14. French traders participated in the transatlantic slave trade as well
During the latter half of the 18th century, France and Great Britain opposed each other in several wars, all of which affected their possessions in North America and the Caribbean. During the early 19th century, the wars continued as both France and Great Britain sought to establish global empires. Throughout the periods of war and the interim periods of peace, French traders followed the pattern of the British and others. French ships carried goods to Africa, traded them for slaves, and carried the slaves to their island plantations in the Caribbean. They also established a large trading center in New Orleans, North America. The French slave-trading business never became as large as that of the British, but they carried a significant number of Africans to their own possessions, as well as to those of their Spanish allies. Most though, went to Saint Domingue (Haiti).
Of all the European colonies in the New World, Saint Domingue proved the most profitable for its French owners and investors. As with British Jamaica, St. Kitts, and other islands, Saint Domingue’s cash crop was sugar. As more and more sugar was produced its prices in Europe declined. Plantation owners had to produce more to continue to generate profits. More production meant more labor, and more labor meant more slaves. As with the British on Jamaica, conditions in the French sugar colonies for the slaves were abysmal. Life expectancies were short, and slavers found an inexhaustible market for African men and women. After the Portuguese and the British, French slavers transported the third-highest total of Africans into slavery in the Americas, with just over half of the 1.3 million men, women, and children sent to Saint Domingue.