KURA HULANDA MUSEUM - CURACAO
Photo & Text: KURA HULANDA MUSEUM - Curacao www.kurahulanda.org
Prince Enrique
of Portugal, 'the Navigator' dispatched his captains to look for gold. They
found slaves, an already well-known but very expensive commodity in Europe
since the trade was monopolized by the Moors.
In 1441, a Portugese sailor Antum Gonzales seized 'two Moors', likely Sanhaja
Berber, on the Rio d'Oro coast and took them, with seven other captives, back
to Lisbon, and gave them to Pope Pius II (Piccolomini). The Pope, in turn,
granted Price Enrique title to all lands discovered East of cape Blanco and,
in 1455, authorized Portugal 'to reduce to servitude all infidel people'.
Pius II also directed that baptized Africans should not be traded, but they
could be enslaved.
Portuguese might be taking home several thousands of slaves a year, they were
still only supplementing the supply of domestic labor fed by an already existing
and profitable trade in European slaves. So profitable that the Venetian Republic
found its sale of Christian slaves to Egypt and other Muslim countries, indeed,
that its merchants had nor been deterred even by Pope Clement V's edit of
ex-communication for his offence", Basil Davidson. Africa in History.
1991.
With Columbus's "discovery" of the New World in 1492 and the introduction
of sugar cane cultures by the settlers to the Spanish West Indies, slave trading
became big business. Africans were highly skilled in tropical farming and
mining, thus in these respects far superior to Amer-Indians and Europeans.
"The African Trade is the first principle and foundation of all the rest, the mainspring of the machine which set every wheel in motion… The African Trade is so beneficial to Great Britain, so essentially necessary to the very being of her colonies, that without it neither could we flourish nor they long subsist…" Malachi Postlethway, 18th century capitalist and Merchantalist Theoretician.
"…the
African ruling class joined hands with the Europeans in exploiting the African
masses; at first light-heartedly and without any notion of the consequences,
and then, after the American discoveries, with an eye to their own increasing
personal profit and power."
Walter Rodney
Greed became
the primary motive of the Atlantic Slave Trade that lasted over 400 years.
Some facts:
- The Slave Trade became the largest employer in Holland and Portugal from
1500 - 1750.
- David and Alexander Barclay established Barclay's bank in 1756 with the
profits made in their slaving business.
- Lloyds of London became one of the biggest financial forces by dabbling
in and insuring slave ships and their cargoes.