Trade Routes Learning Journey
Follow the Learning Journey steps and come aboard ships sailing between England, Africa, the Caribbean and America - the infamous triangular trade routes that crisscrossed the Atlantic Ocean over 200 years ago.
Click on the steps below to explore.
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Trade Routes Learning Journey Step 4 Life on the plantation in America
Slaves needed to work in the cotton, sugar, and tobacco plantations make the journey to the coastal ports of South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and later to Mississippi and Alabama in the American South. Conditions on the plantations are hard and discipline harsh - men, women and children are flogged if they do not work hard enough. When Andrew Jackson is elected president he seizes millions of acres of Native American land so that white settlers can move into the fertile lands of the South East, to establish cotton plantations using slave labour. The US army force the Native American tribes out of their homelands to make way for cotton. In one famous incident 15,000 Cherokee are driven westwards into "Indian Territory" in Oklahoma. At least 4,000 die on the way, and the route becomes known as the 'Trail of Tears'. Far away in Lancashire the new cotton factories have created an explosion in the demand for cheap raw cotton; the solution is found in the taking of Native American land for cotton growing and the trafficking of people from Africa to America on a massive scale to provide cheap labour. |
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