Page 376 - Western Civilization A Brief History, Volume I To 1715 9th - Jackson J. Spielvogel

colonial powers. In the seventeenth century, however, their European neighbors to the north—first the Dutch and then the French and English—moved to replace the Portuguese and Spanish and create their own colo- nial empires. The new rivals and their rivalry soon had an impact on much of the rest of the world—in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.
Africa: The Slave Trade
Although the primary objective of the Portuguese in sailing around Africa was to find a sea route to the Spice Islands, they soon discovered that profits could be made in Africa itself. So did other Europeans.
Traffic in slaves was not new, and at first, the Portu- guese simply replaced European slaves with African ones. During the second half of the fifteenth century, about a thousand slaves were taken to Portugal each year. Most wound up serving as domestic servants for affluent families in Europe. But the discovery of the Americas in the 1490s and the planting of sugarcane in South America and on the islands of the Caribbean changed the situation drastically.
Cane sugar had first been introduced to Europeans from the Middle East during the Crusades. During the sixteenth century, sugarcane plantations were set up along the eastern coast of Brazil and on several islands in the Caribbean. Because the growing of cane sugar demands both skill and large quantities of labor, the new plantations required more workers than could be provided by the small American Indian population in the New World, which had been decimated by diseases imported from the Old World. Since the climate and soil of much of West Africa were not conducive to the cultivation of sugar, African slaves began to be shipped to Brazil and the Caribbean to work on the plantations. The first were sent from Portugal, but in 1518, a Span- ish ship carried the first boatload of African slaves directly from Africa to the New World.
GROWTH IN THE SLAVE TRADE During the next two cen- turies, the trade in slaves grew dramatically and became part of the triangular trade connecting Europe, Africa, and the American continents that char- acterized the new Atlantic economy (see Map 14.2).
0 0
1,500
3,000 1,500
4,500 Kilometers 3,000 Miles
MAP 14.2 Triangular Trade in the Atlantic Economy. As the trade in slaves grew, it became a part of the triangular trade route that characterized the Atlantic economy, involving the exchange of goods and slaves between the western coast of Europe, the slave depots on the African coast, and the ports of North and South America.
ENGLAND HOLLAND FRANCE
PORTUGAL SPAIN Ceuta
NEW
SPAIN Hispaniola Tenochtitlán
(Mexico City)
Porto Bello
Pacific Ocean
SENEGAMBIA GOLD COAST
Q
What were the important source regions for slaves, and where were most of the slaves taken?
PERU BRAZIL
CONGO
Mozambique ANGOLA
Cape of Good Hope
Bahia
Atlantic Ocean
Areas under Spanish control Areas under Portuguese control Areas under French control Areas under English control Areas under Dutch control
Independent trading cities Tordesillas Demarcation Line Slave trade routes
European slave traders Goods from Americas
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Chapter 14
Europe and the World: New Encounters, 1500–1800
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