by cargoes of gold, silver, olive oil, tobacco, dried fruit, and "sacks" of wine back to England. Maritime carriers referred to this Atlantic trade as the "sack trade". A 19th-century example involved general cargo shipped from Britain to Australia, Australian coal to China, then tea and silk back to Britain.

The Atlantic slave trade used a system of three-way transatlantic exchanges - known historically as the triangular trade - which operated between Europe, Africa, and the Americas from