ABSTRACT
Once Europeans became established as the dominant force in the Atlantic, regular conduits of trade and transportation developed across the ocean. One of the first major consequences of Atlantic trade was the influx of silver from Spanish silver mines, which created a huge increase in the availability of monetary metals. Atlantic trade fundamentally altered global economic systems, and the relationships of world societies as international trade routes shifted to the Atlantic from the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. The slave trade coupled with control over Atlantic shipping; while first initiated by the Spanish and Portuguese, it was taken over by the Dutch in the seventeenth century, and then the British from the late eighteenth century. The United States and Britain both ended their official participation in the slave trade by 1807, but ships from both nations continued to take part in the trade clandestinely.
