The triangular trade involved three principle commodities: sugar, rum, and slaves. English distillers made rum from Caribbean sugar. English slave ships took vats of the rum to Africa and bought African slaves from their African owners with the rum. The bulk of the human cargo was sold in the Caribbean in trade for cane sugar. The sugar was then taken back to England, and the cycle continued. At each stop along the way, an excellent profit was made off the top. Rum was very cheap to distil in England, so the potential profits of the triangular trade were enormous.

Historians consider sugar to be the initial drive to the Industrial Revolution which England began. Surplus slaves not sold in the Caribbean or Latin America were brought on English ships in the triangular trade to the American South and sold to the large plantations. Cotton in the American South was sold primarily to English textile mills which became the basis for industrialization in England and the subsequent British Empire.