Ideological, doctrinal, religious and political
aspects of the African slave trade17after the Christian Reconquest the influx of slaves virtually ceased. The market-
ing of black slaves was probably the first profitable 'outcome' of the costly
African expeditions.
One often reads that Portuguese rulers, and among them Prince Henry,
known as 'the Navigator', the organizer of Portuguese expeditions to Africa,
sanctioned the import of Africans ostensibly to convert them to Christianity.
It is true that slaves were baptized, but nevertheless sold.
At that time the Church took quite a different line with regard to Africans.
Pope Nicholas V issued a special bull granting the King of Portugal, Alphonso
V, the right to seize lands and enslave heathens in regions discovered by that
time in Africa, and in those that would be discovered. Moreover, the Catholic
clergy, for instance, in the Congo, daily compromised itself and the Church
by indulging openly in the slave trade.^4
In the early sixteenth century, the Spanish established a huge colonial
empire in the West Indies and America. In the process of seizing new lands
they massacred nearly all of the native Indian population. To obtain cheap
manpower they began to bring African slaves, who had proved their worth
in Europe as capable and handy workers, to the New World.
By exporting Africans to America the Spanish were not trying to save
what was left of the Indians. They were eager to preserve their colonies where
there was no manpower to work the mines and plantations. In 1510, the first
large group of African slaves, 250 in all, was brought to the Hispaniola gold
mines. After that, the Spanish Government regularly concluded asiento with
other countries for the right to sell African slaves in Spain's American colonies.
In the second half of the sixteenth century, Portugal began to lose its
monopoly in Africa, and Spain in the New World. The development of capi-
talism in Europe prompted an active colonial policy. Holland, Great Britain
and then France began conquests in America, Asia and Africa, where they
built up their colonial empires.
Having considerably squeezed out Portugal, these countries settled on
Africa's western coast where they built forts and established settlements. In
the West Indies, Holland seized Curaçao and Aruba; Great Britain, Barbados
and Jamaica; France, Guadeloupe, Martinique and, in the late seventeenth
century, Santo Domingo, etc. Brazil, Cayenne, Surinam, New Amsterdam
(New York) and Virginia were among the colonies that emerged in America
at the time.
By the mid-seventeenth century, the main colonies where African labour
was soon to be employed were founded. Following the essential organizational
period in the colonies the development of plantation economies began. The
rapid development of the West Indies and the American colonies would have
been impossible in that period without the mass employment of cheap man-
power.