Do you remember Triangle Trade? Well I had never heard of it but it sounded like a good idea to me. That is, all except the slaves.

Here's how it worked. Sugar and molasses were produced in the West Indies. Rum was produced in New England. Rum was drunk by the West Africans.

Got it?

Well, there were the poor slaves.

So here we go around the triangle: Slaves produced sugar and molasses which was shipped to New England. Rum was then shipped to West Africa. Finally, slaves were shipped to the West Indies.

After the slaves were "broken in" producing sugar and molasses, they were auctioned off to the Southern Colonies of the United States.

That was not exactly part of the triangle. Sort of a profitable sideline.

Everyone was very happy with Triangle Trade.

Except the poor slaves who were torn from their homes, put on slave ships, whipped into submission in the West Indies, and finally shipped to the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

I used an in-house reference for the above which I distorted and it doesn't explain everything, like whom were the culprits involved in the slave trade? I looked on the net and it was better explained at http://africanhistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa080601a.htm.

The number of slaves transported from 1550 until 1900 was 10,240,200.

Here was the excuse: Europeans were too weakly to work amid tropical diseases and hot sun on plantations or to work in mines above or underground. Africans could not only jump higher when whipped, they could outlive the whippers.

Switching to the East Indies

I put the heading in bold so that you would know I was switching from the West Indies to the East Indies. Let's see if we can find a Trade Triangle there.

You've heard of the British East India Company, right? They had a nice opium trade going, shipping opium from India to China and opium, tea, and other Oriental goodies to England and wherever else British ships sailed. British ships also carried British goods and equipment back to India and China.

That sounds like a triangle to me.

The British fought a war with the Chinese who were tired of their people getting debilitated by Indian opium. The British won the war and finally took Hong Kong and other places for good measure.

They required that India only sell opium to them.

That was a nasty monopoly.

Read about the history of opium at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/heroin/etc/history.html.

What was in common with these two triangles, the slave trade and the opium trade?

Why it was that Great British was the major player.

They must be so proud of their history.