Maritime trade links slavery, naval funding, and suppression

The triangular Atlantic trade carried manufactured goods from Britain, enslaved people from Africa to the Americas, and plantation commodities back to Britain. The wealth and shipping networks created by that system formed part of the economic setting in which the Royal Navy received extensive funding. The Navy later disrupted the transatlantic slave trade by blocking the maritime leg that carried enslaved people to the Americas. Abolition and enforcement also operated within changing British political and financial interests, and they did not erase the state's earlier participation. The same naval institution first protected a trade system that helped fund it, then helped police that system after government policy changed.