Slavery had existed in many regions of Europe since prehistoric times. Prior to the seventeenth century, there was little or no moral or religious stigma linked to slave ownership or trafficking. It existed continuously in the Mediterranean world, with only the source of slaves changing throughout the years. Following the capture of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman Empire prohibited the exporting of white slaves from its territories.

The Portuguese then began importing African slaves from the Canary Islands and West Africa onto the Iberian Peninsula. Black African slaves were also widespread in other regions of the Mediterranean, and a handful made their way to northern Europe. They might be utilized as personal slaves or shown as a result of

Slave labor, however, became a key social and economic force beginning in the sixteenth century, first in the West Indies and the Spanish and Portuguese territories in South America, and subsequently in the British colonies on North America's South Atlantic shore.

The rise of such slave-labor plantation economies resulted in unprecedented contact between European and African peoples, as well as European settlers in the Americas and Africa.

Africa and Africans were pulled into the Western experience in ways never seen before in history.

The Spanish and Portuguese faced a serious manpower shortage after discovering and settling the New World. They, like the majority of the French and English settlers who arrived later, had no intention of doing manual labor. Initially, they hired Native Americans as laborers, but sickness killed hundreds of thousands of the native population throughout the sixteenth century and subsequently.

As a result, labor became scarce very quickly. The Spanish and Portuguese next turned to imported African slave labor. During the seventeenth century, English colonists in North America went more slowly to slavery, with the greatest number settling in the Chesapeake Bay region of Virginia and Maryland, and then later in the low country.

To fully comprehend the consequences of forced African immigration to the Americas, we must consider both areas as well as the overall picture of the transatlantic economy. Slave imports into the West Indies and Brazil were far greater than those into North America. Although the arrival of African slaves on a Dutch ship at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, is considered the commencement of slavery in the United States, almost a century of slave trafficking in the West Indies and South America preceded that occurrence.

Indeed, by the late sixteenth century, Africans had established themselves as a significant social presence in the West Indies as well as in the major towns of both Spanish and Portuguese South America. Their presence and influence in these areas would increase.

During the late seventeenth century, the number of slaves in much of Spanish South America fell, and slavery became less fundamental there than elsewhere. Slavery, on the other hand, continued to grow its impact in Brazil and the Caribbean as sugar plantation grew to suit the need of the European market. By the end of the seventeenth century, the Caribbean islands had become the world's hub for sugar production and the primary provider for the ever-increasing demand for it.

During the eighteenth century, an era of significant slave importation, the establishment of new regions of farming and other economic activities necessitated the hiring of additional slaves. The rising prosperity of sugar islands, which had begun to be exploited in the late 17th century.

During the eighteenth century, there was a significant rise in the number of Africans imported to the Americas as slaves, with the majority landing in the Caribbean or Brazil. As early as the nineteenth century, as many as 20,000 new Africans landed in the West Indies as slaves each year. By 1725, it is believed that about 90% of Jamaica's population was made up of African slaves.

The numbers grew considerably bigger after the fifties.

The inflow of new Africans in most locations, including the British colonies, meant that the number of new forced immigrants outweighed the existing slaves of African heritage.

Before the European discovery, sugar was a luxury item that only the rich could purchase. Sugarcane could not be produced in Europe since it demands subtropical temperatures and copious rainfall. Sugar had to be imported from the Arab world or the Spanish and Portuguese islands off the coast of Africa, which were too dry for the plant to thrive.

The Caribbean, on the other hand, is suitable for sugarcane cultivation. Columbus brought it to the New World in 1493, and within a decade, sugar was being grown (by slaves) in Santo Domingo.

The image attached shows that Sugar was both raised and processed on plantations such as this one in Brazil.

However, sugar production did not take off until Britain and France established themselves in the Caribbean in the seventeenth century, and European demand for sugar began to rise.