Page 238 - The Dutch Caribbean Isles

• he trade of enslaved Africans in the
T Atlantic has its origins in the explo-
rations of Portuguese mariners down
the coast of West Africa in the 15th
century. Before that, contact with Afri-
can slave markets was made to ransom
Portuguese who had been captured
by the intense North African Barbary
pirate attacks on Portuguese ships and
coastal villages, frequently leaving
them depopulated. The first Europeans
to use enslaved Africans in the New
World were the Spaniards, who sought
auxiliaries for their conquest expedi-
tions and labourers on islands such
as Cuba and Hispaniola. The alarming
decline in the native population had
spurred the first royal laws protect-
ing them. The first enslaved Africans
arrived in Hispaniola in 1501. After
Portugal had succeeded in establish-
ing sugar plantations in northern Brazil
ca. 1545, Portuguese merchants on the
West African coast began to supply
enslaved Africans to the sugar plant-
ers. While at first these planters had
relied almost exclusively on the native
Tupani for slave labour, after 1570 they
began importing Africans, as a series of
epidemics had decimated the already
destabilized Tupani communities. By
1630, Africans had replaced the Tupani
as the largest contingent of labour on
Brazilian sugar plantations. This ended
the European medieval household
tradition of slavery, resulted in Brazil’s which then controlled the world’s seas,
receiving the most enslaved Africans,
and revealed sugar cultivation and
processing as the reason that roughly
84% of these Africans were shipped to
the New World.
•
I• n Britain, America, Portugal and in
parts of Europe, opposition devel-
oped against the slave trade. Op-
position to the trade was led by the
Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)
and establishment Evangelicals such
as William Wilberforce. The move-
ment was joined by many and began
to protest against the trade, but they
were opposed by the owners of the
colonial holdings. Under the leadership
of Thomas Jefferson, the new state of
Virginia in 1778 became the first state
and one of the first jurisdictions any-
where to stop the importation of slaves
for sale; it made it a crime for traders
to bring in slaves from out of state or
from overseas for sale; migrants from
other states were allowed to bring
their own slaves. Denmark, which had
been active in the slave trade, was the
first country to ban the trade through
legislation in 1792, which took effect
in 1803. Britain banned the slave trade
in 1807, imposing stiff fines for any
slave found aboard a British ship (see
Slave Trade Act 1807). The Royal Navy,
moved to stop other nations from con-
tinuing the slave trade and declared
that slaving was equal to piracy and
was punishable by death.