Europe sent manufactured goods and luxuries to North America. Europe also sent guns, cloth, iron, and beer to Africa in exchange for gold, ivory, spices and hardwood. The primary export from Africa to North America and the West Indies was enslaved people to work on colonial plantations and farms.
Sugar boosts independence
During those three centuries, sugar was by far the most important of the overseas commodities that accounted for a third of Europe's entire economy. As technologies got more efficient and diversified, adding molasses and rum to the plantation byproducts, sugar barons from St.