Did Portugal participate in the slave trade?
Japan–Portugal relations
After the Portuguese first made contact with Japan in 1543, a large scale slave trade developed in which Portuguese purchased Japanese as slaves in Japan and sold them to various locations overseas, including Portugal itself, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Many documents mention the large slave trade along with protests against the enslavement of Japanese. Japanese slaves are believed to be the first of their nation to end up in Europe, and the Portuguese purchased large numbers of Japanese slave girls to bring to Portugal for sexual purposes, as noted by the Church in 1555. King Sebastian feared that it was having a negative effect on Catholic proselytization since the slave trade in Japanese was growing to massive proportions, so he commanded that it be banned in 1571
Japanese diaspora
Japanese have lived overseas since at least the 16th century. After the Portuguese Empire first made contact with Japan in 1543, a large scale of slave trade developed in which Portuguese purchased Japanese as slaves in Japan and sold them to various locations overseas, including Portugal itself, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Many documents mention the large slave trade along with protests against the enslavement of Japanese. Japanese slaves are believed to be the first of their nation to end up in Europe, and the Portuguese purchased large numbers of Japanese slave girls to bring to Portugal for sexual purposes, as noted by the Church in 1555. King Sebastian feared that it was having a negative effect on Catholic proselytization since the slave trade in Japanese was growing to massive proportions, so he commanded that it be banned in 1571.
Luanda
Luanda was Portugal's bridgehead from 1627, except during the Dutch rule of Luanda, from 1640 to 1648, as Fort Aardenburgh. The city served as the centre of slave trade to Brazil from circa 1550 to 1836. The slave trade was conducted mostly with the Portuguese colony of Brazil; Brazilian ships were the most numerous in the port of Luanda. This slave trade also involved local merchants and warriors who profited from the trade. During this period, no large scale territorial conquest was intended by the Portuguese; only a few minor settlements were established in the immediate hinterland of Luanda, some on the last stretch of the Kwanza River.
Slavery in Africa
The final major transformation of slave relationships came with the inconsistent emancipation efforts starting in the mid-19th century. As European authorities began to take over large parts of inland Africa starting in the 1870s, the colonial policies were often confusing on the issue. For example, even when slavery was deemed illegal, colonial authorities would return escaped slaves to their masters. Slavery persisted in some countries under colonial rule and in some instances it was not until independence that slavery practices were significantly transformed. Anti-colonial struggles in Africa often brought slaves and former slaves together with masters and former masters to fight for independence; however, this cooperation was short-lived and following independence political parties would often form based upon the stratifications of slaves and masters. In some parts of Africa, slavery and slavery-like practices continue to this day and the problem has proven to be difficult for governments and civil society to eliminate.
Efforts by Europeans against slavery and the slave trade began in the late 18th century and had a large impact on slavery in Africa. Portugal was the first country in the continent to abolish slavery in metropolitan Portugal and Portuguese India by a bill issued on 12 February 1761, but this did not affect their colonies of Brazil and Portuguese Africa. France abolished slavery in 1794. However, slavery was again allowed by Napoleon in 1802 and not abolished for good until 1848. In 1803, Denmark-Norway became the first country from Europe to implement a ban on the slave trade. Slavery itself was not banned until 1848. Britain followed in 1807 with the passage of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act by Parliament. This law allowed stiff fines, increasing with the number of slaves transported, for captains of slave ships. Britain followed this with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 which freed all slaves in the British Empire. British pressure on other countries resulted in them agreeing to end the slave trade from Africa. For example, the 1820 U.S. Law on Slave Trade made slave trading piracy, punishable by death. In addition, the Ottoman Empire abolished slave trade from Africa in 1847 under British pressure.
Antisemitic canard
In an article written by anti-racism activist Tim Wise about such accusations of Jewish financial control, he wrote: 
Anti-Jewish propagandists have tried to exaggerate the role of Jews in the Atlantic slave trade. In the 1490s, the Jews were expelled from Spain and Portugal, at a time when trade with the New World was opening up, leading to their participation in Atlantic trading in general, and their participation in the Atlantic slave trade in particular. Jewish participation in the slave trade was significant in Brazil, Curaçao, Suriname, and Rhode Island, but it was otherwise modest or minimal, and Jews had virtually no role in the slave-trading of Britain or France. The Nation of Islam published "The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews" in 1991, which asserted that Jews played a major role in the Atlantic slave trade. The book was widely criticized as anti-Semitic and led to additional scholarly research on the subject, including books such as "Jews and the American Slave Trade" by Saul S. Friedman, which concluded that Jewish involvement in the slave trade was "minimal" and comparable to other groups of slave-traders such as the English, and the accusations were an Antisemitic canard. In 1995 the American Historical Association (AHA) issued a statement condemning "any statement alleging that Jews played a disproportionate role in the Atlantic slave trade".
Early impact of Mesoamerican goods in Iberian society
Despite the mutual trade exclusion that existed between Spain and Portugal in the early 16th century, Portuguese merchants still acquired goods from the Spanish. This led to a Portuguese dominance on the pepper trade within Europe. The Portuguese trade with the New World flourished despite the Treaty of Tordesillas due to illicit trade and Spanish permission to Portuguese merchants to bring African slaves and other trade goods into the colonies. This obvious disregard towards sanctions on trade didn't signify inherent disloyalty, but was a necessity for those whose livelihoods depended on such trade. The trade underground trade between Spain and Portugal was heightened by the African slave trade and became well established as mutually beneficial crops (such as maize, grains, squash, and beans were traded between the nations). Venice, Genoa, and Florence (among other Old World nations) depended on Iberians for New world goods in the early 16th century.
If not for the incorporation of American "miracle foods", Europe may have not pulled out of its 16th-century cycles of hunger and starvation. The dependence on Spain and Portugal for New World goods perpetuated their colonization throughout the world. This, in turn, led to Spain and Portugal becoming the two leading world powers in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Colonial history of Angola
Up to the end of the 19th century the hold of Portugal over the interior of the province was slight, though its influence extended to the Congo and Zambezi basins. The abolition of the external slave trade proved very injurious to the trade of the seaports. From 1860 onward, the agricultural resources of the country were developed with increasing energy, a work in which Brazilian merchants took the lead. After the definite partition of Africa among the European powers, Portugal applied herself with some seriousness to exploit Angola and her other African possessions. Nevertheless, in comparison with its natural wealth, the development of the country had been slow.
Slavery in Angola
Slavery in Angola existed since the late 15th century when Portugal established contacts with the peoples living in what is the Northwest of the present country, and founded several trade posts on the coast. A number of those peoples, like the Imbangala and the Mbundu, were active slave traders for centuries (see African slave trade). In the late 16th century, Kingdom of Portugal's explorers founded the fortified settlement of Luanda, and later on minor trade posts and forts on the Kwanza River as well as on the Atlantic coast southwards until Benguela. The main component of their trading activities consisted in a heavy involvement in the Atlantic slave trade. Slave trafficking was abolished in 1836 by the Portuguese authorities.
History of Portugal
After 1815, the Portuguese expanded their trading ports along the African coast, moving inland to take control of Angola and Mozambique. The slave trade was abolished in 1836, in part because many foreign slave ships were flying the Portuguese flag. In Portuguese India, trade flourished in the colony of Goa, with its subsidiary colonies of Macau, near Hong Kong on the China coast, and Timor, north of Australia. The Portuguese successfully introduced Catholicism and the Portuguese language into their colonies, while most settlers continued to head to Brazil.
History of slavery
Among many other European slave markets, Genoa, and Venice were some well-known markets, their importance and demand growing after the great plague of the 14th century which decimated much of the European work force.
The maritime town of Lagos, Portugal, was the first slave market created in Portugal for the sale of imported African slaves, the "Mercado de Escravos", which opened in 1444. In 1441, the first slaves were brought to Portugal from northern Mauritania. Prince Henry the Navigator, major sponsor of the Portuguese African expeditions, as of any other merchandise, taxed one fifth of the selling price of the slaves imported to Portugal. By the year 1552 African slaves made up 10 percent of the population of Lisbon. In the second half of the 16th century, the Crown gave up the monopoly on slave trade and the focus of European trade in African slaves shifted from import to Europe to slave transports directly to tropical colonies in the Americas—in the case of Portugal, especially Brazil. In the 15th century, one third of the slaves were resold to the African market in exchange of gold. Slavery was abolished in mainland Portugal and Portuguese India in 1761. It was finally abolished in all Portuguese colonies in 1869.
Racism in Brazil
Calls for the end of slavery in Brazil began in the early 19th century. In 1825, José Bonifácio Andrada e Silva, who was a prominent figure in leading Brazil to independence from Portugal, was in high favor of gradual emancipation. Britain also contributed to the push for abolition in Brazil, by abolishing the slave trade. This was a significant move due to the fact that the British was Brazil's main trade partner. A small amount of legislation also helped lead up to the official abolition of slavery in 1888. First, in 1871 the Law of the Free Womb declared that all the children of slaves that were born after the law was passed were to be freed; followed by the 1885 Sexagenarian Law, which freed slaves over sixty years of age.
Piracy in the Atlantic World
The slave trade/Middle Passage was just as much a part of life in the Atlantic as was the merchant shipping of goods. Many European powers had ties to the slaving trade by at least the eighteenth century; countries like Portugal, Sweden, Netherlands, France, and England all had outposts on the African coast. Slavers would conduct their business with the larger African tribes who would buy weapons from the Europeans and in turn use them to collect members of other tribes to sell to slave captains. Once in the hands of a slaver, the slave represented a substantial investment as Ian Baucom suggests, by the insuring of slaves purchased. Some European cities such as Liverpool would become successful from operating in this trade system, and would drive the free markets of slavery to handle as much business as was possible.
First wave of European colonization
Labor in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies became scarce. European diseases and forced labor began killing the indigenous people in insurmountable numbers. Therefore, slaves were seen only as a business venture due to the labor shortages. These slaves were forced to work in jobs such as agriculture and mining. According to David Eltis, areas controlled by the Spanish such as Mexico, Peru, and large parts of Central America used forced slave labor in "mining activities". In 1494 the Pope ushered in the Treaty of Tordesillas, granting Spain and Portugal two separate parts of the world. Due to this treaty, Portugal had the monopoly on acquiring the slaves from Africa. However, Spain, like Portugal, needed the labor force to pursue their personal economic gains. This gave Portugal an increased revenue stream. African slaves were sold to the Spanish colonies through an internal reform known as the "asiento"; which gave the right, by the Spanish Crown, for acquiring African slaves from the Portuguese traders.
Atlantic slave trade
The major Atlantic slave trading nations, ordered by trade volume, were: the Portuguese, the British, the French, the Spanish, and the Dutch Empires. Several had established outposts on the African coast where they purchased slaves from local African leaders. These slaves were managed by a factor who was established on or near the coast to expedite the shipping of slaves to the New World. Slaves were kept in a factory while awaiting shipment. Current estimates are that about 12 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic, although the number purchased by the traders was considerably higher, as the passage had a high death rate. Near the beginning of the 19th century, various governments acted to ban the trade, although illegal smuggling still occurred. In the early 21st century, several governments issued apologies for the transatlantic slave trade.
Economic history of Portugal
After initiating the European slave trade in Sub-Saharan Africa through its involvement in the African slave trade, Portugal played a decreasing role in it over the next few centuries. Although they were the first Europeans to establish trading settlements in Sub-Saharan Africa, they failed to press home their advantage. Nevertheless, they retained a clear presence in the three regions which received their particular attention during the original age of exploration. The closest of these, on the sea journey from Portugal, was Portuguese Guinea, known also, from its main economic activity, as the Slave Coast. The local African rulers in Guinea, who prospered greatly from the slave trade, had no interest in allowing the Europeans to move any further inland than the fortified coastal settlements where the trading took place. In the 15th century, Portugal's Company of Guinea was one of the first chartered commercial companies established by Europeans in other continents during the Age of Discovery. The Company's task was to deal with the spices and to fix the prices of the goods. The Portuguese presence in Guinea was largely limited to the port of Bissau. For a brief period in the 1790s, the British attempted to establish a rival foothold on an offshore island, at Bolama. By the 19th century, however, the Portuguese were sufficiently secure in Bissau to regard the neighbouring coastline as their own special territory.
History of Africa
From the late 15th century, Europeans joined the slave trade. One could say the Portuguese led in partnership with other Europeans. That includes the triangular trade, with the Portuguese initially acquiring slaves through trade and later by force as part of the Atlantic slave trade. They transported enslaved West, Central, and Southern Africans overseas. Subsequently, European colonization of Africa developed rapidly from around 10% (1870) to over 90% (1914) in the Scramble for Africa (1881–1914). However following struggles for independence in many parts of the continent, as well as a weakened Europe after the Second World War , decolonization took place across the continent, culminating in the 1960 Year of Africa.
Afro-Mexicans
Important economic sectors such as sugar production and mining relied heavily on slave labor during that time. After 1640, slave labor became less important but the reasons are not clear. The Spanish Crown cut off contacts with Portuguese slave traders after Portugal gained its independence. Slave labor declined in mining as the high profit margins allowed the recruitment of wage labor. In addition, the indigenous and mestizo population increased, and with them the size of the free labor force. In the later colonial period, most slaves continued to work in sugar production but also in textile mills, which were the two sectors that needed a large, stable workforce. Neither could pay enough to attract free laborers to its arduous work. Slave labor remained important to textile production until the later 18th century when cheaper English textiles were imported.
Slave labor was most common in Mexico City, where they were domestic servants such as maids, coachmen, personal service or armed bodyguards. However, they were more of a status symbol rather than an economic necessity.
Treaty of Lisbon (1668)
Portugal’s restoration of independence freed it to pursue the course mapped out by the pioneers of commercial imperialism. During the seventeenth century, its economy depended largely upon entrepôt trade in tobacco and sugar, and the export of salt. During the eighteenth century, even though staples were not abandoned, the Portuguese economy came to be based more upon slaves, gold, leather, and wine. Portuguese trade, centered in the busy port of Lisbon, was most influenced by Anglo-Dutch capitalism and by the colonial economy in Brazil.
History of Angola
Trade was mostly with the Portuguese colony of Brazil; Brazilian ships were the most numerous in the ports of Luanda and Benguela. By this time, Angola, a Portuguese colony, was in fact like a colony of Brazil, paradoxically another Portuguese colony. A strong Brazilian influence was also exercised by the Jesuits in religion and education. War gradually gave way to the philosophy of trade Slave-trading routes and the conquests that made them possible were the driving force for activities between the different areas; independent states were subjugated to the demands of American slavery In the high plains (the Planalto), the most important states were those of Bié and Bailundo, the latter being noted for its production of foodstuffs and rubber. The interior remained largely free of Portuguese control as late as the 19th century.
Colonial Brazil
The Portuguese attempted to severely restrict colonial trade, meaning that Brazil was only allowed to export and import goods from Portugal and other Portuguese colonies. Brazil exported sugar, tobacco, cotton and native products and imported from Portugal wine, olive oil, textiles and luxury goods – the latter imported by Portugal from other European countries. Africa played an essential role as the supplier of slaves, and Brazilian slave traders in Africa frequently exchanged cachaça, a distilled spirit derived from sugarcane, and shells, for slaves. This comprised what is now known as the Triangular trade between Europe, Africa and the Americas during the colonial period.
Slavery in Brazil
The Portuguese became involved with the African slave trade first during the Reconquista ("reconquest") of the Iberian Peninsula mainly through the mediation of the Alfaqueque: the person tasked with the rescue of Portuguese captives, slaves and prisoners of war; and then later in 1441, long before the colonization of Brazil, but now as slave traders. Slaves exported from Africa during this initial period of the Portuguese slave trade primarily came from Mauritania, and later the Upper Guinea coast. Scholars estimate that as many as 156,000 slaves were exported from 1441 to 1521 to Iberia and the Atlantic islands from the African coast. The trade made the shift from Europe to the Americas as a primary destination for slaves around 1518. Prior to this time, slaves were required to pass through Portugal to be taxed before making their way to the Americas.
Adandozan
Adandozan responded to the slowing of the slave trade by trying to reform the economy to focus on agricultural production. He increased opportunities for agriculture and made the Corn Customs a primary festival held publicly. While attempting these reforms, changed policies in Europe largely undermined his efforts. The British abolished the slave trade in 1807 and began pressuring other countries in Europe to do the same. As part of these efforts they signed an agreement in 1810 with the Portuguese which allowed slave trade only at ports where the Portuguese already traded slaves and no new ports, Whydah was specifically mentioned as a port which could have trade while Porto-Novo, Badagry, and Little Popo (all rival slave trade ports) could not. The result was a sudden increase in the Portuguese slave trade in Whydah.
Atlantic slave trade
The trade of enslaved Africans in the Atlantic has its origins in the explorations of Portuguese mariners down the coast of West Africa in the 15th century. Before that, contact with African 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 expeditions and labourers on islands such as Cuba and Hispaniola. The alarming decline in the native population had spurred the first royal laws protecting them (Laws of Burgos, 1512–13). The first enslaved Africans arrived in Hispaniola in 1501. After Portugal had succeeded in establishing sugar plantations ("engenhos") in northern Brazil ca. 1545, Portuguese merchants on the West African coast began to supply enslaved Africans to the sugar planters. 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 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.
As Britain rose in naval power and settled continental North America and some islands of the West Indies, they became the leading slave traders. At one stage the trade was the monopoly of the Royal Africa Company, operating out of London. But, following the loss of the company's monopoly in 1689, Bristol and Liverpool merchants became increasingly involved in the trade. By the late 17th century, one out of every four ships that left Liverpool harbour was a slave trading ship. Much of the wealth on which the city of Manchester, and surrounding towns, was built in the late 18th century, and for much of the 19th century, was based on the processing of slave-picked cotton and manufacture of cloth. Other British cities also profited from the slave trade. Birmingham, the largest gun-producing town in Britain at the time, supplied guns to be traded for slaves. 75% of all sugar produced in the plantations was sent to London, and much of it was consumed in the highly lucrative coffee houses there.
Slavery in Portugal
The high demand for slaves was due to a shortage of laborers in Portugal. Black slaves were in higher demand than Moorish slaves because they were much easier to convert to Christianity and less likely to escape. Although it was more expensive to purchase a slave than it was to employ a freeman, the sparse population and the lack of free labor made the purchase of a slave a favorable capital investment. The number of black slaves in Portugal given by contemporary accounts argue that Lisbon and the colonies of Portugal averaged a maximum of 10% of the population between the 16th and 18th centuries, but these numbers are impossible to verify. Most slaves in Portugal were concentrated in Lisbon and to the south in the Algarve. The number of black slaves brought to Lisbon and sold cannot be known. This is because the records of both royal institutions responsible for the sale of black slaves, the Casa de Guiné and the Casa dos Escravos were damaged during the earthquake of 1755 in Lisbon, and the fiscal records containing the numbers and sales of these companies were destroyed. The records of the royal chronicler Zurara claim that 927 African slaves were brought to Portugal between 1441 and 1448, and an estimated 1000 black slaves arrived in Portugal each year afterward. A common estimate is that around 2000 black slaves arrive in Lisbon annually after 1490.
History of slavery
Slavery was a mainstay of the Brazilian colonial economy, especially in mining and sugarcane production. 35.3% of all slaves involved in the Atlantic Slave trade went to Brazil. 4 million slaves were obtained by Brazil, 1.5 million more than any other country. Starting around 1550, the Portuguese began to trade African slaves to work the sugar plantations, once the native Tupi people deteriorated. Although Portuguese Prime Minister Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, 1st Marquis of Pombal abolished slavery in mainland Portugal on 12 February 1761, slavery continued in her overseas colonies. Slavery was practiced among all classes. Slaves were owned by upper and middle classes, by the poor, and even by other slaves.
Economic history of Portugal
15th-century Portuguese exploration of the African coast is commonly regarded as the harbinger of European colonialism, and marked the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade, Christian missionary evangelization, and the first globalization processes, which were to become a major element of European colonialism until the end of the 18th century. By the beginning of the colonial era there were forty forts operating along the coast. They acted mainly as trading posts and rarely saw military action, but the fortifications were important, as arms and ammunition were being stored prior to trade.
Badagry
Commercial activities of slave traders were less in Badagri than in Bonny, Angola, Ouidah, and Calabar; in 1865, slaves transported out of Badagri were 800, while at Porto Novo, the figure was 1,200, and at Ouidah, up to 5,000 slaves were transported. The peak period of the slave trade in the city state was between 1736 and 1789, but the trade continued to the early nineteenth century. The trade was dominated by Portuguese and Brazilian traders. After the British abolished the slave trade, notable trader Francisco Félix de Sousa migrated to Badagri around 1807.
Slavery in Portugal
The occupations of slaves varied widely. Some slaves in Lisbon could find themselves working in domestic settings, but most worked hard labor in the mines and metal forges, while others worked at the docks loading and maintaining ships. Some slaves worked peddling cheap goods at the markets and returning the profits to their masters. Opportunities for slaves to become free were scarce, however there were many instances in which slaves had either elevated their status or obtained their freedom. Slaves were able to buy their freedom by saving any earnings, so long as their masters allow them to keep their earnings, or purchase a slave to replace them. Women slaves could be freed if their masters chose to marry them, but this was more common among the colonies. When Lisbon was on the verge of being invaded in 1580, slaves were promised their freedom in exchange for their military service. 440 slaves took the offer and most, after being freed, left Portugal. Black female slaves were desired for sexual purposes, resulting in many mixed-race offspring. This prompted the Council of Trent in 1563 to denounce the widespread immorality. Mulattoes had the ability to integrate into society, some would even command whole fleets of ships. Slavery did little to alter society in Portugal, due to the slight ease of enslaved people’s integration, those who did not assimilate were treated similar to the poor.
Pope Pius VII
Pius VII joined the declaration of the 1815 Congress of Vienna, represented by Cardinal Secretary of State Ercole Consalvi, and urged the suppression of the slave trade. This pertained particularly to places such as Spain and Portugal where slavery was economically very important. The pope wrote a letter to King Louis XVIII of France dated 20 September 1814 and to the King John VI of Portugal in 1823 to urge the end of slavery. He condemned the slave trade and defined the sale of people as an injustice to the dignity of the human person. In his letter to the King of Portugal, he wrote: "the pope regrets that this trade in blacks, that he believed having ceased, is still exercised in some regions and even more cruel way. He begs and begs the King of Portugal that it implement all its authority and wisdom to extirpate this unholy and abominable shame."
Slavery in Brazil
Brazil was the world's leading sugar exporter during the 17th century. From 1600 to 1650, sugar accounted for 95 percent of Brazil's exports, and slave labor was relied heavily upon to provide the workforce to maintain these export earnings. It is estimated that 560,000 Central African slaves arrived in Brazil during the 17th century in addition to the indigenous slave labor that was provided by the "bandeiras".
Iberian ship development, 1400–1600
In 1434 the first consignment of African slaves was brought to Lisbon; "slave trading was the most profitable branch of Portuguese commerce until India was reached." Throughout the fifteenth century, Portuguese explorers sailed the coast of Africa, establishing trading posts for several tradable commodities, as firearms, spices, silver, gold, slaves.
Slavery in India
Portugal gradually prohibited the importation of slaves into Portuguese India, following the 1818 Anglo-Portuguese anti slavery treaty, a subsequent 1836 Royal Edict, and a second Anglo-Portuguese treaty in 1842 reduced the external trade, but the institution itself was only prohibited in 1876.
Portuguese Colonial War
By the middle of the 1920s the whole of Angola was under control. Slavery had officially ended in Portuguese Africa, but the plantations were worked on a system of paid serfdom by African labour composed of the large majority of ethnic Africans who did not have resources to pay Portuguese taxes and were considered unemployed by the authorities. After World War II and the first decolonization events, this system gradually declined. However, paid forced labor, including labor contracts with forced relocation of people, continued in many regions of Portuguese Africa until it was finally abolished in 1961.
Afro-Jamaican
The Atlantic Slave Trade began in the 15th century when the Portuguese took hold of land near Gibraltar and soon encountered Africans, whom they quickly took as prisoners. By mid-century, the first public sale of these prisoners was held. By 1455 Portugal was importing close to 800 enslaved Africans a year. Sugar cultivation began in the Azores islands, and as the demand for sugar grew, so did the demand for slaves to work the fields of sugar cane. By the 16th century, other countries wanted a piece of this action and the competition for the sugar and enslavement trades began.
Colonial history of Angola
Until the early 19th century, Portugal's primary interest in Angola was slavery. The slaving system began early in the 16th century with the purchase from African chiefs of people to work on sugar plantations in São Tomé, Príncipe, and Brazil. The Imbangala and the Mbundu tribes, active slave hunters, were for centuries the main providers of slaves to the market of Luanda. Those slaves were bought by Brazilian traders and shipped to America, including the Portuguese colony of Brazil.
History of slavery
The Atlantic slave trade peaked in the late 18th century, when the largest number of slaves were captured on raiding expeditions into the interior of West Africa. These expeditions were typically carried out by African states, such as the Oyo empire (Yoruba), Kong Empire, Kingdom of Benin, Imamate of Futa Jallon, Imamate of Futa Toro, Kingdom of Koya, Kingdom of Khasso, Kingdom of Kaabu, Fante Confederacy, Ashanti Confederacy, Aro Confederacy and the kingdom of Dahomey. Europeans rarely entered the interior of Africa, due to fear of disease and moreover fierce African resistance. The slaves were brought to coastal outposts where they were traded for goods. The people captured on these expeditions were shipped by European traders to the colonies of the New World. As a result of the War of the Spanish Succession, the United Kingdom obtained the monopoly ("asiento de negros") of transporting captive Africans to Spanish America. It is estimated that over the centuries, twelve to twenty million people were shipped as slaves from Africa by European traders, of whom some 15 percent died during the terrible voyage, many during the arduous journey through the Middle Passage. The great majority were shipped to the Americas, but some also went to Europe and Southern Africa.
Slavery in Africa
Many nations such as the Ashanti of present-day Ghana and the Yoruba of present-day Nigeria were involved in slave-trading. Groups such as the Imbangala of Angola and the Nyamwezi of Tanzania would serve as intermediaries or roving bands, waging war on African states to capture people for export as slaves. Historians John Thornton and Linda Heywood have provided an estimate, that of the Africans captured and then sold to Europeans around 90% of those who were shipped in the Atlantic slave trade. Henry Louis Gates, the Harvard Chair of African and African American Studies, has stated that "without complex business partnerships between African elites and European traders and commercial agents, the slave trade to the New World would have been impossible, at least on the scale it occurred."
Slavery in Portugal
A Portuguese woman, Dona Ana de Ataíde owned an Indian man named António as a slave in Évora. He served as a cook for her. Ana de Ataíde's Indian slave escaped from her in 1587. A large number of slaves were forcibly brought there since the commercial, artisanal, and service sectors all flourished in a regional capital like Évora.
Slavery in Brazil
During the Atlantic slave trade era, Brazil received more African slaves than any other country. An estimated 4.9 million slaves from Africa were brought to Brazil during the period from 1501 to 1866. Until the early 1850s, most enslaved Africans who arrived on Brazilian shores were forced to embark at West Central African ports, especially in Luanda (present-day Angola).
Portuguese Colonial War
As in Guinea, the slave trade became the basis of the local economy in Angola. Excursions traveled ever farther inland to procure captives that were sold by African rulers; the primary source of these slaves were those captured as a result of losing a war or inter-ethnic skirmish with other African tribes. More than a million men, women and children were shipped from Angola across the Atlantic. In this region, unlike Guinea, the trade remained largely in Portuguese hands. Nearly all the slaves were destined for Brazil.
Slavery in Portugal
Portuguese domination was accepted by the "docile" Jau slaves. In Évora, Brites Figueira owned a Java (Jau) slave named Maria Jau. Antão Azedo took an Indian slave named Heitor to Evora, who along with another slave was from Bengal were among the 34 Indian slaves in total who were owned by Tristão Homem, a nobleman in 1544 in Évora. Manuel Gomes previously owned a slave who escaped in 1558 at age 18 and he was said to be from the "land of Prester John of the Indias" named Diogo.
Nigeria
The slave trade was engaged in by European state and non-state actors such as Great Britain, the Netherlands, Portugal and private companies, as well as various African states and non-state actors. With rising anti-slavery sentiment at home and changing economic realities, Great Britain outlawed the international slave trade in 1807. Following the Napoleonic Wars, Great Britain established the West Africa Squadron in an attempt to halt the international traffic in slaves. It stopped ships of other nations that were leaving the African coast with slaves; the seized slaves were taken to Freetown, a colony in West Africa originally established for the resettlement of freed slaves from Britain. Britain intervened in the Lagos Kingship power struggle by bombarding Lagos in 1851, deposing the slave trade friendly Oba Kosoko, helping to install the amenable Oba Akitoye, and signing the Treaty between Great Britain and Lagos on 1 January 1852. Britain annexed Lagos as a Crown Colony in August 1861 with the Lagos Treaty of Cession. British missionaries expanded their operations and travelled further inland. In 1864, Samuel Ajayi Crowther became the first African bishop of the Anglican Church.
Atlantic slave trade to Brazil
The slave trade to Brazil was not exclusive to European and Brazilian white traders, but it was an activity in which pumbeiros, who were mestizos, free blacks and also former slaves, not only dedicated to the slave trade as controlled trade coastal - in the case of Angola, also part of domestic trade - also played the role of cultural mediators in the Atlantic slave trade of Africa. See Francisco Félix de Sousa, freed at age 17, the largest Brazilian slaves trader.
Slave Trade Act 1807
By its Act Against Slavery of 1793, the Parliament of Upper Canada in British North America had abolished the slave trade, and in 1805 a British Order-in-Council had restricted the importation of slaves into colonies that had been captured from France and the Netherlands. Following adoption of the 1807 Act, Britain used its influence to pressure other nations to end their own slave trades. By the 1810 Anglo-Portuguese treaty Portugal agreed to restrict its trade into its colonies; in the 1813 Anglo-Swedish treaty Sweden outlawed its slave trade; and in the 1814 Treaty of Paris whereby France agreed with Britain that the slave trade was "repugnant to the principles of natural justice" and agreed to abolish the slave trade in five years. In the 1814 Anglo-Dutch treaty the Netherlands outlawed its slave trade, and the 1817 Anglo-Spanish treaty called for Spain to suppress its trade by 1820.
Miscegenation
A large-scale slave trade developed in which Portuguese purchased Japanese as slaves in Japan and sold them to various locations overseas, including Portugal itself, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Many documents mention the large slave trade along with protests against the enslavement of Japanese. Japanese slaves are believed to be the first of their nation to end up in Europe, and the Portuguese purchased large numbers of Japanese slave girls to bring to Portugal for sexual purposes, as noted by the Church in 1555. King Sebastian feared that it was having a negative effect on Catholic proselytization since the slave trade in Japanese was growing to massive proporations, so he commanded that it be banned in 1571.
China–Portugal relations
Due to hostility from the Chinese regarding the trafficking in Chinese slaves, in 1595 a law was passed by Portugal banning the selling and buying of Chinese slaves. On 19 February 1624, the King of Portugal forbade the enslavement of Chinese of either sex.
Slavery in Portugal
In sixteenth century southern Portugal there were Chinese slaves but the number of them was described as "negligible", being outnumbered by East Indian, Mourisco, and African slaves. Amerindians, Chinese, Malays, and Indians were slaves in Portugal but in far fewer number than Turks, Berbers, and Arabs. China and Malacca were origins of slaves delivered to Portugal by Portuguese viceroys. A testament from 23 October 1562 recorded a Chinese man named António who was enslaved and owned by a Portuguese woman, Dona Maria de Vilhena, a wealthy noblewoman in Évora. António was among the three most common male names given to male slaves in Évora. D. Maria owned one of the only two Chinese slaves in Évora and she specifically selected and used him from among the slaves she owned to drive her mules for her because he was Chinese since rigorous and demanding tasks were assigned to Mourisco, Chinese, and Indian slaves. D. Maria's owning a Chinese, 3 Indians, and 3 Mouriscos among her fifteen slaves reflected on her high social status, since Chinese, Mouriscos, and Indians were among the ethnicities of prized slaves and were very expensive compared to blacks, so high class individuals owned these ethnicities and it was because her former husband Simão was involved in the slave trade in the east that she owned slaves of many different ethnicities. When she died, D. Maria freed twelve of her slaves including this Chinese man in her testament, leaving them with sums from 20,000 to 10,000 réis in money. D. Maria de Vilhena was the daughter of the nobleman and explorer Sancho de Tovar, the capitão of Sofala (List of colonial governors of Mozambique), and she was married twice, the first marriage to the explorer Cristóvão de Mendonça, and her second marriage was to Simão da Silveira, capitão of Diu (Lista de governadores, capitães e castelões de Diu). D. Maria was left a widow by Simão, and she was a major slave owner, possessing the most slaves in Évora, with her testament recording fifteen slaves.
Slavery
Medieval Spain and Portugal were the scene of almost constant Muslim invasion of the predominantly Christian area. Periodic raiding expeditions were sent from Al-Andalus to ravage the Iberian Christian kingdoms, bringing back booty and slaves. In a raid against Lisbon, Portugal in 1189, for example, the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives, while his governor of Córdoba, in a subsequent attack upon Silves, Portugal, in 1191, took 3,000 Christian slaves. From the 11th to the 19th century, North African Barbary Pirates engaged in "Razzias", raids on European coastal towns, to capture Christian slaves to sell at slave markets in places such as Algeria and Morocco.
History of slavery
The Middle Passage, the crossing of the Atlantic to the Americas, endured by slaves laid out in rows in the holds of ships, was only one element of the well-known triangular trade engaged in by Portuguese, Dutch, French and British. Ships having landed slaves in Caribbean ports would take on sugar, indigo, raw cotton, and later coffee, and make for Liverpool, Nantes, Lisbon or Amsterdam. Ships leaving European ports for West Africa would carry printed cotton textiles, some originally from India, copper utensils and bangles, pewter plates and pots, iron bars more valued than gold, hats, trinkets, gunpowder and firearms and alcohol. Tropical shipworms were eliminated in the cold Atlantic waters, and at each unloading, a profit was made.
Mining industry of Angola
The Portuguese arrived 1475 at the coast of what today is Angola. Until the 19th century, they practically remained confined to the bridgeheads of Luanda, Benguela and Moçâmedes and their hinterland. They used these vantage points in order to play a pivotal role in the Atlantic slave trade: until 1830 well over a million Angolan people were exported as slaves, mainly to Brazil, but also to the Caribbean and North America. They obtained slaves through raiding, but mostly by buying them from key figures in the African kingdoms east of Luanda. Territorial conquests were hesitantly attempted during the 19th century, but the occupation of what then became Angola was not achieved until the 1920s. Under Portuguese colonial rule in Angola, cities, towns and villages were founded, railroads were opened, ports built, and a Westernized society was being gradually developed. Since the 1920s, Portugal's administration has showed an increasing interest in developing the country’s economy and social infrastructure.
Historiography of Colonial Spanish America
Slave labor was utilized in various parts of Spanish America. African slave labor was introduced in the early Caribbean during the demographic collapse of the indigenous populations. The slave trade was in the hands of the Portuguese, who had an early monopoly on the coastal routes in Africa. Africans learned skilled trades and functioned as artisans in cities and labor bosses over indigenous in the countryside. Studies of the African slave trade and the economic role of blacks in Spanish America have increased, particularly with the development of Atlantic history. Asian slaves in Spanish America have been less well studied, but monograph on Mexico indicates the promise of this topic. One of the few women to achieve fame in colonial Mexico was Catarina de San Juan, a slave in seventeenth-century Puebla.
Slavery in Spain
Although slavery in Spain has existed prior to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, it is important to see Spain's involvement of the trade. Spain's connection to the trade with Africa was minor with only 185 voyages and 61,000 slaves from the continent from 1500-1800. This compares to almost 25,000 voyages and over 7 million slaves embarked in total by all nations from 1500-1800. However, from 1800-1866, the Spanish increased their voyages to 1,500 and number of embarked slaves to over 470,000 from Africa.
Atlantic slave trade to Brazil
The Portuguese crown authorized the slavery with papal blessing, documented in the inserts of Nicolau V Dum diversos e Divino Amorecommuniti, both of 1452, which authorized the Portuguese to reduce Africans to the condition of slaves with the intention of Christianizing. The regulation of slavery was legislated in Manueline ordinances: the adoption of slavery had been thus try to overcome the serious lack of manpower, that there was also all over Europe due to the recurrence of epidemics, many of them from Africa and the East. Until the first half of the fifteenth century, the Portuguese population was constant.
Atlantic slave trade
The Portuguese were the first to engage in the Atlantic slave trade in the 16th century. In 1526, they completed the first transatlantic slave voyage to Brazil, and other European countries soon followed. Shipowners regarded the slaves as cargo to be transported to the Americas as quickly and cheaply as possible, there to be sold to work on coffee, tobacco, cocoa, sugar and cotton plantations, gold and silver mines, rice fields, construction industry, cutting timber for ships, in skilled labour, and as domestic servants. The first Africans imported to the English colonies were classified as "indentured servants", like workers coming from England, and also as "apprentices for life". By the middle of the 17th century, slavery had hardened as a racial caste, with the slaves and their offspring being legally the property of their owners, and children born to slave mothers were also slaves. As property, the people were considered merchandise or units of labour, and were sold at markets with other goods and services.
Slavery in Portugal
After the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in the 8th century, in which Moors from North Africa crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and defeated the Visigothic rulers of Iberia, the territory of both modern-day Portugal and Spain fell under Islamic control. The pattern of slavery and serfdom in the Iberian Peninsula differs from the rest of Western Europe due to the Islamic conquest. They established Moorish kingdoms in Iberia, including the area that is occupied by modern Portugal. In comparison to the north, classical-style slavery continued for a longer period of time in southern Europe and trade between Christian Europe, across the Mediterranean, with Islamic North Africa meant that Slavic and Christian Iberian slaves appeared in Italy, Spain, Southern France and Portugal; in the 8th century, the Islamic conquest in Portugal and Spain changed this pattern.
Colonial history of Angola
Whilst the economic development of the country was not entirely neglected and many useful food products were introduced, the prosperity of the province was very largely dependent on the slave trade with the Portuguese colony of Brazil, which was not legally abolished until 1830 after Brazil's independence from Portugal (1822) and in fact continued for many years subsequently. Many scholars agree that by the 19th century, Angola was the largest source of slaves not only for Brazil, but for the Americas, including the United States. By the end of the 19th century, a massive forced labour system had replaced slavery and would continue until outlawed in 1961. Portuguese colonial rule in the twentieth century was characterized by rigid dictatorship and exploitation of African labor.
Slavery in Angola
The Portuguese Empire conquered the Mbundu people of Angola, incorporating the local economy into the Atlantic slave trade. In 1610, Friar Luís Brandão, the head of Portuguese-run Luanda Jesuit college, wrote to a Jesuit who questioned the legality of the enslavement of native Angolans, saying, "We have been here ourselves for forty years and there have been many learned men here and in the province of Brazil who never have considered the trade illicit." He further stated that only a small number of Natives may have been enslaved illegally, and that the Portuguese at least converted them to Christianity. Angola exported slaves at a rate of 10,000 per year in 1612. The Portuguese built a new port in Benguela in 1616 to expand Portugal's access to Angolan slaves. From 1617 to 1621, during the governorship of Luís Mendes de Vasconcellos, up to 50,000 Angolans were enslaved and shipped to the Americas. The "Vergulde Valck", Dutch slave-traders, bought 675 of the 1,000 slaves sold in Angola in 1660.
Sexual slavery
In the 16th and 17th centuries, Portuguese visitors and their South Asian "lascar" (and sometimes African) crewmembers often engaged in slavery in Japan, where they bought or captured young Japanese women and girls, who were either used as sexual slaves on their ships or taken to Macau and other Portuguese colonies in Southeast Asia, the Americas, and India. For example, in Goa, a Portuguese colony in India, there was a community of Japanese slaves and traders during the late 16th and 17th centuries.
Interracial marriage
A large-scale slave trade developed in which Portuguese purchased Japanese as slaves in Japan and sold them to various locations overseas, including Portugal itself, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Many documents mention the large slave trade along with protests against the enslavement of Japanese. Japanese slaves are believed to be the first of their nation to end up in Europe, and the Portuguese purchased many Japanese slave girls to bring to Portugal for sexual purposes, as noted by the Church in 1555. King Sebastian feared that it was having a negative effect on Catholic proselytization since the slave trade in Japanese was growing to massive proportions, so he commanded that it be banned in 1571.
Economic history of Africa
The Portuguese began significant trading with West Africa in the 15th century. This trade was primarily for the same commodities the Arabs had bought—gold, ivory, and slaves. The Portuguese sold the Africans Indian cloth and European manufactured goods but refused to sell them guns. Soon, however, other European powers such as France, Denmark, the Netherlands and Britain were developing their own trade with Africa, and they had fewer restrictions. The major European imperial powers in Africa were Portugal, Great Britain, France, and to a lesser extent Germany, Belgium, Spain and Italy. Portugal's presence in Africa as an imperial power lasted until the 1970s, when the last of its former colonies declared independence after years of war.
History of Portugal
In 1961, the Portuguese army was involved in armed action in its colony in Goa against an Indian invasion (see Operation Vijay). The operations resulted in a humiliating Portuguese defeat and the loss of the colonies in India. Independence movements also became active in Portuguese Angola, Portuguese Mozambique and Portuguese Guinea; the Portuguese Colonial War started. Portugal, during this period, was never an outcast, and was a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).
Proto-globalization
One of the main reasons for the rise of commodities was the rise in the slave trade, specifically the Atlantic slave trade. The use of slaves prior to the 15th century was only a minor practice in the labor force and was not crucial in the development of products and goods; but, due to labor shortage, the use of slaves rose. After 1500, the settlement of island despots and plantation centers in Sao Tome began trade relations with the Kingdom of the Kongo, which brought West Central Africa into the Atlantic Slave Trade. The Portuguese maintained an export of slaves from Agadir, an Atlantic port, which they maintained for most of the early 16th century. Also the Portuguese settlement of the Brazilian subcontinent allowed the opening of the American slave market and slaves were shipped from Sao Tome directly to America. The Europeans also took use of the Atlantic Slave Trade in the first half of the century. The European slave ships took their slaves to the Iberian Peninsula, however slave owners in Europe were only seen in wealthy, aristocrat families due to the high costs of slaves and the cheap peasant labor available for agricultural uses, and as its name implies the first use of the African-American slaves in plantation work arose in the Atlantic islands not in the continental Europe. Approximately 10.2 million Africans survived the Atlantic crossing between 1450 and 1870. The large slave population thrived due to the demand for production from the Europeans who found it cheaper to import crops and goods rather than produce them on their own.
Many wars were fought during the 17th century between the slave trading companies for areas that were economically dependent on slaves. The West India Company gained many slaves through these wars (specifically with Portugal) by captains who had captured enemy ships; between 1623 and 1637, 2,336 were captured and sold in the New World by the West India Company. The selling of slaves to the New World opened up trading posts in North America; the Dutch opened their first on Manhattan Island in 1613. The West India Company had also opened a trading post in the Caribbean and the company was also carrying slaves to a colony of New Netherland.
The use of slaves had many benefits to the economies and productions in the areas of trade. The emergent rise of coffee, tea, and chocolate in Europe led to the demand for the production of sugar; 70 percent of slaves were used solely for the labor-intensive production of crop. Slave trade was also beneficial to the trade voyages, because the constant sailing allowed investors to buy small shares of many ships at the same time. Hopkin states that many scholars, him among them, argue that slave trade was essential to the wealth of many nations, during and after proto-globalization, and without the trade production would have plummeted. The investment in ships and nautical technology was the catalyst to the complex trade networks developed throughout proto-globalization and into modern globalization.
Slavery
After the Portuguese first made contact with Japan in 1543, a large scale slave trade developed in which Portuguese purchased Japanese as slaves in Japan and sold them to various locations overseas, including Portugal itself, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Many documents mention the large slave trade along with protests against the enslavement of Japanese. Japanese slaves are believed to be the first of their nation to end up in Europe, and the Portuguese purchased large numbers of Japanese slave girls to bring to Portugal for sexual purposes, as noted by the Church in 1555. Sebastian of Portugal feared that this was having a negative effect on Catholic proselytization since the slave trade in Japanese was growing to massive proportions, so he commanded that it be banned in 1571.
Slavery in the colonial United States
It was not only the major colonial powers of Western Europe such as France, England, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands that were involved. Other countries, including Sweden and Denmark, participated in the trans-Atlantic slave trade though on a much more limited scale.
West Africa Squadron
On 25 March 1807 Britain formally abolished the Slave Trade, prohibiting British subjects from trading in slaves, crewing slave ships, sponsoring slave ships, or fitting out slave ships. The Act also included a clause allowing the seizure of ships without slave cargoes on board but equipped to trade in slaves. In order to enforce this ruling in 1808 the Admiralty dispatched two vessels to police the African Coast. The small British force was empowered, due to the ongoing Napoleonic Wars, to stop any ship bearing the flag of an enemy nation, making suppression activities much easier. Portugal, however, was one of the largest slave trading nations and Britain's ally against France. So in February 1810 under diplomatic pressure, it signed a convention that allowed British ships to police Portuguese shipping, meaning Portugal could only trade in slaves from its own African possessions.
Economy of Angola
The Portuguese started to develop townships, trading posts, logging camps and small processing factories. From 1764 onwards, there was a gradual change from a slave-based society to one based on production for domestic consumption and export. Following the independence of Brazil in 1822, the slave trade was formally abolished in 1836. However it did continue locally into the 20th century. In 1844, Angola's ports were opened to foreign shipping.
History of slavery
The 15th-century Portuguese exploration of the African coast is commonly regarded as the harbinger of European colonialism. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, granting Afonso V of Portugal the right to reduce any "Saracens, pagans and any other unbelievers" to hereditary slavery which legitimized slave trade under Catholic beliefs of that time. This approval of slavery was reaffirmed and extended in his Romanus Pontifex bull of 1455. These papal bulls came to serve as a justification for the subsequent era of slave trade and European colonialism. Although for a short period as in 1462, Pius II declared slavery to be "a great crime". The followers of the church of England and Protestants did not use the papal bull as a justification. The position of the church was to condemn the slavery of Christians, but slavery was regarded as an old established and necessary institution which supplied Europe with the necessary workforce. In the 16th century, African slaves had replaced almost all other ethnicities and religious enslaved groups in Europe. Within the Portuguese territory of Brazil, and even beyond its original borders, the enslavement of Native Americans was carried out by the Bandeirantes.
Economy of Guinea-Bissau
The slaves were sold in Europe and, from the 16th century, in the Americas. The Company of Guinea was a Portuguese governative institution whose task was to deal with the spices and to fix the prices of the goods. It was called "Casa da Guiné", "Casa da Guiné e Mina" from 1482 to 1483 and "Casa da Índia e da Guiné" in 1499. The local African rulers in Guinea, who prosper greatly from the slave trade, have no interest in allowing the Europeans any further inland than the fortified coastal settlements where the trading takes place. The Portuguese presence in Guinea was therefore largely limited to the port of Bissau.
Atlantic slave trade
There were over 173 city-states and kingdoms in the African regions affected by the slave trade between 1502 and 1853 when Brazil became the last Atlantic import nation to outlaw the slave trade. Of those 173, no fewer than 68 could be deemed nation states with political and military infrastructures that enabled them to dominate their neighbours. Nearly every present-day nation had a pre-colonial predecessor, sometimes an African Empire with which European traders had to barter.
Slavery in Portugal
Until the mid-17th century, during the early Portuguese mandate of Macau, some 5,000 slaves lived in the territory, in addition to 2,000 Portuguese and an ever-growing number of Chinese, which in 1664 reached 20,000.
This number decreased in the following decades to between 1000 and 2000. Most of the slaves were of African origin. Rarely did Chinese women marry Portuguese, initially, mostly Goans, Ceylonese/Sinhalese (from today's Sri Lanka), Indochinese, Malay (from Malacca), and Japanese women were the wives of the Portuguese men in Macau. Slave women of Indian, Indonesian, Malay, and Japanese origin were used as partners by Portuguese men. Japanese girls would be purchased in Japan by Portuguese men. From 1555 onwards Macau received slave women of Timorese origin as well as women of African origin, and from Malacca and India. Macau was permitted by Pombal to receive an influx of Timorese women. Macau received an influx of African slaves, Japanese slaves as well as Christian Korean slaves who were bought by the Portuguese from the Japanese after they were taken prisoner during the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–98) in the era of Hideyoshi.
Angola–Brazil relations
Period of the transatlantic slave trade
In 1646, Jesuit priest Gonçalo João succinctly stated the importance of the economic relationship between Brazil and Angola as "Without Angola, there is no Brazil". Angola was a major source of slaves to Brazil, which was, out of the several European colonies in the Americas, the largest single importer of slaves during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Two-thirds of those slaves in Brazil originated from the Angola-Congo region. Rio de Janeiro depended on the consistent influx of slaves from Angola to work on sugar cane plantations and for re-exportation to Buenos Aires in exchange for silver.
Exports from Brazil to Angola in exchange for these slaves included manioc root meal and "cachaça".
During Dutch occupation of Angola in early 17th century, Brazil and Portugal acted as "co-colonizers" together in their efforts to reclaim the territory. Brazilian historian Luiz Felipe de Alencastro suggests that this critical historical period cemented Brazil's connection to Angola for the duration of the slave trade, and that the construction of Brazil occurred vis-à-vis the destruction of Angola's indigenous kingdoms.
Slavery in Portugal
In 1595, a law was passed by Portugal banning the selling and buying of Chinese and Japanese slaves due to hostility from the Chinese and Japanese regarding the trafficking in Japanese and Chinese slaves On 19 February 1624, the King of Portugal forbade the enslavement of Chinese people of either sex.
William Wilberforce
The British initially became involved in the slave trade during the 16th century. By 1783, the triangular route that took British-made goods to Africa to buy slaves, transported the enslaved to the West Indies, and then brought slave-grown products such as sugar, tobacco, and cotton to Britain, represented about 80 percent of Great Britain's foreign income. British ships dominated the trade, supplying French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese and British colonies, and in peak years carried forty thousand enslaved men, women and children across the Atlantic in the horrific conditions of the middle passage. Of the estimated 11 million Africans transported into slavery, about 1.4 million died during the voyage.
International relations of the Great Powers (1814–1919)
Portugal, a small poor agrarian nation with a strong seafaring tradition, built up a large empire, and kept it longer than anyone else by avoiding wars and remaining largely under the protection of Britain. In 1899 it renewed its Treaty of Windsor with Britain originally written in 1386.
Energetic explorations in the sixteenth century led to a settler colony in Brazil. Portugal also established trading stations open to all nations off the coasts of Africa, South Asia, and East Asia. Portugal had imported slaves as domestic servants and farm workers in Portugal itself, and used its experience to make slave trading a major economic activity. Portuguese businessmen set up slave plantations on the nearby islands of Madeira, Cape Verde, and the Azores, focusing on sugar production. In 1770, the enlightened despot Pombal declared trade to be a noble and necessary profession, allowing businessmen to enter the Portuguese nobility. Many settlers moved to Brazil, which became independent in 1822.
Portuguese Restoration War
Economically, Portugal’s restoration of independence freed it to pursue the course mapped out by the pioneers of commercial imperialism. During the seventeenth century, its economy depended largely upon entrepôt trade in tobacco and sugar, and the export of salt. During the eighteenth century, even though staples were not abandoned, the Portuguese economy came to be based more upon slaves, gold, leather, and wine. Portuguese trade, centered in the busy port of Lisbon, was most influenced by Anglo-Dutch capitalism and by the colonial economy in Brazil.
Luís de Meneses, the Count of Ericeira, economic adviser to the "prince regent", advocated the development of a native textile industry based on a Flemish model. Factories were established at Covilhã, in an area of central Portugal where there was easy access to flocks of sheep and clean mountain water, but they were highly unpopular with both local consumers and traditional weavers. Meanwhile, Portuguese attempts to develop a silk industry were undercut by the French, who wanted to monopolize that market.
Slavery in Africa
By 1850, the year that the last major Atlantic slave trade participant (Brazil) passed the Eusébio de Queirós Law banning the slave trade, the slave trades had been significantly slowed and in general only illegal trade went on. Brazil continued the practice of slavery and was a major source for illegal trade until about 1870 and the abolition of slavery became permanent in 1888 when Princess Isabel of Brazil and Minister Rodrigo Silva (son-in-law of senator Eusebio de Queiroz) banned the practice. The British took an active approach to stopping the illegal Atlantic slave trade during this period. The West Africa Squadron was credited with capturing 1,600 slave ships between 1808 and 1860, and freeing 150,000 Africans who were aboard these ships. Action was also taken against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade, for example against ‘the usurping King of Lagos’, deposed in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 African rulers.
According to Patrick Manning, internal slavery was most important to Africa in the second half of the 19th century stating "if there is any time when one can speak of African societies being organized around a slave mode production, [1850–1900] was it". The abolition of the Atlantic slave trade resulted in the economies of African states dependent on the trade being reorganized towards domestic plantation slavery and legitimate commerce worked by slave labor. Slavery before this period was generally domestic.
Pink Map
Portugal had occupied parts of the coast of Mozambique from the 16th century, but at the start of the 19th century its presence was limited to Mozambique Island, Ibo and Quelimane in northern Mozambique, outposts at Sena and Tete in the Zambezi valley, Sofala to the south of the Zambezi and a port town at Inhambane further south again. Although Delagoa Bay was regarded as Portuguese territory, Lourenço Marques was not settled until 1781, and was temporarily abandoned after a French raid in 1796. In the late 18th century, most of the slaves exported through the Portuguese settlements in Mozambique were sent to Mauritius and Réunion, at that time both French colonies, but this trade was disrupted by wars with France, and in the early 19th century many slaves were sent to Brazil. As was the case with Angola, slave exports declined after 1830, but were partly replaced by exports of ivory through Lourenço Marques from the 1840s onward.
Slavery in Portugal
African slaves prior to 1441 were predominately Berbers and Arabs from the North African Barbary coast, known as ‘Moors” to the Iberian. They were typically enslaved during wars and conquests between Christian and Islamic kingdoms. The first expeditions of Sub-Saharan Africa were sent out by Prince Infante D. Henrique, known commonly today as Henry the Navigator, with the intent to probe how far the kingdoms of the Moors and their power reached. The expeditions sent by Henry came back with African slaves as a way to compensate for the expenses of their voyages. The enslavement of Africans was seen as a military campaign because the people that the Portuguese encountered were identified as Moorish and thus associated with Islam. The royal chronicler Gomes Eanes de Zurara was never decided on the “Moorishness” of the slaves brought back from Africa, due to a seeming lack of contact with Islam. Slavery in Portugal and the number of slaves expanded after the Portuguese began exploration of Sub-Saharan Africa.
Slavery in Portugal
During transport to Portugal, slaves were fastened and chained with manacles, padlocks, and rings around their necks. Portuguese owners could whip, chain, and pour burning hot wax and fat onto the skin of their slaves, and punish their slaves in any way that they wished, as long as the slaves remained alive. The Portuguese also used branding irons to brand their slaves as property.
Atlantic slave trade
Before the arrival of the Portuguese, slavery had already existed in Kongo. Afonso believed that the slave trade should be subject to Kongo law. When he suspected the Portuguese of receiving illegally enslaved persons to sell, he wrote to King João III in 1526 imploring him to put a stop to the practice.
Atlantic slave trade
The Second Atlantic system was the trade of enslaved Africans by mostly English, Portuguese, French and Dutch traders. The main destinations of this phase were the Caribbean colonies and Brazil, as European nations built up economically slave-dependent colonies in the New World. Slightly more than 3% of the enslaved people exported from Africa were traded between 1450 and 1600, and 16% in the 17th century.
Slavery
By 1552, black African slaves made up 10% of the population of Lisbon. In the second half of the 16th century, the Crown gave up the monopoly on slave trade and the focus of European trade in African slaves shifted from import to Europe to slave transports directly to tropical colonies in the Americas – in the case of Portugal, especially Brazil. In the 15th century one-third of the slaves were resold to the African market in exchange of gold.
Japan–Portugal relations
Some Korean slaves were bought by the Portuguese and brought back to Portugal from Japan, where they had been among the tens of thousands of Korean prisoners of war transported to Japan during the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–98). Historians pointed out that at the same time Hideyoshi expressed his indignation and outrage at the Portuguese trade in Japanese slaves, he himself was engaging in a mass slave trade of Korean prisoners of war in Japan.
Nanban trade
After the Portuguese first made contact with Japan in 1543, a large scale slave trade developed in which Portuguese purchased Japanese as slaves in Japan and sold them to various locations overseas, including Portugal itself, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Many documents mention the large slave trade along with protests against the enslavement of Japanese. Japanese slaves are believed to be the first of their nation to end up in Europe, and the Portuguese purchased large numbers of Japanese slave girls to bring to Portugal for sexual purposes (see: Asian fetish), as noted by the Church in 1555. King Sebastian feared that it was having a negative effect on Catholic proselytization since the slave trade in Japanese was growing to massive proportions, so he commanded that it be banned in 1571.
Latin America–United Kingdom relations
The two nations established established diplomatic relations in 1826, after the British imposed a treaty pledging abolition of the African slave trade. By the 1830s, British financiers and merchants effectively controlled the leading sectors of the Brazilian economy. A high priority of London was ending the large-scale slave trade to Brazil, but Brazilian elites strongly resisted, saying the treaties had been coerced and were not valid. in 1845, the Royal Navy started treating Brazilian slave ships as pirates, seizing the ships and freeing slaves. Tensions escalated and there was a threat of war. Meanwhile, plantation owners imported as many slaves as they possibly could, 19,000 in 1846, and 50,000 in 1847. finally in 1850, Brazil past effective laws that virtually ended the slave trade. That ended the tension with Britain, but the Africans remained slaves on the plantations. By the 1850s, Brazil provided about a third of the raw cotton for British factories.
Portuguese Colonial War
When the Portuguese began trading on the west coast of Africa, in the 15th century, they concentrated their energies on Guinea and Angola. Hoping at first for gold, they soon found that slaves were the most valuable commodity available in the region for export. The Islamic Empire was already well-established in the African slave trade, for centuries linking it to the Arab slave trade. However, the Portuguese who had conquered the Islamic port of Ceuta in 1415 and several other towns in current day Morocco in a Crusade against Islamic neighbors, managed to successfully establish themselves in the area. But the Portuguese never established much more than a foothold in either place.
Portuguese Angola
The Portuguese started to develop townships, trading posts, logging camps, and small processing factories. From 1764 onwards, there was a gradual change from a slave-based society to one based on production for domestic consumption and export. Brazil became independent in 1822 and the slave trade was abolished in 1836. In 1844, Angola's ports were opened to legal foreign shipping. By 1850, Luanda was one of the most developed cities outside Europe in the Portuguese Empire: it was full of trading companies, exporting (together with Benguela) palm and peanut oil, wax, copal, timber, ivory, cotton, coffee, and cocoa, among many other products. Maize, tobacco, dried meat and cassava flour also began to be produced locally. The Angolan bourgeoisie was born. From the 1920s to the 1960s, strong economic growth, abundant natural resources and development of infrastructure, led to the arrival of even more Portuguese settlers from the metropole.
Colonialism
European slave traders brought large numbers of African slaves to the Americas by sail. Spain and Portugal had brought African slaves to work at African colonies such as Cape Verde and the Azores, and then Latin America, by the 16th century. The British, French and Dutch joined in the slave trade in subsequent centuries. Ultimately, around 11 million Africans were taken to the Caribbean and North and South America as slaves by European colonizers.
Slave Coast of West Africa
European sources began documenting the development of trade in this region and its integration into the trans-Atlantic slave trade around 1670. The slave trade became so extensive in the 18th and 19th centuries that an “Atlantic community” was formed. The slave trade was facilitated on the European end by the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French and the British. Slaves went to the New World, mostly to Brazil and the Caribbean. Ports that exported these slaves from Africa include Ouidah, Lagos, Aného (Little Popo), Grand-Popo, Agoué, Jakin, Porto-Novo, and Badagry. These ports traded in slaves that were supplied from African communities, tribes and kingdoms, including the Alladah and Ouidah, which were later taken over by the Dahomey kingdom.
First wave of European colonization
Both Spain and Portugal share a similar history in regards to the treatment of slaves in their colonies. As time progressed and new generations of slaves lived under imperial rule, Spanish and Portuguese internal reforms dealt with African slaves in areas such as, "the purchasing and selling of slaves, legal ownership, succession upon death of owner, the rights of slaves to buy their liberty, and penalties to those who ran away". There was a constant strict social control amongst the slave population. Nevertheless, the goal was to create and sustain a labor force that would yield maximum economic output. The lucrative business the Portuguese sought on the West African coast ushered in an era in which human labor, at any cost, was used for the extraction of wealth.
Atlantic slave trade to Brazil
The earliest record of sending African slaves to Brazil dates from 1533 when Pero de Gois, Captain-Mor da Costa of Brazil, requested the King, the shipment of 17 black for his captaincy of São Tomé (Paraíba do Sul / Macaé).Table 1824 of the English painter Edward Francis Finden portraying a slave market in Rio de Janeiro
Angola
The slave trade was abolished in Angola in 1836, and in 1854 the colonial government freed all its existing slaves. Four years later, a more progressive administration appointed by Lisbon abolished slavery altogether. However, these decrees remained largely unenforceable, and the Portuguese depended on assistance from the British Royal Navy to enforce their ban on the slave trade. This coincided with a series of renewed military expeditions into the hinterland. By the mid-nineteenth century Portugal had established its dominion as far east as the Congo River and as far south as Mossâmedes. Until the late 1880s, Lisbon entertained proposals to link Angola with its colony in Mozambique but was blocked by British and Belgian opposition. In this period, the Portuguese came up against different forms of armed resistance from various peoples in Angola.
Chinese people in Portugal
Chinese boys were kidnapped from Macau and sold as slaves in Lisbon while they were still children. Brazil imported some of Lisbon's Chinese slaves. Fillippo Sassetti saw some Chinese and Japanese slaves in Lisbon among the large slave community in 1578, although most of the slaves were blacks. Brazil and Portugal were both recipients of Chinese slaves bought by Portuguese. Portugal exported to Brazil some Chinese slaves. Military, religious, and civil service secretarial work and other lenient and light jobs were given to Chinese slaves while hard labor was given to Africans. Only African slaves in 1578 Lisbon outnumbered the large numbers of Japanese and Chinese slaves in the same city. Some of the Chinese slaves were sold in Brazil, a Portuguese colony. Cooking was the main profession of Chinese slaves around 1580 in Lisbon according to Fillippo Sassetti from Florence and they were viewed as "hard working", "intelligent", and "loyal" by the Portuguese.
Slavery in Portugal
The Visigoths and the Suebi (Germanic tribes), of the 5th century AD, seized control of the Iberian peninsula as the Roman Empire fell. At the time, Portugal did not exist as a separate kingdom, but was primarily a part of the Visigothic Iberian kingdom (the Visigothic ruling class lived apart and heavily taxed the native population). However, during this period, a gradual transition to feudalism and serfdom was occurring throughout Europe.
Legends of Africa
In the 16th century, the Portuguese stake in the slave trade was threatened by England and France. This caused the Portuguese to transfer their slave-trading activities southward to the Congo and South West Africa. Their most stubborn opposition, as they entered the final phase of the conquest of Angola, came from a queen who was a great head of state, and a military leader with few peers in her time.
The important facts about her life are outlined by Professor Glasgow of Bowie, Maryland:
Western imperialism in Asia
The lucrative trade was vastly expanded when the Portuguese began to export slaves from Africa in 1541; however, over time, the rise of the slave trade left Portugal over-extended, and vulnerable to competition from other Western European powers. Envious of Portugal's control of trade routes, other Western European nations—mainly the Netherlands, France, and England—began to send in rival expeditions to Asia. In 1642, the Dutch drove the Portuguese out of the Gold Coast in Africa, the source of the bulk of Portuguese slave labourers, leaving this rich slaving area to other Europeans, especially the Dutch and the English.
Jewish views on slavery
After Spain and Portugal expelled many of their Jewish residents in the 1490s, many Jews from Spain and Portugal migrated to the Americas and to the Netherlands. Jewish participation in the Atlantic slave trade increased through the 17th century because Spain and Portugal maintained a dominant role in the Atlantic trade and peaked in the early 18th century, but started to decline after the Peace of Utrecht in 1713 when Britain obtained the right to sell slaves in Spanish colonies, and Britain and France started to compete with Spain and Portugal. By the time the worldwide slave trade and European sugar-growing reached its peak in the 18th century, Jewish participation was dwarfed by the enterprise of British and French planters who did not allow Jews among their number. During the 19th century, some Jews owned some cotton plantations in the southern United States.
Slavery in Brazil
Since the 1990s, despite the increasing public attention given to slavery through national and international initiatives like UNESCO’s Slave Route Project, Brazil has mounted very few initiatives
commemorating and memorializing slavery and the Atlantic slave trade. However, in the last decade Brazil has begun engaging in several initiatives underscoring its slave past and the importance of African heritage. Gradually, all over the country statues celebrating Zumbi, the leader of Palmares, Brazilian long-lasting quilombo (runaway slave community) were unveiled. Capital cities like Rio de Janeiro and even Porto Alegre created permanent markers commemorating heritage sites of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade. Among the most recent and probably the most famous initiatives of this kind is the Valong Wharf slave memorial in Rio de Janeiro (the site where almost one million enslaved Africans disembarked).
Atlantic slave trade to Brazil
The slave trade had already a strong presence in Africa for thousands of years, at the time of the European Age of Discoveries. The Portuguese began contact with the African slave markets to rescue civilians and military captives since the time of the Reconquista. At this time, the Alfaqueque was the one who had the mission to negotiate captives rescue. When Catherine of Austria authorized the slave trade to Brazil, the slave trade from Africa, which was previously dominated by Africans, started also to be dominated by Europeans.
Atlantic slave trade
By 1494, the Portuguese king had entered agreements with the rulers of several West African states that would allow trade between their respective peoples, enabling the Portuguese to "tap into" the "well-developed commercial economy in Africa ... without engaging in hostilities". "Peaceful trade became the rule all along the African coast", although there were some rare exceptions when acts of aggression led to violence. For instance, Portuguese traders attempted to conquer the Bissagos Islands in 1535. In 1571 Portugal, supported by the Kingdom of Kongo, took control of the south-western region of Angola in order to secure its threatened economic interest in the area. Although Kongo later joined a coalition in 1591 to force the Portuguese out, Portugal had secured a foothold on the continent that it continued to occupy until the 20th century. Despite these incidences of occasional violence between African and European forces, many African states ensured that any trade went on in their own terms, for instance, imposing custom duties on foreign ships. In 1525, the Kongolese king, Afonso I, seized a French vessel and its crew for illegally trading on his coast.
Slave market
Potential buyers made a careful examination of the "merchandise": they checked the state of health of a person who was often standing naked with wrists bound together. In Cairo, transactions involving eunuchs and concubines happened in private houses. Prices varied according to the slave's quality. Thomas Smee, the commander of the British research ship "Ternate", visited such a market in Zanzibar in 1811 and gave a detailed description:
Among many other European slave markets, Genoa, and Venice were some well-known markets, their importance and demand growing after the great plague of the 14th century which decimated much of the European work force.
The maritime town of Lagos, Portugal, was the first slave market created in Portugal for the sale of imported African slaves, the "Mercado de Escravos", which opened in 1444. In 1441, the first slaves were brought to Portugal from northern Mauritania. Prince Henry the Navigator, major sponsor of the Portuguese African expeditions, as of any other merchandise, taxed one fifth of the selling price of the slaves imported to Portugal. By the year 1552 African slaves made up 10 percent of the population of Lisbon. In the second half of the 16th century, the Crown gave up the monopoly on slave trade and the focus of European trade in African slaves shifted from import to Europe to slave transports directly to tropical colonies in the Americas—in the case of Portugal, especially Brazil. In the 15th century, one third of the slaves were resold to the African market in exchange of gold.