During the 1670's and 1680's, the main product of the Chesapeake was tobacco. In order for successful tobacco cultivation, there had to be hard labor behind it. Less English men and women were willing to dedicate themselves for long terms of service to do this work. Wealthy Chesapeake tobacco growers needed to find the right people to do their labor. They found their answer in the Caribbean sugar islands where French, English, and Spanish planters were accustomed to purchasing African Slaves. The main parts of the Atlantic trading system ill go into is West Africa and the slave trade, New England and the Caribbean, and slaving voyages. Majority of the enslaved people taken to North America originated in West Africa. Some of the main Coastal rulers served as intermediaries, as they allowed the establishment of permanent slave-trading posts in their territories and supplying resident Europeans with slaves to fill ships that stopped regularly at coastal forts. Whydah was the major slave-trading port. It was said that Whydah passed at least 10 percent of all slaves exported to the Americas, and Whydah's merchants earned substantial annual profits from the trade. The Portuguese, English, and French all established forts there. Before any Europeans could begin to acquire any cargo, they had to pay fees to Whydah's rulers. However, the slave trade brought varying consequences for the nations of West Africa.
Because of the trades centralizing tendencies, it helped to create such powerful eighteenth-century kingdoms such as Dahomey and Asante. The trade disrupted original trading patterns, as goods once sent north to the Mediterranean, were redirected to the Atlantic. Agricultural production intensified, especially in the rice growing areas because of the need to supply hundreds of slave ships with food for transatlantic voyages. Prisoners of war made up the bulk