In 1518, King Charles authorized Spanish ships (especially privateers) to engage in the trade of African slaves. Direct slave traffic from Africa was not initially permitted because the Spanish Crown worried that captives from sub-Saharan Africa might introduce non-Christian religious practices to the native American Indian populations. But in 1518, Emperor Charles V, abolished the provision requiring slaves to be born under Christian dominion, and issued a charter allowing four thousand Africans to be purchased directly from Portuguese traders in the Cape Verde Islands and transported to the New World. This resulted in an industrialization of the transatlantic slave.  This edict did not start the slave trade but it caused it to happen on a much larger scale.  Prior to 1518, ships trading slaves with Caribbean settlements might have 30 or 40 slaves by the mid 1520’s these ships often carried 200 – 300. 

Spain began importing African slaves to the Caribbean because the Native people it had previously enslaved there were dying from European diseases like smallpox and even influenza.  In 1508, Hispaniola’s native population was over 60,000 but buy 1520 disease and internal warfare had reduced it to less than 20,000.  Spanish colonists had to import laborers in order to sustain the colony’s gold mines and sugar industry so Spanish colonial administrators petitioned the crown for permission to import slaves. In 1516 Dominican friar Bartolome de Las Casas proposed replacing native labor with African slaves, whom he believed were better suited for harsh physical labor.

Slavery was a common practice of warfare in many parts of Africa long before the Spanish slave trade.  It was common practice for warring peoples of Africa to capture slaves.  As the demand for slaves in the Caribbean increased, some African warlords made a business out of capturing Africans from neighboring tribes and selling them.  People captured by these warlords were transported to markets along the coast and exchanged for manufactured goods such as muskets, cloth or alcohol.  Slaves were then shipped to island ports off the coast before ships took them to the Americas.

At each step in this process, huge numbers of people were killed.  First in the capture, as it is necessarily warfare, many people are killed before they can be captured.  Then once captured, many sought to escape, then there were those who died of diseases and malnutrition as they were transported.  Nearly half of those captured in Africa will not survive to become Caribbean slaves.  Then of those who survive, another third will die in the first year of captivity either by disease, mistreatment, or abuse. 

The slave trade had devastating effects in Africa. Trade of enslaved people promoted lawlessness, violence, and perpetual warfare.   Hauling people off to the slave markets depopulated certain regions and the continuing fear of slave traders made economic and agricultural development almost impossible.  A large percentage of the people taken captive were women in their childbearing years and young men who normally would have been starting families. Slave traders left elderly, disabled, and other people who were least able to contribute to the economic health of their societies. As the coastal areas of western Africa become less populous, raiders began to enter the interior of Africa to forcibly take captives. 

Abuse and mistreatment were widespread but the monetary value as slaves meant that ship captains could not ignore the health of their human cargo.  They were only paid for slave delivered alive.   But this human cargo was usually treated in the same manner as other commercial cargo.  Sick and dying slaves were thrown overboard.  Slaves were crammed into unventilated and unsanitary holds fed near starvation diets so as to minimize the cost of transportation.  Slavery had become an industry.

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