please consider supporting us by clicking on the like And subscribe buttons your support will be greatly appreciated how Africans became integral to new world history in the past many historians including marxists accepted a model of economic determinism when discussing the origins of New World slavery and the Restriction of enslavement to Native Americans and then almost exclusively to subsaharan Africans and their descendants presenting racial slavery as an economically backward but inevitable and temporary stage in historical development given the shortage of Labor and the almost Limitless expanse of land in the Americas they tended to ignore or underestimate cultural and ideological factors especially religion yet there is now a broad consensus that Plantation slavery far from being archaic was not only highly productive but anticipated much of the efficiency organization and global interconnectedness of industrial capitalism the economic historian David eltis has also argued that if only economic forces had prevailed Western Europeans would have revived white slavery since it would have been much cheaper to enslave and transport white vagabonds criminals and prisoners of War to the new world than to sail all the way to West Africa and purchase increasingly expensive slaves in such a distant region but the first option Elta stresses was negated by whatever cultural forces had brought a sense of unity and freedom to Christians of Western Europe thus blocking the possibility of any significant Revival of white slavery turning to the influence of religions the long struggle between Christianity and Islam and the cultures they generated have seldom been given sufficient attention with respect to the changing sources of slave labor for well over a millennium the ultimate division between us and them or the other a paradigm for the polarity between Masters and slaves was nourished by the Muslim invasions of eastern and western Europe by the Christian Crusades into Muslim territories by the Christian reconquest of Portugal Spain and the Mediterranean islands and by the Muslim enslavement from the 1500s to the early 1800s of well over a million Western Europeans from Italy France Spain Portugal Holland and Britain some of these whites who had been seized at sea or taken in larger numbers along the European coasts from Italy to England and even Iceland were ransomed by Europeans and publicly celebrated as symbols of the inherent freedom and non-av ability of Christian whites a concept that began to develop in Byzantium in the Early Middle Ages when enslavement and ransoming first became linked with religious identity in England especially this ceremonial liberation of English captives who often appeared in urban parades wearing their chains and tattered slave clothing coincided in the 18th century with a growing desire to to dignify Free Labor along with a kind of New Nationalism signified in the early 18th century by James Thompson's famous lines that would become a kind of national anthem Rule Britannia Britannia rules the waves Britain's never will be slaves as can be seen in their almost continuous Wars especially the Ferocious 30 Years War from 1618 to 1648 Western Europeans had few qualms about slaughtering and torturing one another or even about Exterminating civilians yet their own convicts vagabonds and prisoners of War were exempt from the kind of enslavement that seemed appropriate for Moors and then for what the English termed plam mores I do not mean to minimize the importance of greed economic self-interest and an increasing desire for greater productivity and profit all of which lay at the heart of early modern and modern slavery but these economic desires were also fused with issues of identity ideology and Power in chapter 3 we considered at least four cultural preconditions for the anti-black racism that dominated the White Settlement and development of the Americas especially from the late 17th century onward first and I will not follow the exact order of topics in chapter 3 there were the strong sanctions for slavery in the West's religious and philosophical Heritage extending back to the Hebrew and Christian Bibles and to the classical literature of of the Greco Roman era thus chatt slavery remained an acceptable institution even after it had disappeared from Northwest Europe and after the barbery corsairs underscored the belief that Christians from Western Europe could not be legitimately enslaved ironically the Revival and rediscovery of classical learning supposedly a liberating step toward progress gave new support for slavery in the Renaissance but whereas Roman slaves had included virtually all the ethnic groups then available the emerging modern world would be more influenced by the ancient Israelite distinction between Hebrew and enemy Canaanite slaves and by the Islamic laws against forcibly enslaving free Muslims this need to enslave Outsiders except in Russia and parts of Eastern Europe which differed in demography and cultural Traditions also tied in with the ancient Greco Roman conviction that external facial and physical traits correlated with internal mental and characterological strengths and weaknesses that were hereditary even if originally derived from climate and geography the second precondition we considered was the Medieval Arab precedent of enslaving and transporting by ship or Caravan enormous numbers of black Africans who came to be seen as especially suited for the most degrading forms of work in marked contrast to the enslaved Europeans in North Africa hardly any of these black slaves were Redeemed by their own people though many were converted to Islam and some were freed by their their owners third there is evidence suggesting that racist stereotypes as well as a racist interpretation of the biblical curse of ham were transmitted by Iberian Muslims to Christians who by the 1400s were already becoming obsessed with the alleged danger that Jews and new Christians posed to their own purity of blood this incipient racism was then magnified in the 15th century when the Portuguese imported increasing numbers of West African slaves who were auctioned in lban or shipped to Spanish cities from Seville to Valencia still unlike England which deported its small Jewish population in 1290 and attempted to deport its small number of blacks in the late 1500s Spain and Portugal absorbed much Jewish and especially moish culture despite Spain's expulsion of Jews and then morisco converted Moors iberians became accustomed to the coexistence of a range of skin colors from black to white a fact of life that would lead to a greater acceptance of racial intermixture in their future colonies in the new world this point particularly when we take account of the much lighter skinned people of Northwestern Europe brings us back to a fourth and final precondition the negative connotations and symbolism of the color black having briefly considered the mixed and complex imagery associated with black in medieval Europe it is sufficient to note that the deeply imprinted visual memories derive from depictions of black demons devils and torturers could and no doubt did reinforce other factors in creating a perception of the ultimate Outsiders even more alien than Arabs and Jews as the blacks from distant and Pagan Africa if some popes could welcome delegations of black Christians from Jerusalem and Ethiopia Portugal's discovery of West Africa brought papal approval of black slavery and even the shipment of some black slaves as gifts to Pope and their friends in Rome by 1750 when the British crown finally sanctioned African-American slavery in the English colony of Georgia any informed Observer would have had grounds for concluding that from the very beginning the Western Hemisphere could not have been colonized and settled without the importation of Staggering amounts of African slave labor in 1735 slavery had been excluded by a special law for rendering the colony of Georgia more defensible from Spanish Florida this goal complemented the initial desire to create just south of slave populace Carolina an economically productive refuge for Orphans debtors who had been imprisoned and European refugees but the law excluding slaves proved to be impossible to enforce in 1750 black slaves could be seen in an uninterrupted succession of colonies from French Canada and New England All the Way South to the Spanish settlements in Chile and Argentina in the Caribbean they constituted up to 90% or more of the population of the richest colonies in the world and the demand for such productive slaves continue to rise in one Colony after another in retrospect it appears that the entire New World Enterprise depended on the enormous and expandable flow of slave labor from Africa though in 1495 Columbus transported some 500 Native American slaves to sevil and dreamed of a profitable slave trade of American Indians to Iberia Italy Sicily and the Atlantic Islands some African slaves arrived in the Caribbean at least as early as 1501 by 1820 nearly 8.7 million slaves had departed from Africa for the new world as opposed to only 2.6 million whites many of them convicts or indentured servants who had left Europe thus by 1820 African slaves constituted almost 77% of the enormous population that had sailed toward the Americas and from 1760 to 1820 this immigrating flow included 5.6 African slaves for every European from 1820 to 1880 the African slave trade most of it now illegal continued to ship off from Africa nearly 2.3 million more slaves mainly to Brazil and Cuba in other words there can be no doubt that black slave labor was essential in creating and developing the original new world that began by the 1840s to attract so many millions of European immigrants by the early 1700s most English merchants and political leaders agreed with the eminent Economist Maliki pel the Negro trade and the natural consequences resulting from it may be justly esteemed an inexhaustible fund of wealth and Naval power to this nation for Josiah child Charles davenant and other influential political economists who thought in terms of global strategy and the development of a self-sufficient mercantilist and Imperial econ the African trade had those characteristics of a divinely contrived system the kind of system that greatly appealed to the 18th century mind in France as well as England it was now argued that the slave trade to the British colonies prevented the immigration of large numbers of white laborers that would deprive England not only of workers but of consumers and the African markets for the goods that were exchanged for slaves stimulated both shipping and Manufacturing we will later specify the kinds of imports that induced Africans to sell so many slaves to Europeans and Americans British Defenders of their relatively new Atlantic slave system emphasized the way it stimulated domestic jobs for iron manufacturers gun makers ship Builders refiners rope makers sailmakers Weavers and scores of other trades just as exports to the West Indies had become vital to the prosperity of New England and the middle colonies more moreover the slave trade helped to provide Britain with a favorable balance of trade and surplus blacks could be illegally sold to the Spanish colonies in exchange for gold and silver even the slaves should benefit it was claimed since they were rescued from being killed starved or cannibalized in primitive Africa and were taken to Christian lands where they were wellfed supposedly in their owner's self-interest where they had their own garden plots and where they at least had a chance of becoming gradually civilized Jean barau a French slave ship captain claimed that he conducted the trade according to the Golden Rule and argued that other European Traders and owners should treat blacks as they themselves would want to be treated if they had The Misfortune of Being captured by the Algerian corsairs from North Africa in the beginning however the European Maritime nations from Spain and Portugal in the 1500s to France and England in the 1600s did not undertake New World colonization with the intent of relying on African slaves South Carolina is arguably an exception despite the importance of the preconditions we have considered the new world of 1750 emerged from a long series of fortuitous haphazard and even catastrophic events especially as the Mediterranean patterns of piracy banditry plunder cruelty and ruthless reprisals were transferred to the Caribbean in Central America for example where the conquistadors were disappointed by the absence of tribute in comparison with Mexico they found found some compensation by branding Indian slaves on the face and shipping some 67,000 to Panama Peru and the Caribbean in the 16th and 17th centuries the colonizing Powers relied heavily on Indian labor and in the 17th century the British and Barbados and Virginia depended for many decades on a large flow of white indentured servants who long outnumbered black slaves moving back again to Origins Venetian and genoise merch were at the Forefront in developing conquered Arab sugar producing regions in the Mediterranean and supplying non-african slaves for a variety of economic needs in addition to sugar production and finally an extending the system for slave grown sugar to the so-called Atlantic Islands of madira the canaries the cape verdis and sa T off the west coast of Africa here in order to grasp a more Global picture we should mention again the changing sources of slave labor from the 1200 to the late 1400s a subject that highlights shifting boundaries and provides perspective on the ultimate choice of Africans following the Western capture of Constantinople in The Fourth Crusade 1204 Italian Merchants participated in a booming long-distance Seaborn trade that transported tens of thousands of white Armenian Bulgarian circassian mingrelian and Georgian slaves from regions around the Black Sea and the Sea of azoth to Mediterranean markets extending from Muslim Egypt and Syria to Christian cre Cyprus Sicily and Eastern Spain the slaves were used for the production of sugar as well as for numerous other services what needs to be stressed is that the totters and other slave Traders north of the Black Sea were as eager as their later African counterparts to March streams of captives in this case mostly white captives to Shoreline markets where they could be exchanged for coveted goods between 1414 and 1423 no fewer than 10,000 bondsmen mostly bonds women to meet the demand for household servants were sold in Florence alone in the early 1400s this white slave trade from the Black Sea foreshadowed almost every aspect of the African slave trade which was about to begin including complex organization permanent posts or forts for trade and long-distance shipment by SE to multinational markets in fact although the Portuguese began importing black African slaves in the 1440s the region between the black and Caspian Seas might conceivably have been a significant source of slaves for New World settlements after 1492 and we have noted that a very few white Eastern slaves were shipped to Hispanic America but in 1453 the ottoman Turks captured Constantinople and thus the entrance from the Mediterranean into the Black Sea the Turks soon diverted the flow of Black Sea and Balkan captives solely to Islamic markets Turkish expansion brought an end to Italian colonization efforts in the Eastern Mediterranean and sharply reduced Europe's supply of sugar the Turks also cut off Christian Europe from its major source of slaves and for most potential buyers the price of slaves became prohibitive aside from captured Muslims the only alternative to the Crimea and the steps of Western Asia given the understood prohibition against enslaving Western Europeans was subsaharan Africa for a time this new demand stimulated the Arab Caravan trade across the Sahara hence a very few black slaves taken to the shores of Libya and Tunisia were dispersed to Sicily Naples mayorca southern France and Mediterranean Spain in Sicily a notary recording in Latin referred to scavi negri literally black slaves who outnumbered white slaves by the 1490s at the same time Geno capital and Tech technology had strengthened Portuguese sea power and Portugal's Harbors had proved to be ideal for the small ships mostly owned by Italian Merchants that carried Commodities from the near East to England and Western Europe some of the same Italian Merchant and banking families long involved in the Black Sea slave trade now sent agents to Seville and Lisbon where they became Pioneers in developing the African slave trade for example bartolomeo Marion who represented one such family moved in 1470 from Florence to Lisbon he soon owned sugar plantations in madira worked by black slaves and the king of Portugal granted him a monopoly for slave trading on the guinea Coast there could hardly be a clearer example of the continuity between the late medieval Black Sea Mediterranean slave networks and the emerging Atlantic slave system both energized by the expansion and Westward Movement of sugar cultivation the Portuguese Naval expeditions to West Africa in the mid 1400s were originally intended to find wheat and barley to outflank the Arab Caravan trade to find the rich sources of gold and pepper south of Molly and perhaps to find prester John A legendary Christian ruler somewhere beyond the Islamic world in the event Prince Henry's voyagers also initiated a direct slave trade between West Africa and Lisbon and began to colonize the uninhabited madira islands at first using as slaves the light-skinned guane natives of the Canary Islands who had also been enslaved and massacred by the Spaniards by the time of Columbus's first American Voyage in 1492 madira had already become a wealthy sugar Colony mainly dependent on the labor of black African slaves the Atlantic Islands had originally been bases for pirates and sources for water and supplies for Mariners partly because they presented less risk of tropical diseases than the African Mainland they then became major sites of AG agricultural production as the first true Colony committed to Sugar monoculture and increasingly to black slave labor madira was the transitional prototype for later mercantilist ideals of Empire madira soon outstripped the entire Mediterranean in the production of sugar which was re-exported by the late 1490s to England France Italy and even the Eastern Mediterranean Columbus who had lived for over 10 years on an island near madira had the foresight to take sugar cane from the Spanish Canary Islands on his second voyage to the Indies in 1493 meanwhile as early as 1495 sa T situated much farther south in the Gulf of Guinea was shipping slave grown sugar directly to antp Long the major refining and distributing Center for Europe for the next half century s to would import more African slaves in Europe the Americas or the other Atlantic Islands combined some wealthy African in Angola actually invested in Sugar plantations on Salto which also became a Gathering Place for slaves whom the Portuguese then sold two Africans in exchange for gold or later shipped Westward to the Americas by 1507 there were about 2,000 slaves working on Salto sugar plantations and another 5 to 6,000 awaiting reexport in summary then while African slaves were not part of original European blueprints for colonizing the Americas except for South Carolina spatial boundaries had shifted even by the 1490s in a way that would easily enable Europeans to draw on an enormous potential supply of African slave labor aided I should add by the favorable system of Atlantic winds and currents and by the later cultivation in Africa of such highly nutritious New World crops as manc or cassava corn maze and squash which had the long-term effect of greatly increasing the West African population Columbus's once celebrated Voyage of 1492 was anything but an isolated event it was part of an almost explosive cluster of Spanish and Portuguese Explorations that discovered and mastered in the space of a decade the major ocean currents and wind systems of the North and South Atlantic which had kept the Western Hemisphere protected from earlier invasions and also isolated from many of the diseases of Eurasia and Africa these Atlantic winds and currents suddenly became the means beginning in the 1490s of major Intercontinental contact that would have as we shall see catastrophic consequences for both Amar Indian and African populations this first step toward globalization was made possible by several engineering or technological innovations one of them was the caravel a fast maneuverable sailing vessel with latine and triangular sails for sailing close to the wind a ship adapted from an earlier Arab model the Portuguese caravels and large Spanish navios could sail to almost any point in the world's oceans and return no less important was the compass which probably came via the Arabs from China and such navigational instruments as the astrolab and quadrant which allowed accurate readings of the heavenly bodies and enabled Sailors to plot a ship's latitude at sea for some instruments as well as charts and Maps Navigators owed much to Jewish cos graphers in Portugal and mayorca in 1488 when Bartholomew di ran into contrary winds and currents along the southwestern African Coast he swung out in a Wide Circle and rounded the Cape of Good Hope proving that it was possible to sail from the Atlantic into the Indian Ocean in 1497 vosco de Gama followed a wide Arc of wind systems in the South Atlantic for 93 days he was out of sight of land compared to the 33 days of Columbus's first voyage but once in the Indian Ocean where dama Drew on Arab sailing experience he succeeded in reaching India by the 1550s Japanese screen paintings depicted the arrival of tall long-nosed Portuguese traders closely followed and fanned in the heat by Barefoot black African slaves the Portuguese thus accomplished what Columbus had claimed to have done reaching Asia by sea from their AC accidental discovery of Brazil in 1500 to their interactions with southeast Asia and China in 1513 the Portuguese were the first to grasp the Strategic meaning of world geography and to achieve Dominion of the major seas and oceans this meant that they soon displaced the venetians in importing spices from Asia and gaining hegemony over trade in Gold spices and slaves from Africa by 1565 when the Portuguese had been trading with the Japanese for 30 years the rapidity of change was also symbolized by a Spanish gallion that sailed east across the Pacific from the Philippines finally unloading a cargo of cinnamon in Mexico I would also underscore the multinational character of the Imperial Ventures that created an Atlantic slave system for the production of sugar coffee rice tobacco and other New World products Columbus himself a seaman from Genoa was part of a larger picture that included colonies of Italian Traders bankers and sailors in Lisbon Seville and other Atlantic ports men who soon became deeply involved with West African trade the connections extended to the great Italian Merchant banking families who were skilled at raising Capital selling insurance and handling bills of credit and exchange all of which became essential for lengthy voyages that delayed any return of profits for several years moreover some Italian bankers and money lenders were also linked with great German Merchant capitalist families such as the fugar and wellers of Augsburg the fugar descended from a Bavarian Weaver moved from Banking and providing loans to popes and Kings such as Emperor Charles I to leasing mines in Spain and Hungary that produced especially copper a commodity much desired in subsaharan Africa as well as Europe many of these rich Merchant Bankers first concentrated on importing spices from India and silver from Spanish America at a time when Europe had few major exports silver was even more valued in India than in Europe soon however the merchant Bankers also turned to sugar and it is no exaggeration to say that the sugar colonies in the Atlantic Islands followed by those in Brazil and the Caribbean were made possible by investment capital from Merchant Bankers who then reaped enormous profits by marketing sugar and other slave grown produce throughout Europe even in its early stages the Atlantic slave system foreshadowed certain features of our modern global economy one sees International Investment of capital in distant colonial regions where the slave trade resulted in extremely low labor costs to produce goods for a transatlantic Market with respect to consumerism it is now clear that slave produced sugar rum coffee tobacco and chocolate greatly altered the European diet apart from their damaging effects ranging from sugar induced tooth decay to lung cancer these luxuries helped to shape by the late 18th century a consumer mentality among the masses especially in England so that workers became more pliant and willing to accept Factory discipline in order to afford their luxury stimulants 15th century Portuguese leaders such as Prince Henry the Navigator initially saw the country's Southward voyages along the West African Coast as a continuation of their long struggle to defeat and expel the Moors from Portugal culminating in 1415 with their invasion of the Northwest tip of Africa and capture of theut and Casablanca in Morocco yet when the Portuguese attacked some African blacks south of the river Sagal they were badly defeated even by the mid 1400s it became clear that given the distances involved to say nothing of the Africans military power peaceful cooperation and trade with the coastal peoples was the only way to obtain slaves as well as gold malagata pepper called grains of paradise and other desired Goods unfortunately slaves eventually superseded all other exports as the historian John thoron has vividly shown European slave Traders dealt with Africans as equals at least from the mid-5th to the end of the 17th century if West Africans lack ships that could Sail on the high seas their numerous vessels were fast maneuverable and filled with skillful archers and Javelin men and the quality of West African Iron and Steel at least equaled that of European West Africans could and did attack and even SN some European ships and the rulers of Congo Benin and some other regions succeeded at times in temporarily stopping the trade in slaves yet it is crucially important to recognize that Europeans profited from the total lack of any panafrican Consciousness similarity in skin color and other bodily traits as Europeans viewed them brought no sense of a common African identity but if Africans were themselves divided into many ethnic groups or above all into family or Clan lineages based on highly respected ancestors they quickly learned how to play off one group of Europeans against another and how to maximize the inflow of European Goods Portuguese ship captains and other Europeans soon learned the need to present ceremonial gifts to African rulers and to pay fees and taxes even to anchor and to engage in trade in addition the whites were often required to pay for Butlers Messengers trunk Keepers and washer women among others and they very seldom gained access to the Africans actual networks and procedures for producing gold and slaves as late as 1721 after a half century of transporting slaves across the Atlantic the British royal African company asked its agents in Africa to investigate modes of enslavement in the interior and find out whether there were any sources besides that of being taken prisoners in Wartime a striking example of the limitations of European knowledge and control in the 1400s as in many preceding centuries indigenous slavery and slave trading were very widespread in West Africa but Europeans had no better understanding of the nature of African slavery than Africans had of the emerging New World plantation system to which the slaves they sold would be sent when black slaves boarded the European slave ships many like the Amistad captives we discussed in chapter 1 assumed they would be taken to some place where they would be killed and eaten European Elites exercised power over the European masses by means of private Revenue producing land exemplified in the landlord tenant relationship by contrast as John Thorton puts it slavery was widespread in Atlantic Africa because slaves were the only form of private revenu producing property recognized in African law in West Africa land was owned by the state as a corporation and thus the main symbols of private wealth and success were large numbers of slaves and wives in accordance with socially accepted polygyny and while many slaves were treated much like peasant farmers and some served as administrators soldiers and even Royal advisers others labored in mines or were ritually used for Human Sacrifice despite the huge cultural differences the African and European forms of slavery were in Thorton's words legally indistinguishable and the African political and economic Elites were eager to sell large numbers of slaves to whoever would pay and thus fuel the Atlantic slave trade the words would pay take on appalling significance when we note that in the period between 1680 and 1830 when the trade had its most devastating effects on Africa the price paid for slaves in sambia Rose by 131% when in 1482 the Portuguese built their famous Fortress at Sor deina elmina in present day Ghana it was intended to protect their newly purchased gold from European Interlopers not from Africans and elmina captured by the Dutch in the mid 17th century would soon become a major base for collecting and housing slaves awaiting shipment much later when some inexperienced and freelance white Traders did occasionally seize and enslave black Coastal people as the British slave trading Royal African company complained they invited harsh African retaliation such Anarchy also threatened the elaborate mertile Network that enabled European traders to deal with African princes Kings and Merchants Who Sold slaves for textiles often Asian liquor Hardware bars of iron guns gunpowder tools or utensils of various kinds and cowry shells widely used as currency and brought from the distant mald Islands there has long been a WID spread mythology claiming that Europeans were the ones who physically enslaved Africans as if small groups of sailors who were highly vulnerable to Tropical diseases and who had no supply lines to their homelands could kidnap some 11 to 12 million Africans in actuality from 1482 to the 1530s the Portuguese even purchased gold in the almina section of the Gold Coast in exchange for large numbers of black slaves whom they had purchased farther east and Southward where slaves were cheaper Africans in the almina region and elsewhere expressed a growing demand for slaves who could be used as Porters to carry European Goods into the interior eventually King John III of Portugal feudly declared that this sale of slaves to infidels was immoral and should be stopped an edict that the king could hardly enforce most Portuguese ships carried black interpreters trained in Portugal or sa T who went ashore with the captain to haggle and bargain with local rulers over the price of slaves on some slave ships especially Portuguese at least a few black seamen worked alongside whites some were slaves who were required to turn over most of their earnings to their owners others were free blacks men of mixed descent even commanded Brazilian and Portuguese slave ships and one African slave trader sailed all the way to Barbados where he sold his slaves before returning to Africa as the island of sa became a gathering point for slaves some working on local plantations before being sent to America there was increasing intermixture between whites and blacks by 1550 some of the daughters of rich black Planters had married Portuguese settlers a scattering of Portuguese adventurers including new Christians or the descendants of Jews even braved the risks of malaria and other diseases and settled on the African mainland in the early 19th century the annual death rates for British troops on the Gold Coast was as high as 668 per 1,000 called Tango mouse or lados they lived like Africans left many mulato descendants and often served as intermediaries for the selling and buying of slaves in the 16th century p pugal issued licenses which were usually then sold or subcontracted for acquiring and transporting African slaves Spain was officially barred from Africa by Pope Alexander V 6's 1493 Treaty of toras which drew a longitudinal line dividing the Atlantic into Portuguese and Spanish zones of influence Spain gaining the most unexplored new world except for the as yet undiscovered Brazil which extended Eastward into Portugal's domain Spain nevertheless became increasingly determined to use exclusive contracts called asientos to monopolize and control the supply of slave labor to its American colonies but not only were asientos sold and subcontracted privateers and Interlopers from various European countries continue to break any meaningful Monopoly by the mid 17th century the Dutch had gained a major share of the African slave trade and Leadership ship then passed to England and to a lesser degree France until the early 19th century from 1650 to 1810 the British who won Spain's asento in 17713 transported the greatest number of Africans to the new world though they and the Americans outlawed their own slave trading in 1808 because the Portuguese took the lead before 1650 and after 1810 they ultimately carried the most Africans to the Americas in the early 1500s Portugal's King Manuel I first recognized the African king of Congo aonso the as a brother and Ally who would Aid Portugal's efforts to christianize the vast region to the north and south of the Congo River also known as nzinga Maba aonso became Congo's second Christian King with the aid of knowledgeable clerks he carried on an extensive correspondence with Portugal's ruler historians have often quoted lines from afonso's amazing letter dated July 6th 1526 in which he pleads for help in curbing the terrible damages inflicted by the slave trade Merchants are taking every day our natives sons of the land and Sons of our noblemen and vassals and our relatives because the African thieves and Men of bad conscience grab them wishing to have the things and Wares of this Kingdom so great sir is the corruption and lenti justness that our country is being complet completely depopulated it is our will that in these kingdoms there should not be any trade of slaves nor outlet for them John thoron who had studied the entire correspondence warns that these bitter words can be easily misinterpreted at this moment aonso deplored The Unofficial Aid that some Portuguese had given the ruler of rival nango which had led to the capture in sale of aonso subjects and even Nobles yet aonso personally participated in the slave trade along with his Nobles and he soon wrote a quite different letter describing a new policy of appointing his own inspectors to ensure that the people sold as slaves had been legally enslaved but if aonso accepted both slavery and the export of slaves he fervently believed in lawful regulation and in 1525 had even seized the French ship and its crew because they were trading illegally without Royal permission thoron stresses that aonso and his immed mediate successors were successful not only in curbing internal robbery and limiting the export of slaves but also in spreading Christianity and literacy and maintaining profitable contacts with Portugal and the Vatican as a result Portuguese slave Traders soon moved South and focused their attention on Angola where they established a permanent settlement as well as military alliances and interactions in local conflicts in the 15th and 16th centuries the Portuguese established many of the practices for transporting Slaves by ship such as the total separation of the Sexes which the other Maritime nations would adopt in the centuries to come the conditions on transatlantic slave ships which David eltis has termed the purest form of domination in the history of slavery were probably too horrible to convey inuman words the density of packing slaves in the decks between a ship's bottom hold and Main deck far exceeded the crowding of indentured servants or even Irish prisoners shipped to the British Caribbean the males especially had to lie like spoons locked together with no real standing room above them surrounded by urine and feces with little air to breathe one would need to turn to the suffering of slaves in ancient Greek Silver Mines or to the victims of Nazi death camps to find worse or roughly equivalent examples of what elus calls sheer awfulness matters hardly improved in the 19th century the illegal slave ships captured by the British between 1839 in 1852 had an average of four square feet for each slave compared with the 12 square fet required by British law for contemporary North Atlantic immigrant ships the same space roughly given to Modern economy Fair passengers on a Boeing 747 as David elus puts it the occupant of the typical slave ship could neither lie full length nor stand upright for 5 weeks except for the limited time spent above deck each day consider some of the eyewitness testimony given in 1790 and 1791 to a select committee of the British House of Commons after meals they are made to jump in their irons up on the deck this is called dancing by the slave dealers in every ship he the witness has been desired to fog such as would not jump he had generally a cat of nine tals in his hand in his ship even those who had the flux scurvy and such emitus swellings in their legs as made it painful to them to move it all were compelled to dance by the cat the captain ordered them to sing and they sung songs of Sorrow when the scuttles are obliged to be shut the gratings are not sufficient for airing the rooms he Dr Trotter a ship surgeon never himself could breathe freely unless immediately under the hatchway he has seen the slaves drawing their breath with all those laborious and anxious efforts for life which are observed in expiring animals subjected by experiment to foul air Mr Alexander Falconbridge also States on this head that when employed in stowing the slaves he made the most of the room and wedged them in they had not so much room as a man in his coffin either in length or breadth it was impossible for them to turn or shift with any degree of ease he had often occasion to go from one side of their rooms to the other in which case he always took off his shoes but could not avoid pinching them he has the marks on his feet where they bit and scratched him he says he cannot conceive any situation so Dreadful and disgusting as that of the slaves when ill of the flux in the ship Alexander the deck was covered with blood and mucus and resembled a slaughter house the stench and foul air were intolerable captains of slave ships faced a difficult dilemma they longed to maximize profits by maximizing the number of slaves taken on each Voyage yet they feared both lethal slave revolts and an increase in slave mortality that would reduce their own share of the total New World Sales unlike most Planters they had virtually no personal contact with the slaves they felt no constraints on ordering the most sadistic public punishments in order to terrify the cargo a Portuguese Caravel could could carry as many as 150 slaves and a three-masted navio could hold as many as 400 as well as Provisions for a long voyage by the 18th century a typical French slaver would transport as many as 400 slaves but British ships were much smaller because of the danger of Revolt ships had to carry much larger Crews than on ordinary voyages in the 1500s an average Middle Passage Voyage took from 2 to 3 months by the late 1700s such transatlantic trips lasted about a month but of course much depended on weather and the distance to the new world destination from the time of the first voyages to the Americas male slaves were Bound by chains manles neck rings and padlocks though when out of sight of land and when weather permitted crew members brought them to the deck for exercise including forced dancing as we have seen and some coerced labor slave more mortality most of it from dehydration including denter or the flux averaged around 15% but could easily range from his low as 5% to 33% or even more mortality decreased somewhat by the 19th century a major motive for separating the women was the fear that they would encourage the males to revolt but the separation of sexes also made it far easier for members of the crew to rape black women a very common occurrence in actuality slaves did Rebel on approximately 10% of all slave ships usually when still near the African Coast this resistance significantly increased the cost of the African slave trade in terms of added crew guns and insurance and thus prevented still more African slaves from being shipped to the new world it is important to remember that in the beginning African slaves were not taken to the Americas but rather to Iberia and the Atlantic Islands Brazil only began importing a significant number of black slaves in the late 1500s approximately 140 years after they were first brought into Portugal it took another Century before the truly hemispheric slave trade began to rise to wholly new levels peaking in the late 18th century from 1700 to 1880 an estimated 9.47 million slaves were deported from Africa or about 86.3% of the toal little transatlantic slave migration not counting shipboard mortality yet as early as 1550 black slaves constituted 10% of Lisbon's population of about 100,000 when the Africans arrived in Portugal Merchants divided them into Lots according to age sex and physical condition they were then paraded Stark naked for inspection by prospective buyers and sold by brokers who dealt with them as livestock is if they had been horses or cattle the same procedure became almost Universal when the slaves were first sold to European buyers upon each sale a white man would brand the slave usually on a cheek sometimes on both cheeks the price of such chattle more than doubled during the first half of the 16th century especially as they were re-exported to Spain and the Mediterranean like Moors and Jews blacks were often called dogs or [ __ ] and there is considerable evidence that most Portuguese whites regarded blacks as inherently inferior or even as a separate species displaying the color of the devil since various popes authorized the buying of slaves who had supposedly been taken in a just War for a just cause it was generally agreed that these terms applied to people who were guilty of cannibalism sodomy incest or simply living naked like beasts in ignorance of the Civilized standards of life even so since the church insisted that all human beings possessed Immortal Souls popes and clerics demanded that the slaves be christianized in a letter of 1513 to the pope Portugal's King Manuel I conveyed much concern over the fact that many blacks from Guinea had died at Sea before they could receive baptism he ordered all Masters to be sure that all black adults had been baptized within 6 months of Landing while complaints persisted for decades that many slaves had still not been baptized the Portuguese in marked contrast to later English colonists in the Caribbean and North America encouraged blacks to form their own segregated religious confraternities dedicated to the cult of Our Lady of the Rosary no less striking the Portuguese loved the Africans music and Enlisted the slaves to perform at plays and other types of public entertainment even at Royal functions little could the later British slave ship captains who forc slaves for exercise to dance on Deck to the sound of bag pipes dream that these African descendants would revolutionize popular music on a global level in the 20th century in Portugal the Africans were much less feared than moish slaves who had much greater possibilities for escape or Ransom the historian Deborah Blumenthal presents much evidence to show that in Spain 15th century valencians could not conceive of anyone more base or vile than a black male slave yet precisely because black African slaves were so far removed from their places of origin they were truly natally alienated to use Orlando Patterson's term and just as whites in colonial South Carolina relied for many decades on arming their black slaves to beat off Indian and Spanish attacks so wealthy valencians armed trusted black slaves and used them to insult rivals or enemies and to protect their masters and especially their Master's honor moreover in Portugal black slaves were soon owned by whites and even free blacks of almost all social classes including laborers Sailors and even prostitutes who were legally prohibited from having free servants despite the widespread anti-black racism in Portugal and Spain blacks won a significant degree of acceptance among poor Portuguese whites in sharp contrast to 19th century America socialization led to some interracial marriages almost always between white men and mulat women as in later Latin America and less formally and less universally in the United States molat acquired a much higher status than blacks by the late 1500s then the central elements of an Atlantic slave system had already emerged when we take account of the increasing flow of Africans to Brazil and to the Spanish American colonies along with the rise of great sugar refining and distributing centers in antp and then in Amsterdam one wonders why the emergence of such a slave driven economy evokes so little protest especially in view of The Disappearance of slavery several centuries earlier in Western Europe and the rhetorical unease or even repudiation of domestic slavery in such countries as France Holland and especially England this latter is best symbolized perhaps by the use of such words as servant or handmaiden when translating the biblical Greek and Latin words for slave in the first Bibles to reach a truly wide audience it is true that in August 1444 at the first public auction of African slaves in Portugal near Lagos on the southern coast many of the Common People enraged by the cries and moans prompted by the separation of slave families temporarily interrupted the proceeding even Gomez aanes desura the official chronicler for the Portuguese King whom I quoted in chapter 3 expressed sorrow and Sympathy for the slaves sufferings but the Portuguese like diverse African peoples had long been familiar with slavery in a variety of forms and accepted hierarchical societies headed by authoritarian or even divinely chosen kings today it also requires an imaginative leap to picture the state of human life in even supposedly Advanced nations in the 15th and 16th centuries when life expectancy at Birth Rose only to the low 20s everyone was accustomed to Gastly rates of death from disease especially in towns and cities where epidemics killed up to 20% of the people every 25 or 30 years moreover much of the population always remained on the verge of starvation and officials left decomposing corpses in open pits like the awful of butchered animals in the Streets of London in Lisbon after numerous complaints over the public ubiquity of black people's corpses the city constructed a special and segregated pit if the stench of death lessened as one moved outside Urban Europe other odors did not partly because bath houses had long been associated with the sexual profligacy of late Roman times Europeans bathed very seldom if at all indeed there is repeated testimony that West Africans who did bathe and oil their skin were revolted by the strong odor of white Sailors and were even more shocked by the whites undisguised flatulence that said thieves and robbers infested the countryside in Genoa the homeless poor sold themselves as Galley slaves every winter throughout Europe authorities pursued and burned at the stake thousands of women and men accused of Witchcraft in the St Bartholomew Massacre of 1572 Catholics slaughtered 50,000 Protestant yugon not men women and children their body parts were sold openly in the streets and Pope Gregory the ordered bonfires to be kindled in celebration of this Catholic Triumph in short New World slavery emerged at a time when most people took it for granted that this world was a very cruel sinful and brutal place until the late 18th century with its own French reign of terror the European public was not only insensitive but rushed to witness the most terrible spectacles of torture dismemberment and death in view of this cold-blooded cult culture it is perhaps remarkable that the emerging African slave trade Drew as much courageous fire as it did while he never condemned slavery in principle The Great Spanish and Jesuit Theologian and moralist Lis De Molina delivered scathing attacks on the ways in which Africans were being enslaved Tomas de Mercado of sevil was only one of several Spanish jurists who correctly stressed that the high prices Europeans offered for slaves in Africa encouraged every form of trickery fraud and violence slave Hunters raided Villages judges accepted trumped up charges in order to sentence people to slavery and fathers even sold their own children for the slightest Disobedience marcado's description of the stench and overcrowding of slave ships in 1571 was as horrifying as the testimony presented by British abolitionists in the late 1780s and early 1790s bolome FAS de alberes a great Spanish lawyer living in me Mexico even denied that Christianity could justify the violence of the slave trade and was Radical enough in his sometimes sarcastic attack on African slavery to have his work condemned by the Inquisition but in 1573 the world was hardly ready for an Abolitionist Movement the critics focused on the abusive methods of African enslavement not on the principle of slavery itself even so they had no influence on political or clerical policy nevertheless we have noted that Europeans transported relatively few African slaves to the new world until the late 1500s the slave trades effects on Africa would have been very limited if the major markets for slave labor had continued to be Europe and the Atlantic Islands why then did the Americas become so dependent on an almost Limitless flow of slave labor from Africa the Caribbean so-called Greater Antilles Hispanola later divided between French San doing and Spanish Santo Domingo Jamaica Cuba and Puerto Rico were densely populated with millions of indigenous peoples yet in marked contrast with Portugal's long recognition of the West Africans power and sovereignty and with the attempts of the Portuguese and other Europeans to negotiate trade with various African groups the Spaniards became Intoxicated by prospects of sudden wealth soon symbolized by Rivers rich with gold with guns and attack dogs They seized much land from the relatively passive arrowok tyo Indians and generally passed by the smaller islands in the Lesser Antilles which were defended by Fierce carab Indians after some early efforts to enslave indigenous peoples in the Americas which were later condemned by Spain and the papacy the Spaniards relied on the encomenda a semi- feudal system of tributary labor first applied to the conquered Moors in Spain since in theory the main justification for ruling ing the Indians was to convert them to Christianity and a Christian way of life the system supposedly required a Spanish master or in KERO to protect and slowly christianize a small community of Indians in exchange for tribute the tribute could be in the form of crops personal service or work in underground mines in actuality not only did the Spaniards continue to enslave some Indians but in kandos made large fortunes by exploiting Indian workers as if they were worthless slaves who could not be sold or purchased if the Indians had certain freedoms that were usually denied slaves they hardly represented free labor in any meaningful sense and as the encomenda system helped to destroy native populations in the Caribbean it spread with some modifications from New Spain Mexico to Central and South America to make matters worse the arrowok too culture had been productive but depended on a fragile econ ology for example High Earth Mounds for yucka beans Maze and other crops these Mounds were rapidly destroyed by the spaniard's cattle and especially Hogs which quickly multiplied and in time severely damaged the base of the Indians food supply moreover as we have already noted the Amar Indians throughout the hemisphere had little capacity for resisting imported diseases both temperate and tropical pathogens including small poox malaria yellow fever influenza typhus and the plague given the previous isolation of the Western Hemisphere This Disaster has been called a virgin soil pandemic even white suffered heavy mortality of the 2500 colonists who arrived in Hispanola in 1502 1,000 died in a fairly short period of time but the Spaniards were bewildered and some even horrified as the Indian populations seemed to evaporate before their eyes because these diseases struck all age groups there was little possibility of mitigating the mortality with an increased birth rate while Specialists differ with respect to numbers which are necessarily somewhat speculative we are clearly considering the greatest known population loss in human history that is mortality as a percentage of population the population of central Mexico May well have fallen by almost 90% in 75 years estimates for Peru and Chile Where the diseases spread well before the arrival of Europeans are almost as high the death rate was even worse in the Caribbean where pestilence coincided with the encomienda system and much Mass Slaughter estimates of Hispanola pre-colombian aoak tyo Indian population range from about 300,000 to half a million by the 1540s there were fewer than 500 survivors though the word genocide has been recently used the Spaniards clearly had no plan or motive for the the systematic extermination of most Native Americans on the contrary the colonial entrepreneurs wanted to seize and exploit as many laborers as possible back in Castile Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand became increasingly concerned over the flow of reports documenting the appalling mortality and cruel treatment of Native Americans drawing on his extensive experience in the Caribbean the great Catholic bishop barol deasus led the way in condemning the injustices of the encomenda system and publicizing the crimes committed against the Indians who were worked all day and night he reported to enrich the encomenderos Spain's famous new laws of 1542 influenced by Lascassas sought in various ways to protect the Indians rights allowing them to own property for example and forbidding the Spaniards from working them in mines these and other reforms were difficult if not impossible to enforce but over a period of three centuries the Spanish and Portuguese created a vast body of legislation intended to segregate and protect Native Americans from the exploitive forces of colonization the immense tragedy however was a slow but almost Universal replacement of Indian slaves with black Africans as early as 1516 two of the most Humane and sensitive witnesses to the horrors of the new world lenci zazo and bolom de Lascassas Protectors of the Indians called for the sparing of Indian lives especially in the mines by importing many more African slaves for 25 years laskasas saw the importation of black slaves as the solution for the spaniard's oppression of Indians this substitution of Africans for Indians became a common pattern the great Jesuit Pioneer Manuel danava arrived in Brazil in 1549 and courageously denounced the settlers for their mistreatment of Indians and later helped to restrict the enslavement of Indians yet noga like laskasas appealed for the importation of more black slaves both for the colony and for his own religious order noga claimed that the legality of black slavery had been carefully weighed in the consciences of the people there were also more compelling and pragmatic reasons for this racial replacement throughout the new world colonists agreed that the labor of one black was worth that of several Indians unlike the Native Americans most West Africans were familiar with large-scale agriculture labor discipline and making iron or even steel tools they also shared with Europeans some resistance to oldw World diseases still it seems quite possible that if the Caribbean Indians had not been so susceptible to Old World pathogens and if their food base had not been destroyed they might have provided a significant labor force for Caribbean sugar plantations once the small gold supplies had been exhausted the near extermination of native populations created an immense vacuum easing the seizure of fertile land from Hispanola to Peru by the Spaniards and in Brazil by the Portuguese but in many regions this Invasion left only a skeletal native population that could be coerced to perform heavy labor Cortez made it clear that he and other conquistadors had no intention of pushing a plow and the same could be said with respect to other Europeans who freely and voluntarily traveled to the Americas in search of a fortune Western Europe contained no uprooted or Surplus population willing to volunteer for heavy agricultural labor in the tropics at least not until the 17th century when England shipped tens of thousands of indentured servants and convicts to the Chesapeake and the Caribbean especially Barbados in time this labor Supply proved to be wholly inadequate and the indentured servants were replaced by by far larger numbers of African slaves in short while Europeans settled each new world colony in a special and often fortuitous way we can also see a more General pattern being repeated from Hispanola and Brazil in the 16th century to Virginia and Carolina in the 17th first we note a strongly human element of greed a desire for instant wealth from gold and silver whether stolen from Indians seized from the Spaniards by Dutch British or French FR pirate ships or gain from forcing Indians to work in the mines for mineral wealth in a second and usually later alternative colonial leaders turned to cash crops such as tobacco and especially sugar produced by slaves imported from Africa after initial experiments with Indian labor for reasons we will later examine the African workers could never come close to reproducing their numbers except in the Chesapeake by the 1720s and in South Carolina a half century later hence the need for a continuing and growing stream of Labor from Africa to make up for slave mortality and to clear new land and found new colonies for cultivation much of the new world then came to resemble the death furnace of the ancient god Malik consuming African slaves so increasing numbers of Europeans and later white Americans could consume sugar coffee rice and tobacco and what about Africa historians still debate the long-term effects of four centuries of slave exports on Africa itself the fairly recent emphasis on the equality of Euro African trade negotiations has undermined any simplistic model of victimization but a few key points need to be kept in mind clearly the increasing external demand for slave labor led to the death of enormous numbers of Africans killed in wars of enslavement and driven like cattle often Bound by the neck from interor ior locations to the coast many more died or longed for death as they were jammed into open barracoons or stone Forts and then packed into the white men's slave ships since both Africans and Europeans favored the sale of males the resulting preponderance of women in many West African societies helped to increase polygyny and more rapid reproduction overall about 2third of the captives shipped from Africa to the new world were male in the more decentralized societies this same external demand encouraged kidnapping as we saw in chapter 1 with the capture in Sierra Leon of s the future leader of the Amistad Revolt over the centuries Village after Village became the targets of surprise raids by bands of armed men as the African historian Robert harmes comments it was as if each such African person walked around with a price on his or her head no less important was the rise of predatory States such as futa jalone dhomi Asanti kasanji and the lunda Empire which found it financially profitable to wage war on neighbors and sell prisoners to the Portuguese Dutch English French Danes or Americans these Africans mainly sold slaves for luxury goods such as Asian and European textiles rum and Brandy Metal Goods bars of iron tobacco and personal ornaments such as beads copper armlets and ankl after about 1690 with a growing Perfection of European Firearms the enslaving States became increasingly powerful as they exchanged slaves for gunpowder and the latest weapons a relatively few African rulers government officials Military Officers and Merchants acquired symbols of wealth and status in exchange for the massive export of labor but the slave trade did not stimulate an internal African economy indeed when the European demand suddenly ended in the 1850s and 1860s the African slave making mechanisms continued to operate flooding various regions with non-exportable slaves there seemed to be no economic alternative finally we should note that the geographic sources of slaves shifted over time the Atlantic slave trade Drew captives from a vast area stretching 3,500 miles along the west and West Central African Coast from present day Sagal in the North to the col Ari desert in Angola in the South and from 500 to even a th000 miles inland during the 15th century many captives came from sambia the region that now encompasses Sagal Gambia Northern Guinea Southern Mali Southern morania and guinea basau by the early 16th century West Central Africa including present day Congo and Angola had begun to export significant numbers of slaves it would ultimately provide about about 44% of all the slaves shipped out of Africa but beginning in the 1670s with the emergence of British dominance of the trade the bite of Ben in Western Nigeria and Southeast Niger then known as the slave coast and the Gold Coast present day Ghana Burkina Faso Eastern Ivory Coast and Southern Niger became the major slave exporting regions during the mid 18th century the bite of bafra an area that included Western Cameroon and Eastern Nigeria and Sierra Leon also grew to be major sources of slaves Africans from particular regions also tended to concentrate in particular parts of the new world thus slave holders in the Carolinas and Georgia purchased many slaves from West Central Africa and many from sambia and Sierra Leon who were sought for their rice cultivation skills Virginians imported large numbers of igbos and other peoples from the bite of bafra as well as many s Zambian and Aon slaves it seems clear that large numbers of enslaved Africans from Muslims in Brazil to angolans in Louisiana retained their ethnic identities in the new world and organized social rituals such as funerals and even revolts along ethnic or national lines this chapter is meant to underscore the central truth that black slavery was basic and integral to the entire phenomenon we call America this often hidden or disguised truth ultimately involves the profound contradiction of a free society that was made possible by black slave labor until the late 1700s none of the slave Societies or societies with slaves spread out around the world had committed themselves to the twin ideals of Liberty and equality grounded in a dream or vision of historical progress as I have tried to suggest it was the larger Atlantic slave System including North America's trade with the West Indies and the export of Southern rice tobacco Indigo and finally cotton that prepared the way for everything America was to become thus vital links developed between the profit motive which led to inhuman efforts to dehumanize African slaves and the conception of the new world as an environment of Liberation opportunity and upward Mobility racial slavery became an intrinsic and indispensable part of New World settlement not an accident or an unfortunate shortcoming on the margins of the American Experience from the very Beginnings America was part black and indebted to the appalling sacrifices of millions of individual blacks who cleared the forests and tilled the soil yet even the Ardent opponents of slaveholding could seldom if ever acknowledge this basic fact to balance the soaring aspirations released by the American Revolution and by Evangelical religion in the first first and second great Awakenings slavery became the dark underside of the American dream the great exception to our pretentions of perfection the single barrier blocking our way to the Millennium the single manifestation of national sin the tragic result of this formulation was to identify the so-called negro and the historically negative connotations of the word are crucial for an understanding of my point as the Great American problem the road would be clear everything would be perfect if it were not for his or her presence such assumptions tainted some white and even black abolitionist writing and lay behind the numerous projects and proposals for deporting or colonizing the black population outside the United States hence the victims of the great sin of slavery became in this subtle psychological inversion the embodiment of sin exemplified in the negro's alleged and sometimes comic failings indignities and mistakes for some 200 years African-Americans have struggled against accepting or above all internalizing this prescribed identity this psychological curse please consider supporting us by clicking on the like And subscribe buttons your support will be greatly appreciated