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 knights who after countless adventures managed to become of great wealth and power. Spaniards and Portuguese came to this continent, unknown to them, looking for spices and gold but finally the main motivation for their conquest was the cultivation of sugarcane.
Sugar cane 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 from of the Canary Islands recently occupied by blood and fire by the Castilian and African kings brought from the Guinea coasts.
Sugar in Europe was substituted for honey and already in the 12th and 14th centuries it was sold in the shops. At the same time the distillation was developed, giving rise to the production and consumption of the spirits 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 Spaniards and Portuguese established sugarcane plantations using for it the slave labor of the natives who inhabit these 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 in 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 into three or four kidnapping expeditions. The Portuguese acted similarly in their dominions 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 coasts, 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.
Thus 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 the Spanish and Portuguese settlers who no longer had indigenous slaves to exploit in the plantations, sugar mills, mines and various services. As a result, more and more slaves captured on African lands began to be used more and more to fulfill the tasks that the eliminated indigenous could no longer fulfill.
The slave trade was an ancient and sad history in Africa since ancient times. The successive Moroccan kingdoms of the Maghreb and the Sultanates of the Arabian Peninsula and the coasts 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 implied that at the end of the six centuries before the arrival of the Portuguese in West Africa no less than 3.5 million Africans were "exported" out of Africa.
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. By the end of the sixteenth century, they had established themselves firmly 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 following 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, British ships were following triangular routes: leaving the slaves in Jamaica, returning to England carrying sugar, coffee, indigo and cotton, and then returning to Africa laden with textiles, metal utensils, gunpowder, firearms and alcoholic beverages. . In addition to traffic to the Caribbean, the English also transported slaves to Buenos Aires and Montevideo (in 25 years a total of 16,000), a portion 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 settlers 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 to a high price because they only work, none Spanish. We beg for a general remedy for all the Indies at said price and that the Indians of Brazil from Portugal may enter (as slaves) to this island. "
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