At this date we first hear that negroes had been introduced into the colony. But their introduction into Spain and Europe took place early in the fifteenth century. "Ortiz de Zuñigo, as Humboldt reports, with his usual exactness, says distinctly that 'blacks had been already brought to Seville in the reign of Henry III of Castile,' consequently before 1406. 'The Catalans and the Normans frequented the western coast of Africa as far as the Tropic of Cancer at least forty-five years before the epoch at which Don Henry the Navigator commenced his series of discoveries beyond Cape Nun.'"[6]
But the practice of buying and selling slaves in Europe can be traced as far back as the tenth century, when fairs were established in all the great cities. Prisoners of war, representing different nations at different times, according to the direction which the love of piracy and conquest took, were exposed at those great periodical sales of merchandise to the buyers who flocked from every land. The Northern cities around the Baltic have the distinction of displaying these human goods quite as early as Venice or any commercial centre of the South: the municipal privileges and freedom of those famous cities were thus nourished partly by a traffic in mankind, for whose sake privilege and right are alone worth having. Seven thousand Danish slaves were exposed at one fair held in the city of Mecklenburg at the end of the twelfth century. They had the liberty of being ransomed, but only distinguished captives could be saved in that way from being sold. The price ranged from one to three marks. It is difficult to tell from this how valuable a man was considered, for the relation of the mark to other merchandise, or, in other words, the value of the currency, cannot be represented by modern sums, which are only technically equivalent,--as a mark, for instance, was then held equal to eight ounces of silver.[7] That was not exorbitant, however, for those times, and shows that men were frequently exposed for sale. The merchants of Bristol used to sell a great many captives into Ireland; but it is recorded that the Irish were the first Christian people who agreed at length to put a stop to this traffic by refusing to have any more captives brought into their country. The Church had long before forbidden it; and there are no grounds for supposing that any other motive than humanity induced the Irish people to show this superiority to the conventions of the age.[8]
From the essay by Schoelcher, entitled "The Slave-Trade and its Origin," which has been prepared with considerable research, we gather that the first negroes seen in Portugal were carried there in 1441. Antonio Gonzales was the name of the man who first excited his countrymen by offering for sale this human booty which he had seized. All classes of people felt a mania like that which turns the tides of emigration to Australia and California. Nothing was desired but the means of equipping vessels for the coast of Guinea. Previously to this a few Guanches from the Canaries had been exposed for sale in the markets of Lisbon and Seville, and there were many Moorish slaves in Spain, taken in the wars which preceded the expulsion of that nation. But now there was a rapid accumulation of this species of property, fed by the inexhaustible soil of Africa, whence so many millions of men have been reaped and ploughed into the soils of other lands.
In 1443, an expedition of six caravels, commanded by a gentleman of the Portuguese court, went down the coast on one of these ventures, ostensibly geographical, but really mercenary, which then excited the popular enterprise. It managed to attack some island and to make a great number of prisoners. The same year a citizen of Lisbon fitted out a vessel at his own expense, went beyond the Senegal, where he seized a great many natives, discovered Cape Verde, and was driven back to Lisbon by a storm.
Prince Henry built the fort of Mina upon the Gold Coast, and made it a depot for articles of Spanish use, which he bartered for slaves. He introduced there, and upon the island of Arguin, near Cape Blanco, the cultivation of corn and sugar; the whole coast was formally occupied by the Portuguese, whose king took the title of Lord of Guinea. Sugar went successively to Spain, Madeira, the Azores, and the West Indies, in the company of negro slaves. It was carried to Hayti just as the colonists discovered that negroes were unfit for mining. Charlevoix says that the magnificent palaces of Madrid and Toledo, the work of Charles V., were entirely built by the revenue from the entry-tax on sugar from Hayti.
At first, all prisoners taken in war, or in attacks deliberately made to bring on fighting, were sold, whatever their nation or color. This was due to the Catholic theory that all unbaptized people were infidels. But gradually the same religious influence, moved by some scruples of humanity, made a distinction between negroes and all other people, allowing only the former to become objects of traffic, because they were black as well as heathen. Thus early did physiology come to the aid of religion, notifying the Church of certain physical peculiarities which seemed to be the trade-marks of the Creator, and perpetual guaranties, like the color of woods, the odor of gums, the breadth and bone of draught-cattle, of their availability for the market. What renown has graced the names of Portuguese adventurers, and how illustrious does this epoch of the little country's life appear in history! Rivers, bays, and stormy headlands, long reaches of gold coast and ivory coast, and countries of palm-oil, and strange interiors stocked with new forms of existence, and the great route to India itself, became the charter to a brilliant fame of this mercenary heroism. Man went as far as he was impelled to go. While the stimulus continued, and the outlay was more than equalled by the income and the glory, unexplored regions yielded up their secrets, and the Continent of Africa was established by this insignificant nation to be for centuries the vast slave-nursery of the world.
When the habit of selling men began to be restricted to the selling of negroes, companies were formed to organize this business and to have it carried on with economy. The Portuguese had a monopoly of the trade for a long time. They went up and down the African coast, picking quarrels with the natives when the latter did not quarrel enough among themselves to create a suitable supply of captives. Slaves were in great demand in Spain, and quite numerous at Seville. The percentage which the Portuguese exacted induced the Spaniards at length to enter into the traffic, which they did, according to Zuñigo, in 1474.
At that time negroes were confined, like Jews, to a particular quarter of a Spanish city. They had their places of worship, their own regulations and police. "A Cédula [order] of November 8, 1474, appoints a negro named Juan de Valladolid mayoral of the blacks and mulattoes, free and slaves, in Seville. He had authority to decide in quarrels and regular processes of law, and also to legalize marriages, because, says the Cédula, 'it is within our knowledge that you are acquainted with the laws and ordinances.' He became so famous that people called him El Conde Negro, The Black Count, and his name was bestowed upon one of the streets of the negro quarter."
Thus men were born in Europe into a condition of slavery before 1500. In that year the introduction of negroes into Hayti was authorized, provided they were born in Spain in the houses of Christian masters. Negroes who had been bred in Morisco[9] families were not allowed to be carried thither, from a well-grounded fear that the Moorish hatred had sunk too deeply into a kindred blood.
A great many slaves were immediately transported to Hayti; for in 1503, "Ovando, the Governor-General of the Indies, who had received the instructions of 1500, asked the court 'not to send any more negroes to Española, because they often escaped to the Indians, taught them bad habits, and could never be retaken.'"