Modern Slave Trade

MODERN SLAVE TRADE Not very long after the disappearance of serfdom in the most advanced communities comes into sight the new system of colo nial slavery, whicli, instead of being the spontaneous outgrowth of social necessities and subserving a temporary need of human development, was politically as well as morally a monstrous aberration.

Spanish Colonies.

In 1442, when the Portuguese under Prince Henry the Navigator were exploring the Atlantic coast of Africa, one of his officers, Antam Gonsalves, who had captured some Moors, was directed by the prince to carry them back to Africa. He received from the Moors in exchange for them ten blacks and a quantity of gold dust. This excited the cupidity of his fellow-countrymen; and they fitted out a large number of ships for the trade, and built several forts on the African coast. Many negroes were brought into Spain from these Portuguese settlements, and the colonial slave trade first appears in the form of the introduction into the newly discovered western world of descendants of these negroes. When Nicolas de Ovando was sent out in 15o2 as governor of Haiti, whilst regulations, destined to prove illusory, were made for the protection of the natives of the island, permission was given to carry to the colony negro slaves, born in Seville and other parts of Spain, who had been instructed in the Christian faith. It appears from a letter of Ovando in 1503 that there were at that time numbers of negroes in Haiti; he requested that no more might be permitted to be brought out. In 1510 and the following years King Ferdinand ordered a num ber of Africans to be sent to that colony for the working of the mines.

Before this time Columbus had proposed an exchange of his Carib prisoners as slaves against live stock to be furnished to Haiti by Spanish merchants. He actually sent home,- in above Soo Indian prisoners taken in wars with the caciques, who, he suggested, might be sold as slaves at Seville. But, after a royal order had been issued for their sale, Queen Isabella, inter ested by what she had heard of the gentle and hospitable char acter of the natives and of their docility, procured a letter to be written to Bishop Fonseca, the superintendent of Indian affairs, suspending the order until enquiry should be made into the causes for which they had been made prisoners, and into the lawfulness of their sale. Theologians differed on the latter question, and

Isabella directed that these Indians should be sent back to their native country.

Bartolome de las Casas, the celebrated bishop of Chiapa, accompanied Ovando to Haiti, and was a witness of the cruelties from which the Indians suffered under his administration. He came to Spain in 1517 to obtain measures in their favour, and he then made the suggestion to Charles that each Spanish resi dent in Haiti should have licence to import a dozen negro slaves. Las Casas, in his Historia de las Indies (lib. iii. cap. 'or), con fesses the error into which he thus fell. Other good men appear to have given similar advice about the same time, and, as has been shown, the practice was not absolutely new ; indeed, the young king had in 1516, whilst still in Flanders, granted licences to his courtiers for the importation of negroes into the colonies, though Jimenes, as regent of Castile, by a decree of the same year forbade the practice. The suggestion of Las Casas was no doubt made on the ground that the negroes could, better than the Indians, bear the labour in the mines, which was rapidly exhaust ing the numbers of the latter. He has sometimes on this plea been exonerated from all censure ; but, though entitled to honour for the zeal which he showed on behalf of the natives, he must bear the blame for his violation or neglect of moral principle. His advice was unfortunately adopted. "Charles," says Robertson, "granted a patent to one of his Flemish favourites, containing an exclusive right" of supplying 4,000 negroes annually to Haiti, Cuba, Jamaica and Porto Rico. "The favourite sold his patent to some Genoese merchants for 25,00o ducats"; these merchants ob tained the slaves from the Portuguese ; and thus was first systema tized the slave trade between Africa and America.