18 S. U. AbramovaEvidence of the European countries' huge interest in African trade as a
whole, and particularly in the slave trade, was the founding of numerous trade
companies.
This put an end to the first period of development of the slave trade.
Two phases are distinguished within this period; different as they are, they
form a continuation. The first is the transportation of African slaves from
Africa to Europe, mainly to Portugal and partly to Spain. The appearance of
Africans in the European slave markets was not merely the continuation of
the Mediterranean slave trade. Never before had Europeans indulged in the
seizure of slaves on such a huge scale. Never before had the hunt for slaves
been so systematic nor had it been carried on solely for the sake of procuring
slaves. Never before had Europeans come into contact with such a huge
number of slaves belonging to another race and differing from their European
masters not only by their outward appearance but also by their inner make-up
and their perception of the surrounding world, for the distinctions between
European and African reality were drastic.
The second phase is the granting of the first asiento and the delivery of
slaves to the New World, first from Europe, and later direct from Africa. This
was only the beginning of the European-American slave trade.
Formally, the second period of the slave trade began in the late seven-
teenth century and continued to 1807-08, when Great Britain and the United
States of America, the world's two biggest slave-trading powers, abolished
the export of slaves from Africa. Actually the borderline was set by the French
Revolution of 1789, i.e. during the campaigns of Napoleon that followed,
the transport of slaves from Africa was insignificant.
Despite the attempts of monopoly companies to limit the slave trade in
one way or another, it was conducted within that period on an unrestricted
scale. It was regarded at the time as a branch of trade conducive to the nation's
welfare, as 'the first principle and foundation of all the rest, the mainspring of
the machine which sets every wheel in motion'.^6 And it is to the eighteenth
century that Karl Marx's statement that Africa had been turned into a warren
for hunting blacks, refers first of all.^8
In the late eighteenth century, when a campaign was already in progress
to ban the transport of slaves from Africa, defenders of the slave trade produced
numerous arguments in favour of its continuation (see below). Here we shall
dwell only on the climatic theory advocated by all adherents of the slave trade.
The theory alleged that the climate of the West Indies, both Americas and other
parts where African slave labour was widespread, was unbearable to Europeans
and prevented them from working their plantations. It was claimed that the
plantations of European colonists would inevitably fall into decline were it
not for the import of Africans, who were used to the tropical climate and,
moreover, proved to be splendid agricultural workers. The climatic theory