18 Atlantic African, American, and European Backgrounds to Contact, Commerce, and Enslavementsent to Sicily for cane plantings and sugar technicians. Th e
desire for cane fi eld labor fundamentally altered the nature
of Portuguese slavery from domestic servitude to plantation
labor. In the 15th and 16th centuries almost all of the Atlan-
tic islands experienced sugar booms. By the 1460s, Madeira
was the largest producer of sugar in the Western world.
Th e Atlantic islands provided a model and a launching
ground for New World sugar cultivation based on African
slavery and the plantation system; their successful exploi-
tation prompted European explorers to seek additional is-
lands further west in the Atlantic Ocean. Th e prospect of
fi nding new Atlantic islands and the aspiration of reach-
ing India inspired Christopher Columbus’s voyage of 1492.
Trained in the Madeira sugar trade as a young man, Colum-
bus brought his experience to the New World on his second
voyage of 1493 when he introduced sugar cane plantings
to the Caribbean. In the following century, the immense
profi ts of sugar plantation in the Americas prompted the
expansion of the Atlantic slave trade. Th e Atlantic islands
not only established the pattern of European colonization
and plantation for the New World, but also served as crucial
way stations for Atlantic slavers.
See also: Atlantic Slave Trade; Sugar PlantationsChristina Proenza-ColesBibliography
Curtin, Philip D. Th e Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex:
Essays in Atlantic History. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1989.
Eltis, David. Th e Rise of African Slavery in the Americas. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Mintz, Sidney. Sweetness and Power: Th e Place of Sugar in Modern
History. New York: Penguin Books, 1986.
Th ornton, John. Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic
World, 1 400– 1 800. New York: Cambridge University Press,
1998.
Wright, Donald. African Americans in the Colonial Era. Arlington
Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1990.Atlantic Slave Trade
In the 15th century, Europeans—beginning with the Portu-
guese—engaged in trade relations with Africans along the
Atlantic coast which, over time, would lead to the one of the
most tragic chapters in human history. In search of commer-
cial opportunities and allies against the Islamic conquest ofMediterranean markets. Iberian endeavors to build trad-
ing factories and slave-raiding forts in the Canary Islands
made them the fi rst site of European trading and raiding in
the Atlantic. In 1402 Castile sponsored the fi rst permanent
colonization of the Canaries with Norman colonists. In
the following century the Canary Islands produced sugar,
wine, and sheep and cattle products. Because the Canary
Islands were a source of profi t for Europeans, much atten-
tion was devoted to their navigation, shipping south of the
Straights of Gibraltar increased, and raiding and commer-
cial activity expanded farther south. Th e Canaries served as
a crucial base for the development of additional European
raiding and trading operations along the African coast as
well as for the colonization of uninhabited Atlantic islands
to the west.
In the 15th century, Portuguese colonized the unin-
habited islands of Madeira, the Azores, Cape Verde, and
São Tomé and exported their wild products: honey, wax,
and wood. Madeira and the Canaries soon began to export
large quantities of wheat, cultivated by Canarians pressed
into service, as well as dependent laborers from Europe, to
consumers in Portugal, North Africa, and West Africa. Ma-
deira also produced and profi tably exported wine; however,
the cultivation of sugar, particularly in Madeira and, later,
São Tomé, had the largest economic impact for the Atlantic
islands, and, ultimately, the Atlantic World. Preceding pro-
duction in the New World, Portuguese and northern Ital-
ians developed a sugar plantation complex in the Atlantic
islands where a nonreproducing slave labor force produced
massive quantities of sugar for export.
Th e cultivation of sugarcane had originated in South-
west Asia during the ancient period and gradually spread
westward to Persia. In the 12th and 13th centuries, Arabs
brought sugar cultivation to the Mediterranean where the
fi rst plantation system emerged. Mediterranean shippers
imported bond laborers from southern Russia (Slavs from
whom the word slave derives), the eastern Mediterranean,
and North Africa to produce sugar for a European mar-
ket. By the 14th century, Cyprus produced large quantities
of sugar with the labor of Syrian and Arab slaves, and the
plantation system, based on coerced labor, large land units,
and long-range commerce, moved still west, to Sicily. Th e
Sicilian sugar plantation served as a model for the Portu-
guese and Spanish colonies in the Atlantic islands where
climate and soil were favorable and nearby African sources
provided coerced workers. In 1420 Portugal’s Prince Henry