Page 3 - Sir Francis Drake

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Piracy & Slave Trading
John Hawkins and the other Devon seamen were merchants, but they also found piracy profitable. During war, when pirates stole from the ships of the enemy, it was often seen as an act of patriotism. When pirates stole from one another, whether in war or in peace, the authorities usually looked the other way. Many historians often use the word privateer to describe the acts of theft, and evil inflicted by pirates such as Hawkins and Drake. Hawkins was a merchant who became wealthy through piracy and slave trading. Although it was against English law to capture and transport humans, Queen Elizabeth I looked the other way when she
John Hawkins
https://youtu.be/3tdrb_ZIvyo
realized the amount of money brought to the Crown from trading slaves. John Hawkins, a religious man, was the pioneer of the British slave trade. His son, Robert Hawkins took over the trade along with Francis Drake.
Francis Drake grew up on the Devon coast where piracy was common, not highly respected, but tolerated.
Big Business: The West India Dock in London was built because those profiting from the slave trade pressured the city to build a bigger & better dock.
Slave Trade
Britain’s involvement in the trade of slaves from West Africa to the Americas began during the reign of Elizabeth I. John Hawkins, a merchant, privateer and naval commander was the first English slave trader. In 1562, Hawkins began transporting captured West Africans to Spanish colonies in the Americas. Elizabeth I believed that capturing Africans against their will “would be detestable and call down the vengeance of Heaven upon the undertakers”, but after realizing the huge profits, she lent Royal Ships to two of his slaving expeditions.
Between 1662 and 1807 British and British colonial ships purchased an estimated 3,415,500 Africans, the survivors of the “middle passage” were
sold into slavery in the Americas. The transatlantic slave trade was the largest forced migration in human history, completely changing the face of Africa, the Americas and Europe. Only Portugal/Brazil transported more Africans across the Atlantic than Britain. Until the 1730s, London was a major slaving capitol and dominated the British trade in enslaved people. Because of the large scale of the port’s slave and trade activities, the West India Docks were built because slave traders pressured the city to build a bigger dock to handle the activity.