Slavery in Latin America(16th Century)

Alexander, Balin, Will

Timeline● 1470-1480: Portuguese starts transportation to Cape Verde and Madeira Islands

● 1492: Columbus discovered “India” the islands of Hispaniola

● 1501: Spanish bring African slaves from Africa to Santo Domingo (the present day capital of Dominican

Republic)

● 1513: Portuguese established license and “asientos.”

● 1540: Spain had a population of 7 million people. They were looking for more space for their massive

growing population.

● 1562: Britain joins the slave trade. John Hawkins is the man who starts the mass exportation of slaves

across the Atlantic.

● 1570: 20000 slaves in all of Mexico

● 1570: Portuguese colonized Luanda, colony of Angola.

By Alexander

Timeline

● 1586: Slaves in Lima Peru increase exponentially over the next 60 years

● 1600: African- Americans outnumbered Europeans

● 1570-1580: Queen Elizabeth challenges Spanish ships in the Atlantic and Pacific. Sir Francis Drake

attacked Spanish settlements

● 1581: Spain settles in Florida (St. Augustine). They travel with slaves, who are the first slaves in

America.

By Alexander

Definition

● Slavery: dominance to another force

● Amerindian: another term for American Indian, used chiefly in anthropological and linguistic

contexts.

● Asientos: license to own slaves

● Mulattoes: a person of mixed white and black ancestry, especially a person with one white and

one black parent

● Hacienda: a Spanish estate

● Zacatecas, Guanajuato, Pachuco: tribes of Mexico under Spanish rule

Why● Since the disease that the Europeans brought to the new world cause severe epidemics among the

native populations about 90% of the population died. This meant that there wasn’t nearly as many

natives to use as laborers which further lead Spain & Portugal to use Africans.

● Since the Spanish economy was doing well the wages were generally pretty high which would of made

using their own citizens as laborers too expensive.

● Both Spain and Portugal had got done with enserfment and were more interested in a free-labor

source versus a partial free-labor source.

● Some natives weren’t used to peasant labor systems which made it increasingly hard to implement it.

● Also some natives just weren’t as efficient as African slaves and would cost more money.

By Balin

Why

● An example of a non cost efficient peasant labor system was the Tupi-Guarani people in Brazil which

were never introduced with this idea. This made it too hard for the Portuguese to inforce and wasn’t

profitable.

● Back to the the economy, Spain had a population boom increasing to eight million from seven million.

All this added and helped the economy with more labor which would later lead to higher ages and

Spain unable to use their own citizens and had to use African slaves.

● Spain had armies stationed overseas which both used people and added to the problem of an

expensive workforce.

● Portugal being slightly different but also had a problem with using their own people because they

spent most their time and resources in Africa/Asia with gold, spices, ivory and other such goods. At

the time the only export from Brazil was dyewood which obviously wasn’t as sought out as gold. This

is why Portugal had to use slaves and not their own people.

Coffee Carriers● Slaves would have to do lots of labor intensive

work

● This shows how much of a workforce that was

needed

● Even though carrying coffee isn’t the worst labor

many others were which caused death which

would repeat the cycle of buying even more slaves

By Balin

Who & How Portugal:

● Portugal had already been transporting African slaves for use in the eastern Atlantic by the late 1400’s

● Most of the African slaves being taken to the new world came from the Senegambia region, close to

the Senegal river, but after the development of the Luanda they started coming from Kongo and

Angola

● Luanda was a Portuguese settlement in Angola

● The Slaves were shipped across the Atlantic to the port of Cartagena on the northern coast of

Colombia

● From Cartagena they were taken to Portobello in Panama, and then they were taken by land to the

Pacific Coast. From there they were shipped to Callao, the entry port for Lima. This process took

around four to five months.

● The slaves were then sold throughout South America By Will

Who & HowSpain:

● Wealth generated from the conquest of the American heartland allowed the Spaniards to have the

necessary capital to import African slaves

● The early years of the Atlantic slave trade had African slaves going to Mexico and Peru

● Cortez and his armies had hundreds of African slaves in their conquest of Mexico in the 1520’s. Pizarro

and Almargo also used African slaves when they conquered Peru in the 1530’s

● By the mid 1550’s there were almost 3,000 slaves in the Peruvian viceroyalty

● Need for slaves in Peru rose due to the development of the Potosí silver production. Peru was one of

the wealthiest zones in the New World

● The Portuguese were able to meet this demand and supply the Spanish market after the unification of

the Portuguese and Spanish crowns in 1580

● In early 1540’s, African slaves in groups of ten to fifteen were working in gold deposits in the Andes

By Will

Slave Route● Portugal and Spain traveled

down coast of Africa to the

Ivory and Gold Coast.

● Spain went northwest to

Hispaniola

● Portugal went south to Brazil

and west to Panama

● Portugal went through

Panama to get to the Pacific

Ocean

● Portugal then went south to

Lima, Peru to deliver slaves.

By Alexander

Where● Most slaves came from Senegambia which was Senegal and Gambia

● At its height ⅙ slaves came from the Gambia river

● Other places were the gold coast(Ghana and the ivory coast), Angola, and the Congo

● Most slaves went to either Brazil or the Caribbean, in total 4.8 million went to Brazil and 1.2 went to

Jamaica alone

● 48% of slaves went to the Caribbean and 41% went to Brazil

● The ones that went to Peru had to first go to the Caribbean then cross over Panama and then finish

the rest of the way to Peru by boat.

Slave Ships● The slave ships would carry hundreds of slaves

● The slaves were tightly packed to maximize space and

make travel more profitable

● Dysentery, scurvy, and dehydration led to a high mortality

rate

By Will

Effects● Africans long term advancements were devastated due to the mass exportation of slaves. These slaves

were a large part of the economy in Africa.

● Many tribes had conflicts with each other because they would invade and steal from each others.

● Peace was few and far between in Africa due to the mass amount of conflict between tribes.

● A large portion of Africa's population was stripped away due to the exportation of slavery.

● The economy was devastated because many resources were taken from Africa with no exchange.

Tribal leaders only care about the well being of themselves and not their tribes.

● 10-15% of slaves died during interior African travels to the coast.

● Slaves were sometimes expected to walk as much as 300 miles to the coast.

● Atlantic passage was devastating to slave ships and slaves because of the horrible storm conditions

and the mentality of the slaves

By Alexander

Video● The Atlantic slave trade spanned between 3 continents. Europe, Africa and America.

● There had been centuries of contact between Europe and Africa via the Mediterranean Sea.

● The crops grown in the new colonies such as sugar cane, tobacco, and cotton.

● To meet the massive demand for labor, the Europeans looked to Africa.

● When the captain came offering manufacture goods, weapons and rum for slaves. African kings and

merchants had little reason to hesitate to trade.

● Capturing slaves became a motivation for war rather than its results.

● About 20% of slaves would never see land again.

● Many inland Africans had never seen whites before and thought them to be cannibals, constantly

taking people away and returning for more.

● When the slave trade was finally outlawed in the Americas and Europe, the African kingdoms whose

economies had come to dominate, collapsed.

● In all of these ways, the Atlantic slave trade was an injustice on a massive scale whose impact has

continued long after abolition.