Explain the roles of Europe, the Americas, and West Africa in the triangular trade

Answer 1

European ships carried guns, ammunition, rum, and manufactured goods to West Africa and exchanged them there for slaves. They then transported the slaves to the Americas, exchanging them for gold, silver, tobacco, sugar, cotton, rum, and tropical hardwoods to be carried back to Europe. As "raw material" and as the labor working the mines and plantations of Latin America, the West Indies, and Anglo America, slaves generated much of the wealth that made Europe prosperous and helped spark the Industrial Revolution.
Although Europeans carried out the triangular trade, their physical presence was limited to coastal shipping points. Africans were the intermediaries who actually raided inland communities to capture the slaves and assemble them at the coast for transit shipment.