In 1561, seafarer John Hawkins made a voyage to the Canary Islands off the coast of West Africa. There, he met Spanish merchants who told him about the triangular trade in slaves. Hawkins sailed to Sierra Leone in West Africa, where he captured around 300 people. He forced them on board his ship and sailed across the Atlantic to Spanish colonies in the Caribbean, where Hawkins sold his prisoners as slaves. He used the money to buy foreign goods that he returned with to England and sold on for a profit, before beginning the voyage again. Hawkins’ journeys made him the first Englishman to profit from the slave trade.
In 1585, Walter Raleigh hired Richard Grenville to sail across the Atlantic and start an English colony in North America — an act that effectively began the British empire. Raleigh established his colony on Roanoke Island off the coast of what is now North Carolina. Conditions were very hard. Many colonists, including Grenville, returned home. Those left behind mysteriously disappeared without a trace.
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