Sugar,  hard liquors and slavery

It is known that the "discovery" of America had to do with the search for a commercial road to Southeast Asia, in the face of the obstruction of the traditional roads of the Middle East that at that time had fallen under Turkish rule. It is also known that the medieval culture of the time had generated a mythology of great wealth in distant countries, travelers or men who after countless adventures managed to make themselves of great wealth and power. Spaniards and Portuguese arrived in this continent, unknown to them, looking for spices and gold, but finally the main motivation for their conquest was the cultivation of sugarcane.

Sugarcane was domesticated in India, arriving in the Iberian Peninsula in the 12th century to be introduced in the Madeira Islands. and then Santo Tomé, during the 15th century by the Portuguese, where it was intensively cultivated using guanche slave labor. coming from the Canary Islands recently occupied by blood and fire by the Castilians, and from the coasts of Guinea. 

Sugar in Europe was a substitute for honey and already in the 12th and 14th centuries it was sold in the pharmacies. At the same time the distillation was developed, giving rise to the production and consumption of the spirits and hard liquors that increased the demand and therefore the production of sugarcane.  The highest yields were achieved in Madeira and Santo Tomé. At the end of the 1450s Madeira sugar was sold in London. In 1493 there were eighty mills producing eighteen tons a year.

The huge profits obtained from the sale of sugar in Europe allowed the Portuguese and their Spanish partners to finance further expeditions, including those that would culminate in the conquest of the American continent.

In all the appropriate places, both Spanish and Portuguese established sugar cane plantations using the slave labor of the natives who inhabited those countries. The Spanish enslaved tens of thousands of Tainos and Caribs in the islands they controlled (Haiti, Cuba, Puerto Rico, etc.) and the Portuguese did the same with populations Tupinikin, Carijo, Tupinambá, Caeté and others on the coast of Brazil.

The elimination of the original indigenous population of these sugar regions took place very quickly. The Taínos of Cuba and Haiti were reduced from millions to hundreds in less than half a century, some of the Lesser Antilles were emptied after three or four kidnapping expeditions. The Portuguese acted similarly in their domains of Brazil by eliminating the First Nations of the entire northeast coast from Ceará to Ilheus in little more than fifty years. The Carijá and other groups of the southern coast, around the colonies of Sao Paulo and Sao Vicente, ran the same fate. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Spaniards and Portuguese had killed directly or indirectly more than 10 million people, depopulating vast regions and hindering the development of the same productive activities that were based on the work of these populations.

This is how the islands of the Caribbean and the coasts of Brazil were emptied, regions densely populated in times previous to the invading influence. The lack of labor that they themselves had caused ended up causing great concern among Spanish and Portuguese settlers who no longer had indigenous slaves to exploit in plantations, sugar mills, mines and various services. As a result, they began to resort more and more frequently to slaves captured in African lands to fulfill the tasks that the eliminated indigenous could no longer fulfill.

Slave trade was an ancient and sad history in Africa since ancient times. The successive Moroccan kingdoms of the Maghreb, the Sultanates of the Arabian Peninsula and the coast of the Indian Ocean were dedicated to the slave trade from the 11th and 12th centuries. This traffic was destined to the Mediterranean and European Kingdoms and Empires of the time in exchange for metals, fabrics and other manufactured products. Many of the slaves thus incorporated into the market were of African origin, but not exclusively. The successive wars allowed to capture slaves of many geographic and ethnic origins. During the 12th to 15th centuries the wealthy and "elite" classes of the countries of Western Europe and the Muslim countries of the Mediterranean had become "accustomed" to using African slaves, generally from the territories of West Africa and Guinea. According to Herbert S. Klein it is estimated that between 5,000 and 10,000 slaves per year traveled the route between Sub-Saharan Africa and the countries of the Mediterranean and Europe. This meant that at the end of the six centuries prior to the arrival of the Portuguese in West Africa no less than 3.5 million Africans were "exported" out of the continent57. Caravans carrying various goods and slaves used the trans-Saharan route. At a time when these routes were controlled by Moroccans, the infamous trade originated in certain gangs of kidnappers organized from certain populations of the Sahel, specialized in this traffic, including the Tuaregs, the Fulani and other groups from the Saharan shore. Several kingdoms of this area were based largely on such trade (as Gana, Mali and the Empire of Gao in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries). When the Portuguese arrived in the fifteenth century by sea (ie by the south) the relationship was reversed. As of that moment the task of "capture" was in the hands of the coastal populations and those attacked were the peoples of the interior.

As a result of these readjustments of commercial circuits and the conquest of African bases, Portugal managed to seize the slave trade. In the fifteenth century the Portuguese occupied the Atlantic islands (Cape Verde, Azores and Santo Tomé) and several coastal bases in the Gulf of Guinea and began to exploit the sugarcane using slave labor

Since 1576, when the Portuguese settled in the Sao Paulo neighborhood of Luanda, the traffic moved to this colony, producing an important increase in the numbers exported. The trade of Angola and the coast of Mina (Dahomey) was organized especially in the sugar areas of Brazil and Guinea more oriented to Cartagena de Indias and Peru. 
The ports of the Río de la Plata, later founded, received slaves from Angola and Mozambique on the east coast of the continent.

Despite the antiquity of the slave trade in Africa, when the first Portuguese arrived, many coastal towns in western Africa ignored the origin and purposes of the newcomers. These pale men were simply "murdele" (men of the sea).

There are traditional versions that show the surprise of Africans before the arrival of Europeans:

«They saw a large vessel appear on the wide sea. This boat had white wings shining like knives. White men came out of the water and said words that no one could understand. Our ancestors were afraid, they said they were Vumbi, ghosts of the dead. They were thrown back into the sea with their arrows. But the Vumbi spat fire with a sound of thunder.

From that moment the looting is triggered. A King of the Congo commented: "Thieves and men without conscience arrive at night to take away the children of our nobles and vassals, tempted by the desire to possess the goods and merchandise of the Portuguese." Garcia de Resende said in 1554: « there are many merchants who specialize in this and deceive them and deliver them directly to the slave traders. "

The Portuguese slave trade that dominated commerce during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was based on a chain of forts that had been established along the entire African coast. From the seventeenth century the English appeared through the English Royal Africa Company and the French with their Compagnie du Sénégal which in 1717 was absorbed by the Company of the French Indies.

The Portuguese and their local subordinates were the first to enter the continent from the sea with slave ends. They had their bases of operations were in the islands of Cape Verde and Sao Tome. At the end of the sixteenth century, they had firmly established themselves in the population of San Salvador in the Congo, where merchants and adventurers involved in slave trade were constantly arriving.

The numbers of exported slaves grew regularly. In the 18th century, approximately 16,000 Africans arrived each year in the ports of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro and Salvador de Bahia. In the second decade of the next century this number had increased to 40,000.

As they strengthened economically, demographically and technologically, other European states began to get involved in the slave trade to nourish their own American colonies. The English to supply their plantations in the Caribbean, Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados and others. To meet this trade, the British ships had triangular itineraries: they left the slaves in Jamaica, returned to England carrying sugar, coffee, indigo and cotton, and then returned to Africa loaded with textiles, metal utensils, gunpowder, firearms and alcoholic beverages. . In addition to the traffic to the Caribbean, the English also transported slaves to Buenos Aires and Montevideo (in 25 years a total of 16,000), a part of which were transported to Upper Peru.

The introduction of African slaves in small numbers in America began very early, probably before 1502 when Governor Ovando de la Española unsuccessfully requested the suppression of such shipments. In 1520 the Spanish colonists of Puerto Rico where the natives had been practically exterminated began to acquire African slaves in considerable numbers for their plantations and mills. In the following years the colonists of the other islands also began to buy slaves of that origin to compensate the lack of natives. At that time the Royal Officers of Santo Domingo informed King Charles V that there had been an increase in the price of African labor: "The blacks have risen at a high price because they only work, none Spanish. We pray for a general remedy for all the Indies at said price and that the Indians of Brazil from Portugal may enter (as slaves) on this island. "

From "Amerrique, the Orphans of Paradise", Danilo Anton, Piriguazù Ediciones