Atlantic Slave Trade 21of likely Native American origin, became a slave labor force
throughout the Atlantic islands, and both Spain and Por-
tugal quickly became experts in acquiring additional de-
pendent labor. By the early 1500s, all of the Atlantic islands
were using a mixture of Guanche, Moor, and Atlantic Afri-
can slave labor, establishing a pattern that would be repli-
cated on a much a larger scale in the Americas.
Beginning with Christopher Columbus’s 1492 expedi-
tion through to the establishment of Hispaniola and Brazil
as sites of Iberian colonization in the Americas, the patterns
that began in the Atlantic islands became a foundation for
a variety of activities engaged in by the Spanish and Portu-
guese. Th e depopulation of the Taino in the Spanish Carib-
bean and the Tupi-Guarani in Portuguese Brazil created a
massive demand for labor in these burgeoning sugar plan-
tation colonies. Th e solution to this demand for labor was
off ered fi rst by Bartolomé de Las Casas, a Spanish friar who
supported the mass importation of African slaves as a means
of protecting Native Americans living in the Caribbean and
elsewhere. Th e fl ood gates were opened soon aft er, begin-
ning with the massive importation of enslaved Africans into
Portuguese Brazil. In the early 1570s, Portugal conquered
Angola and established peaceful commercial relations with
the nearby Kongo Kingdom. West-Central Africa therefore
would be an early source of labor for the Portuguese colony
of Brazil and the rest of the Americas, accounting for about
45 percent of all enslaved Africans brought to the Western
Hemisphere between 1519 and 1867.
Entering the fray by the late 1580s were the English,
who began to establish a series of settlements in North
America. Th e fi rst permanent English colony, Jamestown,
was founded in 1607. Th ough they struggled mightily for
the fi rst four years, by 1611 the colonists of Jamestown had
discovered a means to create enormous profi ts—tobacco
cultivation. Aft er a brief and failed experiment with Native
American slavery, the tobacco planters of the region began
to rely heavily on white indentured servants. Th is solution
was only a stop-gap and became completely unfeasible aft er- Indentured servants, including the 300 Africans im-
ported into the Chesapeake between 1619 and 1640, rep-
resented a signifi cant set of problems to tobacco planters:
they only worked a set number of years before they were
freed; once freed, they received “freedom dues” including
seed, land, farming tools, and guns; as land-owning to-
bacco farmers, ex-servants represented a source of com-
petition for the tobacco-planting elite; and the increased
group. In most Algonkian societies, women tended crops
and men hunted. Th us, when British colonists attempted
to enslave the men for tobacco cultivation, this enterprise
was doomed to failure. While all European powers tended
to concentrate on importing enslaved African men, even
if they managed to bring over large numbers of enslaved
women, both groups were fully equipped and socialized
to engage in agricultural labor. Second, by importing men
and women together, the natural outcome would be en-
slaved children and a new generation of labor. Th is was
deemed advantageous over using white indentured ser-
vants, in the Chesapeake especially. Not only did the ser-
vice of indentured workers terminate aft er a set number
of years, but their children were always legally free and
owed no labor obligation to their parents’ master. By en-
slaving the womb of African women, planters throughout
the Americas could guarantee a steady supply of labor that
transcended generations.
When the Portuguese fi rst arrived on the Atlantic coast
of Africa in the 15th century, they witnessed commerce on
a scale Europeans had not seen since Roman times. West
Africa, far from being the backwater many scholars have
envisioned it as, was one of the key centers of trade in the
early modern world. Linked to East and North Africa via
the trans-Saharan trade and, as a result, indirectly con-
nected to Arabia, India, and Indonesia, goods were fl ow-
ing into Atlantic Africa that originated thousands of miles
away. Ultimately, the Portuguese search for the mythical
Prester John—combined with their commercial interests—
led to the establishment of trading posts, factories, and for-
tresses along the West and East African coasts beginning
in the early to mid-16th century. By eff ectively replacing
East African Swahili merchants in the Indian Ocean trade
network, the Portuguese positioned themselves as a global
power with economic interests in Africa, Arabia, India, and
Indonesia.
In the birth of the Atlantic World, one of the most im-
portant events that led to the Atlantic slave trade was the
colonization of the numerous inhabited and uninhabited
Atlantic islands by Iberians. By the 1450s, the Portuguese
had colonized the previously uninhabited Azores, Madeira,
the Cape Verde Islands, and São Tomé and, within a few de-
cades, had transformed each territory into a profi table sugar
plantation colony. Th is pattern was repeated by the Spanish
in the Canary Islands with one slight diff erence—the Ca-
naries were already inhabited by the Guanches. Th is group,