The Slave Trade

The Slave Trade (Africa In The Caribbean)

The Atlantic slave trade brought about 11 million Africans to the Americas and over 40 percent of them came to the Caribbean, deeply shaping the region’s population and cultures.




Africa became Portugal’s exclusive concern after signing the Treaty of
Former slaves in Puerto Rico, 1898. Credit: informafrica.com
Tordesillas with Spain in 1494. The two kingdom’s agreed that Spain would have exclusive rights to the western route to the Indies while Portugal would have a monopoly on the African route. Portuguese merchants were therefore the lawful providers of African captives to Spanish colonists in the Caribbean. At first, they received individual asientos, the Spanish royal license to sell slaves in its colonies.

But in 1562 the Englishman JOHN HAWKINS assembled a group of financiers to invest in the slave trade. He set sail for the African coast where he hijacked a Portuguese slaving ship near modern Sierra Leone. Hawkins took the enslaved Africans and sold 301 of them to Spanish colonists in the Caribbean. The extraordinary profits he brought home generated English interest in the slave trade.

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