Describe the triangular trade network connecting the colonies, Britain, and Africa, and explain mercantilism as Britain's economic policy toward its colonies.
Building on week 11's three regional economies -- New England's ships and fish, the Middle colonies' grain, and the South's cash crops -- colonial trade connected the Atlantic world in a pattern historians call the triangular trade. In one common route, ships carried manufactured goods from Britain and the colonies to West Africa; then carried kidnapped and enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas and the Caribbean, the horrific Middle Passage you studied last week; then carried raw materials and cash crops, including sugar, tobacco, and rice, from the Americas back to Britain and Europe. Not every single ship completed all three legs, but this triangular pattern describes how the whole Atlantic economy fit together during this era.
Britain expected its colonies to operate under mercantilism, an economic policy in which colonies existed mainly to benefit the home country: supplying raw materials cheaply and buying manufactured goods back, while trading as little as possible with other nations. Laws called the Navigation Acts required many colonial goods to be shipped only on British ships and often only to British ports, restricting colonial trade to benefit Britain's economy first. For decades, most colonists tolerated this system, or found ways around it, but as you will see soon, growing British enforcement and new taxes on this trade would eventually push the colonies toward serious conflict with Britain.
Mastery looks like: They can describe the three legs of the triangular trade and explain mercantilism as Britain's reason for restricting colonial trade.
Common stumbles: Thinking triangular trade meant one ship sailing a complete loop rather than an overall network pattern; discussing the trade purely as economics without naming its human cost.