1441: Start of European slave trading in Africa. The Portuguese captains Antão Gonçalves and Nuno Tristão capture 12 Africans in Cabo Branco (modern Mauritania) and take them to Portugal as slaves.
1444
1444: Lançarote de Freitas, a tax-collector from the Portuguese town of Lagos, forms a company to trade with Africa.
8 August 1444: de Freitas lands 235 kidnapped and enslaved Africans in Lagos, the first large group of African slaves brought to Europe.
1450
1452
1452: Start of the 'sugar-slave complex'. Sugar is first planted in the Portuguese island of Madeira and, for the first time, African slaves are put to work on the sugar plantations.
18 June 1452: Pope Nicholas V issues Dum Diversas, a bull authorising the Portuguese to reduce any non-Christians to the status of slaves.
1454
8 January 1454: Pope Nicholas V issues Romanus Pontifex, a bull granting the Portuguese a perpetual monopoly in trade with Africa. Nevertheless, Spanish traders begin to bring slaves from Africa to Spain.
1461
1461: The first of the Portuguese trading forts, the castle at Arguin (modern Mauritania), is completed.
1462
1462: The Portuguese colony on the Cape Verde Islands is founded, an important way-station in the slave trade.
1462: Portuguese slave traders start to operate in Seville (Spain)
1470
1470s: Despite Papal opposition, Spanish merchants begin to trade in large numbers of slaves in the 1470s.
1475
1476
1476: Carlos de Valera of Castille in Spain brings back 400 slaves from Africa.
1481
1481: A Portuguese embassy to the court of King Edward IV of England concludes with the English government agreeing not to enter the slave trade, against the wishes of many English traders.
1481-86: Diogo da Azambuja builds the castle at Elmina (modern Ghana) which was to become the most substantial and the most notorious of the slave-trading forts in West Africa.
1483
1483: Diogo Cão discovers the Congo river. The region is later a major source of slaves.
1485
1485: Diogo Cão makes contact with the nation of Kongo and visits its capital, Mbanza Kongo. He establishes relations between Portugal and Kongo.
1486
1486: João Afonso Aveiro makes contact with the kingdom and the city of Benin.
1486: Portuguese settle the West African island of São Tomé. This uninhabited West African island is planted with sugar and populated by African slaves by the Portuguese. The settlement thus extended and developed the sugar-slave complex that had been initiated in Madeira.
1487
1487-88: Bartolomeo Dias rounds the Cape of Good Hope and explores the Indian Ocean and the East African coast.
1492
2 January 1492: The Moorish town of Granada surrenders to the Spanish forces of the Catholic Kings, Ferdinand and Isabella, marking the end of La Reconquista, the war between Moors and Spaniards in the Iberian peninsular. Both sides retain many slaves taken during the course of the war.
12 October 1492: Christopher Columbus becomes the first European since the Viking era to discover the New World, setting foot on an unidentified island he named San Salvador (modern Bahamas).
1493
3 November 1493: On his second voyage, Columbus again reaches the New World (modern Dominica). On this voyage he initiates the first transatlantic slave voyage, a shipment of several hundred Taino people sent from Hispaniola to Spain. There are doubts about the legality of their enslavement in Spain.
8 December 1493: Columbus founds the first European colony in the New World: La Isabela on the island of Hispaniola (modern Dominican Republic).
1496
8 June 1496: Columbus returns from his second voyage, carrying around 30 Native American slaves. Once again, there are doubts about the legality of their enslavement.
1497
24 June 1497: John Cabot, an Italian sponsored by King Henry VII of England, makes landfall on the northern tip of the island of Newfoundland (modern Canada). This discovery became the basis of subsequent English claims to North America.
1499
1499: More than 200 slaves taken from the northern coast of South America by Amerigo Vespucci and Alonso de Hojeda and sold - apparantly without legal problems - in Cádiz.
1500
1500
22 April 1500: Pedro Cabral of Portugal discovers Brazil, landing at Porto Seguro, southern Bahia.
1501
1502
1502: Juan de Córdoba of Seville becomes the first merchant we can identify to send an African slave to the New World. Córdoba, like other merchants, is permitted by the Spanish authorities to send only one slave. Others send two or three.
1504
1504: a small group of Africans - probably slaves captured from a Portuguese vessel - are brought to the court of King James IV of Scotland.
1505
1505: first record of sugar cane being grown in the New World, in Santo Domingo (modern Dominican Republic).
1509
1509: Columbus's son, Diego Cólon, becomes governor of the new Spanish empire in the Carribean. He soon complains that Native American slaves do not work hard enough.
1510
22 January 1510: the start of the systematic transportation of African slaves to the New World: King Ferdinand of Spain authorises a shipment of 50 African slaves to be sent to Santo Domingo.
1513
2 April 1513: Juan Ponce de Leon becomes the first European to reach the coast of what is now the United States of America (modern Florida).
1516
1516: the governor of Cuba, Diego Velázquez, authorises slave-raiding expeditions to Central America. One group of slaves aboard a Spanish caravel rebel and kill the Spanish crew before sailing home - the first successful slave rebellion recorded in the New World.
1516: in his book Utopia, Sir Thomas More argues that his ideal society would have slaves but they would not be 'non-combatant prisoners-of-war, slaves by birth, or purchases from foreign slave markets.' Rather, they would be local convicts or 'condemned criminals from other countries, who are acquired in large numbers, sometimes for a small payment, but usually for nothing.' (Trans. Paul Turner, Penguin, 1965)
1518
18 August 1518: in a significant escalation of the slave trade, Charles V grants his Flemish courtier Lorenzo de Gorrevod permission to import 4000 African slaves into New Spain. From this point onwards thousands of slaves are sent to the New World each year.
1519
20 September 1519: The circumnavigation expedition of Ferdinand Magellan sets out from San Lucar de Barameda. In December 1520, Magellan discovered the ocean which he named the Pacific. Magellan died in the Philipines, 27 April 1521. Only one of the five ships to set out returned to Spain, on 8 September 1522.
1521
13 August 1521: with the capture of King Cuahutemotzin by Hernan Cortés and the fall of the city of Mexico, the Aztec empire is overthrown and Mexico comes under Spanish Rule.
1522
1522: A major slave rebellion breaks out on the island of Hispaniola. This is the first significant uprising of African slaves. After this, slave resistance becomes widespread and uprisings common.
1524
1524: 300 African slaves taken to Cuba to work in the gold mines.
1525
1526
1526: Hieronymous Seiler and Heinrich Ehinger of Konstanz become the first Germans we know to have become involved in the slave trade.
1527
1527: earliest records of sugar production in Jamaica, later a major sugar producing region of the British Empire. Sugar production is rapidly expanding throughout the Caribbean region at this time - with the mills almost exclusivly worked by African slaves.
1528
November 1528: a slave called Esteban (or Estevanico) becomes the first African slave to step foot on what is now the United States of America. He was one of only four survivors of Pánfilo de Narváez's failed expedition to Florida. He and the other three took eight years to walk to the Spanish colony in Mexico. After their return in 1536, the group's leader, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, published an account of their journey through modern Texas and Mexico (1542).
1530
1530: Juan de la Barrera, a Seville merchant, begins transporting slaves directly from Africa to the New World (before this, slaves had normally passed through Europe first). His lead is quickly followed by other slave traders.
1532
1532: William Hawkins of Plymouth becomes the first English mariner to visit the coast of West Africa, although he does not take part in slave trading.
22 January 1532: Martim Afonso de Souza founds the first Portuguese colony in Brazil at São Vicente. Sugar production begins almost immediately.
15 November 1532: Francisco Pizaro massacres the Incas at Caxamalca (modern Caxamarca) and captures King Atahuallpa, an event that marks the Spanish conquest of Peru.
1539
30 May 1539: Hernando de Soto, following reports from Cabeza de Vaca, lands on the coast of Florida. Of about 1200 men in his expedition, around 50 were African slaves. After exploring modern Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina, the expedition ended in disaster.
1541
September 1541: on his third voyage to Canada, Jacques Cartier establishes the first French colony in the New World at Charlesbourg-Royal, close to modern Québec.
1550
1555
1555: the Portuguese sailor Fernão de Oliveira, in Arte de Guerra no mar (The Art of War at Sea), denounces the slave trade as an 'evil trade'. The book anticipates many of the arguments made by abolitionists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
1555: Queen Mary of England, under pressure from the Spanish, forbids English involvement in Guinea.
July 1555: a small group of Africans from Shama (modern Ghana) described as slaves are brought to London by John Lok, a London merchant hoping to break into the African trade.
10 November 1555: a group of Norman and Breton sailors, under the command of Nicolas de Villegagnon, found the first French colony in South America. The settlement, close to modern Rio De Janiero in Brazil, is named La France Antarctique.
1556
1556: The Italian city of Genoa tries to prevent trading in slaves - not for any humanitarian reasons - but only in an attempt to reduce the numbers of Africans in the city.
1556: Domingo de Soto, in De justicia et de jure libri X (Ten Books on Justice and Law), argues that it is wrong to keep in slavery any person who was born free.
1562
October 1562: John Hawkins of Plymouth becomes the first English sailor that we know about to have obtained African slaves - approximately 300 of them in Sierra Leone - for sale in the West Indies. Hawkins traded the slaves illegally with Spanish colonies, but the trip was profitable and others followed. These contributed to increasing tensions between England and Spain. (As well as initiating the English slave trade, Hawkins also introduced both the potato and tobacco to England.)
1569
1569: a Sevillian Dominican, Tomás de Mercado, publishes Tratos y contratos de mercaderes (Practices and Contracts of Merchants), which attacks the way the slave trade is conducted.
1571
1571: the Parlement of Bordeaux sets all slaves - "blacks and moors" - in the town free, declaring slavery illegal in France.
1575
1573
1573: a Spanish-Mexican lawyer, Bartolemé Frías de Albornoz, publishes Arte de los contratos (The Art of Contracts), which casts doubt on the legality of the slave trade.
1575
20 February 1575: Paulo Dias de Novães founds the Portuguese colony of São Paulo de Luanda on the African mainland (modern Angola). The colony soon became a major slave-trading port supplying the vast Brazilian market.
1577
13 December 1577: Sir Francis Drake sets out from Plymouth on his circumnavigation of the globe. (Returns 26 September 1580)
1579
29 January 1579: with the Union of Utrecht, the northern provinces of the Low Countries unite to create a Calvinist republic free from Spanish rule. The United Provinces (modern Netherlands) soon becomes an important slave-trading nation and an aspiring colonial power.
1580
1580: Following the death of King Henry of Portugal, and a short campaign by the duke of Alva, Spain and Portugal are united under Philip II of Spain. Spain thus becomes the most important colonial power - and the largest participant in the slave trade.
1585
27 July 1585: the first English colony in the New World is established at Roanoke Island (modern North Carolina), organised by Sir Walter Raleigh and governed by Ralph Lane. It was not successful, and the colonists withdrew in June 1586.
16 November 1585: In the first of a series of attacks on Spanish colonial interests, Sir Francis Drake sacks the slave-trading settlement of Santiago in the Cape Verde Islands.
1586
11 January 1586: Sir Francis Drake sacks the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo (modern Dominican republic). He goes on to sack Cartagena (modern Columbia) and St. Augustine (modern Florida). These acts of piracy are among the factors that precipitate war between England and Spain.
1587
23 July 1587: A second English colony is founded at Roanoke Island, again organised by Sir Walter Raleigh. When it is revisted by English ships in August 1590, it has vanished without trace.
1588
July-September 1588: the failure of the Spanish Armada (an intended Spanish invasion of England, largely destroyed by bad weather) provides a boost for English maritime power and for English colonial ambitions, although the boost may have been more psychological than actual.
1592
1592: Bernard Ericks becomes the first Dutch slave trader.
1594
1594: L'Espérance of La Rochelle becomes the first French ship positively identified as participating in the slave trade. However, French merchants may have been involved in small scale slave trading since the 1540s.
1595
1595: in a pattern that was to be adhered to for several decades, Philip II of Spain grants Pedro Gomes Reinal, a Portuguese merchant, a near monopoly in the slave trade. Reinal agrees to provide Spanish America with 4250 African slaves annually, with a further 1000 slaves being provided by other merchants.
1596
11 July 1596: Queen Elizabeth I of England sends a letter complaining that 'there are of late divers blackmoores brought into this realme, of which kinde of people there are allready here to manie ... Her Majesty's pleasure therefore ys that those kinde of people should be sent forth of the lande". Accordingly, a group of slaves were rounded up and given to a German slave trader, Caspar van Senden, in 'payment' for duties he had performed.
1597
1597: Francis Bacon writes on Plantations which becomes an important early text of British colonial discourse.
1600
1600
1600: Pedro Gomes Reinal dies. The Spanish slave-trading monopoly is passed to Jaão Rodrigues Coutinho, Governor of Angola.
1600: King Philip III of Spain outlaws the use of Native American slaves in Spanish colonies.1601
1601: The Jesuits build their first sugar mill in Brazil.
1604
1604: Shakespeare's play Othello: the Moor of Venice first performed. The play features the figure of Othello, an African general, now working for Venice, who has previously suffered enslavement.
1607
14 May 1607: Jamestown, the first permanent British colony in North America, is founded in modern Virginia.
1611
November 1611: Shakespeare's play The Tempest first performed. The play includes the figures of Caliban and Ariel, both enslaved.
1612
1612: The first permanent, although non-official, British colony is founded in Bermuda.
1613
1613: Lorenzo Pignoria publishes De Servis et Eorum apud Veteres Ministeriis, a history of slavery in classical Rome.
1614
23 November 1614: Bermuda colony becomes a Crown possession.
1617
1617: first records of slaves in Bermuda.
1624
28 January 1624: Thomas Warner founds the first British Colony in St Christopher, now normally known as St Kitts.
1625
1625
14 May 1625: Captain John Powell lands on Barbados and claims the island for King James I.
1627
1627: a Spanish-Peruvian Jesuit, Alonso de Sandoval, publishes Naturaleza, Policia, ... Costumbres i Ritos, Disciplina, i Catechismo Evangelico de todos Etíopes (The Nature, Policy, ... Customs and Rituals, Disciplines, and Gospel Catechism of all Ethiopians), which argues that slavery combines all the world's evils.
17 February 1627: Henry Powell, John Powell's brother, along with 80 British settlers and 10 African slaves, found a colony on Barbados at Jamestown (modern Holetown).
1632
1632: Montserrat, originally claimed by Christopher Columbus for Spain in 1493, falls under English control (although there may have been earlier small English settlements).
1650
1651
1651: First written mention of slaves being imported into Montserrat.
1655
May 1655: British forces under the control of Admiral Sir William Penn take control of Jamaica.
1657
1657: George Fox, the Quaker leader, writes a letter 'To Friends beyond sea, that have Blacks and Indian Slaves'. This is the first letter written by a Quaker expressing some doubts about slavery in the New World.
1660
1660: The newly restored King Charles II of England charters the 'Royal Adventurers into Africa', the first English state-sponsored slave trading company.
1671
1671: A group of Quakers, including George Fox and William Edmundson, visit Barbados and appear to have come into conflict with the Barbadian plantocracy for suggesting that slave-owners should treat their slaves with humanity and attempt to convert them to Christianity.
1673
1673: The Puritan Richard Baxter publishes antislavery material in A Christian directory, or, a summ of practical theologie, and cases of conscience (London, 1673).
1675
1676
1676: the Quaker George Fox publishes Gospel Family-Order, being a short discourse concerning the Ordering of Families, both of Whites, Blacks and Indians, which urged Quakers in America to treat their slaves humanely. The book, although published in London, appears to have been based on a sermon he delivered in Barbados in 1671.
1676: the Quaker Alice Curwen visits Barbados and, in a letter to the slave-holding Barbadian Friend Martha Tavernor, becomes the first Quaker to unambiguously denounce slavery.
1680
1680: the Anglican Morgan Godwin publishes The Negro’s and Indians advocate, suing for their admission into the Church (London, 1680).
1681
4 March 1681: Pennsylvania Colony, later to become a centre of antislavery thought, was founded by a grant to William Penn by King Charles II.
1684
1684: In London, Thomas Tryon publishes two tracts on slavery: 'The Negro's Complaint of Their Hard Servitude, and the Cruelties Practised upon Them' and 'A Discourse in Way of Dialogue, between an Ethiopean or Negro-Slave and a Christian, That Was His Master in America'. These appeared as parts II and III of Friendly Advice to the Gentlemen-Planters of the East and West Indies (London, 1684).
1688
1688: Aphra Behn publishes Oroonoko, or, the Royal Slave, the first novel to discuss the rights and wrongs of slavery.
18 February 1688: The German Mennonite Resolution against Slavery, the first formal protest against slavery to be made in the British American colonies, is delivered in Germantown, Pennsylvania.
1689
1689: John Locke publishes Two Treatises of Government (London, 1689) which arguably offers a justification for slavery - although few scholars now believe that Locke's arguments were intended to be applied to the Atlantic slave trade.
1691
1691: Cotton Mather’s biography of John Eliot includes antislavery sentiment: The life and death of the renown’d Mr. John Eliot, who was the first preacher of the Gospel to the Indians in America (Boston?, 1691)
1693
1693: The anonymous An exhortation and caution to Friends concerning buying or keeping of Negroes (New York, 1693) becomes the first printed pamphlet explicitly denouncing slavery and the slave trade. Arising from political controversies in early Pennsylvania, it is directed towards Quakers in Philadelphia.
1696
1696: Thomas Southerne in London publishes his dramatic version of Behn's Oroonoko, or, the Royal Slave.
23 October 1696: Philadelphia Quakers rule that Friends ‘be Careful not to Encourage the bringing in of any more Negroes, & that such that have Negroes be Careful of them, bring them to Meetings, or have Meetings with them in their Families, & Restrain them from Loose, & Lewd Living.’ This is probably the first institutional attempt to limit slave trading in America.
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Thursday, July 14th 2011 at 12:29PM
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