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Slavery in America began when the first African slaves were brought to the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, to aid in the production of such lucrative crops as tobacco. Slavery was practiced throughout the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries, and African-American slaves helped build the economic foundations of the new nation. The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 solidified the central importance of slavery to the South’s economy. By the mid-19th century, America’s westward expansion, along with a growing abolition movement in the North, would provoke a great debate over slavery that would tear the nation apart in the bloody American Civil War (1861-65). Though the Union victory freed the nation’s 4 million slaves, the legacy of slavery continued to influence American history, from the tumultuous years of Reconstruction (1865-77) to the civil rights movement that emerged in the 1960s, a century after emancipation.

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So, look at this triangle. Imagine that there is one person standing on each corner. John here buys a flower and gives it to Jane. Jane then keeps the petals but trades the seeds to Jeremy, who plants them and grows more flowers, which he then sells to John, so John can give more flowers to Jane. She can give more seeds to Jeremy, and he can grow more flowers to sell to John, etc, etc. See how this quickly becomes a cycle of dependence? That's called a triangular trade.

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For more than 2,000 years people in many different parts of the world have forced their fellow humans into slavery. Between about 1500 and 1900, Europeans forcibly uprooted millions of people from throughout West Africa and West Central Africa and shipped them across the Atlantic in conditions of great cruelty.

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In the Triangular Trade, enslaved Africans were imported from Africa to the American colonies as the labor force needed to produce cash crops, which were exported to Europe in exchange for manufactured goods.
European goods were then used to trade with Africans for slaves, who were exported to the American colonies, where the cycle of the trade started again.