THE FIRST GREAT WAVES: AFRICAN PROVENANCE ZONES FOR THE TRANSATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE TO CARTAGENA DE INDIAS, 1570–1640

2011 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID WHEAT
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Relative Importance ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Forced Migrants ◽  
Cartagena De Indias

ABSTRACTDrawing on port entry records for 487 ships disembarking nearly 80,000 captives in Cartagena de Indias, the primary slaving port in early colonial Spanish America, this article provides a new assessment of the relative importance of major African provenance zones for the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century transatlantic slave trade. Upper Guinea and Angola furnished roughly equal shares of forced migrants to Cartagena between 1570 and 1640, with a smaller wave of captives from Lower Guinea. While Angola eventually replaced Upper Guinea as the main source of slave traffic to Cartagena, the shift was more gradual than scholars have previously believed.

Diets, Food Supplies and the African Slave Trade in Early Seventeenth-Century Spanish America

2007 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 517-550 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda A. Newson ◽  
Susie Minchin
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Environmental Conditions ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Labor Income ◽  
Common People ◽  
African Slave ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
The Common

Much has been written about the spread of Old World crops and livestock in the Americas. However, very little is known, except in very general terms, about the availability of different foods, diets and nutrition, particularly among the common people, in different regions of Spanish America in the early colonial period. This derives in part from the shortage of evidence, but it also reflects the difficulties of researching these complex issues, where environmental conditions, access to land and labor, income distribution, regulation of food supplies and prices, as well as food traditions, all interact.

“A Bad Race of Infected Blood” The Atlantic Profile of Gaspar Riveros Vasconcelos and the Question of Race in 1650 New Spain

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-25
Author(s):  
Matteo Lazzari
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
New Spain ◽  
National Archive ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Colonial Mexico ◽  
Infected Blood ◽  
Cartagena De Indias

Abstract Based on manuscripts from the Mexican National Archive recording a 1650 Inquisition trial for astrology, this article will present a reconstruction of the story of Gaspar Riveros Vasconcelos, a “mulatto” born in Tangier, a descendant of a Portuguese father and Angolan mother. He travelled the Atlantic commercial routes – visiting Angola, Pernambuco, Cartagena de Indias, La Havana – and got involved in political discussions with Spaniards residing in mid-seventeenth century Mexico City. This period was particularly tough for Portuguese people in Spanish America, given the 1640 breach of the dynastic union of Spain and Portugal, which had been formerly achieved in 1581 by King Philipp ii. Vasconcelos’ story allows us to reflect on identity formation in time, on the concept of race, as well as on the ways in which “a persona miserable de color pardo” could deploy his agency as Afro-Portuguese in colonial Mexico society. As such, this paper aims to reconsider the relevance of individual narratives which can generate a growing awareness of the importance that Afro-descendants had in the Ibero-American world and how they could influence the process of racialization in the local context of seventeenth century New Spain.

Trans-imperial History in the Making of the Slave Trade to Venezuela, 1526-1811

Itinerario ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Borucki
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Rigid System ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade ◽  
Online Resource ◽  
Commercial Networks ◽  
Spanish Colonies ◽  
Trading Routes

The last two decades have witnessed an unprecedented expansion of knowledge about the transatlantic slave trade, both through research on specific sections of this traffic and through the consolidation of datasets into a single online resource: Voyages: The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database (hereafter Voyages Database). This collective project has elucidated in great detail the slave trading routes across the Atlantic and the broad African origins of captives, at least from their ports of embarkation. However, this multi-source database tells us little about the slave trading routes within the Americas, as slaves were shipped through various ports of disembarkation, sometimes by crossing imperial borders in the New World. This gap complicates our understanding of the slave trade to Spanish America, which depended on foreign slavers to acquire captives through a rigid system of contracts (asientos and licencias) overseen by the Crown up to 1789. These foreign merchants often shipped captives from their own American territories such as Jamaica, Curaçao, and Brazil. Thus, the slave trade connected the Spanish colonies with interlopers from England, France, the Netherlands, Portugal (within the Spanish domain from 1580 to 1640), and eventually the United States. The importance of the intra-American slave trade is particularly evident in Venezuela: while the Voyages Database shows only 11,500 enslaved Africans arriving in Venezuela directly from Africa, I estimate that 101,000 captives were disembarked there, mostly from other colonies. This article illuminates the volume of this traffic, the slave trading routes, and the origins of slaves arriving in Venezuela by exploring the connections of this Spanish colony with the Portuguese, Dutch, British, and French Atlantics. Imperial conflicts and commercial networks shaped the number and sources of slaves arriving in Venezuela. As supplies of captives passed from Portuguese to Dutch, and then to English hands, the colony absorbed captives from different African regions of embarkation.

PAWNSHIP, DEBT, AND ‘FREEDOM’ IN ATLANTIC AFRICA DURING THE ERA OF THE SLAVE TRADE: A REASSESSMENT

2014 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul E. Lovejoy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Guinea Coast ◽  
Congo River

AbstractA reassessment of the institution of pawnship in Africa for the period from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century tightens the reference to situations in which individuals were held as collateral for debts that had been incurred by others, usually relatives. Contrary to the assumptions of some scholars, pawnship was not related to poverty and enslavement for debt but rather to commercial liquidity and the mechanisms by which funds were acquired to promote trade or to cover the expenses of funerals, weddings, and religious obligations. A distinction is made, therefore, between enslavement for debt and pawnship. It is demonstrated that pawnship characterized trade with European and American ships in many parts of Atlantic Africa, but not everywhere. While pawnship was common north of the Congo River, at Gabon, Cameroon, Calabar, the interior of the Bights of Biafra and Benin, the Gold Coast, and the upper Guinea coast, it was illegal in most of Muslim Africa and the Portuguese colony of Angola, while it was not used in commercial dealings with Europeans at Bonny, Ouidah, and other places.

African Slavery and Spanish Empire

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
African Descent ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
Demographic Situation ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
Racial Slavery

This article traces a philosophical shift that opened the door to a new departure in eighteenth-century Spanish empire: a newly emerging sense that the slave trade and African slavery were essential to the wealth of nations. Contextualizing this ideological reconfiguration within mid-eighteenth century debates, this article draws upon the works of political economists and royal councilors in Madrid and puts them in conversation with the words and actions of individuals in and from Cuba, including people of African descent themselves. Because of the central place of the island in eighteenth-century imperial rivalry and reform, as well as its particular demographic situation, Cuba served as a catalyst for these debates about the place of African slavery and the transatlantic slave trade in Spanish empire. Ultimately, between the mid-eighteenth century and the turn of the nineteenth, this new mode of thought would lead to dramatic transformations in the institution of racial slavery and Spanish imperial political economy.

Slavery and Abolition

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debbie Lee
Keyword(s):  
Slave Trade ◽  
Breaking Point ◽  
African Origin ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

During the British transatlantic slave trade, which lasted from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, millions of people were taken from their home in Africa and sold in the Americas where they were forced to work for nothing. But these people continually resisted slavery through acts small and large, and during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, slavery reached a breaking point. British poets, novelists, and artists gave voice injustices slavery created, but the most powerful anti-slavery writing of the era came from those of African origin living in England.

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