- Asia
Dhaka muslin and the wealth of Bengal
Mughal Bengal becomes the world's foremost exporter of fine muslin and a leading source of European trade with Asia, making the province the richest in the empire.
Era: Mughal Bengal and the Wealth of the Delta
Sources: History of Bangladesh · Encyclopædia Britannica
- Africa
Peak of the slave trade through Loango
By the eighteenth century the Loango ports were embarking large numbers of enslaved Africans each year, bound mainly for the Caribbean and the Americas, drawing the coastal kingdoms ever deeper into the Atlantic economy.
Era: Loango ports and the Atlantic slave trade
Sources: Kingdom of Loango · Encyclopædia Britannica, Kingdom of Loango · Wikipedia, Vili people · Wikipedia
- South America
The engineered sugar coast
Dutch planters drain the coastal plain with polders, dams, canals and koker sluice-gates, building a below-sea-level sugar landscape worked by enslaved Africans.
Era: The Dutch Colonies and the Engineered Coast
Sources: Guyana — History (Colonialism, Independence, Culture) · Encyclopaedia Britannica, Guyana and Belize: Country Studies · U.S. Library of Congress, Federal Research Division
- Africa
The Slave Coast and the Atlantic trade
The Togolese shore formed part of the 'Slave Coast', through whose ports including Aného enslaved Africans were trafficked to the Americas — a sustained system of violence and dispossession that reshaped coastal and interior societies.
Era: The coast, the Guin and the Slave Coast
Sources: Aného · Wikipedia, Togo (country overview and history) · Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Europe
Purchase of the county of Vaduz
Johann Adam Andreas I acquired the county of Vaduz, and from this time Vaduz Castle entered the possession of the princes of Liechtenstein, completing the territory of the future principality.
Era: Bought and Founded: The Imperial Principality of 1719
Sources: The History of the Princely House of Liechtenstein · Fürstenhaus von Liechtenstein (official Princely House), How the Principality of Liechtenstein came into being · Swiss National Museum (Blog)
- Africa
A slave-worked plantation economy
Enslaved Africans, Malagasy and others are imported in large numbers to work sugar and other estates; they become the majority of the population.
Era: Isle de France: Sugar & Slavery
Sources: Isle de France (Mauritius) · Wikipedia, Le Morne Cultural Landscape (World Heritage List) · UNESCO World Heritage Centre
- Africa
Bunce Island at its height
Under the London firm of Grant, Sargent and Oswald, Bunce Island became one of the largest British slave castles on the Rice Coast, with many captives — valued as skilled rice-growers — sold to planters in South Carolina and Georgia.
Era: The Atlantic slave trade and Bunce Island
Sources: Bunce Island, Sierra Leone River · Sierra Leone Heritage, Bunce Island in Sierra Leone (Gilder Lehrman Center) · Yale University, Gilder Lehrman Center, Bloody Bunce: A Legacy of the Transatlantic Slave Trade in Sierra Leone · Royal Historical Society
- Africa
Peak of the Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade on the Gabon coast reached its height, driven by Brazilian and Cuban demand; the Orungu kingdom and the Loango coast served as middlemen channelling captives from the interior to European slavers.
Era: The Myènè coast, the Fang, and the Atlantic trade
Sources: History of Gabon · Encyclopædia Britannica, History of Gabon · Wikipedia, Slave Trade of the Gabon Estuary · University of Wisconsin Digital Collections
- North America
Spain concedes cutting rights
By the treaties of Paris (1763) and Versailles (1783) Spain granted British subjects the right to cut logwood — and after 1786 the more valuable mahogany — within defined limits, while reserving sovereignty over the territory.
Era: The Baymen, the forest and the slaves
Sources: History of Belize · Encyclopædia Britannica, Our History · Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government of Belize, Guyana and Belize: Country Studies (Federal Research Division) · Library of Congress
- Africa
Spice and plantation economy
Pierre Poivre promoted spice gardens to challenge the Dutch monopoly; cotton, coconut, maize and cinnamon followed, all worked by enslaved Africans.
Era: The French Claim and First Settlers
Sources: The French History of the Seychelles · Kreol Magazine, History of Seychelles — French Settlement and Rule · Liquisearch
- North America
The royal trade monopoly
Denmark established the Royal Greenland Trading Department, granting the crown a strict monopoly over all trade with Greenland and sealing the colony off from foreign contact for nearly two centuries.
Era: Hans Egede and Two Centuries of Danish Rule
Sources: Greenland: History · Encyclopædia Britannica
- South America
Free trade reforms
Bourbon commercial reforms loosen Spain's trade monopoly, allowing Buenos Aires to trade more freely and accelerating its growth as an Atlantic port.
Era: The Viceroyalty and the Colonial Era
Sources: Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata · Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Africa
Captives embarked at Gabon and Cape Lopez
Records describe roughly 500 captives a year being embarked at points called Gabon and Cape Lopez in the late eighteenth century, an index of the trade run through the coastal Myènè kingdoms.
Era: The Myènè coast, the Fang, and the Atlantic trade
Sources: History of Gabon · Encyclopædia Britannica, Slave Trade of the Gabon Estuary · University of Wisconsin Digital Collections
- North America
World's richest colony
Saint-Domingue, with roughly half a million enslaved Africans, has become the leading producer of sugar and coffee and France's most valuable colony.
Era: Saint-Domingue: The Richest Colony on Earth
Sources: Saint-Domingue · Encyclopaedia Britannica, Haitian Revolution · Encyclopaedia Britannica
- North America
The failed cotton plantations
Loyalists planted cotton on the "Cotton Islands", but exhausted soils and pests ruined the crop within a couple of decades, collapsing the plantation economy.
Era: Loyalists, slavery and emancipation
Sources: The Bahamas — British colonization (History) · Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Africa
Lacerda reaches Kazembe
A Portuguese expedition under Francisco de Lacerda reached the court of the Mwata Kazembe seeking to open trade links across the continent, an early European contact with the Luapula kingdom.
Era: Kingdoms of the Zambezi and Luapula: Lozi, Bemba, Chewa and Kazembe
Sources: Kazembe (Lunda kingdom of the Luapula) · Wikipedia, Zambia: External contacts and the slave and ivory trade · Encyclopaedia Britannica
Economy & TradeThe 18th century
Economy & Trade in the 18th century
Every event in the Terralore archive tagged economy and trade — trade, currency, industry and resources, narrowed to the 18th century — 16 of them, drawn from 15 nations, running from 1700 to 1798. Each entry keeps the sources it was verified against and links back to the chronicle it came from.
- Events
- 16
- Nations
- 15
- Earliest
- 1700
- Latest
- 1798
- Africa
- 8
- North America
- 4
- South America
- 2
- Asia
- 1
- Europe
- 1
Every entry below is the same record, with the same sources, as the one on its nation’s chronicle.