Slavery was a large and integral part of the world economy for centuries.
During the 18th century, the largest slave trade in the world was the
Trans-Atlantic Triangle Trade.
It was called the Triangle Trade because instead of going back and forth
between two places as most trade does, it cycled through three, and made
profitable trades at each point of the triangle.
Beginning in Europe, especially Great Britain, traders would first travel to
Africa, bringing manufactured goods such as firearms and alcohol and trading
them for slaves. It's a common misconception that the Europeans conquered and
directly took slaves by force; this did happen a few times, but it was not the
usual method. Instead, African slavers would capture people from enemy
tribes, enslave them, and then the Europeans would purchase the slaves from those slavers. African slavery had been going on for centuries before Europeans ever got involved....
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Of course, the high demand for slaves from Europeans, along with the guns they provided for sale, surely made slavery in Africa much worse than it would have been on its own.
The next step in the triangle was to travel to colonies in North America and
the Caribbean, where the slaves would be sold to plantations in exchange for
goods, mostly agricultural products, that were difficult or impossible to
obtain in Europe, such as tobacco, potatoes, and cotton.
Then, to complete the triangle, the traders returned to Europe and sold these
"New World" goods for more manufactured European goods, pocketing the profits
and beginning the cycle anew.
Without slavery, this triangle trade would not have been possible, and trade in
general with the colonies in North America and the Caribbean would have dried
up, unless European traders had found something else to sell the colonists. But
most goods were actually quite abundant in the colonies, especially
agricultural goods; mainly what they needed more of was labor. Firearms were
relatively scarce, but European empires wanted it to stay that way, lest the
colonies revolt (which of course many eventually did, notably the US).
The most viable mode of trade that wouldn't have been as horrifically evil as
slavery would probably have been to bring free laborers, people who willingly
came to North America to work and paid travel fees to do so. Of course, that
wouldn't have been nearly as profitable for either the traders or the
plantations, so in the absence of law or public outrage against slavery, the
self-interested traders had little incentive to change.
References
How was slavery central to trade between Europe and the American colonies?
Slavery was very important to the economies of Europe and the American colonies. Slaves worked the sugar plantations of the New World; this sugar served as the colonies' most valuable export. Slavery also helped drive rice and tobacco production in North America. Slaves were considered more valuable than indentured servants since slaves could be owned for life, whereas indentured servants had to be released from contracts. Slaves could also be bought and sold like any other agricultural product, and many prominent colonial families measured their wealth in terms of plantations owned and slaves controlled. Historians refer to the economic relationship that sent slaves to America, agricultural products to Europe, and finished European goods to Africa and the colonies as the Triangle Trade.
Agricultural exports helped to drive a growing trade between the colonies and Europe. Sugar made with slave labor was a major component in rum, a staple on British ships. European colonists living in the New World were key consumers of European products. European goods could also be used to barter for additional slaves from Africa that could be used to work in plantation agriculture in the New World.
Without slave labor, the New World's plantations would not have been possible in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Agricultural exports led to more wealth for colonial plantation owners. Europeans could also sell their goods in these new colonial markets as well as use the goods to trade for more slaves that would fetch good prices in the colonies. The Triangle Trade was built on exploiting chattel slaves for the benefit of colonial plantation owners and European businesses.