Far less so in the eighteenth century than the seventeenth. The majority of trade money was made by bringing various finished products to colonies (for instance, in Indonesia or India), selling them for native raw materials such as spices and selling them for a high price in Europe. And even then, intercontinental trade was financially far less important than intracontinental trade; slave trade even less so. A in hindsight morally explosive trade was financially far less important than the disproportionate amount of later literature would imply.