goods were exchanged for a human cargo of Africans who had been kidnapped or captured in war.

	Diagram showing the packing of slaves in the Liverpool ship Brookes

They then embarked on the notorious Middle Passage to the West Indies. Conditions on board were cruel and inhumane. Branded and shackled, men and women were packed together on deck and in the holds. So small was the space allowed to each, they had not so much room as a man in a coffin. Between twelve and twenty million Africans were transported in this way, as many as a million died in transit. On arriving in the colonies, the surviving captives were sold as slaves at public auctions. The ships then returned to Britain with cargoes of sugar, spices, rum and tobacco.

During the 18th century the slave trade dominated the British economy. It supplied fashionable society with sugar, chocolate, coffee and tea to consume, American cotton clothing to wear and tobacco to smoke. It created fortunes for individual absentee plantation owners and encouraged the expansion of trade and industry in the Midlands and Northwest England, the heartland of the Industrial Revolution.

The right to buy and sell human beings went largely unchallenged in Britain until the late 18th century. Its moral justification depended on a refusal to recognise black people as human beings. From about 1783 abolitionists investigated and publicised the inhumanity of slavery using mass-produced objects, such as printed pottery to advertise the cause. The testimony of former slaves horrified the public. Britains working classes had also begun to find a political voice and used it in defence of their black brothers and sisters, sending over 100 petitions to parliament in 1788 alone. The slave trade was abolished in 1807 and slaves in British colonies were granted emancipation from 1834. Slavery continued in the United States for another 30 years.

Abolition was achieved not only by means of the white conscience but also through the resistance of Africans. On the slave ships men, women and children tried to throw themselves overboard and refused to eat or exercise. On plantations many deliberately worked slowly, feigned illness, broke tools and ran away. Between 1638 and 1837 there were at least seventy-eight slave uprisings in the British West Indies. Plantation owners realised that it made sound economic sense to hire labour when needed, rather than support a large captive work force.