The Triangle Trade

New England's soil is thin and rocky and its growing season is short, so its farms barely feed its own people. Instead, New Englanders turned to the sea. Fishing fleets bring home far more cod than the colonies can eat, dried in the sun or salted to keep. Whalers supply whale oil for lamps, and the forests supply lumber for shipyards. Your fleet of 7 merchant ships is the largest of any colony. Your main ports are Boston (Massachusetts) and Newport (Rhode Island).

Your most valuable export is rum, made in Rhode Island's distilleries (factories that make liquor) from West Indian molasses (the syrup left over from making sugar). The game's rule: each rum you trade uses up 2 molasses. The sugar islands grew almost nothing but cane, so they paid well for dried fish and lumber. You are short of farm crops and of manufactured goods (goods made by skilled workers), which the Navigation Acts required the colonies to buy through England. Your fleet is also a business: the Southern Colonies and the West Indies own no ships, so you can carry their cargo for a price. You start with no molasses, so your rum waits until you trade for some. In this game, your whale oil, your rum, and your ships are what other regions want most; fish and lumber are harder to sell. Work out the most profitable trades you can.

At home, fishermen, whalers, sailors, and shipwrights did the work, alongside enslaved people in the port towns. New England's trade was tied to slavery. The molasses came from sugar plantations worked by enslaved Africans, and the cheapest dried fish was shipped south to feed them. Newport merchants sent rum to West Africa to buy captive people, who were carried across the Atlantic in the Middle Passage (the forced crossing): weeks chained in crowded holds, where many died. Slavery was also legal in New England itself.

Farms in the Middle Colonies produce large amounts of wheat and corn, much more than the colonists can use. The region was called the breadbasket of British America. Some tobacco grows in Delaware, but not enough to export. Pennsylvania and New York also have plenty of cattle and lumber. Trade with Native American nations brings in furs, which sell for a high price in England. Your main ports are Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) and New York City (New York). You own 2 merchant ships: enough to trade on your own, but small next to New England's 7 or England's 8.

Food is a necessity, and you grow it, but grain and cattle are bulky and worth little per shipload. You are short of manufactured goods (goods made by skilled workers). The Navigation Acts required the colonies to buy them through England. You also lack the tropical goods that only warm places produce. Sugar, by contrast, is expensive in England. Trade some of your products in the West Indies for sugar, then take that sugar to England for the manufactured goods you lack. The profitable route is often the indirect one. Work out the best trades you can.

Middle Colonies wheat and cattle came from farms worked by the families themselves, by indentured servants (workers bound to labor for years to pay for their passage), and by enslaved people. That route depended on slavery. Sugar planters kept nearly every acre in cane and bought their food. Philadelphia flour and New York grain fed the enslaved Africans who worked the plantations, and colonial lumber became their barrels and buildings. Those Africans had survived the Middle Passage (the forced crossing of the Atlantic), chained below deck for weeks. Slavery also existed in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and New York City had one of the largest enslaved populations of any colonial city.

Tobacco is the major cash crop (a crop grown to sell) of the Southern Colonies, and you grow far more than England can buy. South Carolina produces rice, some silk, and indigo (a plant that makes blue dye). North Carolina produces naval stores (pine tar and resin used to build and seal ships) and lumber. Maryland sells fish, and furs come from trade with Native Americans. Eight kinds of goods is the most varied supply in the game. Your main ports are Charleston (South Carolina) and Savannah (Georgia), but you own no merchant ships.

Under the Navigation Act of 1660, tobacco could be sold only to England. Taxes and oversupply pushed its price down to about a penny a pound, though buyers elsewhere in Europe would have paid more. England's cloth makers still want your indigo, English buyers want your rice, and every shipyard wants naval stores. You are short of food grains and of manufactured goods (goods made by skilled workers). Before you can trade, you have to move your cargo: hire a ship from New England, the Middle Colonies, or England, or trade for a ship of your own. Work out the best trades you can.

Every one of these crops rested on slavery. Planters forced enslaved Africans and their descendants to clear the land and grow the tobacco, rice, and indigo, without pay and for life. By the early 1700s, enslaved people were the majority of South Carolina's population. Many had survived the Middle Passage (the forced crossing of the Atlantic) in chained, crowded holds, and more captives arrived at Charleston than at any other mainland port.

The West Indies, including Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua, and St. Kitts, are covered with sugar cane plantations. Sugar is expensive and in demand all over the world, which makes it the most valuable good in the game. Making crystallized sugar also produces molasses (a dark brown syrup), which New England's distilleries depend on for rum. You also supply citrus fruit, which sailors ate to stay healthy on long voyages. Your ports include Kingston (Jamaica) and Bridgetown (Barbados). You own no ships.

England pays high prices for sugar, and New England needs your molasses to trade its rum. But the islands grow almost nothing except sugar, so they must import food and manufactured goods (goods made by skilled workers). You must hire a ship from New England, the Middle Colonies, or England, or trade for one. French, Spanish, and Dutch islands grow sugar too and often sell it cheaper; the Molasses Act of 1733 taxed their molasses to protect your trade. Since you control the game's most wanted good, set your prices with care. Work out the best trades you can.

Sugar required an enormous workforce, and planters filled it through the transatlantic slave trade. Enslaved Africans were forcibly taken from their homes and carried through the Middle Passage (the brutal crossing of the Atlantic), then made to work the cane fields and boiling houses. By the mid-1700s, about nine in ten people in Jamaica were enslaved. The wealth of these islands cannot be separated from the people who were forced to produce it.

You represent the merchants of England, the Mother Country (the nation that rules the colonies). England controls most of the manufactured goods (goods made by skilled workers) the colonies want: guns, gunpowder, clothing, fine furniture, tools, and books. You also hold silver. Your main port is London, and your 8 merchant ships are the most in the game.

Under mercantilism (the belief that colonies exist to make the ruling nation rich), colonies supply raw materials and buy the ruling nation's manufactured goods. The Navigation Acts, beginning in 1651, required colonial trade to travel on English ships. Many colonial goods could be sold only to England. That monopoly (complete control of a trade) is your advantage. Your challenge is a long import list, nearly all colonial raw materials: forest products for the fleet and cash crops for English buyers. Trade manufactured goods for those raw materials, and earn more by carrying cargo for the regions that own no ships. Work out the best trades you can.

England's manufactured goods were made by workers in English workshops and mills, often for long hours and low pay. English ships were also the largest carriers of the transatlantic slave trade in the 1700s. They carried cloth, guns, and metal goods to West Africa, where they were traded for captive Africans. The captives were carried through the Middle Passage (the forced crossing of the Atlantic) and sold into slavery in the Americas. The ships returned with sugar and tobacco grown by enslaved people. Liverpool and Bristol grew rich from this trade.