Columbian Exchange; Atlantic slave trade

Things happened, and the rest is history

1. 01

   Portuguese voyages and the first enslaved Africans brought to Europe

   Event

   What happened

   In the 1440s Portuguese captains sailing down the west African coast begin seizing and buying people, and in 1444 a first large group is landed at Lagos in Portugal. In 1482 Portugal builds the fortress of São Jorge da Mina on the Gold Coast to trade for gold. Portuguese planters also begin growing sugar on Atlantic islands such as Madeira and later São Tomé, using enslaved labour.

   ↓ The rest is history

   The island sugar plantations served as a model for what came next. When Europeans settled in the Americas, they moved the same system of sugar growing and enslaved labour across the ocean. Historians generally see the Atlantic islands as a testing ground for plantation slavery. By the early 1500s enslaved Africans were being shipped directly to the Spanish Caribbean.

   Sources

   1. PrimaryZurara, Gomes Eanes de. Crónica do descobrimento e conquista de Guiné. Portuguese chronicle, c. 1453.Eyewitness-based account of the landing of captives at Lagos in 1444.
   2. BookRussell-Wood, A. J. R. A World on the Move: The Portuguese in Africa, Asia, and America, 1415-1808. Manchester: Carcanet, 1992.
   3. BookThornton, John. Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
2. 02

   Columbus's later voyages and Spanish settlement of the Caribbean

   Event

   What happened

   After his first landfall in October 1492, Columbus returns in 1493 with a large fleet carrying settlers, seeds, horses, cattle and pigs to Hispaniola. The Spanish found a colony there and set up the encomienda, a system that assigned Indigenous people to Spanish colonists for labour. Within a few decades the Taíno population of the island falls sharply.

   ↓ The rest is history

   Hispaniola became the base from which Spain moved on to Cuba, Mexico and Peru. Livestock and European crops were introduced here first. The collapse of the Indigenous workforce, from disease, overwork and violence, helped create demand for enslaved labour from Africa. A royal licence of 1518 allowed the direct shipment of enslaved Africans to the Spanish colonies.

   Sources

   1. PrimaryLas Casas, Bartolomé de. Historia de las Indias. Spanish chronicle, written c. 1527-1561.Contemporary account of the Spanish colony on Hispaniola.
   2. BookCrosby, Alfred W. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972.
3. 03

   Epidemics in Mexico and the Andes

   Event

   What happened

   In 1519 Hernán Cortés lands in Mexico, and from 1520 a smallpox epidemic spreads through the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan and surrounding lands. In the 1520s smallpox also moves ahead of Spanish forces in the Andes, and the Inca emperor Huayna Capac dies around 1527, probably of an epidemic disease. Spanish forces conquer the Aztec capital in 1521 and the Inca state in the 1530s.

   ↓ The rest is history

   Indigenous people had no earlier exposure to these diseases, and population losses were severe over the following century. Estimates of the pre-1492 population of the Americas vary widely, and the scale of the decline is still debated, but most scholars agree that it was very large, in some regions the great majority of the population. The losses weakened resistance to conquest and left colonists short of labour, which pushed them towards enslaved African workers.

   Sources

   1. PrimarySahagún, Bernardino de. Florentine Codex (General History of the Things of New Spain). Nahuatl and Spanish text, compiled 1540s-1570s.Book 12 gives the Nahua account of the conquest and the smallpox epidemic.
   2. BookCook, Noble David. Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492-1650. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
   3. BookCrosby, Alfred W. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
4. 04

   Silver from Potosí and Zacatecas

   Event

   What happened

   In 1545 Spanish prospectors find an enormous silver deposit at Cerro Rico in Potosí, in present-day Bolivia, and Zacatecas in Mexico is mined from 1546. Spain organises Indigenous forced labour, the mita, at Potosí. Silver then flows across the Atlantic to Spain and across the Pacific to Manila and China.

   ↓ The rest is history

   American silver linked the economies of Europe, Asia and the Americas for the first time. It paid for Spanish wars and for goods from China, where silver was in strong demand. Historians debate how far it caused inflation in Europe. The silver mines also helped fix a colonial economy built on coerced labour.

   Sources

   1. BookBakewell, Peter. Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico: Zacatecas, 1546-1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971.
   2. BookFlynn, Dennis O., and Arturo Giráldez. "Born with a Silver Spoon: The Origin of World Trade in 1571." Journal of World History 6, no. 2 (1995): 201-221.
5. 05

   Sugar in Brazil and the Caribbean

   Event

   What happened

   From the 1530s the Portuguese establish sugar plantations in northeastern Brazil, relying first on Indigenous and then increasingly on enslaved African labour. In the 1640s Dutch, English and French colonists in Barbados and other islands move into sugar. Barbados turns from tobacco and cotton to sugar in that decade.

   ↓ The rest is history

   Sugar became the leading crop of the Atlantic economy, and plantation colonies took the largest share of the people carried in the slave trade. Brazil alone received roughly 40 percent of all Africans taken across the Atlantic, according to the Slave Voyages database. Sugar, grown from a plant native to Asia and spread through the Mediterranean and Atlantic islands, is among the clearest examples of the Old World crops reshaping the Americas.

   Sources

   1. BookSchwartz, Stuart B. Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550-1835. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
   2. BookMintz, Sidney W. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York: Viking, 1985.
6. 06

   American food crops reach Europe, Africa and Asia

   Event

   What happened

   During the 1500s, Spanish and Portuguese ships carry maize, potatoes, tomatoes, beans, chilli peppers, manioc and tobacco from the Americas to Europe, and onward to Africa and Asia. Maize and manioc are grown widely in West and Central Africa, and sweet potatoes and maize spread through China. Potatoes reach Spain by the 1560s and then other parts of Europe.

   ↓ The rest is history

   New crops raised food supplies in many places, and historians link them to population growth in Europe, Africa and China during the following centuries, though other factors also mattered. The potato became a staple in Ireland and northern Europe, which left some regions exposed to later crop failures such as the Irish famine of the 1840s. Manioc and maize were also used to feed captives on slave ships and to feed people in Africa, so the trades in food and in people were connected.

   Sources

   1. BookNunn, Nathan, and Nancy Qian. "The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas." Journal of Economic Perspectives 24, no. 2 (2010): 163-188.
   2. BookMann, Charles C. 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. New York: Knopf, 2011.
7. 07

   The Middle Passage and the growth of the trade

   Event

   What happened

   Between the 1500s and the 1860s European and American ships carry about 12 million Africans across the Atlantic, of whom roughly 10.7 million survive the voyage. The trade peaks in the 1700s, led by Portugal, Britain and France. Captives are marched to the coast, held in forts and ships, and sold in the Americas.

   ↓ The rest is history

   These figures come from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, built from ship records. Mortality on the crossing, known as the Middle Passage, was high, and many more died in capture and in the first years of forced labour. The trade drew people mostly from West and West-Central Africa and shaped African politics, as some states grew rich on the trade and others suffered raids. Britain banned its slave trade in 1807, and the trade ended in the 1860s.

   Sources

   1. PrimaryEquiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. London, 1789.Autobiography of a formerly enslaved man, with an account of the crossing.
   2. BookEltis, David, and David Richardson. Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010.
   3. BookRediker, Marcus. The Slave Ship: A Human History. New York: Viking, 2007.
8. 08

   Las Casas and the debate on Indigenous rights

   Event

   What happened

   In 1511 the Dominican friar Antonio de Montesinos preaches in Hispaniola against the abuse of Indigenous people. The Spanish crown issues the Laws of Burgos in 1512 and the New Laws in 1542, which limited the encomienda. In 1550-1551 Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda debate at Valladolid the rights of Indigenous peoples.

   ↓ The rest is history

   The debate produced no general end to forced labour, and colonists often resisted the New Laws. Las Casas wrote against the abuse of Indigenous people. In his earlier years he is also reported to have supported bringing Africans as workers, and he later regretted this. The episode shows that arguments over the morality of conquest and enslavement began early, although slavery itself lasted for more than three centuries.

   Sources

   1. PrimaryLas Casas, Bartolomé de. Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias. Seville, 1552.His best-known account of Spanish violence in the Americas.
   2. BookHanke, Lewis. All Mankind Is One: A Study of the Disputation between Bartolomé de Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974.
9. 09

   The Irish were the first slaves in America

   Popular belief

   The legend

   A widely shared claim holds that Irish people were the true or main slaves of the early Americas and that their treatment was as bad as or worse than that of Africans. Memes present it as a hidden history that is not taught. It is repeated online and in some books.

   ↓ The rest is history

   Many Irish people were transported as prisoners or indentured servants to the Caribbean in the 1600s, especially under Cromwell, and their suffering was real. But indentured servitude was a term of years with legal limits, whereas chattel slavery was lifelong, inherited by children, and based on race, written into colonial law from the later 1600s. The numbers sometimes quoted are inflated. Historians such as Liam Hogan have traced the claim to modern internet sources rather than to the records.

   Sources

   1. BookBeckles, Hilary McD. White Servitude and Black Slavery in Barbados, 1627-1715. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989.
   2. ArticleHogan, Liam. "The Irish Slaves Myth." Medium essay and related scholarly responses, 2016.Traces the modern origin of the claim.
10. 10

    Columbus brought the first potato and tomato to everyone

    Popular belief

    The legend

    It is often said that Columbus himself returned from his first voyage with potatoes, tomatoes and maize, and that these foods then swept Europe quickly. Some retellings say he started the exchange in a single trip. School accounts sometimes repeat this.

    ↓ The rest is history

    Columbus did bring back some items, and he noted maize and sweet potatoes in his journals. But the potato is an Andean crop that Europeans met only after the Spanish reached South America in the 1530s, and it spread slowly. Tomatoes came from Mesoamerica after the conquest of Mexico. Many crops took decades or centuries to become staples. The exchange was a long process involving many voyages, not one man's single trip.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryColumbus, Christopher. Diario del primer viaje. Journal of the first voyage, 1492-1493, as abridged by Bartolomé de las Casas.Mentions maize and other crops seen in the Caribbean.
    2. BookCrosby, Alfred W. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972.
11. 11

    Europeans deliberately spread smallpox to conquer the Americas

    Popular belief

    The legend

    A common belief says that the disaster that struck Indigenous peoples was a planned act of biological warfare from the start. Conquerors are said to have given out infected blankets as a deliberate policy. The story is often told as the main reason for the population collapse.

    ↓ The rest is history

    The great majority of deaths came from diseases spreading unplanned, since Europeans did not understand germs in the 1500s and many of them fell ill too. There is one well-documented attempt at deliberate infection: in 1763 British officers at Fort Pitt, during Pontiac's War, discussed and handed out blankets from a smallpox hospital, as shown in letters by Jeffery Amherst and Henry Bouquet. Whether it caused an outbreak is uncertain, since smallpox was already present. This was a single local episode, not the cause of the wider collapse.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryAmherst, Jeffery, and Henry Bouquet. Letters of June-July 1763 on smallpox and the Delaware, in the Bouquet Papers. British Library.Discuss the idea of spreading smallpox among Native people.
    2. BookFenn, Elizabeth A. Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82. New York: Hill and Wang, 2001.
12. 12

    Africans were only enslaved because they were already slaves in Africa

    Popular belief

    The legend

    A frequent claim says that Europeans simply bought people who were already enslaved in Africa, so that Africans themselves were responsible for the trade. Some tellings say Europeans seldom took part in capture. The claim is used to deflect blame.

    ↓ The rest is history

    Slavery of various kinds did exist in Africa, as it did in Europe and Asia, and African rulers and merchants took part in the trade on the coast, often on their own terms. But European demand, goods and firearms greatly increased the scale of capture and sale, and Europeans owned the ships, ran the forts and the American plantations, and wrote the colonial laws. Historians such as John Thornton stress African agency, while others such as Walter Rodney stress the damage that the trade did. Both parts of the picture are supported by the records, and neither removes the responsibility of the European traders and colonists.

    Sources

    1. BookThornton, John. Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
    2. BookLovejoy, Paul E. Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.