Good Learning Co.
SavannahYear 8
← History
HistoryEmpire, enslavement and abolition30 min★★★ difficulty

Britain's transatlantic slave trade

For roughly two centuries British ships carried enslaved African people across the Atlantic. This lesson handles the system, its human cost and its profits carefully and directly.

Lesson overview

What you'll learn in this lesson

Understand Britain's transatlantic slave trade, its effects and its eventual abolition

Key learning points

  • • The three legs
  • • The Middle Passage
  • • Plantation life and resistance
  • • Where the money went

This lesson at a glance

  • 30 minutes
  • 18 parts to scroll through
  • 4 quick checks
  • Marked quiz at the end
  • Gentle pace: short sittings with pauses

Words to know

britaintransatlanticeffectseventualabolition

Scroll down — the lesson carries on below

Part 1 of 18 · Discover6%
1

Watch & discover

Part 1 of 18

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Britain's transatlantic slave trade

An English teaching video on this topic from That Archive Guy. Watch it, then scroll down for the lesson.

In a nutshell

Understand Britain's transatlantic slave trade, its effects and its eventual abolition

2

What you already know

Part 2 of 18

Before we start

What you already know

You should know that Britain held colonies in the Caribbean and North America and that sugar, tobacco and cotton were grown there.

3

Key words

Part 3 of 18

Key words

Words you'll need today

Triangular trade
Goods to West Africa, enslaved people to the Americas, plantation crops to Britain.
Middle Passage
The Atlantic crossing endured by enslaved people.
Plantation
A large estate producing crops such as sugar using forced labour.
Chattel slavery
A system treating people in law as property that could be bought and inherited.
Resistance
The many ways enslaved people opposed the system, from sabotage to revolt.
4

Learning cycle

Part 4 of 18

Learning cycle 1 of 2

How the system worked

A short piece of teaching, then a check to make sure it has landed.

5

Explore the idea

Part 5 of 18

Learn

The three legs

British ships carried manufactured goods, guns and cloth to West Africa and exchanged them for captives taken in raids and wars. The captives were shipped to the Americas and sold. The ships returned with sugar, tobacco and later cotton. Profit was made on each leg, which is why ports such as Bristol and Liverpool grew rich on it.

6

Explore the idea

Part 6 of 18

Learn

The Middle Passage

People were chained below decks for weeks with little air, water or sanitation. A large proportion died of disease, thirst or violence, and some chose death over captivity. Behind every figure is a person taken from a family and a place. The scale must never make the individual invisible.

7

Quick check

Part 7 of 18

Quick check

What was traded on the first leg of the triangle?

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Reset break

Part 8 of 18

Pause

That's sitting 1 of 2 done

Stretch, get a drink, look out of the window. There is no timer and nothing is counting down — your place is saved, so you can come back in five minutes or tomorrow.

Stop here for now
9

Quick check

Part 9 of 18

Quick check

The Middle Passage refers to...

10

Learning cycle

Part 10 of 18

Learning cycle 2 of 2

Its human and economic effects

A short piece of teaching, then a check to make sure it has landed.

11

Explore the idea

Part 11 of 18

Learn

Plantation life and resistance

On plantations days were long, punishment was brutal and law defined people as property. Enslaved people resisted constantly: working slowly, preserving languages, music and faith, escaping to form free communities, and rising in revolt as in Jamaica and, decisively, in Saint-Domingue from 1791.

12

Explore the idea

Part 12 of 18

Learn

Where the money went

Profits built merchant houses, funded banks and insurers and helped finance industry. Some British families still hold wealth traceable to it, and when slavery was abolished it was slave owners, not the enslaved, who received compensation. Consequences did not stop in 1833.

13

Quick check

Part 13 of 18

Quick check

Which is an example of resistance?

14

Quick check

Part 14 of 18

Quick check

Who received compensation when slavery was abolished in British colonies?

15

Common mix-ups

Part 15 of 18

Common mix-ups

Things people often get wrong

  • Enslaved people were not passive victims; resistance was constant and took many forms.
  • Slavery was not ended by kindness alone; revolt, economics and campaigning all played parts.
  • The 1807 Act ended the British trade in enslaved people, not slavery itself.
  • Compensation in 1833 went to owners, not to the people who had been enslaved.
16

Challenge round

Part 16 of 18

Game · Sort it

Which of these are true?

Drag each card into the right column. Tap a card first if dragging is fiddly.

True

Not true

17

Mastery quiz

Part 17 of 18

Marked quiz

End of lesson quiz: Britain's transatlantic slave trade

6 questions, marked with the reasoning shown. No timer.

  1. 1. Two ports enriched by the trade were...

  2. 2. Chattel slavery treated people in law as...

  3. 3. The major revolution beginning in Saint-Domingue started in...

  4. 4. Plantation crops included...

  5. 5. The 1807 Act abolished...

  6. 6. Profits helped fund...

18

Lesson round-up

Part 18 of 18

Lesson round-up

Ready when you are

Quiz score

Not sat

Games

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Points this lesson

0

Best run

0 in a row

Luna: 0 out of 4 on the practice checks. Only if you feel up to it — one more?

Ask Luna

Do the work

Your written work for this lesson

This is the part you'd do in your book at school. Pick the pieces below, write here or on paper, and photograph anything you draw or work out.

Source

A factory inspector's notebook, 1842

"I visited the mill at seven in the morning. The machines were already running. I counted fourteen children at the frames, the youngest no more than nine years of age. The overseer told me they work from six until seven, with forty minutes for dinner."

"The air is thick with cotton dust and the windows are kept shut so the thread does not break. Two of the children showed me hands cut by the shuttles. The owner assured me that the work is light and that the families beg him for the places, since without the children's wages the rent cannot be paid."

"I have written to the magistrates. I doubt much will follow from it."

Original source-style text written for Good Learning Co.

Reading questions

  1. Who wrote this, when, and why might that make it useful to a historian?
  2. What does the source tell you about children's work — and what does it not tell you?
  3. How far does this source show that mill owners were to blame? Answer with a judgement and evidence.

  • Source work

    Reading

    Read the source closely. Write who made it, when, and what it tells you — then what it does not tell you.

    2 paragraphs

  • Essay answer

    Writing

    Answer the enquiry question with a clear judgement. Use two pieces of evidence and finish with a sentence that weighs them up.

    300–400 words

  • Timeline

    Diagram

    Draw a timeline of the events in this lesson with dates, then photograph it.

    6–8 events

Saved as you type.

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