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Virtual Guide | Slavery | Slave Trade

History | Slave Trade | Shipment | Surinam
Slavery & Abolition in the USA | Slavery Today

Portuguese on the Western Shores of Africa

Islamitic Berbers brought the first black slaves to the Iberian Peninsula. Although small in numbers compared to later periods, the consequences turned out to be tremendous. Spaniards and Portuguese were well aware of the strength and the qualities of Negros as cheap labour. Especially in the sugar culture around the Mediterranean Sea and after their discovery on the Azores and Madeira slaves were employed. Iberians heard stories about the kingdoms south of the Sahara and about the Songhay king, who was 'the wealthiest king in the world'. In search of these African kingdoms of gold, Dom Henrique (also called Henry the Sailor) left Portugal in 1441 A.C. with a few ships. He landed on the African west coast but did not find gold, though enough other merchandise. Two of his captains captured twelve Negros (men, women and children). These captives were carried to Portugal as slaves to convince the king that it was cheaper to get slaves directly from the African west coast than to buy them from Arabic and European middle-men. Dom Henrique offered the Pope two black slaves, and the Pope granted the Portuguese permission for the slave trade on the West African coast.

The Pope issued in advance complete absolution to those who would fall in the battle on the African west coast. Such ended Arab monopoly of the slave trade through the Sahara. In 1448 for the first time, leaders of Mali and Songhay exchanged almost a thousand slaves with the Portuguese against horses, silk and silver. The first black slaves were used as domestics and for the sugar culture around the Mediterranean Sea, the Azores and on Madeira. Black slaves were also sold to Spain and Italy.
In 1481 the Portuguese built their first fort on the Gold Coast, the notorious d'El Mina, the mine. Thus the first stone was laid for an enormous and forbidding enterprise, 'The Transatlantic Slave Trade."

The beginning of the Transatlantic slave trade

Two years after the discovery of America in 1492, the Treaty of Tordesillas, made by the Pope, assigned the territory eastward of the line through Brazil to Portugal and the territory on the west of it to Spain. With this the Portuguese gained a monopoly on the slave trade on the African coast. On the other hand Spain got a free hand in the Caribbean sea and Central and South America.

A treaty made the previous year; the demarcation line went further to the east, thus completely excluding Portugal from the new world. In 1494, after heavy protest, the treaty was adjusted and Portugal was assigned a part of the present Brazil that still had to be discovered.

At first, colonists in Portuguese and Spanish colonies preferred to use natives as slaves. But the Indians were originally fishermen and hunters. Physically they were not suitable for heavy labour. The work was predominantly in salt and silver mines and in agriculture. Many of the natives died from exhaustion, malnourishment, ill-treatment or Old World diseases, such as smallpox and measles. Others preferred to commit suicide rather than to live the inhuman life that was forced on them by Spanish colonists. When possible, the native slaves tried to escape to the impenetrable inlands. Regularly, Spanish soldiers carried out punitive expeditions. Captured runaways were severely punished. As a warning many natives were hanged. Escapees often preferred mass suicide rather than being captured again. On Hispafiola (now Haiti) the number of natives decreased in less than 25 years from more than one million to hardly eleven thousand, in spite of a constant supply of new native slaves from the other Caribbean Islands. About 200,00 of the "Arowakken" who were carried off from the coastal region of South America and the Caribbean islands, died between 1492 and 15110.

Already in 1510, black slaves were transported to Spanish colonies with the permission of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand (Ferdinand the Catholic) of Spain. At first, all Africans had to come from Portugal or Spain or had to be baptized in Africa before embarkation. The "Casa dos Escravos" in Lisbon (the government slave trade agency) sold more than 1,200 Negros between 1511 - 1513. Emperor of Austria and King of Spain, Charles V, granted licenses to his trusted and favorite courtiers to transport African slaves to the new world. In 1529 such a license was handed for the first time to a Dutchman (at that time Holland was a Spanish territory). No doubt that also at the beginning of the sixteenth century, slaves had been illegally transported directly from Africa to the New World colonies.
Bishop Bartolomé de las Casas of Chiapas could not bear to witness the atrocities committed against the Caribbean native population. Ruthless and cruel expeditions forcing convertion of nonbelievers were equally destructive as those of the slave raiders. Thus the Catholic Church had become involved in the destruction of native Caribbean's. In 1537 the bishop returned to Spain with a request to King Charles V to end the inhuman situation of the natives. He proposed to replace the native Caribbean's with more "durable" African Negros.
Based solely on economical motives, King Charles V honored the bishop's request. It was not possible to make the new territories productive with only the help of a few unwilling natives. It was thought that Africa Tihad an inexhaustible labour force. In 1538, this led to the "Asiento de Negros" (a monopolistic con-tract for the slave trade). As the licenses to transport black slaves to the new world was limited to one trip or a certain number of slaves, the "asiento" was a privilege that, during the agreed term, granted the holder a monopoly on slave transports to the overseas colonies. King Charles V granted this "asiento" to one of his courtiers, the Fleming Laurens de Goumenot. He obtained the right to transport 4,000 Negros to Hispanola, Cuba, Jamaica and Puerto Rico.

De Goumenot could only recruit this large number of slaves from the Portuguese in Africa, because the Treaty of Tordesillas excluded Spain from all trade with West Africa. The purchase of Negro slaves, the transport over sea and the high price that had to be paid to the crown, required large sums of money, which De Goumenot did not have at his disposal. That is why he sold the "asiento" for 25,000 ducats to some Genuese traders. They started a very profitable trade with Portuguese slave traders on the West African coast. Especially at the beginning the slaves were captured during inland expeditions, or bought from wealthy African kings. Some kings even undertook special military expeditions against neighboring tribes and, if necessary, sold their own citizens.

Curaçao as centre of the slave trade

After the loss of the Pernambuco region in Brazil, Curaçao formed the most suitable market for African slaves. Already in 1636 the WIC had promulgated instructions that ordered captains equipped with Dutch letters of marquee, to deliver captured Negro slaves on Curaçao. Most were employed as company slaves on Curaçao and Bonaire, for the cutting down of dye-wood and the salt production, but also for fishing, turtle hunting and the maintenance of the company gardens. Superfluous slaves were sold to the New Netherlands and to the Guyanas.
At the end of the sixteen forties, the demand for African slaves at the Dutch colonies in Pernambuco slowly died as the Portuguese gradually reconquered this region. The WIC transferred its slave trading activities to the Spanish colonies in the Caribbean area. Between 1646 and 1657, about 3,800 slaves were sold tot Santo Domingo, Puerto Rico and the Tierra Firme. Some ships sailed directly to these destinations; others brought their load to Curacao first, where the human cargo was resold.

Peter Stuyvesant was the owner of a slave camp on Curacao. After his departure for the New Netherlands in 1646 he asked his successor, Matthias Beck, to sell these slaves. Beck sold - to the dismay of Stuyvesant - the slaves to the Spaniards. Among the slaves were children who, at the request of Stuyvesant's wife, were baptized Protestant. Stuyvesant was not indignant about the sale of these children, but he did not agree with a sale to the Catholic Spaniards.

In 1640, sixty years after the Spanish occupation, the Portuguese regained their freedom. Portugal closed its doors for Spanish traders. The just granted asiento became worthless.
The Spanish needed workers and apart from Portugal, only the Dutch (with whom Spain waged war for almost eighty years) had trading posts on the African coast. Spain did not want to conclude an asiento with a rebellious nation. Until 1662 no asiento was concluded, only individual supply agreements.
In 1655 the shipping industry between Spain and the new world was severely damaged because of the British conquest of the former Spanish colony Jamaica. In 1657, the deputy governor of Curaçao, Matthias Beck, got in touch with Spanish colonial authorities on the nearby South American continent. It was quite clear that the Spanish colonies were in big need for European goods. But trade with this region could only be possible when, apart from goods, also negro slaves could be delivered. There were not sufficient slaves available to fulfill the great demand of the Spanish colonies. The demand for slaves was so enormous that most slave ships, who sailed between 1658 and 1662 to Curacao, were already sold before the ship entered the harbor.
The flourishing slave trade on Curaçao did not escape the attention of the two Genuese traders who in 1662 obtained the Asiento. Instead of importing slaves from Africa they choose to conclude a delivery contract with the WIC. The contents of the first contract stipulated the delivery of 24,000 slaves during a period of seven years.
At their arrival on Curaçao, slaves were immediately accommodated in special slave depots. After a medical examination they were taken to agents of the "Asientistas". At first, the depots were situated in the Schottegat area, where the slave ships docked. It is conceivable that there was a slave depot in the area of the present museum Kurá Hulanda. Due to lack of documents, much is still unknown about the first years of the slave trade on Curaçao.

Slaves, who were not immediately sold, were accommodated in two W1C slave camps These were mostly the weak, the sick or slaves rejected by the "Asientistas". The chained slaves walked from Schottegat to Zuurzak plantation, which was the largest slave camp. This camp was walled to prevent escape attempts.
When the camp was full, slaves were brought to Groot St. Joris, the second slave camp. In these camps the slaves could recover. Afterwards most of them were sold illegally to Spanish or other colonies. Others remained in the service of the company and were put to work on one of the nine plantations of the WIC. The company had a doctor to take care of sick slaves. Not from a humane point of view but purely for economic reasons. The value of a healthy slave was about 150 Guilders. At that time a bricklayer, a barber or a carpenter earned 20 Guilders a month.

In the slave trade the value of a slave was counted in piezas de Indias. A slave only counted as a full pieza de Indias if he or she was at least seven palmos (about five feet) in height and was between 15 and 35 years of age. Because of physical defects such as bad teeth, a bad eyesight or a disease, individual slaves were counted as fractions of the ideal slave. They were sometimes called manquerones or macrons. Children aged 4-8 and 8-15 were counted as one-half and two-thirds of a pieza de Indias.

The slave trade on Curaçao had its ups and downs. Could the demand between 1659 and 1662 not be fulfilled, due to a temporary stagnation in 1669 there were about 3,000 slaves available on the island. In spite of all, the WIC was unable to deliver the contractually agreed number of slaves. Instead of three to four thousand slaves a year, the average delivery to the Asientistas was not even a thousand a year. Nevertheless the Asientistas kept on concluding new contracts with the company, because Curacao was the most important slave market in the Caribbean. The trade went on until the end of the eighties of the seventeenth century. Then the importance of Curacao as a slave market lessened, due to increased competition with the now British island of Jamaica. More and more slave ships delivered their load directly to the Spanish colonies. In 1713, through the peace treaty of Utrecht, Britain gained the Spanish Asiento. This ended the official slave trade with the Spanish colonies for Curaçao. There was no market for the slaves that were delivered on the island in 1715. They were forced to stay on the island. In years to come very few slaves from Africa were directly delivered to Curaçao. The last (documented) slave ship that delivered African slaves directly to Willemstad, reached the island in 1775. Al illegal transportations seldom were committed to paper, this does not imply the end of the transatlantic slave trade to Curaçao, although it would have been minimal.

Other nations and the slave trade

The monopoly on West Africa granted by the Pope in 1494, was in practice a mere formality. Portugal did not have the necessary military means to maintain its monopoly. Already during the first quarter of the seventeenth century several Dutch trading posts arose along the West African coast. After the Dutch conquest of fort d'Ehnina in 1637, other countries competed for a key position along the West African coast. At first they restricted themselves to the delivery of slaves to the Spanish colonies in the new world. But as countries like France, Denmark, Britain and Germany gained possession of their own colonies, slaves were also transported across the Atlantic Ocean to provide their own territories with black labourers. Britain, with whom during the seventeenth century the Dutch Republic was at war several times, turned out to be a formidable competitor. In 1655 it had conquered the island of Jamaica and set out to develop it into a major slave depot. Despite the British having lost its forts along the Gold Coast during the second war with the Republic (1665 - 1667), the British slave trade recovered quite fast. A lot of slave ships changed their course to Jamaica and Barbados.
In 1672 the Royal African Company was founded. It gained a monopoly on the slave trade with British colonies in the new world. Unfortunately this monopoly was undermined by British seamen, who managed to cross the ocean with smaller and faster ships at lower expenses.
Jamaica had a flourishing sugar culture and needed a lot of slaves. But the supplied slaves were also sold to the Spanish Continent of South America. More and more Britain took over the leading role from the Republic as the major slave supplier to the new world. In exchange for peace after the ending of the Spanish Succession War in 1713, Britain gained the Asiento, that allowed them to transport 144,000 Negro slaves to the Spanish colonies during a period of thirty years. In the eighteenth century Britain became the largest provider of African slaves. Also France and - after the War of Independence - the United States of America were active in this trade.

Early Colonization in Brazil

Today, Brazil is demographically and culturally practically an "African" country, which has derived from a rich history of African presence in the area. Shortly after the first European arrival in 1500, by Pedro Alves Cabral, Africans were being imported into Brazil.

Unfortunately the names of the first Africans were not as well recorded as the Europeans. By 1535, the African slave trade was a fully organized endeavor.

However, just as we often overlook the names of the first Africans, we also often find that comparative analysis of technological achievements of Africans and Europeans have also been overlooked. Such that in 16th century Africa, the level of metallurgy and agricultural technologies were superior to those of the Europeans at the time, thus it often resulted that the slaves would teach their masters such skills.

The earliest Dutch colonies in the New World, were at Dutch Guyana (Suriname) and in the Pernambuco region of northern Brazil at Olinda and Recife. Olinda was settled in 1630, and Johan Maurits van Nassau was made Governor of the colony in 1637.

His house still stands as a monument in that city today. In 1654, the Dutch handed over the Brazilian colony to the Portuguese, and thereafter shifted their African slave traffic primarily via the island of Curaçao. However the Portuguese continued to increase their importation of Africans into Brazil.

The actual numbers of Africans brought to Brazil by the Portuguese is very difficult to calculate, as a result of vague documentation and a single catastrophic historical event. This event was the decree of the Minister of Finance, Rui Barbosa, on May 13, 1891, that all historical documents relating to slavery and the slave trade, be destroyed.

This act, single-handedly ruined the possibility for the millions of Africans in Brazil to properly research their heritage.

Sugar was the Brazilian colony's first industry, with the states of Bahia and Pernambuco being the center of major early growth as a colony. By 1587 there were over 47 sugar
mills operating in Bahia alone. Throughout the early years of the colony, the African slaves were the majority population.

Later, with the advent of cotton as a primary cash crop, the larger African slave populations were moved north into the area of Maranho. Into the 18th century, gold and diamonds became the focus of economic activity in Brazil, and thus the African slave populations were concentrated largest in the south near Minas Gerias.

Brazil was the last nation in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery, on May 13, 1888.

João Mauricio Rugendas in Brazil

João Mauricio Rugendas was born in Ausborg, Germany, in 1802, into a family of famous artists, and he died in Weilheim, Germany, in 1858. After serving as a professor then director of the Academy of Ausborg, Rugendas eventually joined a scientific expedition to Brazil led by Amado Adriano Taunay.

Many of Rugendas' drawings from this expedition were sent to St. Petersburg, Russia, while he was still in Brazil. Some of these original drawings were lost and others have been found and later published.

After Rugendas returned to Germany, he compiled the drawings that he still possessed into a "Pictorial Voyage of Brazil" (Viagem Pictoresca atraves do Brasil) published in Paris in 1835, with both French and German editions, both having lithographic reproductions of Rugendas' drawings done by an artist named Engelmann. These lithographs are the basis of this exhibition, as they best depict the life ways of the African slaves in Brazil during the 19th century, some of the origin Rugendas drawings are also represented in the exhibition.

Of some interest are the drawings that record the first Dutch colonies in Brasil at Olinda and Recife.

Subsequent to this 1835 publication Rugendas returned to South America and Mexico, where he produced hundreds of drawings. Most of these original drawings were displayed in the Museum of Munich. In 1928, Clovis Ribeiro and Wasth Rodrigues took advantage of the poor economic conditions in Germany at the time, and purchased over 600 of the Rugendas drawings and returned them to Brazil.

In this exhibition, Rugendas was able to capture the very human characteristics of daily African slave life and physical characteristics in Brazil, from the harsh conditions and cruelty, to the pleasantries of dance and domestic life.

Abolition of the slave trade

Already in the seventeenth century public opinion turned against slavery. The Quakers thought that slavery was in contravention of Christianity. In the next century French philosophers like Voltaire criticized slavery. He made a foal of the Roman Catholic Church because of their acceptance of slavery by moans of his publication of "Sacramento".
England - the country that was the largest slave trader since the beginning of the eighteenth century - turned out to be the first to abolish slavery. Two important protagonists for the abolition of slavery in England were the vicar John Wesley and the lawyer Granville Sharp. The latter founded in 1765 the first organized abolition movement. In England lived between 15,000 and 16,000 slaves, that were taken along by the (former) owners of plantations in the colonies. Sharp started several legal cases about escaped slaves. On June 22, 1772 this led in the famous case of the escaped slave James Sommersot, to the judgment of the High Court that "slavery in this nature, morally as well politically, can not be established. It is detestable and there is nothing to justify this - not even a law. What the unpleasant conclusion of this verdict may be, it is impossible to say that slavery can be accepted or approved by the British court and Therefore I demand that this black man is acquitted."
With this verdict all slaves living in England were discharged, but not the slaves in the colonies, whore in accordance to the local laws, slavery was allowed. In the year following this verdict many free slaves wore kidnapped by their previous masters and illegally shipped to the colonies.
The abolitionists did continue their struggle against slavery. In 1787, the famous potter Josiah Wedgwood, co-founder of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in England, made 200,000 replica's of a medallion he had designed, of a kneeling and chained slave with the text: "Am I not a man and a brother?" Continually more and more voices were raised against the slave trade. The British abolitionists tried to convince other nations to stop their slave trade. They contacted French abolitionists. This country was at the forefront concerning the abolition of slavery. France already had a "Code Noir" with rules concerning the treatment of slaves. In August 1789, the National Assembly in Paris published the first declaration of human rights. They insisted on the right of freedom and equality for all human beings; the well-known slogan of the French Revolution: "Freedom, Equality and Fratemy." Against all expectations this turned out not to apply to the French slaves in the West Indies. This led in 1791 to a general slave revolt in Saint Dominique, when slaves killed or dislodged their previous masters. After a bloody war of many years, m 1804 the former French colony became an independent nation under the new name of Haiti. In 1794 the French government officially sot free all slaves. But their freedom did not last long. In a do-cree, issued in May 1802, Napoleon restored slavery in imperial France. The (short-lived) freedom of the slaves on the French part of St. Martin led to commotion and discontentment among the slaves on the Dutch part of the island. Only because the slaves had - within certain boundaries - a lot of freedom, no great irregularities were caused on the Dutch side of St. Martin, but it did increase desertion to the French side among the slaves.
Denmark was the first country to ban slavery. In 1807 Britain declared the slave trade to be illegal. One year later the United States of America followed, Sweden in 1813, The Netherlands in 1814, France in 1815 and Spain in 1820. Brazil became independent in 1822, submitted to the pressure of the British government and legally ended the slave trade soon after.
However the constant demand for slaves in the Caribbean and in the Southern States of America continued. Huge profits could still be made with the slave trade. In the years that followed, dozens of illegal slave transports took place between Africa and those destinations. Britain on an international level made great efforts to stop this illegal trade. It made agreements with other countries. The British marine ships were authorized to ransack ships leaving Africa. They patrolled along the African coast to stop illegal slave transports. When a slave trader got caught, the ship was confiscated and the captain punished. The punishments England imposed in 1811 was deportation or the death penalty.
It was not from a humane point of view that England suppressed the slave trade, but to protect its own sugar colonies against dishonest competition of other countries that could still count on new supplies of cheap slave labour. The British ships along the African coast caused the situation of the slaves aboard illegal slave ships to become even more insecure. It was not unusual for a slave ship to toss her human car-go into the sea when confronted with a British or French slave hunter. There wore also rumours about mass slaughters of slaves along the African coast by Negro slavers when British or French marine ships prevented the slave ships to roach the shore to pick up the human cargo.
The most important markets for illegal slavers wore Cuba and Brazil. From Cuba the African Negros wore illegally transported on fast clippers to the southern states of America, often with false documents to prove the slaves originated from other Caribbean colonies and not from Africa. British, American, French and Dutch ships took part in the illegal slave transports that happened until 1870. At a rough estimation, about 1,898,400 slaves have been transported over the Atlantic Ocean between 1811 and 1870. Sixty per-cent of these slaves wore transported to Brazil, 32 percent to Cuba and Puerto Rico, 5 percent to the French West Indies and only 3 percent straight to the United States, but many slaves were brought to the United States through Cuba.
The ban on the import of new African Negros in most colonies forced the plantation owners to treat their slaves better. In some colonies the situation did not change much because of the large number of illegally imported slaves. On Curaçao slaveholders could, despite the ban on the slave trade, get permissions for the export of slaves to other colonies, like Puerto Rico and Surinam. Because of a natural growth many planters had problems to feed their fast growing slave population. But exports to other colonies was (officially) only possible with the authorization of the slave himself. They often preferred Puerto Rico to Surinam. A transfer to Surinam for a white governor was considered a promotion, for the slaves it was used as a punishment.