Slavery in the New World: 1491-1607

Established by the Spanish to control the native population during colonization.
Based on a tribute system.
Natives provided either gold or labor.
The Spanish provided “protection” and conversion to Christianity.
Basically forced slavery of the native population by the Spanish.

Spanish settlers force long labor, don't pay Indian workers, fail to protect Indians, and seize Indian lands.
Indians die from disease and harsh living and working conditions.
Encomienda ends after clergy protests and Indian revolts; abuses continue under replacement repartimiento.

The demand for workers on plantations, especially in the Caribbean and Brazil, led to the African slave trade.
Europeans looked to Africa as a source of slaves.
Africa will forever change due to this.

A transatlantic trading network develops.
Connects Europe, Africa, and the Americas.
Exports included natural resources, cash crops, manufactured goods, and enslaved people.
Included the Middle Passage: voyage that brought captured Africans to the West Indies and Americas to be sold into slavery.

Slaves were chained together and forced into dark, cramped quarters below the ship's deck.
Slaves were stowed under shelves with a height of 2 feet 7 inches between the beams and far less under the beams.

The majority of African slaves worked in harsh conditions on sugar and indigo plantations or in gold and silver mines.
Africans were treated less than animals, not thought of as human, and tortured and mutilated.

Segment of the global slave trade that transported between 10 million and 12 million enslaved Africans.
A little more than 300,000 captives, or 4-6 percent, came to the United States.
The majority of enslaved Africans went to Brazil, followed by the Caribbean.

First documented black person to arrive in what would become the U.S. when he accompanied Juan Ponce de León (Spanish) in search of the Fountain of Youth in 1513, and they ended up in present-day Florida, around St. Augustine.
The Portuguese, in the 16th century, were the first to engage in the Atlantic slave trade. In 1526, they completed the first transatlantic slave voyage to Brazil.
In 1526, enslaved Africans were part of a Spanish expedition to establish an outpost on the North American coast in present-day South Carolina.
First English Colony-Jamestown 1607.
The first enslaved Africans in England’s colonies in America were brought on a ship flying the Dutch flag in 1619.
The Atlantic slave traders, ordered by trade volume, were: the Portuguese, the British, the French, the Spanish, the Dutch, and the Americans.